Usually at this time of year, if I were still at ELAC, I would be frantically organizing for Take Back the Night, and I wouldn't be thinking about what I would say when I took the mic. I wouldn't be planning to take the mic, except to thank the folks who had donated the cookies, and given up a night of perfectly good cram for finals studying. Given the news that has been bouncing around the country and blogosphere out of Durham N.C. it feels a little strange to be blogging about sexual assault, especially because I feel I have nothing to say about the Duke case. But I can't let the sunny days of April go by without talking about sexualt assault.
I am a story collector. I carry people's stories in my gut, and every April those stories want to talk. I know about the fourteen year old girl who was walking home from school one day and was raped against the gravel by the traintracks. I know about the sixteen year old girl who was raped in the back of a car after a date by someone on her (co-ed) sports team. I know about the twelve year old girl, who was pushed against a washing machine in her parents house and fingered by her friend who was thirteen. I know about the little girl who was molested by her grandmother's gardener. The twelve year old raped against a chainlink fence. And I know all of those people now. Some of them I have counseled through their fear, craddled through their nightmares, some of them I know no details about. Trust me when I tell you that I know all of these people very well, some of them are family, some lovers, some youth I've mentored. And I know my own story -- I know that when I was seventeen I was having sex for the first time with a woman. I know that we were fooling around at midnight on a playground, I know that when she asked, I said I didn't know and pulled away, and I know that the next second her hand was inside me, and I felt pain for days, and dirty for years.
Power and sex cannot be disentangled, and there is so much grey area. Consent is active, it is not silence or doubt, it is the screamed, whispered, and winked yes. It is not saying yes through gritted teeth after saying no seventeen times. It is not closing your eyes, or being so drunk you've passed out. It is not waking up naked without any idea of what happened. Consent is also incredibly sexy, as a fellow anti-rape activist once said, "Why wouldn't you want to make sure that the other person was having a good time?" So take back the night, the day, the walk home, the lover's embrace, and your own ability to say "yes" and "no".
Happy April.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006
The Best Quote
So, on Monday, when I gave my notice, there were a couple of key quotes that came out of the mouth of the Executive Director of my organization. But my all time favorite was this:
C: I think I want to do more policy and economic research in my next job.
ED: Yes, that makes sense. It's been slowing dawning on me that we haven't...um... utilized your talents and skills as... efficiently as we might have.
C (REALLY? You think I'm qualified to do more than answer emails and photocopy? Are you sure? When exactly did this occur to you, ED?) : (faint smile and mumblings)
Priceless.
C: I think I want to do more policy and economic research in my next job.
ED: Yes, that makes sense. It's been slowing dawning on me that we haven't...um... utilized your talents and skills as... efficiently as we might have.
C (REALLY? You think I'm qualified to do more than answer emails and photocopy? Are you sure? When exactly did this occur to you, ED?) : (faint smile and mumblings)
Priceless.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Supply and Demand
(This was going to be a much larger post, but I'm breaking it out into segments for easy digestability by people who know nothing about economics -- if you stick around for long enough, maybe there will be a funny story).Look at the supply and demand curves to the left, see where they intersect? For now just look at the intersection of D1 and S, resulting in Q1 units of the good being sold.
What is demand, anyway?
Your demand for a good is the amount that you are willing to pay to have that good, also known as your reservation price. At the top of the line D1, we'll call it point A, if you draw a vertical line down to the Quantity axis you will find a Qa (use your imaginations kids!). If the price of the good were Pa, Qa people would be willing to buy it. You can also think of it as much benefit you get personally from buying thing x, if you buy a coffee for 1.50, it should make you 1.50-worth-of-happy to drink it (or spill it) and yes, there are huge problems with quantifying human happiness, sue me. If it makes you 3.00 worth of happy then you are one of those people more to the left on the demand graph.
What is supply, again?
Supply is the marginal cost to produce each product. How much does it cost the factory to go from producing 2 to producing 3 products. Sometimes this is also called a 'cost schedule'.
But doesn't it not cost anything to produce zero units? Shouldn't the supply curve go through the origin?
Yes, and no. If it doesn't cost anything to set everything up to make the very first product then yes, the curve should go through the origin. If you think that you need to buy some supplies and such, then it should start somewhere above the origin, like it does in the picture.
(More later)
Day(s) of Silence
Today is the day of silence, and for the first time in eight years, I'm not shutting my big mouth for a day. This is something that I have always felt a little bit ambivalent about. While the website does say that "silence is loud", I sometimes wonder about its ultimate effectiveness. The ways that I have justified it is by saying that, in general, on the campuses where I have done this I have been a very active queer voice, rarely silent on matters queer or, let's be honest, all matters. When I sat silently in black, handing out cards explaining my silence to professors and classmates I'm sure it made some impact.
But it didn't reveal all of the ways that I felt silenced.
I think it was good for the community, but not good for me. Which is fine, community action will never be good for all its members, and I acknowledge that. Maybe people in the closet felt heartened by my solidarity with their silence on that day, and it is a nice balance point to Coming Out day in October, framing the academic calendar year with queer activism. In short I think it is a good thing, and I applaud those people who are participating. I also think that the more complete the silence the better, for instance, TP's email immediately bounces back today with a message to members of the RedStateU community. I also think that there are ways to counter the silence. For example, at EliteLiberalArtsCollege at the end of the day we would scream at 6:00 to end the silence, and then there would be a "talkback" event about how the silence had been experienced by the community. This made the rest of the day much more bearable.
But it didn't reveal all of the ways that I felt silenced.
