The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes - Martin Luther King Jr's Muse

Image featured is taken of Hughes on 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, at “Our Block's Children's Garden,” -Under his supervision…each child chose a plant, set it, and assumed partial responsibility for weeding and watering the garden. On a picket beside each plant was posted a child’s name."

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”

The leader of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes —a poet, social activist, and playwright - just one of the many writers who Martin Luther King Jr. held so very close to his heart.  We recommend starting with The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes - this definitive collection spans five decades, and is comprised of over 800 poems - half of which had never before been seen until its publication long after Langston's death. This compendium contains all of the poems which were published throughout his entire lifetime; arranged in the order in which he wrote them.

The relationship formed between Martin Luther King Jr. and poet Langston Hughes was inspired through their work as activists —the two became very close friends. They spent years exchanging intimate letters, and eventually reserved some time for traveling to Nigeria together, in the 1960’s. Prior to the height of their friendship at this moment in time, Dr. King recited a very specific poem to his wife Corretta on what would have been her very first Mother’s Day celebration -Dr. King would read the poem “Mother to Son”, written by his muse, Langston Hughes. During this time period Hughes also made an honorable contribution to his dear friend; he wrote a poem about Dr. King, entwined with insights based on the infamous Montgomery Bus Boycott. Hughes titled the piece, “Brotherly Love.”

Albeit this blossoming companionship that had formed between the two men, the turbulent years of the civil rights movement had its unique way of creating a boundary between Hughes and Dr. King. Not to mention, Langston had already acquired much more attention than Martin had managed to garner from the public; he had a reputation, and Dr. King was still trying to establish his. It would be said that Dr. King had never publicly uttered the poet’s name throughout the decades. We all know why at this point, but ages ago it was just a rumor; in the 1940’s, Mr. Hughes had attracted the attention of the FBI —agents would sneak into his public readings, suspicious of his radical effect on the black community; and the reputation built around his being a communist sympathizer.

In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter (Knopf, 1930), won the Harmon gold medal for literature. In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple Speaks His Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1950); Simple Stakes a Claim (Rinehart, 1957); Simple Takes a Wife (Simon & Schuster, 1953); and Simple's Uncle Sam (Hill and Wang, 1965). He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography, The Big Sea (Knopf, 1940), and cowrote the play Mule Bone (HarperCollins, 1991) with Zora Neale Hurston.

Langston resided in Mexico during his youth, and later became one of the very first black authors to make a living off of his work. His mother was a school teacher, and a poet herself. Hughes barely knew his father, daddy was cruel, and never around; yet daddy paid Hughes’s tuition to study at Columbia University, for as long as his son didn’t become a writer! It wasn’t long until Langston dropped out of Columbia, and made history for himself. His story "Blessed Assurance" deals with a father's anger over his son's effeminacy and "queerness". Many of his readers, specifically of the LGBTQ community, state that his “love of black men is evidenced in a number of poems.” Biographers argued that “in order to retain the respect and support of black churches and organizations and avoid exacerbating his precarious financial situation, Hughes remained closeted”—although many who knew him have stated that he was was anything, he may have been asexual. We love you Langston, whoever it is you wanted to be; Your delicate demeanor, literary mastery, and social influence pales in comparison to any modern writer of our times.

Green Snake - Dir. Hark Tsui - 1993 1h 39m

Tsui drags us into a rather vivacious fantasy world. The characters arrive amidst a catastrophe, guiding us on a playfully erotic journey that’s based mischievously on a Chinese Folk tale. Take into consideration an overzealous Monk, and two twin phantasmagoria muses -Xiao Qing the Green Snake, and Bai Suzhen the White Snake -who had been training for centuries to take on human form. Embracing a realized mortal realm takes a lot of practice. But when one sister deceives the other in order to infiltrate her romance, things get…sticky. If you’ve been slain by HAUSU or SWEET MOVIE, then GREEN SNAKE should be next on your list. A surreal and not to be missed adaptation of Lilian Lee’s lucid novel (by the same title).

FLOWERS: A Guide to American Wildflowers by Zim, Martin, and Freund

This charming pocket paperback will put you under an inescapable spell  -A Golden Nature Guide with 134 plates in full color, a collection of wildflowers in the Americas; Herbert S. Zim, PhD and Alexander C. Martin, PhD. Vibrant llustrations by Rudolf Freund.

“Wildflowers grow almost everywhere, You’ll find them in deserts, swamps, and fields, on mountains, roadsides, and city lots -in all parts of our country. Flowers are far more intriguing than many people suspect. A flower is more than a splash of color and design.”

Featured specimens include the rabbitbrush, chicory, rose gentians, and an intimate disclosure of the clover – there are 75 diff species in the West…most have well known identifiable globular flower heads. The blood root is also featured and identified within the first sign of spring in the Northeast (a fragile flower with clear long petals). There are many unidentifiable wildflowers which stand out, amidst their rather dull write-ups, such as the delicate famed gentian  -“producing its base-like deeply fringed violet blue flower in its second year of growth.” The bee-balms and the trillions are among the featured —the trillions being handsome spring plants of moist eastern woodlands and western mountains; 15 species for these mysterious creatures. You will also find information on The Wildflower Preservation Society, and short essays are provided in the introduction for instructions on various amateur activities such as photographing, growing, collecting, and conserving whichever wildflowers you may find in your vicinity. Keep a notebook, and collect systematically your specimens. Printed in 1950 by Golden Press, NY.

If you’re very curious, we recommend you stop by one of our favorite databases for all blooming matter — Geraniaceae.com

The Female Man - Joanna Russ - 1975 220pgs

Russ' collection of non-linear science fiction tales departs from the intimate lives of four different characters living in dystopian times; Jeannine, Janet, Jael, and Joanna. One is a guilty cunt-warrior with steel teeth who’s ready for battle against Man, another is from a utopia called Whileaway (where only women dare exist).  At a certain point Russ' characters connect through the story of a feminist from the 70's -who's trying desperately to succeed in “a mans world”. Literary critic Susan Ayers once postulated in an article for Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Mar., 1995): "her purpose in The Female Man is to trick the reader into recognizing the problem of "contrarieties": "You can't unite woman and human any more than you can unite matter and antimatter." Russ contrasts our present-day heterosexual society with two revolutionary alternatives:  a utopian world of women and a dystopian world of women warring with men,  to "pulverize the old forms and formal conventions", critiquing the “straight mind” -heterosexual institutions that regulate gender.”

Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Ninteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite - Introduction by Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault — Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite — The unapologetic erotic diary of a french intersexed radical who was assigned female at birth, and raised in a convent; just one of the many lost voices from our vibrant LGBTQ history. The devoutly Catholic Barbin confessed to Jean-Francois-Anne Landroit, the Bishop of La Rochelle of her secret, and was examined by a Dr. Chesnet, in 1860. He discovered that even though Barbin had a vagina, they had also a penis and testicles inside of their body. In 1868, Barbin committed suicide due to their struggle with poverty, gender and sexuality troubles and the false persona she felt forced to maintain.

Judith Butler called Foucault's introduction a "romanticized appropriation" of Barbin's experience; rather, Butler understands Barbin's upbringing "not as an intersex body exposing and refuting the regulative strategies of sexual categorization but as an example of how the law maintains an 'outside' within itself".

The birthday of Herculine Barbin is November 8th, which is deemed as the radical Intersex Day of Remembrance.

The Insect Guide - Orders and Major Families of North American Insects, Ralph B. Swain, 1948

From leaf-hoppers, dragonflies, wasps, moths, thrips, stinkbugs, crickets, and beetles -this lush hardcover field guide is an essential item to add to your book shelves. There are extensive details on how adult insects differ from other arthropods —for this matter they have two pairs of wings; three distinct major body divisions -head, thorax, and abdomen- and never more than three pairs of legs (a pair to each thoracic segment).

The Insect Guide - Orders and Major Families of North American Insects, by Ralph B. Swain, at the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, US Dept. of Agriculture. This specific edition was published in 1948, for Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY. Includes bewildering illustrations by Suzan N. Swain. 454 plates, 330 in full color which cover 251 insect species in the US and Canada.

“One who wishes to distinguish different kinds of insects first must know how to tell them from the various animals with which they commonly are confused. Almost any small creature with more than 4 legs mistakenly may be called an insect or 'bug', and the immature stages of many insects too often are miscalled 'worms'. “Moths And Butterflies: Order Lepidoptera” - pp 178-179.

“About 670,000 different kinds of insects have been described since the days of Linnaeus, the inventor of our present system of naming insects, and the total number of species that eventually will be discovered and described is conservatively estimated to be 2,000,000. In short, there are more species of insects than of all other animals taken together…So let us look at the world of insects, seeing only the later elements of its composition, and hope that in so doing some who hitherto have been appalled and confused by the sheer numbers and diversity of insects will have a pleasurable experience akin to that of the mountaineer who has achieved the summit.” Above excerpt is taken from the Introduction, which also includes a segment from “Chapter One: Is It An Insect?”.

Although an extensive guide, we do recommend furthering your studies by visiting entomologytoday.org.

