The first book I read in 2012

I just finished reading Jeffrey Eugenides' most recent novel, The Marriage Plot, which was released in October of 2011.

His Pulitzer Prize-winner Middlesex (published in 2002) is one of my favorite books of all time. So I had really looked forward to reading this, and had high expectations for it.

And maybe that's why I was a bit disappointed by it. I think I would have liked it more had I read it prior to reading Middlesex. Because I loved Eugenides' earlier work so much, I couldn't help but make comparisons.

The Marriage Plot is the first of his novels that isn't set in my hometown of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. As much as I gripe about this place, a huge part of why I love Middlesex (and The Virgin Suicides, for that matter) is that I can picture the setting perfectly.

But anyway, I should stop gushing about Eugenides' earlier novels, and get to writing about The Marriage Plot.

It's centered around three graduates of Brown University: Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell. The novel begins on graduation day in 1982 and follows them through their first year or so thereafter. The book is titled The Marriage Plot for two reasons: Madeleine, an English major, writes her senior thesis on that topic (Austen, James, Eliot, etc). Plus, the three aforementioned characters are part of a love triangle: Mitchell loves Madeline, but Madeline loves Leonard.

The book contains some really beautiful/amusing passages-- the type that I really admire Eugenides for as a writer. Here are a few of the things I highlighted:

• "Everyone in the room was so spectral-looking that Madeleine's natural healthiness seemed suspect, like a vote for Reagan" (25).
• "Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. After getting out of Semiotics 211, Madeleine fled to the Rockefeller Library, down to B Level, where the stacks exuded a vivifying smell of mold, and grabbed something-- anything. The House of Mirth, Daniel, Deronda-- to restore herself to sanity. How wonderful it was when one sentence followed logically from the sentence before! What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth-century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world" (47).
• "In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable" (77).

But, as you might notice, I stopped highlighting things pretty early on. This is because Eugenides' statements seemed less profound than they would be had I liked the characters more.

I just couldn't bring myself to care about Madeleine. She wasn't entirely unlikable, exactly. But she reminded me of someone I went to high school with: someone who, however full of good intentions, had absolutely no idea how privileged she was.

I don't know. To me, she just seemed empty: completely devoid of a history that would explain her personality. She'd be fine as a minor character. But as the protagonist, she just wasn't complex enough for me.

I felt similarly about Mitchell, the guy who's in love with Madeleine. He's from Grosse Pointe, and I feel like I wouldn't have learned anything about him if I didn't have prior knowledge about his hometown. For example, of his graduation, Eugenides writes, "Deanie, in a blue blazer and London Fog raincoat, was beaming at the sight of his youngest son, having forgotten, apparently, that he'd never wanted Mitchell to go to college in the East and be ruined by liberals" (117). Because I know that Grosse Pointe is a notoriously conservative town, I laughed when I read that.

Leonard, meanwhile, is pretty interesting. He's manic depressive; I alternated between feeling compassion for him and being extremely annoyed by his failure to recognize how much he was hurting those around him. Leonard wasn't a very likable person, but he wasn't supposed to be. My opinion of Leonard is similar to that of the other characters in the book. And I admire any author whose talent can allow me to participate in a story that way.

Another thing I struggled with: Although a lot of the references to literary theory made me laugh, it all just got really old/pretentious after a while. Eugenides grew up in Grosse Pointe and then went on to attend both Brown and Stanford. He sort of reminds me of Edith Wharton in that he has access to the upper classes and takes advantage of his ability to reveal things about people like that. And I think that his aim here was satire, which is awesome. But, like everything else about this book, it fell short and all just seemed a bit over the top.

Although I enjoyed the ending (and I won't give anything away), I didn't enjoy the pages leading up to it enough for it to be really profound for me.

And while I want to blame my criticism of this book on my biases (the fact that I'm a huge sucker for good character development, as well as the geography thing), what friends of mine who read this before I did have said about it rang true to my experience. As my friend Liz put it, "I think it was good but it just wasn't... as good? I don't think [Eugenides] accomplished what he had intended to do."

I agree with that. This book had quite a few great moments, but was not, as a whole, great. And maybe that's just because I loved Middlesex so, so, so very much and therefore will always hold Eugenides to a ridiculously high standard as a writer, but still.

Books I read: 2011 edition

For the past few years, I've felt like I haven't been reading enough. I don't know what "enough" is, exactly, but I've definitely been reading less than usual.

And that's how I feel about 2011, even though looking at this list, I didn't do too badly. My big thing this year was that I had a hard time focusing on fiction. I told everyone I was on a huge nonfiction kick. And that's certainly what it felt like, even though that wasn't entirely true. I read a decent number of novels, some of which were pretty long.

I didn't read much poetry until just this month, when I discovered Mindy Nettifee. She gets special mention up here because her books inspired me to start writing poetry again. Read them.

But anyway, the list. As in previous years, I've added comments about a few, and links to longer posts that I wrote earlier this year about certain books.

fiction

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (1994)

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

The Man from Saigon by Marti Leimbach (2009)

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson (1989)

On Beauty by Zadie Smith (2005)

This book contains a brief reference to an early Tracy Chapman album. A+.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (2001)

Inventing Memory: A Novel of Mothers and Daughters by Erica Jong (1997)

Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing (2008)

American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell (2008)

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1928)

Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell (2011)

The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi (1990)

ya/children's

Hope was Here by Joan Bauer (2000)

When We Were Saints by Han Nolan (2003)

The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007)

Pregnant Pause by Han Nolan (2011)

Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey by Margaret Peterson Haddix (1996)

I picked this out randomly, because I love YA books. It contained a list of books by the same author, and although I hadn't recognized her name when I picked this up, I realized that she also wrote Running Out of Time, a book I read in elementary school and loved. So it was cool to accidentally stumble upon another book by the same author.

nonfiction

I Never Called it Rape: The Ms. Report on Recognizing, Fighting, and Surviving Date and Acquaintance Rape by Robin Warshaw (1988)

My one complaint about this book is that it's a bit dated. A lot of the scenarios therein chronicled women who found themselves trapped in a bathroom in the home of someone who had assaulted them. They then had to crawl out of the window to find help. Cell phones have changed that, so I think that a more current edition would be helpful, because unfortunately, this is still a very relevant issue.

He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know by Jessica Valenti (2008)

The Journal of Helene Berr by Helene Berr (2008)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1860)

Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington (1901)

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts (1997)

This was the best book I read all year. It was published quite a few years ago, so I don't know why it wasn't on my radar until now. But it rocked. I could literally feel my brain growing and learning as I read it-- a lot of the information was hard to digest. It was totally riveting and I think that everyone interested in race, class, and reproductive justice should read it.

A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn (1980, 2003)

I actually started reading this last year and just finished it this spring. It's a giant beast of a book, but everyone should read it; it was first recommended to me by a high school teacher six or seven years ago. I think this particular high school recognized my political leanings before I was even aware of them, though, so I'm glad that I waited until college to read it.

Side note: I have a list of people I'd like to high five before I die. Howard Zinn and Lucille Clifton were both on it, until they died within a couple of weeks of each other. That's when I started to get serious about my high five list, and in November of that year, I tracked down Michael Franti after a show in Ann Arbor and gave him a high five. He also gave me a hug, which was AWESOME, but I digress.

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to presentby Gail Collins (2009)

No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think about Power by Gloria Feldt (2010)

Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards (2000)

The one cool thing about this book for me is that the authors included a blurb about a student at the University of Michigan who started a feminist zine there in the 1990s. And the name sounded really, really familiar, so I Googled it, and realized that she teaches in the women's studies program at Wayne now. So I took a class with her this fall. :)

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power in a World Without Rape edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti (2009)

Behind Every Choice is a Story by Gloria Feldt (2002)

As I've mentioned in previous entries, I did not always consider myself to be pro-choice. I only became pro-choice after hearing many women's stories and realizing that reproduction is not an area of life in need of government interference. This is not a book about abortion. It's a book about the difficult decisions that women make.

It was published quite a few years ago; I was bummed to find that many of the web addresses Feldt included don't work anymore. But other than that, it's a pretty good read. What I liked about it is that Feldt left it largely unedited, which allows each woman's individual voice to come through.

Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa Harris-Perry (2011)

How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America by Cristina Page (2006)

My problem with books like this is that the people who really ought to read them never will. This is yet another reason why I think the climate surrounding the "abortion debate" should be modified. The whole pro-choice vs. pro-life thing isn't effective. Talk to people. Respect each other.