In my Spanish class my sophmore year I had to write a two page essay on my typical day. Keep in mind that at that point my spanish was pretty poor. Anyway, at several points in that essay I mentioned 'mi novia' , my girlfriend. When I got the essay back, in addition to all the other grammatical corrections, there was a red mark making all of the 'a's into 'o's, giving me a boyfriend. I had been erased, corrected. It was the beginning of the semester, and I didn't know the professor and I can be incredibly shy, so I just let it slide. The day of silence did nothing to counter this kind of pervasive heteronormativity. I know the spanish essay doesn't sound like a big deal, and in some ways it wasn't, in others way it exemplifies what everyday was like there (and maybe everywhere).
At ELAC I was consistently alienated from the student queer community. Part of this was all about the word 'queer'. I was consistently identified by others in the community as a lesbian. Which is a word I haven't used for myself since I was 15, and I was constantly explaining queer, over and over. I wanted to agitate and use the Queer Student Union to do that, they just wanted to have a rockin' party twice a year (not that I'm down on rockin' parties). I was sex-positive and was willing to confront people on their shit about that. I didn't assume that just because people were queer, I would want to spend an hour a week talking to them about some banal topic that the board came up with. Again random examples, that aren't really doing a good job of explaining the silence and alienation that I felt.
In some ways I felt less silenced in the general populatin where I could talk for myself instead of a queer community that I found isolated, monolithic, and well... not very queer.
I think that there are layers of silence; every community truncates what its members can say and do. So, the day of silence is great, it pulls a community together and makes them realize some important things about homophobia, particularly in educational settings. But, like all community action, it is not an end point, or sufficient agitation against all the hegemonies that constrict queer voices, in all communities.
Or at least it does not satisfy me.
But it didn't reveal all of the ways that I felt silenced.
I think it was good for the community, but not good for me. Which is fine, community action will never be good for all its members, and I acknowledge that. Maybe people in the closet felt heartened by my solidarity with their silence on that day, and it is a nice balance point to Coming Out day in October, framing the academic calendar year with queer activism. In short I think it is a good thing, and I applaud those people who are participating. I also think that the more complete the silence the better, for instance, TP's email immediately bounces back today with a message to members of the RedStateU community. I also think that there are ways to counter the silence. For example, at EliteLiberalArtsCollege at the end of the day we would scream at 6:00 to end the silence, and then there would be a "talkback" event about how the silence had been experienced by the community. This made the rest of the day much more bearable.
But it didn't reveal all of the ways that I felt silenced.
In my Spanish class my sophmore year I had to write a two page essay on my typical day. Keep in mind that at that point my spanish was pretty poor. Anyway, at several points in that essay I mentioned 'mi novia' , my girlfriend. When I got the essay back, in addition to all the other grammatical corrections, there was a red mark making all of the 'a's into 'o's, giving me a boyfriend. I had been erased, corrected. It was the beginning of the semester, and I didn't know the professor and I can be incredibly shy, so I just let it slide. The day of silence did nothing to counter this kind of pervasive heteronormativity. I know the spanish essay doesn't sound like a big deal, and in some ways it wasn't, in others way it exemplifies what everyday was like there (and maybe everywhere).
At ELAC I was consistently alienated from the student queer community. Part of this was all about the word 'queer'. I was consistently identified by others in the community as a lesbian. Which is a word I haven't used for myself since I was 15, and I was constantly explaining queer, over and over. I wanted to agitate and use the Queer Student Union to do that, they just wanted to have a rockin' party twice a year (not that I'm down on rockin' parties). I was sex-positive and was willing to confront people on their shit about that. I didn't assume that just because people were queer, I would want to spend an hour a week talking to them about some banal topic that the board came up with. Again random examples, that aren't really doing a good job of explaining the silence and alienation that I felt.
In some ways I felt less silenced in the general populatin where I could talk for myself instead of a queer community that I found isolated, monolithic, and well... not very queer.
I think that there are layers of silence; every community truncates what its members can say and do. So, the day of silence is great, it pulls a community together and makes them realize some important things about homophobia, particularly in educational settings. But, like all community action, it is not an end point, or sufficient agitation against all the hegemonies that constrict queer voices, in all communities.
Or at least it does not satisfy me.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Potato Rosemary Foccacia
Ok. Here is a post of some substance. In fact this a pretty filling bread. It was my lunch today and yesterday. In the past 24 hours I have:
- sent out one job application
- slept
- looked at my budgeting spreadsheet a million times
- booked flights to go see TP in June
- gone for a run
- gone to work
- had three beers
By the way, this bread is delicious, one of my favs, and easy to expand if you need to feed a small army, this amount will make enough for one 9x12 cookie sheet.
POTATO ROSEMARY FOCACCIA
1 Tbsp active dry yeast
6 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups mashed cooked potatoes (about 16 pounds)
1/2 Tbsp salt
3 garlic cloves, sliced thin
1 Tbsp crumbled dried rosemary
1/4 cup olive oil
10 small red potatoes (this past weekend I also made it with the little purple potatoes and they were fun)
1. You need mashed potatoes -- it doesn't matter whether they are leftovers or made specifically for this, but if you are making them for this, start them first.
2. In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over ~1 1/3 cups warm (hotter than a baby bottle, not painful) water and let it proof for 5 minutes or until it is foamy.
3. In a large bowl, combine well 5 cups of the flour with the mashed potatoes and the salt until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
4. Add the yeast mixture, and stir the dough until it is combined well.
5. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it (incorporating as much of the remaining flour as necessary to prevent it from sticking) for 8 to 10 minutes, or until it is smooth and elastic.
6. Form the dough into a ball, put it in an oiled bowl, and turn it to coat it with the oil. Let the dough rise, covered, in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours, or until it is double in bulk.
7. While the dough is rising, in a small bowl stir together the garlic, the rosemary, and the oil and let the mixture stand, covered.