Dust on her Ephemerides: On Olga Tokarczuk’s novel ‘Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead’

In Tokarczuk’s grotesque comedy we are introduced to Janina Duszejko, an astrologer who cares for silent unkept spaces belonging to local Warsaw inhabitants -their summer homes are like corpses. Although Janina follows the Moon for guidance, she reluctantly confesses to being an amateur at such esoteric endeavors,”I see us moving blindly in eternal Gloom, like May bugs trapped in a box by a cruel child. It’s easy to harm and injure us, to smash up our intricately assembled, bizarre existence.” We are led to believe that Janina has no real home herself. She is an outcast. Yet a string of murders in her neighborhood reveal themselves one by one; the Animals are seeking revenge on Mankind. Janina reflects, as she often tends to do, “We have a view of the world, but Animals have a sense of the world.” Yet the authorities only mock Janina’s findings.

Big Foot was her first discovery. The body, twisted up on the floor, the one (of many) whom Janina despised. The one who had slain the forest animals, and displayed them with disrespect around the perimeter of his stench of a cottage. Janina takes note of everything in his home, his dirty underwear, and how his death “might have been a good thing. It had freed him from the mess that was his life. And it had freed other living Creatures from him. Oh yes, suddenly I realized what a good thing death can be, how just and fair, like a disinfectant, or a vacuum cleaner.” Janina and Oddball continue to care for the body, “Dressing the dead man was like a form of caress. I doubt he ever experienced such tenderness in life.”

Janina is anxious, and an insomniac by trade. The Sun is her Damsel.She wonders how the fields she knows so well will appear millions of years from today. Would the sky be the same color? She makes sure to wash her feet before heading to bed just in case she is taken to the hospital in the middle of the night. She has an Ailment, one that she has foreseen in the stars, which implements her own death. This is her driving force. Yet as a woman ripe with knowledge, intuition, and with her youth behind her, Janina is a prisoner in other people’s homes. She pisses red, endures a painful gastroscopy, and imagines the beautiful country beyond the Czech border. Janina has a theory, too. She believes that our cerebellum “has not been correctly connected to our brain.” She foretells a greater future than the one she experiences, if only we were able to possess “full knowledge of our own anatomy, of what was happening inside of our bodies.” Janina drinks only black tea, dry muesli crumbs settle and create a fine line of dust on her Ephemerides.

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead is a lucid tale embossed with an array of the self-loathing characters we’ve come to expect (and long for) from Poland’s outspoken literary genius. Tokarczuk’s words keep us warm, and her 2019 Nobel Prize novel is also a book about translation: Dionizy, Janina’s previous student, had recently turned thirty, lost his job in Wrocław, and had taken to reside in a dirty concrete hostel. Soft hair, shy, accident prone, and allergic to absolutely everything he came to encounter. Dionizy (aka Dizzy) comes to visit with Janina on Fridays, which was when they would translate Blake. Although Janina had never cared for poetry, and she finds Blake’s work too similar to children’s rhymes. She wished that it were written in the “proper prose format”, then admits to being no good at translation anyways- her English mostly forgotten. She would let Dionizy stay over on those cold Friday evenings, he slept on the sofa in her study. She’d leave her bedroom door open throughout the night so that they could “hear each other’s breathing”. There is a subtle romance that takes form between the two quasi-polyglots, although it is not exactly a love that comes to fruition. Dizzy receives word that the Klodzko Gazette wants to publish his recent translations -an opportunity like this could change everything for Janina’s slovenly darling, yet this news is shortly eclipsed by his intimidation. The two decide to visit the Czech Republic to obtain access to one of the very few book shops that sells Blake.

Amidst all the literary meanderings, Dizzy becomes another unwilling witness to the unusual happenings taking place in town. Rumor has it that a wealthy man disappears; one whom owned various properties and took on a multitude of responsibilities -a delicatessen, a fox farm, a slaughterhouse…furs illegally imported from the Russian Mafia changes the conversation altogether. “So, is your poodle a dog, or a bitch?” It’s spring, and the town’s dentist, ever so recently retired,  brings out his antique equipment, dusts off the cobwebs -no use to confuse the winter with bad health- it’s too dark and cold, but he treats his olde clients in the front yard of his home, illegally.

Although let’s not forget about Dizzy and Janina -there is yet another corpse that has been discovered. Our thirty something reluctant translator quick grabs a flashlight, takes Janina’s hand, and heads off into the neighborhood to do more research. They run above the olive groves, toward the evergreen ruins, a walnut tree ahead, and yet another victim-a car laid barren below. An off-road vehicle, empty inside except for a briefcase and a bag of groceries. There had been a windmill on site, years ago before the war. They followed hoof prints toward a well, where there lay the next bloody, ominous body. Her astrological reading of Dizzy: “His generation has Pluto in Libra, which somewhat weakens their vigilance. And they think they can balance hell. I don’t believe they’ll manage it.”

Still, Janina’s eyes won’t stop watering, and she is deemed by the local authorities as a threat; the old crone. She imagines they’re all waiting for the moment that she herself disappears, just like all of the others.Eventually she writes to the police station about the mass creature killings and their unspoken revenge, explaining how it all began in 1659 at a vineyard in Italy, where the owners themselves wrote a summons to the Caterpillars who destroyed their crop. Janina makes up the rules as she goes about her day. She reminisces about the past, stating how no one has the courage to think up, and administer, a real revolution. Janina refers to this exhaustion of our species as what in Greek translates to “a dropping of the petals.” And as depressed as Janina becomes, we still find ourselves listening. Especially since previously, Janina was a teacher, as well as a bridge construction engineer -among many other occupations.

Janina does possess meaningful friendships, even if her colleagues are slightly inhibited by practicalities. Our heroin has recurring dreams: she meets her Grandmother and Mother in the boiler room, where they were both “in summer dresses…as if they were off to church and lost their way. They avoided my gaze…” Janina reflects on her surroundings next, “Loud, dark clouds had been scudding across the sky all day, and now, late in the evening, they were rubbing their wet bellies against the hills. The sharp, jagged line of the horizon as if it were a strand of hair. Oh yes, Venus goes to bed in the Czech Republic.”

For more about Olga’s work visit National Arts And Cultures article.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o — Excerpts from his 2010 release Dreams In A Time Of War: A Childhood Memoir (Man Booker International Prize Finalist)

“The ban on Karing’a and KISA schools, especially the Kenya Teachers’ College at Githunguri, was a practical and psychological assault on the African initiative for self-reliance. Much had gone into their organization. Mbiyu Loinange had narrowly escaped arrest alongside Kenyatta because he happened to be in England at the time, representing the Kenya African Union. Many others associated with the college were among the thousands arrested. But the biggest blow to the collective psyche occurred when the colonial state turned the college grounds and buildings into a prison camp where proponents of resistance to colonialism were hanged…up to then there had been two competing and parallel systems of modern education, that of the government and missionaries on one hand, and the African-run independent schools on the other. I had been able to move from one to the other. And now? There was no choice.

I didn’t know how long I lived with the uncertainty. But the following year, 1953, it was announced that a number of KISA and Karing’a schools would be reopened under government control. Some trustees refused to give up their independents and hence their schools did not reopen. Many others were not given that option. Manguo was among those whose board members agreed to have the school reopened under the government-sanctioned Kiambu District Educational Board. The syllabus would be determined by colonial masters.”

“My mother was a thinker and good listener loved for her generosity and respected for her legendary capacity for work. Though she would not confront my father openly, she was stubborn and let her actions speak for her. She was like the minister of works…she was a great storyteller. Every evening we children gathered around the fireside in her hut, and the performance would begin. Sometimes they led to stories about events in the land and the world…some of them sounded stranger than fiction: like the case of a white man named Hitler refusing to shake the hand of the fastest runner in the world in 1963 because the man, Jesse Owens, was black.

I looked forward to these evenings; it seemed to me a glorious wonder that such beautiful and sometimes scary stories could issue from their mouths. Best for me were those stories in which the audience would join in the singing of the chorus. The melody was invariably captivating; it felt like I had been transported to another world of endless harmony even in sadness.”

“…evidence of war was not to be found simply in stories; it was all around us. Peasant farmers could sell their food only through the government marketing board. Movement of food across regions was not permitted without a license, creating shortages and famine in some areas. Though I did not know the reasons at the time, this system of food production and distribution was actually the colony’s contribution to the British war economy.

Even before I was born, Benito Mussolini had entered Ethiopia in 1936 and had forced the African emperor Haile Selassie into exile and added insult to injury by creating Italian East Africa out of Ethiopia and neighboring territories.”

A Midsummers Reading List

Here we are, in the middle of a pandemic and a much anticipated civil rights movement —we’re enthusiastic for your stories, and for the year ahead. The month of June has marked an unforgettable milestone, bringing light to developments in a radically energized plan for racial justice, beginning with structural reform. Although, there is much more work to be done. Make sure to stop by our announcements page to access the organizations that we hope you will spend some time researching, joining, and donating to. We also have a confession to make, we’ve put our heads together to share with you what we’ve been reading during quarantine, and amidst all of the changes taking place. We’re excited to recommend the books we believe are essential companions, for however you decide to spend the rest of your summer.

Knut Hamsun — HUNGER

James Baldwin – Giovanni’s Room – At the age of 32, Baldwin completed one of his most outspoken autobiographical pieces that has yet to disappear from view. Giovanni’s Room is not to remain solely a testament of sexual rites and disparities, it is also a dramatized crisis at the helm of self delusion and highlights the importance of the art of seduction. James Baldwin’s work has always dealt with the euphoric state of love and exile. The story follows the path of David, an American man exploring his sexual relationships with men, and women, while residing in Paris.