A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America by Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson (1998)

The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz (1992)

This past summer, a former professor mentioned that she was reading Coontz's most recent book, and told me that she thought I'd really like it. Although I didn't go out and find a copy of the book right away, I kept the author's name in the back of my mind, and was surprised to find her work referenced all over the place (in essays I read, blogs, etc). So finally, I looked to see if the Grosse Pointe library owned copies of any of her books. And I found this one.

It's dated, and could benefit from some more recent statistics. But Coontz is a historian, so I still really appreciated what she had to say about American families in earlier centuries. I also really liked how objective she was. The book has been described as "myth-shattering," and I'm always skeptical of that label, because it's usually a euphemism for "hugely biased." But that really was not the case with this book.

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)

As mentioned above, I intended to read Stephanie Coontz's most recent book. But it was written about The Feminine Mystique, which I hadn't read. So, maybe because I'm completely insane, I decided to read it in its entirety. Lucy joined me, because a friend of hers recently wrote a capstone paper on it, which she found interesting.

I also wanted to read this book because, as someone who was born twenty-five years after it was published, I feel like I've been told how to feel about books like this one: It's outdated, not inclusive of women who aren't white/middle class/etc. And while those things are all pretty much true, these books obviously had a lot of influence in their time. So I like to read them to figure out why; they're not exactly assigned reading in my women's studies classes these days, and I'm fine with that. The focus of the program I'm in is to emphasize that feminism is still relevant today, and therefore, our readings are more current. But I like to read and think history is really important, so here we are.

That said, parts of it were definitely difficult to get through. For whatever reason, I wasn't expecting Friedan to spend so much time on psychology: Freud, Maslow, etc. To be honest, I don't like psychology very much. I used to. But after taking however many psychology classes at SVSU just because I found it interesting, I got tired of spending so much time in my own head, and decided I cared more about how people interacted with each other. And now I'm a women's studies major. It's sheer personal bias, but it still really influenced my opinion of this book.

A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s by Stephanie Coontz (2011)

Just Kids by Patti Smith (2010)

Inferno: A Poet's Novel by Eileen Myles (2010)

This isn't really a "novel," which is why I've placed it under the nonfiction heading. Creative nonfiction, that's it. Myles herself is the protagonist, and describes her time on the art/poetry scene in 1970s NYC. It was interesting to read this right after I finished Just Kids.

poetry

for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange (1975)

This is another one of those books I had a hard time categorizing. Should I have put it beneath the heading below? It's referred to as a "choreopoem," so. Here you go. I have yet to see the Tyler Perry film.

Crush by Richard Siken (2005)

Stephanie raved about this book, so I decided to read it. Also, I pretty much automatically love anyone who has ever won the Yale Series Prize for Younger Poets, which Siken did. This reminds me that Carolyn Forche gave a reading at SVSU back in March and I missed it because I live two hours away and had to work that night anyhow. I'm still really bummed out about that.

Late Wife by Claudia Emerson (2005)

Rise of the Trust Fall by Mindy Nettifee (2010)

What I loved about this was that it was both poignant and hilarious. Also, it inspired me to start writing poetry again, which is significant, because I hadn't written any in almost three years. Mindy Nettifee gave a reading at the West Side School for the Desperate (where Stephanie lives) back in October. It was on a Monday night, and I live all the way out in Michigan, so I missed it. And I'm so bummed about that, because Mindy Nettifee is one badass poet, and I would have loved to see her read in person.

Sleepyhead Assassins by Mindy Nettifee (2006)

drama

M Butterfly by David Henry Hwang (1986)

Is this really the only play I've read all year? Gotta step my game up, I guess. I love reading plays. The idea of an entire story being told through dialogue = win, win.

Beer and a new book that you should read!

Earlier today, I went to Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo, MI for the launch of Bonnie Jo Campbell's new novel, _Once Upon a River_. The book was released less than a week ago, so I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. But if it's anything like her earlier work, it's going to be excellent. And I have a signed copy now, so will be reading it soon. :)

I first met Bonnie Jo Campbell in April of last year. She came to SVSU to give a reading, and because I was the editor-in-chief of the student art/literary journal at the time, I was invited to have lunch with her. She also taught a fiction workshop at the Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers in 2009, which, because I'm a loser, was actually the first year I didn't attend. I know, I know, I missed out. I tried to make up for that today, however.

That's a picture of the two of us, taken this afternoon at the book launch. I lost my camera a few months ago and had to borrow my sister's, so wasn't aware that all of the photos were going to come out with a pink tint. But they did. Oh well.

For more photos, click here.

Suffice it to say that the experience was awesome. I've been looking for a good excuse to visit Bell's for a long time; Oberon is perhaps my favorite beer ever.

I also ran into a good friend of mine from the Controlled Burn Seminar, Patric. It was great to have a chance to catch up with him, but, going through my photos, I see that there aren't any photos of the two of us. Lame. :(

Anyway, go find yourself a copy of _Once Upon a River_. It's bound to be great. I wish I could say that I'm going to sign off now to go read it, but I should probably read about the Bolshevik Revolution instead, so I don't make an ass of myself in class tomorrow. I am a nerd so I do things like go to school in the middle of July. Don't hate.

See ya later, Internet, and happy reading!

Inventing Memory... but not much else.

I just finished reading a book called _Inventing Memory: A Novel of Mothers and Daughters_ by Erica Jong. I have a lot to say about it, but I'd only give it about two stars (which, according to the GoodReads.com rating system, translates into "it was okay").

I am kind of a huge sucker for family sagas that span several generations. I loved _Middlesex_ by Jeffrey Eugenides and _White Teeth_ by Zadie Smith. So when I came across this at the library the other day, I thought I'd like it. From the dust jacket:

Spanning a hundred years, _Inventing Memory_ brilliantly interweaves the lives of four generations of unforgettable women, from the turn of the last century to the early years of the twenty-first century. Propelled out of 1905 Russia by a pogrom in which she loses her first child, her twin brother, and her father, Sarah Solomon arrives in an America of bowler hats, Irish cops, elevated subway cars, Jewish and Italian anarchists, and labor ferment. Establishing herself as an artist, Sarah lives with and loves two very different men: a landsman, Lev Levitsky, and Sim Coppley, a proper New York WASP who is in love with all things Jewish, including her. While Sarah and Lev embark on an artistic life together that will take them west to a newly established Hollywood, their wild, flapper daughter and avant-garde writer, Salome, cavorts in 1929 Paris with the likes of Henry Miller, Anais Nin, and Gertrude Stein, until she learns a shocking secret that compels her to search for her WASP roots. Salome's daughter, Sally, destined to become one of the 1960s' most famous folksingers, is struck like lightning by fame, and with it the ravages of a counterculture that wreaked havoc upon the lives of so many young artists.

We meet Sally--and all of these women--through her daughter, Sara. Born in 1978, trained as a historian and in the process of researching her family history at the prestigious Council on Jewish History in New York, Sara finds herself drawn into the tumultuous lives of her ancestors via a sepia-tone photograph of her great-grandmother Sarah, for whom she was named. A single mother with a young daughter, Sara absorbs all she can of the strength of her great-grandmother and grandmother, and tries to make peace with the ghost of her own neglectful mother; she comes to understand the paradoxical, subjective nature of memory, and the way we invent, reinvent, and assimilate our ancestors.

Right off the bat, one thing in particular seemed odd to me: At just 300 pages (with decent-sized print to boot), it seemed hardly long enough to contain such a colorful set of characters and complicated storyline.

And my major issue with the book, in the end, was a lack of character development. All four of the protagonists had the potential to be interesting and colorful and completely engaging. But because Jong did not take the time to explain their motivations, they all fell flat.

There's no background on Sarah Solomon, for example. What was her personality like when she was living in Russia? Without that bit of insight, it's hard to understand why she comes to the US without knowing any English and all of a sudden out of the blue starts worshiping Emma Goldman. During that whole part of the novel I kept thinking to myself, "That's fucking awesome, but I don't understand why Sarah is such a die-hard anarchist."

And that question was never answered. Neither were most others.

Sarah's daughter Salome is an even bigger mess of a character. At seventeen, she goes to Paris to write a novel and hangs out with all the cool people who were writing in Paris at that time. Then, she comes back to the US, and there's this twenty-year lapse and all of a sudden it's the 1950s and she's all tangled up in McCarthyism. Also, she marries this guy named Aaron who has what sounds like PTSD; he witnessed a lot of terrible shit during World War 2 in Europe and made several suicide attempts. His emotional instability is what causes his daughter Sally to spend the 1960s in a marijuana fog, writing folk songs about deadbeat dads.