8. Turn the dough out onto well-oiled trays, press it evenly into the trays, and let it rise, covered loosely, in a warm place for 45 minutes or less, or until it is almost double in bulk.
9. Preheat the ovens to 400°F.
10. Slice the red potatoes into paper-thin slices. Arrange the slices on the dough, overlapping them, and brush them with the oil mixture, discarding the garlic (um, what? throw away garlic? invest in mints).
11. Sprinkle the focaccia with salt and pepper to taste and bake it in a preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until it is golden.
12. Let the focaccia cool in the pan on a rack and serve it warm or at room temperature (keeps well for several days, though usually is eaten by then).
- sent out one job application
- slept
- looked at my budgeting spreadsheet a million times
- booked flights to go see TP in June
- gone for a run
- gone to work
- had three beers
By the way, this bread is delicious, one of my favs, and easy to expand if you need to feed a small army, this amount will make enough for one 9x12 cookie sheet.
POTATO ROSEMARY FOCACCIA
1 Tbsp active dry yeast
6 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups mashed cooked potatoes (about 16 pounds)
1/2 Tbsp salt
3 garlic cloves, sliced thin
1 Tbsp crumbled dried rosemary
1/4 cup olive oil
10 small red potatoes (this past weekend I also made it with the little purple potatoes and they were fun)
1. You need mashed potatoes -- it doesn't matter whether they are leftovers or made specifically for this, but if you are making them for this, start them first.
2. In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over ~1 1/3 cups warm (hotter than a baby bottle, not painful) water and let it proof for 5 minutes or until it is foamy.
3. In a large bowl, combine well 5 cups of the flour with the mashed potatoes and the salt until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
4. Add the yeast mixture, and stir the dough until it is combined well.
5. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it (incorporating as much of the remaining flour as necessary to prevent it from sticking) for 8 to 10 minutes, or until it is smooth and elastic.
6. Form the dough into a ball, put it in an oiled bowl, and turn it to coat it with the oil. Let the dough rise, covered, in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours, or until it is double in bulk.
7. While the dough is rising, in a small bowl stir together the garlic, the rosemary, and the oil and let the mixture stand, covered.
8. Turn the dough out onto well-oiled trays, press it evenly into the trays, and let it rise, covered loosely, in a warm place for 45 minutes or less, or until it is almost double in bulk.
9. Preheat the ovens to 400°F.
10. Slice the red potatoes into paper-thin slices. Arrange the slices on the dough, overlapping them, and brush them with the oil mixture, discarding the garlic (um, what? throw away garlic? invest in mints).
11. Sprinkle the focaccia with salt and pepper to taste and bake it in a preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until it is golden.
12. Let the focaccia cool in the pan on a rack and serve it warm or at room temperature (keeps well for several days, though usually is eaten by then).
Monday, April 24, 2006
Deflated Bridgebuilder
I am one deflated bridgebuilder.
Anyone, anywhere want to say something to cheer me up? It's gray and raining, I have to walk across town for a meeting, I just found out that CoolResearchJob no longer exists unless I relocate to MidAtlanticCity. I'm giving notice at my job this afternoon, and I am, in the words of my amazing mentor, freefalling. So I can't blog about race like I meant to, or the potato rosemary foccacia I made, or my dreams, or masculinity in fringe cultural spaces. Cheer me up and I'll think about it. If things continue like this, I'm buying medicinal whiskey on the way home and quilting all night.
Anyone, anywhere want to say something to cheer me up? It's gray and raining, I have to walk across town for a meeting, I just found out that CoolResearchJob no longer exists unless I relocate to MidAtlanticCity. I'm giving notice at my job this afternoon, and I am, in the words of my amazing mentor, freefalling. So I can't blog about race like I meant to, or the potato rosemary foccacia I made, or my dreams, or masculinity in fringe cultural spaces. Cheer me up and I'll think about it. If things continue like this, I'm buying medicinal whiskey on the way home and quilting all night.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Good (Almost) Man: An Entry Against Heteronormativity
Some Background: I work with HIV-positive people, my partner, TP, identifies as genderqueer. All the names of the men who I had this conversation with have been changed to protect their anonymity. There is so much I could say about heteronormativity, but sometimes it is the way that it reveals itself to me in these small interactions that are the most fertile ground for analysis (and humor).
Also, the official Blog Against Heteronormativity Day is tomorrow, but I have to post this today, because I'm going to an internet free zone.
-Why you smilin'?
-She got a man. That's the only a reason a girl would smile like that.
I knew these men, their viral loads; I had talked to them about their lives, entered them into spreadsheets, and advocated on their behalf. Charles is the oldest, gay, black, quiet and studious -- positive for at least twenty years. He reads everything with a magnifying glass. Jimmy and Lincoln are black and gay too, but younger and very christian. Their faith, that I don't really understand, pulls them through crisis after crisis, making them build a vision for their lives. Mac is the only straight one in the bunch, with a wicked sense of humor and years of street living under his belt. So much divides us -- age, race, class, sero-status -- but right now they are teasing me like one of their own.
-Could be smiling about something else, says Charles gathering his papers
-Naw, she got a man, I know that smile
-That true? You got a man?
-Almost
I'm smiling because I'm happy. Happy to be working with these people, happy that the sun is shining and the crocuses are in bloom. Feeling playful, thinking about my partner, packing ten states away, looking for an endocrinologist, rejecting a diagnosis, rejecting both man and woman, I turn this thing that is puzzle and struggle into a game with one word.
-Almost
-What? You almost got him?
-Does he know he's gonna be your man?
-Is tonight the magic night?
Mac winks at me, then turns serious
-He a good man? He treat you right?
-You get him, girl!
Jimmy is ready to be my cheerleader.