The unpredictable aspects of desire is presented through an ambiguous story, one impenetrable. A story about bisexuality, while further addressing the manner of how desire barges its way into our lives, promising a new identity. Baldwin’s enigmatic prose is both nourishing and unpredictable.

David, our narrator, describes unsparingly his observations and is entrapped by regret. He repents for his sins. Yet with vivid evocations, he becomes an observer of intimacy, delivering a terror, a wisdom, a human characterization not yet exposed to an audience of the 1950’s.

It could be said that I have a soft spot for Giovanni’s Room, as it was the first piece I’d ever read by Baldwin. But I have to admit to you this, it is his best work, whether or not you read it first or after picking up his other works; read it when you first wake, bring it with you to the protest, when you need a friend who understands —as a witness to his humble testimony: James Baldwin, you have figured the rapture, and spoken for those of us who had yet to realize the words we must surrender to; his mind, out his mouth, JAMES! —this wondrous and profound being, he has your heart under a spell. It is the spell of a truth so revealing, and we cannot resist any longer.

Bharati Mukherjee — The Tiger’s Daughter — Recovering ones roots as an immigrant is not a widely discussed topic when one resides already in America, especially within a family of many a privileges. Albeit is it is a discussion, and one revealed through Mukherjee’s works, which foregrounds a dismantling of all we’ve been lied to about. The visible effects of racism in India are also boldly addressed with the Naxalite uprising in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

"She sat in an uncomfortable chair in the hall, under a framed photograph of her great-grandfather, trying to compose a letter to her husband. Her parents, she said, were very well; of course, they worried about the bombings and recurring strikes. Tara idly scratched grease from the photograph about her head." Bharati Mukherjee, the Indian-born American novelist and short-story writer, delineated in her writing the cultural changes and alienation of the immigrant experience.

Mukherjee's debut novel, The Tiger’s Daughter (1972), tells of a sheltered Indian woman shocked by her immersion in American culture and, on her return to India, dismayed by an unrecognizable Calcutta.

“We immigrants have fascinating tales to relate. Many of us have lived in newly independent or emerging countries which are placed by civil and religious conflicts …. when we uproot ourselves from those countries and come here, either by choice or out of necessity, we suddenly must absorb 200 years of American history and learn to adapt to American society … I attempt to illustrate this in my novels and short stories. My aim is to expose Americans to the energetic voices of new settlers in this country.”

Alfred Jarry – UBU ROI – Translated by Barbara Wright – A drama in five acts -translated from the French, canonized by the surrealists, ridiculed and celebrated; “Pooh what a dreadful beast.” spoke the poppy and the dandelion. Jarry’s intention was to shake up the elite back in the 1890’s – the aristocrats whom seemed to be too tepid and uncultured for Jarry’s liking.

Lest we misunderstand the Latin spewing orgy scrawling down the walls of snowy Lithuanian cliffs in UBU ROI; these are not madmen, nor crackpots -these are the revolutionists, destroying the reputation of the French Czar- tempting the bourgeois to climb out from their polished shells.

If you know his work, then you know his life. Jarry was an ether addict, and was said to have lived in a filthy room with a sagging ceiling, his two pet owls, rotting flowers, and personal effects of the many Belgian girls who visited his squalid flat. Smells like home. “Scum yourself! How did such a crummy creature as you ever get slapped together?” - the gritty brilliance of Alfred Jarry’s UBU ROI. ⁣⁣

Ta-Nehisi Coates — We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy — A collection of essays originally published from The Atlantic Magazine, between 2008 and 2016 over the course of the Barack Obama administration. “The notion that writing about race, which is to say, the force of white supremacy, is marginal and provincial is itself parcel to white supremacy, premised on the notion that the foundational crimes of this country are mostly irrelevant to its existence.”

Coates takes his title from the haunting words of Thomas Miller, a black South Carolinian who had been elected to state office during the years of Reconstruction after the civil war. Black people in South Carolina significantly outnumbered white people and, for a time, dominated the legislature.

They had, in fact, as WEB Du Bois showed in his magisterial Black Reconstruction in America, instituted “good Negro government”; the very thing, Du Bois said, whites feared most.

On Carlo Rovelli’s The Order Of Time

Time is wicked, and it holds us hostage. Ham over swiss, a friendship, a bus ride: all function within the constraints of the inner workings of time. Each of us has our own intimate relationship with the past, present, and imagined future. So—before we panic—the precarious, spinning wheel of time reveals itself through the eyes of one Italian theoretical physicist, Carlo Rovelli, a poet of the sciences who provokes the reader compassionately and coherently, tempting us with various inquiries, some emotional, some scientific (such as, when we look through a telescope, are we looking out into the past or the future?).

By the arrival of the telegraph in the nineteenth century, our comprehension of timetables forced us into proposing standardized time; this changed everything. Not very far before, we based our lives on the diurnal rhythms of animal and plant life, primal sensations relative to the moon’s cycles, our hormones and molecular organisms that make up the biochemistry of our internal clocks. So where does this leave us? Slaves to something we cannot see? We can access this ancient knowledge so that we may measure the ways time changes us, the main detrimental frustration we currently face. But, if nothing changes, does time not exist?—and which is more frightening to acknowledge? Rovelli’s The Order of Time delicately mends ideas of linear time. He convinces us that the relationship between time and change is not illusory, but is a grammatical question rather than a globally-determined one.

Time is hungry and never satisfied. Its jelly-like wingspan veils our vascular system, tugs at our quantum breath, our gravitational subconscious. We’re left at the mercy of time, begging for an understanding, an extension. We stand there sucking our thumbs while pleading for more—more time! —only to come to the realization that time is the anchor which we cannot always navigate. One may measure time by marking events along a continuum, but to define the order of time takes a specific set of skills. As inebriated as we may be, duration is a not always a leisure; it is a sharp persistence shoving us into the corner, laughing outside our peripherals, begging us to figure where to go from ‘here’, how to love, and how to better comprehend the feeling of the loss of time. Rovelli tells us we can make peace with this loss, and introduces us to the freedom of chance in quantum physics, while reminding us how the mystical tower of our past reflects a mighty shadow; one barely reliable (yet vastly relatable) as the grin on our face subsides.

Women in Polish Cinema - Ewa Mazierska & Elzbieta Ostrowska - 2006 Berghahn Books

Still from Andrzej Wadja's 1958 Polish Melodrama ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Because paradigms of Polish cinema reflect situations of the archetypal figure of Jewish intersections, we must investigate the proper resources to better illustrate sociocultural depictions of the Heroine, and the male Protagonist, in Polish film. Women were expected to fulfill traditional roles, such as childbearing and housekeeping -yet they were simultaneously already working in factories and on the land. The myth of the Polish Mother is therefore debunked in Mazierska & Ostrowska’s academic guide, as they discuss how ideological restraints & status shaped the future of Polish discourse.

Lest we forget, the collapse of communism was in 1989, not so long ago -albeit this apparition, post-communist cinema changed everything for present day filmmakers, writers, and authors; whether or not they escaped the Gestapo, or were born into a modern Jewish family.  Since then though, the introduction of democracy has barely allowed for any real positive changes for the Polish woman's freedom. Examinations of  these topographies are explored through the success of Polish women filmmakers: Dorota Kędzierzawska, Wanda Jakubowska, Barbara Sass and Agnieszka Holland, to name a few influential figures.

The Legend Of Paul And Paula - Dir. Heiner Carow 1973 105m

Hyper-fertile Paula meets her soul mate, Paul, who coincidentally lives across the street from her. Paul is docile, vulnerable, and yearns to nest with another desperate soul. Seems like the perfect match. If you’re an avid enthusiast of love stories gone wrong, this tragicomedy will surely get you off. Heiner Carow (Coming Out, Until Death Do Us Part ) forces the viewer to look at dating in a whole new pathetic light. 

We are introduced to Paul (Winfried Glatzeder), who’s unhappily married to his unfaithful wife and residing in East Berlin. He has a white collar job and appears somewhat satisfied, but behind the walls of an abandoned shitter, things are different. Then there’s Paula (Angelica Domröse), who lives across the street from Paul in a rundown building. She leads a gruesome career as a grocery store cashier, is reluctantly dating a middle-aged salesman, all the while caring for two children (left behind by her unfaithful lover).

When Paul and Paula meet by chance at a boisterous watering hole, their lives are forever disrupted by the obsession which the two cannot resist -one another. Prepare yourself for a hilarious, and at times psychedelic, love story that is as disappointing as it is satisfying. Music by Peter Gotthardt, with songs by the legendary Deutsche band Puhdys.

AMARANTH: The Flora and Fauna of Atlantis, by Elizabeth Hurnshaw: A Lady Botanist -Compiled and Edited by Una Woodruff

Elizabeth Hurnshaw’s life started out just as unusual as her own death  — being the seventh child born to her family, there occurred a similar happening just a few decades prior; her own mother had also been born the seventh child. Lady Elizabeth came into the world in the year 1651, inheriting both the knowledge and skills (for her future studies) from her wet-nurse, an apparent well known celtic healer. Elizabeth was taught how to use plants medicinally; not the stereo-typical studies that a blossoming young girl would willfully surrender to, yet this scenario echoes the perfect childhood for a future botanist like herself. Then came along Sir Christopher Hurnshaw, who as a child himself was different than his peers. He refused to become a hunter, and ate only fruits and vegetables  -which horrified his father. Not exactly an unusual response from a fifteenth century Papa. Hurnshaw the elder had wanted his son to fish, to hunt, and to fulfill the typical masculine roles that he himself had to endure as a young man. 