Around this point in the book, I started to get the impression that Jong took all of the important events of the twentieth century and deliberately placed her characters in the middle of them. I think that she should have researched things more, gotten a bit of dirt on a few of the celebrities she mentioned, and then cut out the rest. I started making notes to myself every time a celebrity was mentioned, but I soon got bored of it. Between Sarah, an artist living in the early twentieth century; Salome, a writer in Paris in the 1920s; and Sally, a folksinger in the 1960s, there were a lot, and in my opinion, too many for any of the references to be meaningful to the story.

One of my favorite books of all time is _Blonde_ by Joyce Carol Oates. It's an account of Marilyn Monroe's life, from birth to death, in novel form. It reads a lot like a biography, but it's largely fictional. Oates did tons and tons of research on Monroe's life, and then because she's a very brave badass, she took a lot of liberties and created this brilliant beast of a novel about one of the biggest pop culture icons of the twentieth century.

That book could have been a giant disappointment. What is there left to say about Marilyn Monroe that hasn't already been said? But Oates found lots to say: nearly 800 pages' worth, in fact.

This is where Jong fell short. Her protagonists interacted with many historical figures. But I gained no insight on those people from what I read.

For example, at one point in the novel, Salome's hanging out with a bunch of famous writers in Paris:

They were all there... Miss Stein to Sam Beckett, Val Miller to James Joyce.

How the great ones avoid each other! Still, there was a moment when Beckett, Joyce, and Miller all pulled up chairs near each other, but they were accosted by their sycophants and admirers before they could speak a word.

To Miss Stein, however, the very fact of the chairs being pulled up connotes conspiracy.

"A chair is a chair is a chair is a chair is a chair is a chair," she says.

Like, really? You have the opportunity to write a scene wherein your protagonist interacts with Gertrude Stein--who was one hell of an interesting person--and all you can come up with is the most overused Gertrude Stein reference ever?

After about a million scenes like that (Sally the 1960s folk singer does too many drugs, dies, and Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell all turn up at the funeral), I began to find it all ridiculously hilarious. But that's just because after a while, I decided to read it that way in order to make the book more enjoyable.

I don't know. This book contains a lot of great insights, but none of them struck me as profound, because due to lack of character/plot development, the book wasn't set against a very believable backdrop. And that's sort of ironic, given that it brings back to life many people who actually existed at one point, and contributed to the political/artistic landscape that this novel is trying to revive for this generation.

No Excuses!

I just finished reading Gloria Feldt's latest book, _No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power_. And I've decided to blog about if for a couple of reasons:

1) She offers some great advice for aspiring feminist activists. _No Excuses_ definitely motivated me. But I knew that simply reading the book wouldn't be enough. I had to think about how what she was saying affected me personally; I read very slowly, and (nerd alert!) took a lot of notes. How many times have you read a book full of good advice, but then acted on none of it? I know I have. And I didn't want that to happen this time.

2) Likely because it was published so recently, this book contains a lot of information about how websites and blogs are changing the landscape of feminist activism. I'll elaborate on that in a bit. But suffice it to say for now that as as someone who considers herself a feminist blogger, I'd be wrong not to mention this book here.

Feldt's book _The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back_ (published in 2004) totally blew my mind, so when I heard that she was coming out with a new book, I was eager to read it. But I have to admit that at first, I wasn't sure how I felt about the idea behind this one. From the inside front cover: "In _No Excuses_, [Feldt] argues that the most confounding problem facing women today isn't that doors aren't open, but that not enough women are walking through them."

It sounded a little like victim blaming to me. But given that Gloria Feldt isn't exactly the victim blaming type, I decided to read it anyway.

And I'm glad that I did.

She offers a lot of solid examples to back up her claim. For instance, women fought hard to win the right to vote in the US. But many stopped short of using their newly gained right as a vehicle through which to make further progress. Alice Paul, meanwhile, understood that winning the right to vote, though tremendous, was only one step along the road to equality. So she drafted the Equal Rights Amendment.

Feldt does not generalize about how women "aren't doing this" or "aren't doing that." Rather, _No Excuses_ is full of stories of women who, like Alice Paul, walked through the doors that were open to them. A huge part of her argument is really that those women aren't bringing enough people with them. And without a whole lot of us, we won't be able to achieve much.

She illustrates that by focusing on the idea of "power to," which she explains in contrast with "power over." The latter is force. Bad news bears. The former, however, inspires the solidarity that social justice movements are made of. So naturally, I was all over that.

Feldt does a really good job of emphasizing that everyone, regardless of age, race, gender, education level, party affiliation, or any other factor, can and should do their part to make the world better. I was particularly impressed with what she said about my generation of feminists.

There has been a lot of talk in the past couple of years about how "young feminist don't exist." The very first blog carnival I ever participated in addressed this very issue. More than forty feminist bloggers (myself included) posted in response to negative comments made by Gail Collins and Stacy Schiff in the New York Times.

But on page 276 of _No Excuses_, Feldt (who, at age 69, is a couple of generations ahead of my 22-year-old self) says, "Younger women's involvement and leadership in advancing women's rights to equality and self-determination are crucial because that's the only way the movement for equality will continue to flourish and grow. I fear for our future unless young women step up to lead a new wave of civic engagement--and indeed, one of my greatest delights is seeing how many young women are doing just that." She goes on to highlight work by young feminists such as Shelby Knox (24) and Courtney Martin (31).

But where to start? Feldt emphasizes that the best way to gain self esteem is to stand up for what you believe in. The first thing I did when I read that, of course, was compare myself to the activists highlighted in the book. And then I proceeded to beat myself up over what a shitty job I've been doing of standing up for what I care about. But I also realized that there are already things I'm doing correctly.

Like "wearing the shirt," for example, or, in other words, putting your beliefs out in the open. One need look no further than this blog to see that I'm already doing that. In the "about me" blurb, I say outright that I'm a feminist. And below that are badges to all the blog carnivals in which I've participated. From those, you can tell that I support LGBT rights, Planned Parenthood, and pro-choice/feminist issues in general. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are littered with similar posts.

And then there's my tote bag. I carry with me everywhere I go. There's an Audre Lorde quote ("Your silence will not protect you") pinned to it. And there's a "trust women" pin on it as well. And to support LGBT rights, I wear a "gayclet" that my friend Angela made for me out of rainbow-colored pieces of string. I've been asked about all of those. It's not scary to me, because those are topics that I love to talk about--even with people who give me dirty looks.

And in some cases, my vocal habits have paid off. A couple of years ago, I was driving with my friend Kevin from Saginaw to Kalamazoo, MI. As soon as we got onto the freeway, Kevin, who had been following my Facebook posts, asked me why I identify as pro-choice. Because he knew me to be a kind, compassionate friend, he wondered why I was so incredibly passionate about something with which he so adamantly disagreed.

And so, in our three hours on the road together, I explained why I care so much about it. I had all the time in the world to offer up examples and answer his questions. Neither of us were hostile about it; he was genuinely curious and willing to listen. In the end, he told me that he could see that there was good reason for supporting pro-choice issues. I realize now that the conversation would not have happened had I not been spouting off online.

Despite my confidence about certain issues, however, there's still this discrepancy between how I see myself and how others see me. If you use Twitter, you know that you can organize your "followers" into "lists." Followers of mine have categorized me this way: "feminist," "feminist bloggers," and even Gloria Feldt's favorite word, "power."

But in my head, it's a different picture entirely. I've always said that I'm a "feminist with a blog" instead of a "feminist blogger" because although everything I write comes from a feminist perspective, I don't write exclusively about feminist issues. Furthermore, although I've identified as a feminist for a number of years now, it was only a year or so ago that I got active in the feminist blogosphere. I make the mistake of comparing myself to women like Feministing's Chloe Angyal or Shelby Knox, the subject of a documentary on comprehensive sex education. And I get discouraged, because they, like me, are in their early twenties. And they are doing some pretty amazing stuff.

But just because I don't write for Feministing, doesn't mean I'm not a feminist blogger, right?

This got me thinking about all the times that I've underestimated myself, or backed off when I shouldn't have. Here's just one of many examples: A year or so ago, a "Facebook friend" of mine posted a status in which he declared that "feminism has gone too far." Obviously, it really pissed me off. But instead of responding to his post with reasons why feminism actually hasn't reached far enough yet, I just blocked his updates from my feed and got on with my day. Because I didn't want to deal with the inevitable backlash.