-Every lady needs a good man
-Ain't that the truth, says Lincoln wryly
-Not every woman
-Every woman i've known
-Is tonight the special night?
-The way she's laughing now, she's got two men
I am laughing, hard, stuck in a conversation I never anticipated, and only know how to laugh at, hard.
-Uh-uh, look at her turn pink. You got a man, girl?
-He treat you right?
They seem really concerned, lincoln and mac in particular, so i answer
-Yeah, he treats me well
I'm still laughing as I pick up my papers and walk back to my cubicle and I can still hear them talking about how every woman needs a good man. I'm shaking my head and thinking about my man, my almost man. Later I'm giving Charles his travel reimbursement
-Do you really have a man? He raises an eyebrow, no, one whole eye over his glasses at me, asking.
-No, I don't need a man.
-That's right, girl. More trouble than they're worth. And he walks out, I think for a moment whether he's ever had a good man. That every lady deserves.
Me, I still almost got a man. A good almost man. Most days I even deserve it. Lincoln, Jimmy, and Charles deserve good men too, And I wonder at the puzzle of them talking about my man to me, asking me if he treats me right. What do they mean when they say that? What images are they holding in their heads. I'm guessing that my partner would meet their criteria, without identifying as a man, or undergoing a a physical exam, just by the way ze smiles at me from across the room. What struggles have they gone through to work their desires into this picture, so that they desire and deserve good men. And mac does he struggle to be a good man for the women in his life? Was that what he was trying to do all those years on the street? It is all puzzle and struggle, this mess of gender and desire and expectation -- but for now, with the sun shining and the crocuses in bloom, it's almost a game and I almost got me a man.
Also, the official Blog Against Heteronormativity Day is tomorrow, but I have to post this today, because I'm going to an internet free zone.
-Why you smilin'?
-She got a man. That's the only a reason a girl would smile like that.
I knew these men, their viral loads; I had talked to them about their lives, entered them into spreadsheets, and advocated on their behalf. Charles is the oldest, gay, black, quiet and studious -- positive for at least twenty years. He reads everything with a magnifying glass. Jimmy and Lincoln are black and gay too, but younger and very christian. Their faith, that I don't really understand, pulls them through crisis after crisis, making them build a vision for their lives. Mac is the only straight one in the bunch, with a wicked sense of humor and years of street living under his belt. So much divides us -- age, race, class, sero-status -- but right now they are teasing me like one of their own.
-Could be smiling about something else, says Charles gathering his papers
-Naw, she got a man, I know that smile
-That true? You got a man?
-Almost
I'm smiling because I'm happy. Happy to be working with these people, happy that the sun is shining and the crocuses are in bloom. Feeling playful, thinking about my partner, packing ten states away, looking for an endocrinologist, rejecting a diagnosis, rejecting both man and woman, I turn this thing that is puzzle and struggle into a game with one word.
-Almost
-What? You almost got him?
-Does he know he's gonna be your man?
-Is tonight the magic night?
Mac winks at me, then turns serious
-He a good man? He treat you right?
-You get him, girl!
Jimmy is ready to be my cheerleader.
-Every lady needs a good man
-Ain't that the truth, says Lincoln wryly
-Not every woman
-Every woman i've known
-Is tonight the special night?
-The way she's laughing now, she's got two men
I am laughing, hard, stuck in a conversation I never anticipated, and only know how to laugh at, hard.
-Uh-uh, look at her turn pink. You got a man, girl?
-He treat you right?
They seem really concerned, lincoln and mac in particular, so i answer
-Yeah, he treats me well
I'm still laughing as I pick up my papers and walk back to my cubicle and I can still hear them talking about how every woman needs a good man. I'm shaking my head and thinking about my man, my almost man. Later I'm giving Charles his travel reimbursement
-Do you really have a man? He raises an eyebrow, no, one whole eye over his glasses at me, asking.
-No, I don't need a man.
-That's right, girl. More trouble than they're worth. And he walks out, I think for a moment whether he's ever had a good man. That every lady deserves.
Me, I still almost got a man. A good almost man. Most days I even deserve it. Lincoln, Jimmy, and Charles deserve good men too, And I wonder at the puzzle of them talking about my man to me, asking me if he treats me right. What do they mean when they say that? What images are they holding in their heads. I'm guessing that my partner would meet their criteria, without identifying as a man, or undergoing a a physical exam, just by the way ze smiles at me from across the room. What struggles have they gone through to work their desires into this picture, so that they desire and deserve good men. And mac does he struggle to be a good man for the women in his life? Was that what he was trying to do all those years on the street? It is all puzzle and struggle, this mess of gender and desire and expectation -- but for now, with the sun shining and the crocuses in bloom, it's almost a game and I almost got me a man.
Child of a Single Mother : A List of Thing I've Learned
1. I will never ever, ever take my education for granted.
2. I think that french toast is a perfectly reasonable thing to have for dinner.
3. I know that after someone drives 90 minutes home from work you should give them a backrub before you ask for allowance money, or anything else you want.
4. I never want to depend economically on another person, not even for allowance money.
5. I know that Mother's Day is a sham, and that I can never thank my mother enough.
6. I know that my mother will never be perfect, and that her imperfections are reflected in me.
7. I *believe* in carpooling.
8. I know the value of buying that thing you can't afford because it will make you (or your kid) happy.
9. I hate spending money on things I can't afford, and on most things I can.
10. Although I really hope to have a co-parent when I have kids, I also know that I could do it by myself if I had to, and wouldn't have kids unless I thought I could.
2. I think that french toast is a perfectly reasonable thing to have for dinner.
3. I know that after someone drives 90 minutes home from work you should give them a backrub before you ask for allowance money, or anything else you want.