Years later Christopher continued to defy his father’s demands, and went to Oxford to study science and botany. Thus the young man would find himself exactly where he needed to be; alongside others with whom he could relate to. Christopher soon encountered the young Lady Elizabeth during one of his many research treks to Wessex , where he would collect rare botanical species by the bundles.

There she was, frail and focused, sitting on the Cornish moor collecting wildflowers. The two were inseparable. We might postulate here, that Elizabeth and Christopher were born for one another. But the Hursaw’s did not approve of such a dame as she —they proclaimed that Liz simply didn’t have the rotund child-bearing hips. She was thin, and ghostlike. A celtic beauty, although they deemed her to be insubstantial, “as though she might vanish into the mist any minute.”

The eccentrics wed shortly after meeting, and the couple stayed together despite the indifferences on both sides of the family. Christopher and Elizabeth refused to eat meat, drink spirits, and were said to have never had one argument -amongst themselves, nor with anyone else outside of the marriage. Their in-laws were considerably appalled, disgusted, and found the two to be leading an unnatural lifestyle. Lady Elizabeth and Sir Christopher Hurnshaw continued to ignore these accusations —they knew the life they wanted to live was plentiful, and continued to conduct their research together. These young lovers swept over the lands like a warm, quiet wind rushing through the delicate willow trees; they archived their findings over the years, and often met their goal of categorizing each and every known plant species in 15th century England.

The two were said  to have gone “junketing off across the seas just to pick up and preserve a few odd daisies and boil them up for tea.” They built heated glasshouses for their “new aquisitions”, filling the grounds of their estate so that they may propagate, and cultivate —especially being that famine “was the great fear of that epoch; Christopher and Elizabeth felt that the answer lay in the ground around them and the vegetation which nature had provided.”

Just as the time came when Christopher and Elizabeth decided they would have at least one child, an unexpected tragedy befell them both. Christopher, the love of the Lady Botanist's life, would be killed from a riding accident  -his devoted steed had gotten caught on a snare, and the young man was was thrown to his death. Elizabeth was bed ridden from grief. Crushed. Demobilized. Not only had our heroine lost the only one she truly loved, she was now without a research partner. Life and all of its efforts had little meaning left. One spring morning, Elizabeth noticed the first snowdrops outside her window and decided that she had to pick flowers for Christopher’s grave. This would be the first time she had left her room since his death. 

Yet as more time would pass, Elizabeth was reluctantly convinced to move in with her brother-in-law, Edward. Although he quickly found her to be a woman that had unhealthy desires, with just as much behemoth as Papa Hurnshaw had proclaimed. Liz was eventually knocked up by this inherited disaster of man, yet one day she’d gotten word of his true feelings for her  -she was no better than “ a barren witch, playing with spells and calling it science.” —so Elizabeth made her escape, with child. And, her maid, Martha, came along as well. Martha had revealed to her that the bastard had “got drunk one night and shouted out that if that black witch Elizabeth thought the baby she was carrying was ever going to inherit Hurnshaw she could think again —his son was going to get the lot, not some brat that played with flowers.” Elizabeth would raise her son alongside Martha for some time. They would curiously set sail, and travel across the seas to further all their botanical research. Lady Hurnshaw and her son were eventually discovered shipwrecked, years later, only to be rescued by a sea captain in Africa.

Yet shortly after this incident the two disappeared, and this time never to be rescued  —the great Hurnshaw black sheep were forever encapsulated in the works they left behind. Three hundred years later, an antiquarian artist named Una Woodruff would discover these unusual documents, diaries, and drawings, in the dilapidated library of the Hurnshaw House. Yet even omitting these eccentricities, this enchanting compendium is essential for botanists to add to their collection. Published in 1981.

A BI GEZUNT, BUBBALA!

The other day one of my good friends came over, and it just so happened that I was in the middle of doing the wash. Laundry day had arrived. I can’t afford a washer and dryer, plus it’s cheaper to just do the wash at home rather than schlepping all the way to the laundromat. So there I was, wearing my oversized rain boots (with knee pads to match) in the backyard, going at it – with a big bucket of soapy water. My friend started laughing to herself, and after much of my prying she finally blurted out “You’re such a Jew!” And I said – “Thank you.”

It’s true. All us Jews got a few things in common. We do what we gotta do to survive no matter how complicated the situation. It’s all a matter of making ends meet, and being a self-starter. We also love a good kvetch, can’t survive longer than a week without a bagel, and there’s of course that unforgettable history, of our people. Aside from that, we’re just like everyone else. We wanna survive life while subconsciously representing our heritage with pure unadulterated chutzpah. Of course, I’d always wished I had my own Rabbi. But to be honest, we never went to temple. Being a Jew had little to do with organized religion. At least, that’s how it was in my family.

There was one thing that was always a mystery to me though. I wasn’t exactly raised on books about other Jews. As a child, and into my teenage years, there were times when I had relatives who would approach me, strategically, during family gatherings; funerals, reunions, during the holidays—they would eventually whisper into my ear at the end of the night: “You don’t tell those kids that you’re a Jew. Even your friends, don’t mutter a word of it…if anyone asks, you say you don’t know where you’re from.” And even as an adult, my relatives still confess that they are fearful of anyone knowing they are of a Jewish heritage…what do they fear? Being captured. Being imprisoned. Being deported. And worse —being exterminated. But when you see the entire family together, it’s not difficult to figure out where we all came from. We’re short. We have dark hair, can’t resist a good argument, and every other word that spurts out from our mouths is a Yiddish companion to better illustrate our concerns. We have large elegant noses, and know exactly how to administer tough love.

While working at various bookstores on the West Coast, my own concerns were to stock up on books about my people. And I do have to admit, going through these historical documents & memoirs  -that I didn’t pay that much attention to as kid-  was an emotionally trying experince. That being said, on so many different levels, I have an unconditional respect for my people, as well as the multitude of individuals who have suffered (and are still suffering) from the inherit racism that pervades this country.

Lemme shine a little Yahrzeit light on that for you.

Because paradigms of Polish cinema reflect situations of the archetypal figure of Jewish intersections, we must investigate the proper resources to better illustrate sociocultural depictions of the Heroine, and the male Protagonist, in Polish film. Women were expected to fulfill traditional roles, such as childbearing and housekeeping -yet they were simultaneously already working in factories and on the land. The myth of the Polish Mother is therefore debunked in Mazierska & Ostrowska’s academic guide, as they discuss how ideological restraints & status shaped the future of Polish discourse.

Lest we forget, the collapse of communism was in 1989, not so long ago -albeit this apparition, post-communist cinema changed everything for present day filmmakers, writers, and authors; whether or not they escaped the Gestapo, or were born into a modern Jewish family. Since then though, the introduction of democracy has barely allowed for any real positive changes for the Polish woman's freedom. Examinations of these topographies are explored through the success of Polish women filmmakers: Dorota Kędzierzawska, Wanda Jakubowska, Barbara Sass and Agnieszka Holland, to name a few influential figures.

Démanty noci (Diamonds of the Night). A hypnotizing and nauseating filmic treasure —you may find yourself trembling in your seat, taking in all of the beauty and terror of this truly disheartening masterpiece. Although such a tale of disparity didn't exactly start with the film itself. Arnošt Lustig's Children of the Holocaust series, Darkness Casts No Shadow, was the publication which inspired Jan Němec’s cinematic debut. Démanty noci, an unapologetic and lyrical film which redefined storytelling methodologies, and was released in 1964. Deemed an “artificial documentary” by a handful of critics, the story depicts hyper-realistic imagery of the brutal struggles shared between two young men —whom escape a Nazi prison train; one which was transporting them to their next concentration camp. I had the opportunity to experience Démanty noci on the big screen years back -an evening that will never escape my memory.

The Little Book of Jewish Celebrations – Yelena Bryksenkova & Ronald Tauber – Mmmm festive rituals centered around scrumptious, holy meals. Released by Chronicle Books in 2014. The illustrations will make your heart skip a beat, and the text takes the reader through various scenarios that still ring true for some Jewish folks. Such as circumcision, Simchat bat, and uh, other ceremonies. Although I’m not much into the religious customs, I can relate to something profound here – I love those family gatherings! Even if Gramma always burns the Schmaltz and Gribenes.

The Tale of Meshka the Kvetch – Carol Chapman – Pictures by Arnold Lobel. A charming Yiddish tale about a cute little plump woman named Meshka, who got herself into some big time trouble by contracting “the Kvetch’s Itch,” which entails that everything she Kvetch’s (complains) about, comes true before her very eyes. Sounds frightening doesn’t it? If ya do a little googling, I’d say don’t waste your time -there’s no ebook available for Meshka the Kvetch.