I regret that. And I don't know why I constantly talk myself out of speaking my mind when I know that I'm pretty well-versed on a lot of feminist issues. In _No Excuses_, Feldt refers to quite a few books--among them _When Everything Changed_ by Gail Collins, _The Means of Reproduction_ by Michelle Goldberg, and _Manifesta_ by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards--all of which I've read. She also refers to a lot of things that have happened recently in the blogosphere. She spent several pages on "abstinence porn," which is a term coined by Chrstine Seifert of Bitch Magazine to describe the genre of YA lit into which the Twilight series fits. I didn't need a refresher course from Gloria Feldt to understand that, because I read the Bitch article when it was published several years ago. To this day, I cannot think about Twilight without my internal monologue going, "Abstinence porn! Abstinence porn! Hahahahaha!"

So clearly, I know my shit. There are doors there. Gotta open 'em.

And I see this blog as the key to doing that. From page 331: "There are many reasons to keep blogs or maintain websites. To advance our professional lives by displaying portfolios of our work; the thrill of the open confessional; documenting a hobby, talent, or obsession; or simply as a place to document our daily lives. Just as my T-shirt is valuable real estate to proclaim my convictions, so is your online platform--you can wear the cypershirt. You can tell your story uncensored and find a community of people who share your problems and your passions."

As I mentioned, I'm already doing that to some extent. But there are still a few things that have kept me from having much of an impact. So I hope to use this blog as a vehicle through which to change that. I'm part of something great, and need to fully embrace it. This means recognizing that I too have a voice in the feminist blogosphere.

Now stop reading this. Go find a copy of _No Excuses_, and read it if you haven't yet already. Then figure out what your strengths are, and go get shit done.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 17

Disclaimer:

It's not my fault that I got behind on the Blog Challenge. Blogger's been down for the past couple of days; people could still read posts as usual, but nobody could update!

So, I took a blissfully unexpected break from blogging and got some reading done. For the record, I'm currently halfway through _On Beauty_ by Zadie Smith; it's holding my attention, but isn't nearly as good as _White Teeth_.

Now, without further ado...

Your highs and lows of this past year.

This is hard to write about, because a lot of the -low- moments of the past year are really personal. Even though I have a blog and tend to overshare on FB/Twitter, I do actually have a sense of when I ought to keep my mouth shut.

So, let's settle for a purposely cryptic list:

The highs:

• transferring: I felt incredibly hopeful about everything
• coming out as a lesbian to my family: it was exhausting, but worked out in the end
• MEETING MICHAEL FRANTI
• knowing that I have really wonderful friends, even if they live far away
• babysitting: I love the girls I babysit
  

The lows:

• the not-so-great aspects of coming out
• getting punched in the face by someone who really shouldn't have punched me in the face
• feeling like a giant piece of existential fail
  
• living in Grosse Pointe
• loneliness
• babysitting: Even though I love the kids, that shit is hard work

See what I mean? Purposely cryptic. Suffice it to say that I was really hopeful about a lot of things that didn't turn out. But it's okay, because I was also rather pessimistic about the things that did turn out. Such is life.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 12

Bullet your whole day.

Friday, May 6, 2011

(Of course, catch me on a day when I'm not enrolled in classes and don't have to babysit.)

• woke up just before 9
• went downstairs to make coffee/feed the cat
• read for a while (while drinking the coffee I made, natch)
  
• played on the Internet
• received a text message from my friend Victoria, asking if I'd like to get together for dinner/drinks once she got off work at 8:15
• replied to that text message with "yes"
  
• took a shower
• did boring, responsible things like 3 loads of laundry, Swiffering the floor, and cleaning the bathroom
• ate some peach-flavored yogurt and a Nutri Grain bar
  
• read some more
• did the dishes
• read
• decided that I needed a change of scenery, so went to Caribou Coffee by Victoria's work to wait for her
• finished reading _White Teeth_ by Zadie Smith (A+)
• got really excited when I heard an Adele song playing in the coffee shop
• ran into someone I knew from high school and exchanged awkward pleasantries
• went outside to read some more (_When We Were Saints_ by Han Nolan) because it was warm outside and had stopped raining
• marveled at very large dogs walking with their owners
  
• met up with Victoria and her friend Ben
• went to Victoria's so she could change out of her work clothes; wound up watching "Sexy Gay Friend" videos online for half an hour
  
• drove to a 24-hour diner in St. Clair Shores because my uterus demands such foods once per month, if you catch my drift
• ate $14 worth of cheap diner food, wondered why my bill was so high, then remembered that I'd only eaten some yogurt and a Nutri Grain bar thus far that day
  
• went to a nearby bar but left after the first drink because the music was too loud and we're old and boring
• went to another bar, where Victoria was disappointed because they no longer had her favorite beer
• went to another bar, where Ben and Victoria got drunk
• I stayed sober because I'm boring (and had to drive)
  
• we played pool
• the bar closed, so we went home
• went to bed around 3:30 a.m.
  

Summer plans and other random things

Hi, Internet.

I haven't blogged too much this month. And if I may be perfectly honest, t's not because I've been busy with end-of-semester stuff. It's because I've been really down about a lot of things, and everything I wrote sounded whiny. So I just didn't post much.

The political climate in this country is really, really upsetting me. Earlier this month, governor of Michigan Rick Snyder declared the city of Benton Harbor to be in a state of crisis and appointed an "Emergency Financial Manager," who stripped all elected officials in BH of their duties.

Giant democracy fail, I know.

Furthermore, the Detroit Public School System sent layoff notices to every single one of its teachers. We can blame Rick Snyder's budget plan for that, too.

My mom is Canadian. She was born in Sudbury, Ontario, and moved to Detroit when she married my dad (24 years ago yesterday). So I have a lot of relatives in Canada. And one of them--my mom's older sister Kerrie, who lives in the Yukon--offered to let me come live with her for the summer.

I thought it was a pretty neat idea. And not surprisingly, I've been fantasizing about getting out of the US for a while. So Kerrie talked to a friend of hers about getting me a job. I didn't tell too many people about it, because I wasn't sure whether it was going to work out.

And in the end, it didn't work out. I'm oddly not too bummed about that though, because a fear of mine is that a summer in the Yukon would make me lonelier than I already am here in Grosse Pointe.

So, my summer looks like this:

• classes at Wayne State
  
• babysitting/searching for another job
• the release of Bonnie Jo Campbell's novel _Once Upon a River_ at Kalamazoo's Bell's Brewery in July
• my friend Rose having a baby
• Lollapalooza in Chicago with my friend Toni

That last one is sort of a big deal. The day tickets went on sale, Toni wrote on my FB Wall, telling me that I should come with her. As much as I liked the idea, I did not at first intend to say yes. Shit's expensive. Gotta plan a purchase like that in advance.

But then she followed up with a lengthy FB message, detailing how much it would cost. I appreciated the gesture and really like Toni. Besides, I wanted to go.

So I told autonomous adulthood to suck it, asked my mom to loan me some money, and bought a 3-day pass to Lollapalooza.

I just paid it off a couple of days ago, and will spend the next few months being a huge tightwad in order to be able to afford to spend three days in Chicago. But it will be a fabulous end to the summer. :)

Also: Summer would not be summer without summer reading. Recommendations? Here's a(n unrealistically ambitious) list of books that I'm thinking of reading (in no particular order):

• _Sexing the Cherry_ by Jeanette Winterson
• _The Golden Notebook_ by Doris Lessing
• _Midnight's Children_ by Salman Rushdie
  
• _Breeding a Nation: Reproductive Slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Pursuit of Freedom_ by Pamela D. Bridgewater
• _Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those who Want to Write Them_ by Francine Prose
  
• _The Way We Lived_ by Audrey Jacobs
• _When We Were Saints_ by Han Nolan
  

And speaking of books (especially that last one): My inner 13-year-old is jumping up and down, turning blue, and squealing over and over, "AMELIA, TELL THEM YOUR NEWS!" So: I learned today that HAN NOLAN WILL BE RELEASING A NEW BOOK IN THE FALL. I love her books so much: reading her work has made me a better person. I've blogged before about how much I love her.

Anyway. This post has been all over the place. I apologize. They'll soon go back to being more focused. I've decided to participate in a 30-day blog challenge. Let's see how closely I can stick to it.

I'll leave you with a really great NYT article I read last night, which I think sums up everything that matters to me. Virginia Woolf once wrote about what it would have been like if Shakespeare had had a sister. Well, Benjamin Franklin did have a sister. Her name was Jane Mecom. And she didn't do so well.

And this is relevant today because, as the article states:

"Tea Partiers dressed as Benjamin Franklin call for an end to social services for the poor; and the 'Path to Prosperity' urges a return to 'America’s founding ideals of liberty, limited government and equality under the rule of law.' But the story of Jane Mecom is a reminder that, especially for women, escaping poverty has always depended on the opportunity for an education and the ability to control the size of their families."