4. I never want to depend economically on another person, not even for allowance money.
5. I know that Mother's Day is a sham, and that I can never thank my mother enough.
6. I know that my mother will never be perfect, and that her imperfections are reflected in me.
7. I *believe* in carpooling.
8. I know the value of buying that thing you can't afford because it will make you (or your kid) happy.
9. I hate spending money on things I can't afford, and on most things I can.
10. Although I really hope to have a co-parent when I have kids, I also know that I could do it by myself if I had to, and wouldn't have kids unless I thought I could.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Using a 19th Century Ailment to Avoid Pathology
TP, in finding an endocrinologist to prescribe T, really wanted to avoid being diagnosed with GID. Hir reasons for this were basically that a pathology should not be connected to how ze feels about hir gender and getting the care ze needs to be happy and well should not require capitulating to Benjamin Standards. The real sticking point is that those standards say that you have to say that you want to the be the "other" gender. Now, not believing in the gender-binary and not wanting to a man, this presented some problems for TP.
But you have to have something to put on your insurance claim. What is the answer?
Frigidity.
TP has been diagnosed as frigid. This is hilarious. Read the last paragraph of my post from yesterday and you will find it doubly hilarious. There is also some bizarre sense of poetic justice to using a bogus diagnosis from a hundred years ago to avoid a bogus diagnosis today. I'm just sure that Havelock Ellis, or the creators of the first vibrator, are spinning in their graves right now.
But you have to have something to put on your insurance claim. What is the answer?
Frigidity.
TP has been diagnosed as frigid. This is hilarious. Read the last paragraph of my post from yesterday and you will find it doubly hilarious. There is also some bizarre sense of poetic justice to using a bogus diagnosis from a hundred years ago to avoid a bogus diagnosis today. I'm just sure that Havelock Ellis, or the creators of the first vibrator, are spinning in their graves right now.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Lemons, Limes, My Wrist, and the Boss (in Which I Blog like a Teenager about Sex)
I was told by a Jamaican friend last summer that limes "cut your nature". That they will calm you down when you are horny. I hadn't really thought about citrus in connection with sex again until about five minutes ago.
Today, my boss strolled by my desk and asked if I had a knife. When I told her I didn't, she showed me the problem -- inside her red waterbottle was a lemon wedge, which she had squeezed in there, but could not remove. Thirty seconds later the waterbottle is upside down over my trashcan and my hand is all up in there. My wrist starts to hurt, but I'm determined, and with a few more movements, the lemon is free and I'm left with a juicy hand.
Remind you of anything? Yeah, it reminded me too. Sometimes I think that when TP goes on T I will be subjected to dealing with someone with hormones raging around like an adolescent boy -- then I remember that sometimes I think about sex like a teenager too.
Today, my boss strolled by my desk and asked if I had a knife. When I told her I didn't, she showed me the problem -- inside her red waterbottle was a lemon wedge, which she had squeezed in there, but could not remove. Thirty seconds later the waterbottle is upside down over my trashcan and my hand is all up in there. My wrist starts to hurt, but I'm determined, and with a few more movements, the lemon is free and I'm left with a juicy hand.
Remind you of anything? Yeah, it reminded me too. Sometimes I think that when TP goes on T I will be subjected to dealing with someone with hormones raging around like an adolescent boy -- then I remember that sometimes I think about sex like a teenager too.
Class Identity -- The Background Post
i spent a lot of last weekend at the idyllic ancestral home not only living in the female world of love and ritual, but also pouring over spreadsheets figuring out how i'm going to finance a car, a cat, and a period of unemployment. what does this say about my class identity? it says that it's complicated. i'm a middle class kid who grew up worrying about money in a working class town.
my mother had parents that were well seated in the working lower middle class. her father worked for a large company for most of his life, and her mother stayed home with the kids and worked as a secretary. fairly standard for that era. she moved to New England State with my father in the mid-seventies to go 'back to the earth' and raise their children. Neither of them counted on the ways in which capitalism, the patriarchy, and the dissolution of their marriage shunted them both away from those dreams.
suffice it to say that through the problems of divorce, home-ownership, and a bad job market, and raising three children, my mother is not a wealthy woman. she has lived most of her adult life, on that edge between being poor and having debt and also having stuff and just being poor. when i was nine she decided to move farther away from her job to be closer to better schools. over and over again she has prioritized the three of us over herself. there was a long period of time when i was in elementary school when she was unemployed, and a period of time in high school where she took a couple of jobs that made her so unhappy that it was better to be unemployed. including one with a boss who made lewd jokes about women in her presence, and who made me feel distinctly slimey. we always had enough to eat, our house was always warm. we didn't always have the clothes we wanted and we rarely go on vacations. i remember the shame of not being able to explain to classmates what my mother did with her time or describing my vacations to them. so maybe i'm not quite middle class.
but i learned latin. my mother encouraged me to read voraciously, listen to music, dream about my future, learn anything i wanted to learn. she taught me about red wine, world religions, and impeccable grammar. so my cultural capital is high, and if you saw me walking down the street you would put me in the liberal white middle class.