Hungry Hearts (Short Stories) – Anzia Yezierska – I especially have a fondness for Wings, which follows a young janitress living in poverty, named Shenah Peshah. She is eventually befriended by a male sociologist, around her age, who brings her in to live with him. Together they study closely his patients, and fall in love. My favorite line from Wings is as follows: “But from where can I get the money for new clothes? Oi vey! How bitter it is not to have the dollar! Woe is me! No mother, no friend, nobody to help me lift myself out of my greenhorn rags.”

Manja – Anna Gmeyner – 526 pages of the life of Manja, one out of five children, who take refuge in Germany, between the years 1920 and 1933. Manja is a Polish Jew, and her five friends are German boys; one who is partly Jewish yet fearful of this fact. The children meet two days a week, on Saturdays & Wednesdays. Their meeting spot, a dilapidated house above a river. The story is roughly about friendships being tested, in a time when the after effects of the war were inescapable.

Hana’s Suitcase – Karen Levine – You may have read it already, but if it’s new to you, then I suggest you grab a copy of this tragic yet enlightening true story of a woman working at a Japanese Holocaust center; who discovered the suitcase of a young orphaned Czech girl named Hana. Levine’s story departs from the year 2000, in Tokyo. Those who attended the museum could visit Hana’s suitcase, as it sat behind glass in a cabinet. I don’t want to give away too much here, because the book is so full of revealing facts to keep you reading it from front to back cover in one sitting. I will say though, Hana’s favorite song was I Have Nine Canaries (Ja Mam Devět Kanaru). Which I’ve tried desperately to find a copy of, but all I could dig up was a modern version of the song, on a compilation titled The Buffooneiest Czech Oldies II.

Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages – David C. Kraemer – Habitual eating, food politics on biblical laws that limited Israel’s diet choices, and how a Jew living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 20th century chose to eat Italian food rather than black bread and borsht. I’ll admit, I’m not much of a cook, which often makes my babushka a little ferklempt when I’m in the kitchen. I guess the apple falls really far from the tree. Either way, I found Kraemer’s guide to be easy enough to follow, and packed full of realized facts on not only the Jewish history of identity through psychogeography, but in depth chapters on Torah eating laws in ‘The Rabbinic Period’ which proclaims “Thou shalt not eat a calf with a mother’s milk”. I especially found interest in chapter 8, which is titled “Separating the Dishes”. There’s even a quote by Claude Levi-Strauss in the introduction which reads “Cooking is a language through which that society unconsciously reveals its structure”.

Just the other night, I asked my babushka if she could tell me some more stories revealing her life as a young Jewish woman. And at first she seemed quite emotional.

“Will ya make me a little somethin to eat first?” She asked me. Of course, I couldn’t refuse. So I cooked up some sausages, poured her a glass of some diet soda, got out my notebook, and sat there wide-eyed and all ears.

“There were many hardships, see. For those of us who moved to the states before the war, we still had little options available. No Potential. No future. We changed our last names, so we couldn’t be tracked. Dinner was either soup made from chicken bones, or potatoes and meatloaf. The majority of us held down dangerous jobs, in slaughterhouses, on the streets as pimps, or dancers. Some even sold flowers to the Italian mob.” As she told me these things, I started getting a little choked up. Then, she took a bite of her sausage and leaned in closer to me.

“Although there were times of great struggle, we never gave up. And neither should you…A bi gezunt, bubbala! -in other words, don’t worry my darling -you’ve got your health!”

I never knew exactly what it was that my great-grandmother did for a living. She was raised in Lithuania, and was the only sibling in the family who had icy blonde hair and a tough-as-nails attitude. Some say she was a business woman. But in what sort of business exactly, was never actually revealed to us. Her husband (my great-grandfather) grew up in Minsk, and after making it over to the states he worked his days at a slaughterhouse, and his nights on the streets. As a pimp. So, perhaps my great-grandmothers ‘business endeavors’ could be somewhat assumed.

Either way, there are a few stories that had been passed down through generations in my family, and one story had always stood out in my mind. It involved a boy named Junior Chekov, an illiterate young girl (my grandmother), and her mother’s obsession with Sonja Henie.

It all began on a sultry summer morning, on the south side of Chicago. The year was 1936. A young Norwegian ice skater, a prodigy named Sonja Henie, had just won her third Olympic title at Garmisch-Partenkirchen; a popular ski town in the Bavarian Alps. My great-grandmother was watching a re-run of this very event on the television in her kitchen. Probably steaming up some potatoes and liverwurst. That’s apparently all they ate back then. When you’re dirt poor, the options were soup, potatoes, and…well, soup.

(You’re wondering -wait a second, was there television in the 30’s? It just so happens that Sonja Henie’s performance was the first live broadcast of a sporting event in the history of television.)

A younger version of my grandmother was playing out in the streets with one of her friends. A young boy named Junior Chekov. Most of the time, they got along. They would play games like kick the can, hopscotch, or stickball. But today, her and Junior had gotten into an arguement. My grandmother leaned against a fire hydrant, and sipped on a cup of melted pistachio ice cream. Her long hair was tied in a delicate bun at the top of her tiny head. She was known as the only dark-haired jew in the neighborhood.

“Mom? Hey, mom!” Called out the young dark-haired girl. Her mother (the business woman) leaned out of their apartment window, which was on the 6th floor.

“What now? You know I’m watching my Sonja!!” Shouted my great-grandmother.

“Junior Chekov called me a dirty jew!” Said the young girl.

“HE WHAT!?”

“And he said that I killed christ!”

“Call him a dirty polak!”

“Okay! But, mom, aren’t we Polish?”

“Who told you that?”

“My father…”

“Well, yeah. You’re a Polish Jew!”

“Okay. But, mom?”

“Whaaaaaat?!”

“Who the hell is christ?”

“Never you mind!!” She shouted back to her daughter, and hurriedly retreated through  the window of their apartment. I would do anything to revisit that time. To catch just a glimpse of what their place might have looked like. Back then, wallpaper was a growing trend, as was over-the-counter pain killers…heroin, that is. You could order it straight from a Montgomery Ward Catalogue.

Now, my grandmother’s not a religious woman, she never was. Whenever I asked her why, she stated, “Whose got time for all that nonsense? It’s just a fairytale anyways, and a poorly written one at that.”

Of course, I agreed. Her and I joked about there being a big bearded man in the sky, who listened to the prayers of every single human being in the world; whereas in the real world racism soared, bombs were being dropped and wild floods were destroying communities. Didn’t sound like there was much of a god out there, to us. So then I asked her – “Grandma, if you weren’t into christ, then you never read the bible…so, what books did you read?” She paused for a minute, took a sip of her Diet Dr. Pepper, then leaned in toward me and said very proudly,

“Well, ya know, I never really learned how to read or write very well in school. But I always had a job. And over the years, I eventually picked up a few things about the english language.”

When I looked around my grandmother’s bookshelves, the truth was, I’d never seen one single novel, not even a book of poetry. And grandma LOVED Judy Garland -so I’d imagined I would at least find a memoir or two. But, none were to be found. All the books on her shelves were picture books. How-to manuals on making dolls, building outdoor furniture, or landscaping guides for gardeners. It often amazed me how so many detailed stories were passed down by this woman, who’d never read a single book, and didn’t even learn to properly read or write until she was a teenager. That says a lot about storytelling, doesn’t it? This encouraged me to do one thing. I was determined to find books that I could read with my babushka. There had to be something she’d find fascinating. I began by bringing over a bag of books each time I’d go over to visit her. I’d start reading one to her, but would soon lose all interest. So I picked up another, and another…

“There’s no pictures in there?” She asked me.

“Well, no, there’s no pictures. See? It’s just some words, grandma.”

“How awful.” She replied back, chewing on a protein bar and reaching for the remote control.

“You gotta use a different part of your imagination…” I told her. She laughed for second,

“Oh, jesus.” Then turned on the TV; searching for some movies she’d recorded off the cable box.

“I know how to use my imagination. The best way to do that, is through a picture. Cos with a picture, especially with a film, you get shape, and sound, and then…well maybe not smells, but ya can imagine the smells, maybe even dream up something wild about the characters.”

“Somethin’ sexy?”

“Yes. And so, eventually you wake up one morning and have all these great ideas to work with. Just last week I saw this wonderful documentary about the Wooly Mammoth, and the next day I started sketching out a new painting; of these hefty, clumsy, ugly things with long flowing hair, and they’re grazing in a field of sunflowers.”

Wow, grandma. You slay me.

I couldn’t agree more, the moving image is powerful. Although, I can’t help but also adore the experience of living vicariously through the characters in a book, in a way that I can’t always get from watching a film. Because as bibliophiles, we ultimately create the characters we read about, more or less. But I wasn’t gonna argue with grandma.

It’s clear to me now, that the history of storytelling takes on various shapes. Some tales are told through a drawing. While others are revealed through a film, or even -this story…manifests itself deep into the caverns of my own memory. And one day, I’ll tell it to my own kids. Well, that’s if I ever have any of my own.

On my way home from grandma’s, I stopped at the public library in my own neighborhood, and picked up a VHS copy of Sonja Henie’s performance, from that quaint little ski town in the Bavarian Alps back in 1936. I imagined my great-grandmother, and her obsession with the young Olympic star. By the following week, I had spent endless hours researching as much as I could about other iconic ice skaters, as well as pimps & slaughterhouses from the 1930’s. Maybe one day I’ll even shoot a film resurrecting this unusual past, and my grandmother will watch it on her TV set…

….