A few words on education

Yesterday my friend Dan (who is a student at SVSU) posted a note on Facebook titled "The Cold War of Life." It's about what he's learning at school, and how that contributes to the greater picture (which is a topic I've wanted to write about). But until I read what Dan wrote, I wasn't sure how to frame what I wanted to say.

I'll start with an excerpt from his post. It's kind of long, but I wouldn't be sharing it if I didn't think it was worth your while to read it.

I have just come to the realization that my current semester is a bit of a downer. In one class, I am learning the historical beginnings of colonization and enslavement of native peoples by capitalists, leading to the current international economy and the division of labor that exploits the weak by multi-national corporations, who use economical power to control corrupt, undemocratic, resource-rich governments. In another class, I am learning about the Cold War. Additionally, during the day, I am being bombarded by negative information whenever I try to catch up on current events. But what I thought was another internal, moral crisis actually led me back to upholding my original principles and values.

Learning about the Cold War has taught me that it was just like life. George Kennan, writing from his insightful vantage point as a post-WWII diplomat, outlined what was to become the main American policy towards the Soviet Union for the next four decades, with an article (and a byline of “Mr. X”) called “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in the magazine Foreign Policy. In the article, he notes that the Russian Revolution demonstrated the youthful impatience of revolutionaries who tried to industrialize a mostly-agrarian society too quickly. This swift change of policy and ideology led to distrust from Lenin and Stalin, on down to the peasant, and created a culture of fear and totalitarianism. Additionally, Kennan notes that because one ideology (capitalism or communism) will eventually “win” due to the fatal flaws of the other. Although Stalin believed capitalism would implode under the weight of its own greed and imperialism, Kennan believed the opposite, that communism would fall due to the rigid top-down nature of the Communist Party system and the lack of easy governmental transition upon the death of the Chairman. Kennan turned out to be right, while Stalin is remembered as a paranoid genocidal maniac and Russia is a shadow of what he knew when he lived. To meet this end, Kennan focused on a policy of vigorous “containment” toward the Russians, that if communism can be prevented to spread, the system would eventually splinter and bring change to an oppressive government that had to keep its people in with barbed wire.

Which brings me to my main point: Patience will bring change. We can respect each others’ ideologies because when it comes down to it, the truth will always come out, even under the most authoritarian of regimes, both here and abroad. When Martin Luther wrote out his complaints regarding the selling of indulgences by corrupt Catholic Church officials (which was an offense punishable by death), he had no idea that his little screed would literally change the known world. One little action propelled peasants, nations, kings, and popes into the boxing ring of competing ideologies; one spark from a lowly Catholic monk set off a cultural bonfire that led to new ideas such as national sovereignty, liberalism, the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, and the expansion of capitalism and democracy, just to name a handful. All the previous events listed brought us to a new era of humanity, forever separating us from the base animal with violent, wild instinct.

He goes on to give other examples of how seemingly small acts by patient individuals have ultimately changed the world for the better. After he posted the note, he updated his status with a quote from an individual whose identity is unknown: "Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow--that is patience."

Reading that, I thought about how school has been making me feel lately. I love it, but feel that it needs to be a bigger part of my life, because I cannot possibly keep the experience contained to the classroom.

And yet, that's what I find myself doing. I'm a transfer student who lives with her parents twenty minutes from campus. So I often feel really lonely. The only people I spend a significant amount of time with are my parents (who didn't go to college) and the girls I babysit (they're four and seven--so it's not exactly possible to discuss my 5000-level English and women's studies classes with them).

Last night in class, my professor was talking about the importance of critical pedagogy. And my internal monologue was like, "Oh. This is why you feel so crazy and alone. Because you understand that this needs to be an ongoing discussion. And yet you feel as if the only person you have to talk to is yourself."

I got really mopey when I realized that everything I'm learning at school (and pretty much everything I believe in, for that matter) stands in direct opposition to the structure and belief system of the world in which I live. For example, we were talking in English class recently about how it's bullshit that college has basically been an unlearning of K-12's version of American history. What did we learn about Columbus? That he came over to what is now the United States and had a nice dinner with the people who lived there before he did. And what did we learn about slaves? That they were freed.

That in particular is really hard for me, because I babysit a first grader and see how that's exactly what she's being taught to accept as fact. And I feel helpless to stop it. What's the point of even teaching that? Her options are to either go to college and unlearn it all, or keep believing that forever. I have a hard time seeing how we've supposedly "come so far" as a nation when we're still teaching children this stuff, you know?

So I see a great danger in isolation: my keeping what I learn at school confined to a classroom at Wayne State; or telling first graders that what happened in the past will stay there, and has nothing to do with life as it is now.

Yesterday in class, we were talking about how Harriet Jacobs, who wrote _Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl_, tried to get white women in the north to understand her perspective. And to do that, she had to try to identify with them, even though she knew that her experience was vastly different from theirs. Her audience embraced the "cult of true womanhood," believing that women should be pious, religious, confined to the domestic sphere, and above all else, completely devoted to their children.

In order to get them to sympathize with her, Jacobs had to prove that she actually fit into that very mold. She justified the decisions she made by making her audience aware of the circumstances surrounding her situation as a slave. Even though she spent seven years hiding in an attic, she explained that she still loved her children; she made clothes for them. She used these examples to explain why she should not be held to the same standard as the white women to whom she told her story (thus dismantling the idea of the "cult of true womanhood," woo hoo)!

I got home last night and started thinking about how relevant that still is, almost two hundred years later. The next book I have to read for that class is _Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty_ by Dorothy Roberts. I haven't actually opened it yet, but I don't see how it's such a dramatic shift from our discussion of motherhood in the time of slavery in the U.S. There's a blurb from Ms. Magazine on the cover: "Compelling...Deftly shows how distorted and racist constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and policy in the United States." Um, black welfare mother stereotype, anyone?

And so, the helplessness. I worry that nothing will ever change or get better. I want to quit real life and devote all my time to activism. But instead I gotta be a grown up and spend my time doing my part to support the very structure I oppose. And I do that by earning money babysitting.

But Dan's post showed me how I can, in my own little way, carry what I'm learning in school over to other aspects of my life. The other day I had a conversation with the four-year-old I babysit. She had just gotten home from ballet class and asked me why some of her classmates are boys. We had a little chat about how boys can take ballet, too. (And girls can do things that have been traditionally only associated with boys!)

That seems so insignificant, though. Maybe my talk with her won't change a damn thing. But maybe it will. And that hope is what tells me that I ought to continue to do things like that, however small and seemingly pointless. And I'll be patient. Not lazy, not passive. But patient.

Books I read in 2010

I didn't read very many books this past year, but am trying not to be too hard on myself about it. After all, I discovered a bunch of blogs, and therefore, did read stuff, even if it's not the kind of reading material I can post on Good Reads.

Speaking of Good Reads, I thought I'd make a list of all the books I read in 2010, since it has kept track of that for me all year. I won't comment on all of them, but will add a few words about some that I didn't blog about when I read them initially.

FICTION

_Goldengrove_ by Francine Prose (2008)

_The Devil's Arithmetic_ by Jane Yolen (YA, 1988)
This Holocaust story bears a striking resemblance to a book that was published six years later, in 1994. Han Nolan's _If I Should Die Before I Wake_, like _The Devil's Arithmetic_, is also about a girl who travels back in time and experiences life in a concentration camp. I think I like Nolan's book best, but am biased, because I'm the biggest Nolan fan on Earth. If there's anyone out there who has read both, which do you prefer and why? I'm curious.

_Push_ by Sapphire (1996)

_Schooled_ by Gordon Korman (YA, 2007)
I loved this book so much, and don't know why I didn't blog about it at length when I read it ten months ago. It reminded me a lot of _Stargirl_ by Jerry Spinelli. It's about a teenager (Cap Anderson) who has lived on an "alternate farm commune" all his life. And when his grandmother (who is his legal guardian) is injured, he is forced into foster care and attends a regular high school for the first time.

Culture shock ensues. He has no concept of money. And when he is elected class president, he's put in charge of organizing a school dance. The principal, in an attempt to teach him how to be financially responsible, gives him a checkbook. Cap realizes that checks make people happy. And in a completely altruistic attempt at making his classmates happy, he writes large dollar amounts on a bunch of checks and gives them away.

That incident (among others) really struck me, and made me realize that although we may think we hold certain values/beliefs, the society in which we live really limits the extent to which we practice that. Cap Anderson, having come from a totally different lifestyle, lived by what he believed better than anyone else. It was really sweet (and also really sad to see how he suffered for it).