New England State. is not all pretty postcards. rednecks and poor white trash don't just exist below the Mason-Dixon line. it just isn't as important to say that they are white in NES -- in fact, it's almost redundant. there are houses in my town which have several cars in various states of total disrepair rusting out on their lawns. i remember my father talking about a family near our house when i was little, he said that they were poachers, meaning that they hunted deer out of season. usually my father would have been a stickler about the regulations and reported them, but he knew that they needed to meat to eat and so let it slide.
class and class identity is very much about how you interact with people in the small interactions of the day. i never really questioned the way that i was taught to interact with people, until i realized that i did it radically different from my peers at Elite Liberal Arts College in another New England State. i talk to everyone, especially when i see the same person every day i really want the answer to "how are you?". i also can slide between languages. i can slip into a rural way of talking and discuss the planting, talk about where i was for sunday dinner, slide into a whole set of assumptions. it's this very specific way of being bi-cultural.
most students at ELAC treated custodians and food service workers as invisible. when we would talk about class issues they would say that if they were in the city they would be doing some activism, but they were "in the middle of nowhere" and therefore there was nothing to do. this infuriated me since i had grown up in the middle of nowhere. the same class issues that i had dealt with in high school and middle school were right there again, and in some ways i was on the other side of them, because ELAC was so wealthy in that particular structure my family was more on par with the employees that with students, at least in monetary terms. so i started to identify with the working class mothers at ELAC, with their children. i had a class identity for the first time.
now, living in HarborCity my class identity is in flux, and is much harder to separate from my racial identity and privilege. more on this soon.
my mother had parents that were well seated in the working lower middle class. her father worked for a large company for most of his life, and her mother stayed home with the kids and worked as a secretary. fairly standard for that era. she moved to New England State with my father in the mid-seventies to go 'back to the earth' and raise their children. Neither of them counted on the ways in which capitalism, the patriarchy, and the dissolution of their marriage shunted them both away from those dreams.
suffice it to say that through the problems of divorce, home-ownership, and a bad job market, and raising three children, my mother is not a wealthy woman. she has lived most of her adult life, on that edge between being poor and having debt and also having stuff and just being poor. when i was nine she decided to move farther away from her job to be closer to better schools. over and over again she has prioritized the three of us over herself. there was a long period of time when i was in elementary school when she was unemployed, and a period of time in high school where she took a couple of jobs that made her so unhappy that it was better to be unemployed. including one with a boss who made lewd jokes about women in her presence, and who made me feel distinctly slimey. we always had enough to eat, our house was always warm. we didn't always have the clothes we wanted and we rarely go on vacations. i remember the shame of not being able to explain to classmates what my mother did with her time or describing my vacations to them. so maybe i'm not quite middle class.
but i learned latin. my mother encouraged me to read voraciously, listen to music, dream about my future, learn anything i wanted to learn. she taught me about red wine, world religions, and impeccable grammar. so my cultural capital is high, and if you saw me walking down the street you would put me in the liberal white middle class.
New England State. is not all pretty postcards. rednecks and poor white trash don't just exist below the Mason-Dixon line. it just isn't as important to say that they are white in NES -- in fact, it's almost redundant. there are houses in my town which have several cars in various states of total disrepair rusting out on their lawns. i remember my father talking about a family near our house when i was little, he said that they were poachers, meaning that they hunted deer out of season. usually my father would have been a stickler about the regulations and reported them, but he knew that they needed to meat to eat and so let it slide.
class and class identity is very much about how you interact with people in the small interactions of the day. i never really questioned the way that i was taught to interact with people, until i realized that i did it radically different from my peers at Elite Liberal Arts College in another New England State. i talk to everyone, especially when i see the same person every day i really want the answer to "how are you?". i also can slide between languages. i can slip into a rural way of talking and discuss the planting, talk about where i was for sunday dinner, slide into a whole set of assumptions. it's this very specific way of being bi-cultural.
most students at ELAC treated custodians and food service workers as invisible. when we would talk about class issues they would say that if they were in the city they would be doing some activism, but they were "in the middle of nowhere" and therefore there was nothing to do. this infuriated me since i had grown up in the middle of nowhere. the same class issues that i had dealt with in high school and middle school were right there again, and in some ways i was on the other side of them, because ELAC was so wealthy in that particular structure my family was more on par with the employees that with students, at least in monetary terms. so i started to identify with the working class mothers at ELAC, with their children. i had a class identity for the first time.
now, living in HarborCity my class identity is in flux, and is much harder to separate from my racial identity and privilege. more on this soon.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Coming Soon
I had a lovely weekend at the idyllic ancestral home, and returned home last night. It was nice to get out of HarborCity and go somewhere where it's dark at night, and quiet all the time to sort through how I'm feeling about, well, love, life, work, the universe and everything. In that order.
While I was there I spent some time writing about class identity. So y'all (all 1.62 of you) have that to look forward to. Also Saturday is Blog Against Heteronormativity Day.
I hope that you all had good weekends, and survived the Monday that I didn't have.
While I was there I spent some time writing about class identity. So y'all (all 1.62 of you) have that to look forward to. Also Saturday is Blog Against Heteronormativity Day.
I hope that you all had good weekends, and survived the Monday that I didn't have.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Queer Family
Found out about this story this morning via feministing, and it really has my blood boiling. The implications of a discourse that regulates our families and domestic space is this matter is troubling to say the least. When the government defines family, we are all in trouble. All of us. For a long time I have wondered and theorized about the potential efficacy of a broadbased coalition between queers and those who are marginalized along racial and class lines. Situations like this make me feel that that coalition would be fruitful if incredibly challenging.
At some point I need to write about my racial and class identities in detail, so that my positionality in all of this is more clear. However, right now, I need to charge ahead, bear with me, I know where I'm writing from and even I am taking myself with a grain of salt. Even beyond my positionality there is still a lot of backstory to this post -- I don't think marriage is the be-all-and-end-all, for queer people, brown people, or any people. My family is queer. I live with two friends who I define as family. We decided to live together after college before we decided anything else about our post-college lives. We share all the bills, we are thinking about buying a car together; we are not the standard roomies. We are also almost illegal (if we lived in Black Jack, MO).