Over the years my childhood (and early adulthood) fetishes moved way past grocery store items, and into the direction of bric-a-brac and eventually…my demise as a book collector blew through the roof.

It all started a little over 20 years back. My parents would drop my sister and I off for the weekend at our Gramma’s place, the west side of the valley – known as the ‘most undesirable place to live’ in Southern California (if ya do a little research…or, just live there for a while).

A little crime watch goes well with those corn fritters.

Often enough, while rummaging through my grandmother’s closet, we hit the jackpot. Garbage bags filled with old ratty silk scarves from the 1940’s, stacks of Playgirl magazines, books about the movie stars living lavishly in far away places, and of course tchotchkes galore -like tiny sculpted elephants made from metal, or old perfume bottles reeking of the year 1956. We’d find a plethora of things to keep us busy. I’ll start with this one shelf here, the one above the microwave…

Montgomery Ward Catalogue 1872-1922 – Venture into a forgotten time, where you can finally afford a new pair of slacks. A gluttonous price guide for all your domestic needs, just under 670 pages. Exceptional values in denim overalls for only ninety eight cents. Let’s see here, Zephyr Gingham for thirty nine cents a yard, stylish raincoats, stock toxins & insecticides, genuine Rogers Silverware, and furs for girls & misses -all at “unusual prices”.

Harpo Marx with Rowland Barber – Harpo Speaks! – This humble account of Harpo’s life is a delightful read, especially if you’re a huge Marx Brothers fan like me. With chapters like ‘Poom-Pooms, Pedals and Poker’ and ‘The Oboe under the blanket’ the book is downright satisfying. You are, at times, granted access to a behind-the-scenes look at each of the Marx Brothers films. These guys were troublemakers, even off-screen. Did you know that Harpo was the brother who held his mother in his arms as she spoke her last dying words? Or that he played piano for brothels, and almost got kidnapped in Russia? Neither did I. Although, at over 400 pages long, I’d hoped that Harpo would have revealed some steamy and detailed love stories, but alas there were none to be found.

Sona Kovacevicova – The Slovak National Dress Through The Centuries – Smock frocks and laced bodices display political unrest, from the sewing tables of Hungarian refugees seeking sanctuary in Slovakia. The Carpathian Mountains never looked so frumpy & wild. This one is my absolute favorite book on the vast history of national dress. Here we can come to witness the cultural ornaments by Slovak designers over the last 500 years. One becomes drawn in to the materials once cultivated from imported silks out of Poland, Hungaria, and Italy. Color engravings by (little known) artists such as V.G. Kininger, and J. Heinbucher-Bikessy.

Regardless, my sister and I loved going to Gramma’s. She was always rearranging the furniture, building abstract sculptures out of trash, or making meatballs in the kitchen with her boyfriend, Papa Danny.

The smell of bleached linens lined the walls of our senses. On a typical afternoon, we’d trim the bougainvillea, scrub the fleas out of some family maltese (hounds), while Gramma fell asleep to some soap opera on basic cable. It was here where my sister and I would sneak off, and go through all of Gramma’s cabinets, inspecting closely what might lie behind each stack of towels and each closet door.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that my own collection has become entwined with the old bird’s random supply of books she’d hoarded herself. It’s hard to tell which ones are of my own psychosis, and which books were once stacked below Gramma’s trash bags of lingerie, prescription medications, and silk scarves.

—Originally published for The Last Bookstore

Illuminated Quotes: Featuring Fernando Pessoa's The Book Of Disquiet

"I gathered every flower's soul to write it, and from the fleeting moments of every song of every bird I wove eternity and stagnation. A steady weaver, I sat at the window of my life and forgot that I lied there and existed, shrouding my tedium in the chaste linens I wove for the altars of my silence." Excerpt from 'Peristyle'

"The indefinable breathing of the saps' deep pulsing...oak trees full of knotty centuries made our feet trip over the dead tentacles of their roots...the paths hidden among the brush!...poppies that would remain hidden if their deep red didn't betray them, violets toward the verdant borders of camellias with no scent..." Excerpt from 'In The Forest Of Estrangement' 

"We don't even know if what ends with daylight terminates in us as useless grief, or if we are just an illusion among shadows, and reality just this vast silence without wild ducks that falls over the lakes where straight and stiff weeds swoon" Excerpt from 'A Factless Autobiography'

"To make a decision, to finalize something, to emerge from the realm of doubt and obscurity - these are things that seem to me like catastrophes or universal cataclysms...Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful - only then do I find myself and feel comforted." Excerpt from ‘Apocalyptic Feeling'

"To love is to tire of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves (It's exceedingly important that we not love)." Excerpt from 'Maxims'

"We never know when we're sincere. Perhaps we never are. And even if we're sincere about something today, tomorrow we may be sincere about its complete opposite." Excerpt from 'A Factless Autobiography'

"Flame transformed into halo, absent presence, rhythmic and female silence, twilight of wispy flesh, goblet that was left out of the banquet, stained-glass window of some painter-dream from the Middle Ages of another Earth." Excerpt from 'Peristyle'

"...sequestered sensations felt in a body that is not our physical body and yet is physical in its own way, with subtleties that fall between the complex and the simple...lakes where pellucid hint of muted gold hovers, hazily divested of ever having been materialized, and no doubt through tortuous refinements, a lily in sheer white hands..." Excerpt from 'Milky Way'

"Like all men endowed with great mental mobility, I have an irrevocable, organic love of settledness. I abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places." Excerpt from 'A Factless Autobiography'

The Book of Disquiet is a humble compendium of works by Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935). Each segment of the collection, no matter a few lines or pages in length, is a fragmented timeline of the authors life —first published in Portuguese in 1982, 47 years after Pessoa's death.

A Reading List for Restless Spirits

Whether it be fiction or nonfiction, what writers have to offer us is something we savor. New perspectives are essential to our survival, so when we open up a book there are a multitude of sensations taking place inside of us. Some of us treat our collections as long term projects; these are our research materials. Besides, consumption can be more satisfying if we deny our senses what it wants until we’re up to our elbows in stacks. O! the ecstasy is ripe when you find yourself here…

Diving into a book is about administering discipline. It also helps if you’re truly entranced by an author’s message. Although at times it may even be more horrifying to think that soon enough you will finish that one book, and your unique journey with those characters will come to an end  -yet you are free to repeat the process itself, and with a whole other set of existential awakenings. Either way, I decided to sit down and figure which books really stuck with me over the last few months. This was a complicated situation I had set up for myself, but I’ll never turn down a challenge.

A Manual For Cleaning Women – Lucia Berlin – When I’d first come across her work, I had no idea she would quickly become my muse. Lucia Berlin should be every writers hero, but if she hasn’t yet made it to your bookcase don’t distress  -these stories have recently been released and A Manual for Cleaning Women is easy enough to locate. I’ll admit to you this, I just discovered her work this year. It’s time we enter into Berlin’s mysterious and humble world. Lucia was never interested in appeasing the reader, in fact she wrote from a place that most authors wished they could access. Her stories are both frightening and charming. Wander around through nausea, deuces wild, care taking, bus rides in Mexico City, stars drawn with a felt-tip marker onto Sally’s bald head, gypsy deaths, latin class, Mama’s sex life…a unique anthology is Berlin’s short stories on the true lives of outsiders.

The Arthritic Grasshopper  – Gisele Prassinos –  She was a young writer born in Istanbul, who at the age of fourteen read her poems to the Surrealists. It’s difficult to describe when one might feel drawn to reading her work   -I would recommend when you first wake in the morning, so that you might better imagine: A corpse, a bishop, a black pearl in your nostril…uncoil a murmur, as you set down your burdens and enter the feverish slumber of Prassinos. Dandelion hangs from your bellybutton, as your gaze bares witness to the grotesque and playful universe at your fingertips.

Annie John – Jamaica Kincaid – Kincaid is one of my literary heroes, and remains an outspoken author of our times. Annie John is an enlightening and tragic tale narrated by a tough-as-nails young black girl, whose intelligence sets her apart from her classmates. She acquires an intimate friendship with a girl named Gwen, which is overshadowed by Annie’s obsession with her own mother. It’s here we are granted access to the struggles of depression, colonization, and life in the Caribbean. Follow young Annie from puberty and into her adulthood -whose mother’s laughter is like a crocodile’s grin, whose vivid dreams haunt her waking life; an intro to physics class, turning 15, funeral visitations, escaping to the cinema… a coming of age story highlighting poverty and class alienation.

The Seven Mysteries of Life  –  Guy Murchie  – Are you on the search to further your knowledge of the playful (yet academic) insights on tentacles, hermaphrodites, and strawberries? It is here that you are presented with this option, as well as one profound research experience. The Seven Mysteries of Life consists of 659 pages that cause my cerebral cortex (and, my heart) to spin itself into about a million different directions. As a reader, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed with information. Yet, as a researcher you’ll discover a new side of yourself  -amidst the midnight wind, awakening the prose admirer and science geek that lies deep within. Further your studies on pollen, mice midwives, ambiguous three dimensional illusions, limestone, eardrums, worms, dreams, amnesia…imagine if Mary Roach had created a massive compendium on all the natural curiosities she has yet to write about  -and you will then find yourself arriving here, at the crux of poetic intellect.