_Number the Stars_ by Lois Lowry (YA, 1989)

_My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike_ by Joyce Carol Oates (2008)

_A Face in Every Window_ by Han Nolan (YA, 1999)
I loved this book because it affirmed my belief that it's okay to have an alternate definition of family; you're not just limited to blood relatives. An uptight teenager named JP finds himself living in a house full of social outcasts when his mother wins the house in a contest and invites a bunch of lonely strangers to move in. I don't think I've ever read a book with such a colorful and affecting cast of characters. And I loved watching JP learn to accept and love all of them.

I am so glad Han Nolan writes for young adults. She is using her talent to make the world a better place. I can't say it enough: If you haven't read her books yet, get with the program already. (There. I've just made your New Years resolution for you.)

_Household Saints_ by Francine Prose (1981)

_The Robber Bride_ by Margaret Atwood (1993)

_Voyage in the Dark_ by Jean Rhys (1934)

_Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons: The Story of Phillis Wheatley_ by Ann Rinaldi (YA, 1996)

_Keep Smiling Through_ by Ann Rinaldi (YA, 1996)

_Crazy_ by Han Nolan (YA, 2010)

_The Letter Writer_ by Ann Rinaldi (YA, 2008)

NONFICTION

_Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation_ by Leora Tenenbaum (2000)

_To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism_ edited by Rebecca Walker (1995)

_Slouching Towards Bethlehem_ essays by Joan Didion (1968)

_Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History_ by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (2007)
A lot of people have criticized this book for covering too much ground in too few pages. It did read a lot like a survey course in history. But I loved it. There were a lot of resources in the back of the book for more in-depth information on the topics covered. And because I am a nerd, I sure as hell poked around on the Internet/in the library learning things after I finished reading this. So I'll count it as a win.

_Zami: A New Spelling of My Name_ by Audre Lorde (1983)
I loved this book for so many reasons and can't possibly list them all here. What's funny is that this is a good example of how books teach me things I don't expect to learn when I first start reading them. Take, for instance, the definition of "biomythography." That's this book's genre. At first, I thought that was something Lorde made up (I had even expected an explanation similar to the one about the symmetry of her name). But no. When I Googled the word, I found a list of other "biomythographies" instead of a definition.

_When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple_ edited by Sandra Martz (1991)

_Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists_ edited by Courtney Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan (2010)

_Cunt: A Declaration of Independence_ by Inga Muscio (1998, 2002)

_Rose: Love in Violent Times_ by Inga Muscio (2010)
I actually wrote a lengthy post about this, but Blogger decided it wanted a midnight snack and ate it. I'm still too upset to redo it. But I'm sure I'll get over it eventually, and when I do, the post will go up. Suffice it to say for now that I liked this book a lot. I was drawn to it because it was published very recently (in it, Muscio quotes former BP CEO Tony Hayward saying he'd like his life back). Goes nicely with my recent need for new and relevant information, yes? I've been a blog-reading fiend all year.

POETRY

_The Best American Poetry, 2009_ edited by David Wagoner (2009)

_Book of Longing_ by Leonard Cohen (2006)

_Beautiful Rust_ by Ken Meisel (2009)

_Beauty Breaks In_ by Mary Ann Samyn (2009)

_Mother Love_ by Rita Dove (1996)

Feminism and crappy limericks

"Part of getting older is owning the facets of your identity that frighten you the most." - Jessica Valenti

2010 has been a year of transition, of change. I transferred schools and finally gave myself the opportunity to explore interests of mine other than poetry (which, until a year or so ago, was the one thing I was totally comfortable with and felt 100% confident about). This year I learned to be patient. For once, I did not expect to come out on top. And let's get real for a second: I hit rock bottom (perhaps more times than I made known).

I made one hell of a mess. This mess looked much like the one I made when I was nine and just starting to familiarize myself with poetry (I'm referring to the stage where I spent all of my time writing crappy limericks). What's different now is that I'm not nine. I'm twenty-two. And crappy limericks aren't so cute anymore when you're trying to convince people to start treating you like an adult.

Anyone who knows me knows that identify as a feminist. And I have since my senior year of high school. Back then, my green-haired friend Stephanie and I spent all our time spouting off in AP Lit class, thinking we were total badasses.

But the more I explore the zillion layers of feminism, the more I realize that it isn't easy. It takes effort the same way honing my poetry did.

And man, poetry and me go way back. I attended the annual Controlled Burn Seminar every summer for years. I studied at Interlochen. At SVSU, I majored in creative writing. I competed in poetry slams (one of which was held at the Grand Hotel on Macinac Island). I worked as editor-in-chief of two art/literary journals (Looking Glass in high school, Cardinal Sins in college). And I had my work published in a couple of national undergraduate literary journals.

I lived and breathed poetry. But it took a lot of time to cover that much ground. And it wasn't even one solid thing. At nine, I wrote limericks. At fourteen, I wrote couplets and quatrains. By sixteen, I had moved on to free verse. By nineteen, that free verse was better polished. A never-ending process. Endless change and (I like to think) a great deal of growth.

And so even though I've identified as a feminist for three or four years now, I still feel like I'm in the crappy limerick stage of it--the stage where I litter my Facebook Wall with angry shit and walk around with Audre Lorde quotes pinned to my tote bag. But don't really know where I fit in in the midst of it all.

I just finished reading a book called _Click_, which is a collection of essays written about "that moment" when its contributors knew they were feminists. Feministing editor Courtney Martin wrote, "It makes me sad now to think that much of my first feminist searching was born out of such desperation. I wish I had come to feminism celebratory or even outraged. Instead, I came like so many...on my knees, confused, heartbroken" (90).

I've never thought of it like that. (Strange image to couple with feminism, yes?) But the same is probably true for me. Even though I've considered myself a feminist for years now, I had to experience a couple of things that hit a little too close to home before I could realize that it's more than believing in equality--it's also acting on that belief.

And that's some tough shit.

And so I've finally moved past desperate and heartbroken (anyone who knew me a year ago knows what that looked like). Now I'm pissed. Pissed and frustrated because there's so much out there to be done and I don't even know where to start, or how to start. Because I'm still just learning to trust myself and my voice.

You know, limericks.

But despite my inability to trust myself, people have told me for years that it's obvious to them that I'm a feminist. Well, duh. I scream it. But like I said: I've got angry shit all over my Facebook Wall, and Audre Lorde quotes on my tote bag. Lots of noise. (Eloquent noise, but still.) I hide behind all that noise. Where the fuck is my own voice in all of that?

So to me, growing as a feminist is a lot like writing poetry. As a poet, I subscribed to the idea of "saying as much as possible in very few words." A lot of the women I admire don't even have to go on raging, long-winded tirades for me to understand that they mean business. I can just see it in their actions--in the way they live their lives.

I want to reach that point, whatever that means for me. I know that these interests of mine aren't mutually exclusive. I could just write feminist poetry and call it good. That is, in and of itself, a form of activism. But right now, that isn't fulfilling enough for me.

I'll admit that I don't really know what the hell I'm going to do to satisfy this need. But I'm going to find it and live it. If it brings me back to poetry, awesome. If not, I'll keep moving on to whatever's next. I've taken one huge step away from my comfort zone. I can take a few more.

I'm pretty excited to see what 2011 has in store for me.

How I became the "Cuntlovin' Ruler of My Sexual Universe"

I just finished reading _Cunt: A Declaration of Independence_ by Inga Muscio. Mind: Blown.

In case you're not familiar with it, here's the blurb from the back cover:

An ancient title of respect for women, the word "cunt" long ago veered off this noble path. Inga Muscio traces the road from honor to expletive, giving the woman the motivation and tools to claim "cunt" as a positive and powerful force in their lives. With humor and candor, she shares her own history as she explores the cultural forces that influence women's relationships with their bodies.

Sending out a call for every woman to be the Cuntlovin' Ruler of her Sexual Universe, Muscio stands convention on its head by embracing all things cunt-related.

A copy of it had been sitting on my shelf for years, and was mentioned several times in my women's studies class this semester (it wasn't assigned reading, though). So I decided to get with the program and read it already. 373 pages later, I'm the proud, "Cuntlovin' Ruler of my Sexual Universe."

I don't think I've ever read anything so critical of capitalism. (But then I guess you can't really call yourself a feminist without being critical of it... or whatever economic system you're living under, for that matter.) Momentary brain fart, there--sorry. I should not have been caught off-guard. After all, I've been critical of capitalism for a very long time.

Picture it: Boyne City, Michigan, 1997. I'm eight years old and spending the weekend with a friend's family at their condo. On our way to said condo, I turn to my friend and ask her, "So, who lives there while you and your family are at home in Grosse Pointe?" She looks at me incredulously and answers, "Um. No one. Right, Dad?"