Ok. All that said, let's chat coalition. The oppressions faced by queer people, the poor and the working poor, and people of color are not the same, and I don't want to minimize that -- but the ways in which we are oppressed have some similarities. Most of these circle around ideas of (re)productivity. This spins out to being about controlling our labor, our sexuality, and our domestic space. Anxieties about these three things have been warping the lives of people on the margin for the last ... long f-ing time. This is another example of that. This law prevents families from living together, families like mine, families who need to cohabitate without marriage for a whole host of economic and cultural reasons that really aren't any of the government business unless they actually want to do something about it, and even then I don't know how I feel about it from a theoretical point of view, since it still has them in our bedrooms. So until they look a lot more like us, I'll be wary of the possible pernicious outcomes.
I do think that communities and the government should support the families as they exist, nurturing those organic networks of love and obligation that we make with each other. This should mean that there are supports for two single mothers who want to share a household and benefit from all the things that are good about having two adults in a home. It should support families that are multi-generational, "female-headed", and queer in a whole host of other ways. And affordable housing in safe neighborhoods, I think that should be a given. I think this coalition should work for this and many other things -- yes, I do want to destroy capitalism and the american family as we know them -- does that make me a good queer or a bad queer?
At some point I need to write about my racial and class identities in detail, so that my positionality in all of this is more clear. However, right now, I need to charge ahead, bear with me, I know where I'm writing from and even I am taking myself with a grain of salt. Even beyond my positionality there is still a lot of backstory to this post -- I don't think marriage is the be-all-and-end-all, for queer people, brown people, or any people. My family is queer. I live with two friends who I define as family. We decided to live together after college before we decided anything else about our post-college lives. We share all the bills, we are thinking about buying a car together; we are not the standard roomies. We are also almost illegal (if we lived in Black Jack, MO).
Ok. All that said, let's chat coalition. The oppressions faced by queer people, the poor and the working poor, and people of color are not the same, and I don't want to minimize that -- but the ways in which we are oppressed have some similarities. Most of these circle around ideas of (re)productivity. This spins out to being about controlling our labor, our sexuality, and our domestic space. Anxieties about these three things have been warping the lives of people on the margin for the last ... long f-ing time. This is another example of that. This law prevents families from living together, families like mine, families who need to cohabitate without marriage for a whole host of economic and cultural reasons that really aren't any of the government business unless they actually want to do something about it, and even then I don't know how I feel about it from a theoretical point of view, since it still has them in our bedrooms. So until they look a lot more like us, I'll be wary of the possible pernicious outcomes.
I do think that communities and the government should support the families as they exist, nurturing those organic networks of love and obligation that we make with each other. This should mean that there are supports for two single mothers who want to share a household and benefit from all the things that are good about having two adults in a home. It should support families that are multi-generational, "female-headed", and queer in a whole host of other ways. And affordable housing in safe neighborhoods, I think that should be a given. I think this coalition should work for this and many other things -- yes, I do want to destroy capitalism and the american family as we know them -- does that make me a good queer or a bad queer?
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Sick Day
yesterday i took a sick day, that i richly deserved. anyone who hates their job and clocks in a fever over 100 gets a sick day, even if that is spent lying in bed, reading, listening to NPR, making yummy kosher desserts, and watching old movies. that is what sick days are for.
someone could start a small meth lab with the amount of cold medicine that is in my apartment, but i wouldn't suggest it because meth is scary. i also meant to blog about important things, like my sourdough starter, mentoring, academia (and how i miss it), immigration, the duke rape/sexual assault case, and a couple of other things of note. right now the only update i could possibly give you is that the i'm preoccupied about hosting a seder this evening (in the grand tradition of seder with as few jews as possible), my fever is down, and i'm back at work with way too much to do to justify blogging.
also, i'm escaping to my idyllic ancestral home this weekend, and living in the world of female love and ritual, which will probably not include blogging. so see you next week, when hopefully my life will be a little more settled.
someone could start a small meth lab with the amount of cold medicine that is in my apartment, but i wouldn't suggest it because meth is scary. i also meant to blog about important things, like my sourdough starter, mentoring, academia (and how i miss it), immigration, the duke rape/sexual assault case, and a couple of other things of note. right now the only update i could possibly give you is that the i'm preoccupied about hosting a seder this evening (in the grand tradition of seder with as few jews as possible), my fever is down, and i'm back at work with way too much to do to justify blogging.
also, i'm escaping to my idyllic ancestral home this weekend, and living in the world of female love and ritual, which will probably not include blogging. so see you next week, when hopefully my life will be a little more settled.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Links
i've figured out my template and am SLOWLY linking to cool folks, who i read daily, and you should take a peek at if you don't already.
The Rollercoaster: Part I
i hate rollercoasters. the last time i was on one i was ten and it was just a basic dragon that went around an oval slightly sloping track, and i was absolutely terrified. in general i like to be in control of my body and my surroundings. for a long time this was my reasoning for not doing drugs or drinking; it is still my main reason for being leery of drugs -- both prescribed and recreational.
that said, i'm strapping myself in for a rollercoaster. i can feel my stomach tighten the way it does before i dive off a diving board, my mind runs over the track ahead of the car -- i'm checking it for loose bolts; i want to push it faster ahead so the whole thing will be over; and i want to hold it back and make it stop, yell to the attendant and unstrap myself and get the hell out. i'm terrified and dreadfully excited. and i could almost throw up. it's a good thing i haven't eaten any fried dough recently.
in approximately six weeks my partner, TP, will starting injecting testosterone into hir body. the goal, to the extent that ze has a goal, is to achieve a more androgynous body, but not to "fully transition" to a male body. our relationship is long distance, but thankfully we will be together for a month this summer, and that month will be month two on T. i'm very grateful that i will be around for some of these beginning stages. i can think about all the good things that this will do for hir self-conception and the way that the world interacts with hir, and i can think of the things about it that absolutely terrify me. and both make me feel like i'm sitting in a rollercoaster car on which i don't control the levers.