What A Plant Knows –  Daniel Chamovitz – This is no beginners guide  -so instead, turn your mind on at it’s full capacity, for the time has come to indulge in the mysteries (and similarities) behind plant & human interactivity. Be aware: plants speak to us, and send us -as well as animals and other plants- signals. They speak a language we do not always find ourselves accessing. You see, our human eyes are like antennas. As they absorb electromagnetic rays, we see light in the ‘visual spectra’. Whereas the ‘eyes’ of plants simply bend toward light. Their view specifically responds to ultraviolet & infrared light. These are not recent findings, but more so ancient truths that we have limited ourselves to being aware of, being our culture (for decades) has ignored the connection we have with nature itself. Don’t be afraid, as the answers to your life dilemma are not so frightening to digest.

Cinematic Cuts –  Sheila Kunkle – I’ve always been curious as to how a conclusion fully impacts my experience with a film. What better way to make this analysis, than summoning the disappointment of desire, the somber Jewish-ness of Chaplin, Kurosawa’s examination of humanism, post-modern depression, Brechtian language trajectories! If you are in fact looking to elaborate on your film facts, this could be a deal with the devil that you will never regret. More books on the progress of film history must look to Sheila’s work for the way to a truth that is no longer immitatable. Deleuze and Claire Denis would be proud.

Bryan Washington’s debut novel, LOT

Lot is a humble glimpse into the lives of the working class, revealing tales of familial trauma, and the forbidden aspects of queer love. Washington leaves nothing to the imagination; highlighting how toxic ideologies of domesticity still runs rampant, and prejudice is everywhere, even in places that appear hidden. Bryan’s stories contain elements which broadly illustrate the politics of race, infidelity, and poverty; intimate monologues nodding off into a weightless symphony.

In an urban community of decay, where daddy’s never coming home, and huffing paint doesn’t pay the bills —it is here we encounter unforgettable characters. Miguel -the crux of our narrator’s spiritual freedom, Benito the “resident queer”, Roberto who’s “pimply in all the wrong places”. Although there are other characters we are introduced to as well, whom simply disappear without a trace. In this sense, Lot is an unapologetic portrayal of abandonment. Bryan Washington presents to the reader a collection of what feels more like first person accounts, rather than fiction; dealing with humility, HIV, sex workers, shit jobs, murder, homophobia, racism, and violent upbringings —revealing that especially in communities under economic despair, individuals are dealing with devastating realities where skin color labels you and being queer remains taboo.

We are granted moments of poetics, which are dispersed throughout Lot like the pig guts at the taqueria where the narrator works. There is the story of Aja, and the white- boy whom she had a short-lived affair with. “We all knew, just like Aja knew, that he had something. In larval form, maybe. Cocooned inside of him.” Bryan speaks of love as something that isn’t allowed to transpire without misunderstandings getting in the way, true love being forbidden, as a farcity that gay men, people of color, and women everywhere endure. Then we come to the chapter titled Fannin, where we hear yet another voice, it’s Jan —the narrator’s sister. “I had an Afghani guy once, his fingers felt like chocolate, for a minute I lived with him in this hotel room on the ninth floor of Zaza…he didn’t know that my brother sucked more dick than the peddlers on Waugh, or that my mother spent whole months crying because of it.” Bryan Washington’s narrator often disappears, lost behind the voices of these Others. The narrator finds himself to be in limbo; as the son of a Latino Father and a tough as nails Woman Of Color. Washington reveals to us the fact that we aren’t always sure who these storytellers are, chapter by chapter, which alludes to the fact that the majority of underserved communities feel just that way. Their stories simply aren’t heard.

As the reader, we are not allowed to know the main narrator by his name, unless it is muttered by one of his lovers, such as Miguel —the boy we really do want him to end up with. By the end of the book, Miguel calls out “Nicholaus…What if you stayed, he said. He reached for my arms on the mattress. Laced his fingers in mine. I could smell me on his breath—or not me. Us.” Is our young protagonist finally ready to love without fear? Fear born from the homophobia in his community, especially from his brothel-owning brother Javi, who stated that “the only thing worse than a junkie was a faggot son.” Eventually Nicholaus steals Miguel’s car and heads past Highway 59, to the ocean in Galveston, only to realize that he is still running, from love itself.

Through Washington’s debut novel, we are presented with scenarios which propel some of us into an unwanted glance back, into our own childhood. But we are at the same time granted a squalid whisper of hope, amidst the grotesque social landscapes we must survive, especially if those of us are people of color, or queer. But how can one navigate a forbidden love? How can one ‘come out’ in a town that is so unforgiving? In the title chapter, we are garnered more of a glimpse into Nicholaus’ own loneliness —the disintegration of his family life, and most profoundly, his day job. “I slice and marinate and unsleeve the meat. Pack it in aluminum. Load the pit, light the fire. The pigs we gut have blue eyes.”

Washington’s characters pose many questions, the main one being – how is it that we might be able to separate ourselves from the tragedies we witness growing up in poverty stricken communities? Our narrator is determined to answer this question, although he is, at the same time, bitter. And rightfully so. Similar to most working class communities, like the ones which our narrator describes to us, the poor rob the poor. This is a book for survivors, social rejects, immigrants, and divorcees. This is a book that everyone needs to read, especially if you’ve never experienced poverty first hand.

Hungry for more on Bryan Washington? Check out our interview with the author on our conversations page.

The Hills Reply - Tarjei Vesaas - 1968 208pgs

Video still from Tarjei Vesaas reading from "Is-slottet", for Opphavsrett NRK, 1968

A lush, warm, brooding void that envelopes the senses. We are seduced by this overtly autobiographical account, as this is Tarjei's final work  -and his most sacred. A hallucinatory tale of a young boy bound by the vivid observations he makes of his father, set against the brutal winter landscape of the Norwegian countryside. Intimate, dreadful, charming. Time is not present here, but an entity that has caused great damage, and the boy is distraught. They clear snow from the roads, from the gully  -there is nothing to think about but the silence, the wet horse and the snow on it's muzzle. If one dreams, it's only to escape the nothingness. When a birch branch breaks, not even that sound is heard  -pitiful duties, blinded by an idleness. The boy imagines what life would be like if the snow had ever stopped falling. Although his greatest challenge is to penetrate the emptiness of his father's eyes  -cold, distant, unwelcoming; such a silence and disconnect is as deafening as the snowfall. Perhaps his father despises him because he possesses what appears to be lost  -his own youth, his dreams, and his strength. A father defeated. 

"The day creeps on its belly like a snake, and breaks in pieces in order to make off into thousands of hiding places; in the wilderness, in the upper reaches of lakes, between the blocks of stone in ancient mountain slides...The betrayed day, once so splendidly equipped, has no chance now."

Intimate, dreadful, and charming. First published in 1968, yet it's strange conviction blends the ever present sensation of loss that we can relate to today. It can be observed that Tarjei's own memory may have been deteriorating upon completing this fragmented novel, but there is a rhythm which slowly emerges  -and you're out there in the nothingness, alone, cold, and tired. You must put the book down, set it aside so as to digest these sterile, yet simultaneously challenging, vignettes. I am reminded of Lawrence English's album Cruel Optism, or Popol Vuh's 1975 masterpiece, Das Hohelied Salomos.

Tarjei's The Hills Reply renders the reader helpless, although once we arrive to the second chapter, 'In the Marshes and on the Earth', something miraculous happens.  "The great bird folds his wings. With my eyes above the moss I can watch. It stands in the  marsh with an uplifted, inquiring head...I am quivering with excitement...I am lying in cold marsh moisture that slowly penetrates my clothes, making me damp and filthy." 

—Originally published for Book Soup

The Cartography of Olga Tokarczuk: FLIGHTS

Review and Interview by Gina Jelinski + Jonah Lipton

The ecstasy we experienced while reading Flights was, at first, tempered by a mild sense of frustration. Over the course of episodes that span decades, continents, and genres, it isn’t always clear how everything fits together. It isn’t obvious how an anatomist’s search for a means of preserving the human body relates to a tour guide telling fairy tales to a herd of voyagers, or how these and other stories relate to the maps and diagrams sprinkled throughout the novel. But our appetite for these humble accounts held us captive.

As the enchantment commenced, we realized that Olga had written the type of book that we so longed to read. It was as if we were right beside the narrator, or that rather, she was inside our own heads; reminding us of the pleasures and pains of being an observer. Terrifying, vulnerable, dense, thoroughly saturated with object-affection and dismembered bodies, blood transfusion politics, shampoo ads, plane food, a singer’s gesture at a funeral mass for Chopin, cursing in Polish at a video rental shop, a mercy killing, honeysuckle straight to the sea, a letter from Josefine to the Emperor of Austria… various encounters etched into time illustrate decades of loneliness.

But Flights is more than just a compendium of existential crises; these fragmented tales felt to us like scientific case studies that Tokarczuk trusted us to decipher. We were seduced by this methodology, led to believe that these may be musings on the philosophical topography of Olga’s frightening kraina czarów (wonderland). Remnants of the author’s time as a clinical psychologist seep through the pages. “Too far from what, too near to what?”  mumbles the narrator in one of Tokarczuk’s painfully enigmatic chapters. Each character represents our desperation to belong while disregarding one’s place, simultaneously mapping nostalgia and inheriting doubt.