I'm profoundly disappointed and mutter something about how I think it's unfair that there are homeless people locked out of an empty condo in a place as cold as Boyne City. My friend's dad laughs and says, "It looks like we've got a little socialist on our hands."

I repeat the word "socialist" a few times to myself so it'll stay in my mind until I have the chance to look it up later. I have a very hard time (even to this day) understanding why what he said was meant as an insult.

Given the incident explained above, you'd think that someone like me would just smile and nod through a book like _Cunt_, right? Oh, sweet. Someone understands my perspective!

Wrong-o.

In an earlier post about feminism, I mentioned that I'm in awe of just how much I don't know. In _Cunt_, Muscio does an excellent job of picking out little things that we're conditioned to accept as the norm, and points out how they contribute to the very things we work against as American feminists.

Take tampons, for instance. Part of life, right? No. Muscio points out that you don't have to pay $7.99 for a simple box of cotton. "Why the flying fuck should a woman have to pay some huge corporation over and over because the lining of her uterus naturally, biologically sheds sheds every month?" (30).

I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of assigning a dollar value to people and things that people need to survive. When, at the age of eleven, I found out that my parents had to pay a water bill, I wanted to call the city officials and demand an explanation.

So maybe the tampon thing would have been common sense to me once--like when I was eight and 100% altruistic and just wanted to help the homeless.

But in my twenty-two years on Earth, I've encountered many people like my friend's dad. So I go to the freaking drugstore every month and buy my box of tampons because I'm a woman who lives in the good old USA and menstruates.

But this book brought back some of my old mindset, and made me a little ashamed of having lost it in the first place.

Meanwhile, other things she mentioned actually made me feel a little better about some of my habits/practices.

Like trying to reason with my uterus, for example.

I've never used the Pill. I don't sleep with dudes, and therefore don't need it for reproductive reasons. I know a lot of women who use it just because periods really suck, and having them less is nice. But I've never been into that. It just doesn't suit me. Seems unnatural and unnecessary. Don't get me wrong: I respect the hell out of the Pill. I no longer have a healthy relationship with my Protestant grandmother because I've put so much energy into defending it. But I've never actually used it, and doubt I ever will.

So I was glad to find that this book contains a whole section on the importance of getting to know your body and your menstrual cycle. It's something to which I have devoted a lot of time. My periods have always been intense; if I don't do something to control the pain before I start bleeding, I'll be stuck in the fetal position for days. And since I'd rather not take birth control, I've just gotten really good at figuring out when it's going to happen. I've tried to explain that to a few people and gotten funny looks. So it was nice to see my beliefs and practices within the pages of this book (especially since I needed something to make me feel better about the fact that I've been inadvertently adding fuel to the very fire I've been fighting all my life).

Although her main focus is on the US, Muscio does not ignore other cultures. And in mentioning other experiences, she strengthens her argument that capitalism is incredibly damaging to women. One of the most eye-opening parts of the book for me was an interview she conducted with Soraya Mire, a woman from Somalia who points out, "In America, women pay the money that is theirs and no one else's to go to a doctor who cuts them up so they can create or sustain an image men want. Men are the mirror. Western women cut themselves up voluntarily. In my country, a child is woken up at three in the morning, held down and cut with a razor blade. Western women pay to get their bodies mutilated" (126).

And yet in the afterward, Muscio acknowledges that despite her best efforts at being inclusive of all women, she missed something pretty tremendous and has been kicking herself since. "What I did not consider--and this is totally a result of my socialization--is that the world is made up of more than women and men, boys and girls. In writing _Cunt_, I completely overlooked the realities of gender-variant people" (239).

In the "expanded and updated second edition," Muscio explains that after the original publication of _Cunt_, she was asked many times about her "position" on trans-inclusion, and was entirely caught off-guard. It made her want to go back and edit entire sections of the book she had written.

High five to her. In admitting that, she touched upon something I've mentioned here many times: Feminism is still relevant because just look at how much we're still learning. We've all got our biases. And we're living in a capitalist society whose ideal is white, male, and heterosexual, so we're still going to catch ourselves inadvertently leaving people out. Shit, I'm gay and have kicked myself for not meeting the expectations of compulsory heterosexuality. I'm female and I've used sexist language. And yet I, like Inga Muscio, have identified as a raging feminist for quite some time now.

Like I said, reading _Cunt_ has made me aware of how I've been fueling the very fire I've been fighting all my life.

It's time to stop. I don't know how fully I can do that without leaving the US, but "I promise on a holy stack of _Beloveds_ by Toni Morrison" (69), I will spend some time with my inner eight-year-old.

Let me gush about Han Nolan's new book for a second.

I just finished reading Han Nolan's latest YA novel, _Crazy_, which was just released last month.

Wow. Nolan never disappoints. I've gushed about her before, so I won't go on detail about why it is I love her books so much. Suffice it to say, though, that _Crazy_ is just as good as the books of hers that preceded it.

It made me laugh and it made me cry. It made my chest hurt and it made my jaw drop a few times. It's about a fourteen-year-old boy, Jason, whose mother has died. And he's living with/taking care of his father, who is mentally ill. Jason relies on the voices in his head to help him navigate through life, but slowly learns to accept that he can't manage everything on his own.

Here's a passage that really stuck out for me:

"The way people come and go in your life, where they're present and alive one minute, and missing or dead the next, is an idea that's too big for me to grasp. Life just seems way too fragile all of the sudden, and everybody seems to take it so lightly, as if they all think we're made like army tanks, big and strong and able to roll over anything in our way. And it's not just our bodies that are fragile; our minds are even more so. I don't know what fine membrane separates sanity from insanity, but after watching my dad slip-sliding around on the border between the two all my life, I know how easy it is to cross, and this scares me...It's too easy to slip up, to slip off, and flip out" (224-225).

As I read that passage, I thought about how much I wish this book had existed a year ago, when I went into existential crisis mode and suddenly wasn't able to recognize myself anymore.

When I picked up this book, I had not expected to relate to it on any level at all. I mean, let's get real for a second. My mom's not dead and my dad's not crazy.

But a year ago, I was struggling to care about school/my job as editor-in-chief of a literary journal. And I found it incredibly difficult because so much crazy shit had happened to my friends that year: One friend's mom and brother died, another's six-year-old daughter drowned, and one's house burned down. I was made aware of just how fragile life really is, and was afraid of losing everyone/thing. That fear made me lose myself just a little.

I don't know. I guess I can't really compare. But at the very least, I can't deny that this book was oddly really comforting to me, as all of Nolan's books are.

You're missing out if you don't read them.

I love Fridays. And everything/one.

I've discovered that it's physically impossible for me to wake up before 10:30 a.m. on Friday mornings. And I love that. Means I've earned it. :-)

This week has been great. Not because it's been perfect. It hasn't. But it's been great anyway, just because.

Because on Monday I received a card in the mail from a friend who lives in Midland.

Because on Tuesday morning, I woke up to rain and wind. And it made me grumpy, so I got online and bought a copy of the first season of The Golden Girls on DVD.

Because on Wednesday, my copy of Han Nolan's new book, _Crazy_ finally came in the mail.

And because on Thursday I baked cookies with the girls I babysit for, and they worked so well together. They took turns kneading the dough and didn't fight over the cookie cutters. And later that night, when the youngest (four) burned her finger on a light bulb in the bedroom they share, the eldest (seven) found the Band Aids and suggested I make an ice pack.

This week has had its moments of epic suckiness, too. I took an astronomy quiz that I'm pretty sure I bombed. And I've been following a story on the news about Michigan's assistant attorney general, who apparently has nothing better to do than write hateful things in a blog about U of M's openly gay student body president. Speaking of of the news, I found out earlier this week that my favorite anchor (Robbie Timmons on WXYZ in Detroit) is retiring. It's probably weird to have a favorite news anchor, but I've always been a Robbie Timmons fan. In 1972, she became the first woman in the US to anchor a 6 and 11 o'clock newscast. I think that's pretty badass, and will miss seeing her on the air every day.

Whenever I mention how happy I am these days, someone inevitably asks me what I'm smokin'. And even though they're kidding, it bothers me a little. Because it isn't euphoria or giddyness. It's just that I'm awake and aware and alive in a way I wasn't a year ago. Things still piss me off and break my heart and all of that. But I'm here, and I'm so glad I'm here, just living and doing and being.

Those books you read in fifth grade? They're a bigger deal than you thought they were.

Right now, I'm about 450 pages into _A People's History of the United States_ by Howard Zinn. It's been on my to-read list since my junior year of high school. And after Zinn passed away this past January, I decided that I needed to get with the program and read it already. And so, here I am.