there will be more of this in coming months, but for right now, i'm just sitting here. holding the things i find comforting like so many talismans -- including my love for hir and trust in the decisions that ze makes.
that said, i'm strapping myself in for a rollercoaster. i can feel my stomach tighten the way it does before i dive off a diving board, my mind runs over the track ahead of the car -- i'm checking it for loose bolts; i want to push it faster ahead so the whole thing will be over; and i want to hold it back and make it stop, yell to the attendant and unstrap myself and get the hell out. i'm terrified and dreadfully excited. and i could almost throw up. it's a good thing i haven't eaten any fried dough recently.
in approximately six weeks my partner, TP, will starting injecting testosterone into hir body. the goal, to the extent that ze has a goal, is to achieve a more androgynous body, but not to "fully transition" to a male body. our relationship is long distance, but thankfully we will be together for a month this summer, and that month will be month two on T. i'm very grateful that i will be around for some of these beginning stages. i can think about all the good things that this will do for hir self-conception and the way that the world interacts with hir, and i can think of the things about it that absolutely terrify me. and both make me feel like i'm sitting in a rollercoaster car on which i don't control the levers.
there will be more of this in coming months, but for right now, i'm just sitting here. holding the things i find comforting like so many talismans -- including my love for hir and trust in the decisions that ze makes.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Intro to Economics: Part I
most people don't know much about economics or the conceptions they have are pretty out of whack. and i happen to love the discipline with a passion. there are two branches of economics -- micro and macro -- and i like things about each, but at base i am a micro person. which is fine, because macroeconomics is slowly learning more tools from micro to predict changes in the macroeconomy (more on this later). for now, though i will stick to what i truly love.
microeconomics is the study of how people make decisions. more specifically it is about the allocation of scarce resources among competing needs. think about that for a second. scarce resources among competing needs. 10 widgets and 1 wahoozit or 10 wahoozits and 1 widget, money for the war or money for health care, clean air for all people, or clean air for white people in the suburbs. the list goes on and on. cost-benefit is one way to think about it but only when all the costs and benefits are taken into account.
occasionally i will blog about economics. i will try to makes economics seem important and accessible. someday i want to teach the subject, so i might as well start honing those skills here. also i think that, generally, breaking down the discourse of the discipline so that anyone can understand it is to everyone's benefit.
microeconomics is the study of how people make decisions. more specifically it is about the allocation of scarce resources among competing needs. think about that for a second. scarce resources among competing needs. 10 widgets and 1 wahoozit or 10 wahoozits and 1 widget, money for the war or money for health care, clean air for all people, or clean air for white people in the suburbs. the list goes on and on. cost-benefit is one way to think about it but only when all the costs and benefits are taken into account.
occasionally i will blog about economics. i will try to makes economics seem important and accessible. someday i want to teach the subject, so i might as well start honing those skills here. also i think that, generally, breaking down the discourse of the discipline so that anyone can understand it is to everyone's benefit.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Women's Writing
Stolen from Badger, if there is some etiquette about this, I haven't learned it yet, and beg your apologies...:
Instructions: Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you have wanted/might like to read. ??Place question marks by any titles/authors you've never heard of?? Put an asterisk if you've read something else by the same author.
* Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
* Atwood, Margaret–Cat's Eye
*Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
* Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
* Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
* Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Chopin, Kate–The Awakening
Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
* Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South??
* Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
* Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
? Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
*Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, George–Middlemarch
?Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
* Erdrich, Louise–Tracks
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
*Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper
? Gordimer, Nadine–July's People
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
* hooks, bell–Bone Black
* Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
*Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
?Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
*Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
* Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing
* L'Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
* Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
? Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
* Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series (any of them)
? McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
?McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
? Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
*Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
? Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
* Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
?Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller's Wife
* Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
O'Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
* Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister's Keeper
*Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
?Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping
? Rocha, Sharon–For Lac
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
*Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
?Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle–The House
* Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
? Tannen, Deborah–You're Wearing That
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife's Tale
? Urquhart, Jane–Away
* Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer's Beginnings
*Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
* Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
* Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One's Own
Instructions: Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you have wanted/might like to read. ??Place question marks by any titles/authors you've never heard of?? Put an asterisk if you've read something else by the same author.
* Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
* Atwood, Margaret–Cat's Eye
*Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
* Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
* Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
* Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Chopin, Kate–The Awakening
Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
* Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South??
* Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
* Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
? Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
*Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, George–Middlemarch
?Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
* Erdrich, Louise–Tracks
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
*Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper
? Gordimer, Nadine–July's People
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
* hooks, bell–Bone Black
* Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
*Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
?Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
*Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
* Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing
* L'Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
* Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
? Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
* Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series (any of them)
? McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
?McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
? Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
*Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
? Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
* Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
?Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller's Wife
* Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
O'Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
* Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister's Keeper
*Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
?Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping
? Rocha, Sharon–For Lac
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
*Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
?Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle–The House
* Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
? Tannen, Deborah–You're Wearing That
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife's Tale
? Urquhart, Jane–Away
* Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer's Beginnings
*Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
* Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
* Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One's Own
Monday, April 03, 2006
A NYTimes Piece that Didn't Make Me Gag (and it's even about women!)
If you have been reading some of the junk that has been coming out of the NY Times about women, work, education and feminism... this piece published in Sunday's magazine was refreshing, smart, human, and realistic. Which I think is what journalism is supposed to be. Right?
Compromises
what is the biggest compromise you've ever made with a loved one, a lover? i'm not talking about agreeing to paint the living room yellow instead of green. what are the big ones? how did you decide to let go of your position for them, do you regret it now?
the decisions circle me like predators that cleverly hide when i turn my head. but i know they are there, rustling in the dark future.
the decisions circle me like predators that cleverly hide when i turn my head. but i know they are there, rustling in the dark future.
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