It's making me want to throw things (which means its doing its job). Thing is, it started to make me feel so sad/angry/anxious that today, I decided to take a break and read a couple of YA books.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have a huge soft spot for YA literature. My favorite YA author (perhaps my favorite author of all time, actually) is Han Nolan, whose writing I admire because not only is she unafraid to tackle political topics, but she does so very subtly. And although she writes for a younger audience, she does not underestimate her readers. Her books have really made me a better person.

Another favorite YA author of mine is Ann Rinaldi. I started reading her books when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. She writes historical fiction, and occasionally borders on nonfiction: One of her novels, _Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbon_, tells the story of Phillis Wheatley.

Reading one of her books today, I began to think about what I read now, and how it isn't all that different from what I read when I was younger, and how all of that has ultimately played a huge, huge, HUGE role in the decisions I've made in regard to my education.

English was always my favorite subject in school. And I rocked it. At the eighth grade "graduation" ceremony, I was presented with an award from the English department (I still have the plaque in my bedroom). In high school, I took honors/AP English classes, and worked as the editor-in-chief of my school's art/literary magazine. And then I got to college, majored in creative writing, and worked as the editor-in-chief of the art/literary magazine there, too.

And then I started to question whether it was really what I wanted to pursue. It was a really difficult question to ask myself, because my love of English/writing was the one thing I had always been sure of.

I couldn't deny my other interests, though. As much as I loved most of my English classes, the best class I've ever taken at SVSU was a 100-level history class I took to fulfill a gen ed requirement. I hadn't expected to get much out of it. It was just a history of the United States, post Civil War to the present. I took it because I thought it'd be a blow off.

But it blew my mind. It made me question capitalism, which was a real ground-shaker for me, having grown up in Grosse Pointe. I got a B in the class, and I had to work my ass off for that B. I was glad to work my ass off for that B. I had so much fun.

That same semester, I took a literature course called Great Lakes Writers (also to fill a gen ed requirement, actually). I figured, "Okay. We'll read some books written by people from Michigan." And that's exactly what happened. But what I really loved about it was the that it was the first time I was conscious of putting what I read into a larger, more political context. We read _them_ by Joyce Carol Oates, which led to a discussion about social class. We read some Hemingway, and I got to rip him to shreds for being a misogynist. And to top it all off: We watched two Michael Moore documentaries. Sha-zam.

That was the best semester ever. Afterward, I went back to taking writing courses. It went well for the most part, but I couldn't shake my desire to delve into politics/history. I continued on as a creative writing major, figuring that since English had always been my favorite subject, that was the right thing to do.

It wasn't. By the beginning of my third year at SVSU, I was unhappy, mostly because I was doing well in my field, and therefore felt like it was too late to tell anyone that I didn't think it was the right field for me anymore. I lacked the ambition I'd had before, and couldn't afford that, because by that point, I was in charge of the art/literary journal.

So I kept on, and it made me crazy. My heart just wasn't in it, and it really began to show.

A lot of electives for the creative writing major are literature courses. So I wound up enrolled in quite a few of those. One class in particular was awesome: When one of my friends looked through my notes, she actually thought they were for a history class. It had the potential to surpass History 100C as the best class I'd ever taken, but by that point, I was in the midst of a full-blown freak out, and therefore, was too distracted to get much out of it.

I still love English. I love it so much that I couldn't bring myself to major in anything else once I decided to transfer to Wayne State (even though a huge reason for my transferring to a school bigger than SVSU was the chance to take more specialized classes in other fields).

But what I failed to realize--until earlier today, as I was reading YA books--is that literature is what gave me my interest in politics/history in the first place.

I didn't know what feminism was--let alone identify as a feminist--when I first picked up an Ann Rinaldi book ten or eleven years ago. But I know I loved her strong female protagonists.

And I wasn't aware of what was going around me politically--much less have an opinion about any of it--when I started reading Han Nolan's books. I just agreed with her humanism. It affected me, and stayed with me. It had a tremendous impact on my outlook.

I find this little epiphany of mine hugely comforting. It was really hard for me to accept that I might not be as in love with English as I had once been.

I still am. It's just a bigger field now, and I'm a bigger person.

Hear me roar. :-)

Crazy, crazy. We're all crazy.

It's the week before finals, but oddly, I don't feel too out of whack. I mean, I'm stressed. But I'm not overwhelmed.

This semester's issue of Cardinal Sins was released to the pubic on Monday. The night before the post-publication reception, I realized that even though it's the most exasperating thing I've ever done, I really will miss being editor-in-chief. A sign I've grown? I like to think so.

Another reason I'm not as stressed out as everyone else is right now: Last semester, I was a mess. Every week felt like the week before final exams. I'm calmer now; things are back in perspective. I've spent the winter semester getting my ducks in a row. Apologizing constantly for what's over & done. If you freak out, you're not supposed to show it.

Right now I'm reading _My Sister, My Love_ by Joyce Carol Oates. It satirizes social climbing parents in affluent suburbs. And I grew up in Grosse Pointe, so I think it's hilarious & brilliant.

The thing about JCO: Her characters are all so friggin' bizarre. And yet, she writes so well and so honestly about people. I think we're all a whole lot crazier than we let on.

Guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself for being honest.

The case for children's/YA lit

Every now and then I wander up to the fourth floor of SVSU's library, where the children's/YA books are kept. I do this whenever I'm especially stressed out. (Ahem--like when Cardinal Sins is due to press within a week...)

Anyway, not only is that part of the library so quiet I can hear myself breathe, but for some reason or another, looking through the books I read when I was younger never fails to make me feel entirely at peace with myself.

Nothing irritates me more than people who disregard children's/YA lit just because they no longer fall within the age range of its targeted audience. I'm an avid reader as an adult because I fell in love with reading when I was a kid. So even now, I go back and read books targeted toward elementary/middle school-aged readers.

My all-time favorite YA author is Han Nolan, who won a National Book Award in 1997 for her novel _Dancing on the Edge_. I read that book when I was twelve years old and loved it. The protagonist was so well-developed that I actually found myself sharing her mindset. For that reason, I was as caught off-guard as she was by the things that happened to her. Psychological mindfuck, for the win--something that can only be pulled off by one hell of a good writer.

In 2006, Nolan released a new YA novel: _The Summer of Kings_. I found it in the library at my high school and, remembering how much I had loved _Dancing on the Edge_, picked it up and read it. I was surprised by how much I still loved Nolan's writing. By that time, I was 18 and reading books targeted toward adults.

Since then, I've gone back and read a few more of Nolan's books. _Send Me Down a Miracle_ and _If I Should Die Before I Wake_ are just as good as the ones I mentioned above. I think she appeals to me just as much now as she did when I was younger because she doesn't underestimate her audience. She's very political, but equally subtle: something I admire a lot in any writer who explores that territory. The fact that she does so successfully while writing for young teenagers is pretty astounding.

I probably wouldn't be reading Han Nolan as an adult had I not first read her when I was in middle school. Knowing that has made me go looking for books I never got around to reading as a kid, and I've come across some pretty interesting stuff.

You might too. Go read some YA lit (or some other genre you wouldn't normally pick up off the shelf). You just might surprise yourself. :-)

Addendum, 03/25/2010:

I just found out that Han Nolan will be releasing a new book this fall!

Keep on livin'

I started this blog months ago and I still don't know what I'd like to use it for. For now, we'll settle on randomness.

I'm in Durango, Colorado right now, visiting my friend Victoria, whose mom bought me a plane ticket as a Christmas gift. I arrived on December 24 and will be heading back to Detroit on January 2.

I know it sounds touristy of me, but the Rocky Mountains are friggin' gorgeous. I wish I had something pretty to look at in Michigan (maybe I do but I'm taking it for granted because I've lived there all my life). I don't travel much, so I dig the scenery. I can see the mountains at any time, wherever I am: through the windows of Victoria's house, from the coffee shop in town, and from the road to New Mexico (yes, we went to New Mexico, just to shop at Target; it was amusing and a half).

I definitely needed to get away for a while. Just like every other 20-something out there, I've been trying to figure out what the hell I want to do with the rest of my life. Wishing I could be as happy as I was two years ago. Mustering up enough energy to make the changes that will (hopefully) make me as happy as I was then.

In the meantime, I'm drinking wine, watching countless episodes of Gilmore Girls, and reading some good books (the new Francine Prose book and this year's edition of _The Best American Poetry_, among others). Eating junk food and trying to relax, even though I had a nightmare about Cardinal Sins last night--the first of the semester. And the semester hasn't even started yet!

Sigh. Whatevs. Bring it on, 2010. Bring it on.