Stay longer. Time to depart. Why had I left? Why had I returned? In the last hundred pages of Tokarczuk’s novel, during one of many airplane rides, the narrator finds a handwritten message on the back of an unused barf bag in the seat-pocket in front of her: “10/12/2006: Striking out for Ireland. Final destination Belfast. Students of the Rzeszów Institute of Technology.” Like the reader of Flights, the narrator glimpses a story in this collection of departures and intended arrivals, even if she is left to imagine for herself the psychological terrain this journey entails. It is the sentiment behind this letter (and behind Tokarczuk’s book) that binds us to these characters: a desire for connection, for our journeys to have an audience, for our loneliness to find a home in the collective, unyielding pilgrimage.

A Breif Interview with Olga Tokarczuk

Our interview with Olga Tokarczuk was conducted over email. Jennifer Croft, the translator of Flights, also translated both sides of our conversation:

Jonah & Gina: While reading Flights, it became clear to us how so many disparate narrative threads are actually in careful conversation with one another. Do you remember which of these strands came to you first and affected you most deeply? And, how did the order in which you wrote each section relate to the way they appear in Flights?

Olga Tokarczuk: I thought of all the connections and associations in the book in engineering terms: bolts, joints, gearwheels, rivets. I knew they wouldn’t be visible to the reader, but also that they needed to ensure that the whole structure of the text would be internally stable. The first thing was the opposition between the world and its motion to the body, memory, death and the pursuit of immortality. That’s why that juxtaposition happens on other levels, as well, as in the appearances by Copernicus and Vesalius. That’s the main axis of the book. It may come as a surprise, but I wrote most of the book’s parts in order. There were only a few sections that had to be rearranged in the final version.

J&G: What is the first section you gravitate toward when you visit a library or bookstore?

OT: Sale books! And after that psychology and religion.

J&G: You write that tyrants “want to create a frozen order, to falsify time’s passage.” Can you compare this enforced stasis to writing? In what ways do you think writing can work for or against this tyranny?

OT: I think that because literature is always seeking new points of view and always telling ancient stories afresh it keeps our minds curious, restless, ready to react and ask questions. Thanks to it we see the world in motion, and that’s the only version of the world that’s true. Nothing unsettles tyrants more than the idea that anything can happen.

J&G: What keeps you in motion, Olga?

OT: Plans, people, trips and all the things that demand writing.

J&G: What about a place keeps you still?

OT: Nature, especially my country garden.

J&G: We were interested in what other jobs you’ve taken inspiration from, aside from clinical psychology, that you might you want to reveal to us?

OT: Whenever I write books I study in great detail what I intend to describe. Often my characters have strange occupations. In House of Day, House of Night, the protagonist makes wigs, and when it came time to show this in the book, I went to this workshop where they make wigs and learned every detail of the process with great precision. It was similar with Flights–I studied the whole history of anatomy and the preservation of tissues, went to Amsterdam with that goal. Of course only a small fraction of what I learn makes it into the book. But that kind of research brings enormous pleasure. That might actually be the most pleasurable part of writing, that unhampered study of something that really fascinates you.

J&G: What objects do you take along with you during your own travels?

OT: I don’t take anything special with me, but I do collect little things along the way: pieces of brick, pebbles, pine cones, seeds. That way I think I make my own travels real to myself, by collecting evidence that I was there. That’s something the internet will never be able to do.

—Originally published for Book Soup

Nurturing Your Gender: The Tomboy List

At the age of 9, the year I was homeschooled for too many incidents of getting beat up in the girls bathroom, I was convinced that I was a boy. There was no way I could relate to other girls —they were divisive, and only cared about their looks or the latest boy band. I felt sick to my stomach when they’d tell me tales about getting their first bra. It made no sense to me. I could do more pull-ups than any boy in class, and rather enjoyed playing in the garden; getting dirty, sweaty, and pretending that I was a dinosaur in the Cretaceous period. A few years passed, and I got my own period. That was when I realized that wearing those stuffy, hot, uncomfortable menstrual pads didn’t fit so well in a pair of jeans. Skirts allowed for my cunt to breathe. Plus, I rather enjoyed when I’d get a little blood on my seat in art class. Menstruation was a dream come true.

By the time I had reached high school, boys were utterly confused by my existence —in fact, I almost didn’t exist. All my guy friends were getting crushes on other girls, ya know, the pretty ones. Tumbling around in the field and playing soccer with the boys were things I still wanted to partake in, but it wasn’t gonna happen – alas, we weren’t kids anymore. When I turned 17 I had chopped off my long brown hair, thrown away my bras, and began cutting up my girly clothing and wearing those fragments as multi-layered outfits that I’d sewn into some boys clothing.  Soon enough, I dropped out of high school, shaved my head, and found a lovely tribe of unfortunates who were just like me: masculine girls and feminine boys. But until this miracle occurred, my encounters with my peers were few and far in between -like when I fell down the stairs on my way to class and someone threw an empty soda can at my head…or when that one barbie girl spit onto my hairy legs. Those were the good old days. I never desired ruby red lips or smooth virgin-like shaved limbs. Who has time for all that wretched hair removal anyways? Yet, I was getting kinda worried…

Was it time for me to become a girl? Would people like me better then?

Despite all the fun and games back then, I was never convinced that becoming a girl, gender-wise, was the best decision to make —Fuck these kids. I’ll just be a little bit of both, it’s more fun that way. In the 90’s, hormones and gender reassignment surgeries weren’t exactly an option. And I do have to admit, I am relieved —I love my tits, and enjoy menstruation, even into my 30’s. I get a rush when I put on my masculine garb and tape back my breasts, yet if I’m on my period I let everything hang out. One of my greatest fetishes is bleeding all over my swimming trunks for boys from the late 80’s. And as the years have proceeded to provide me with new insights on gender, I find myself having conversations on the topic with other fine specimens; tomboys, dykes, daddys, lesbians, bisexuals, asexuals, trans angels, and all sorts of queer heteros. We all had identity markers as kids, but who became our new role models? I decided to do some research back at home. And what better way to understand the self, then by first re-visiting the past?

I began my journey by going through a box of old remnants I’d kept as a young one  -can you believe I still have all this crap? Let’s see, rusted bottle caps, boys underwear, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, a sealed up hot pink lipstick…hmm. Ooo what’s this? A VHS copy of The Neverending Story. Atreyu, the main character, was a very feminine boy. In fact, I thought he was a girl for years. I recall asking my 9 year old self, “Why does she get to run around with her shirt unbuttoned? Why does she get to climb mountains and fall into the mud, visit rock monsters, and ride a dragon…?” Of course by the time I was in high school, I realized that Falcor was just a big puppet, and Atreyu was actually a boy. Which was okay with me.

This leads me to the reason for choosing the following books to revisit and interrogate for the first time. These are the source materials which granted me permission to keep asking questions, which gave me a sense of purpose as a blossoming tomboy. Stories that allowed me to feel less alone in a world that I, to this day, still can’t always relate to.

Gilbert Herdt – Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History – 486 pages of gender bliss. This book covers topics such as adolescent male prostitutes, and explores mutual masturbation techniques, Polynesian gender liminality, and FTM & MTF true life stories. The text explains further the realm of androgyny, discussing ancient and modern embodiments of Western gender paradigms, changes in the transgender communities, challenges for women athletes, and wholly transcends alternate somatic models of feminine fragility and ultimately, feminine strengths. A mandatory read.

George Platt Lynes – Photographs 1931—1955 – Growing up alongside Bisexuals, Tomboys and Gay men, I was intrigued to explore the more sensual and delicate side of the male body, and the rough edges of the female body, and this is so important. For hundreds of years we’ve shoved both sexes into boring and absurd categories. The men, expected to be the bread-winner, the stone-face, and the construction worker. I mean sure, do what you gotta do to survive. Dig a little hole, build some walls. But don’t forget that men want to feel nurtured and adored for their intuitive side the same way that women do. Regardless, this book changed my life. The men are sensual, and the women are frumpy. These images were first exhibited in the 30’s, where Platt Lynes shared the walls of Julien Levy’s NY Gallery with others, the surrealists: Man Ray, Moholy-Magy, and Max Ernst. Captivating and self indulgent portraits of Jonathan Tichenor slumped against faded backdrops compliment images of sultry nude men amidst shadows and mirrors, often dressed as erotic mythological creatures. You are in for a treat with this body of work.

CJ Jung – Aspects of the Masculine – Intimate case studies, references to archetypes, dreams, and thoughts on the origin of the ‘Hero’. I decided to start with Chapter IV “Logos and Eros; Sol and Luna. The Personification of the Opposites. The Moon Nature.” I believe that this line reveals so much about the book in it’s entirety; “…the common occurrence(s) of a psychically predominate contrasexuality…wherever this exists we find a forcible intrusion of the unconscious, a corresponding exclusion of the consciousness specific to either sex…this inversion of roles is probably the chief psychological source for the alchemical concept of the hermaphrodite.” These are indeed intellectual, spiritual, and scientific findings. In Chapter V we encounter “The Masculine in Women”, where Jung discusses the anima into woman and the animus into man.

I have interpreted this to proclaim that no matter which gender we choose to imitate, or which gender we choose to identify with – men possess a feminine force, the same way that women possess a masculine soul. There are of course arguable insights to be had with this sort of research, and that’s why it’s taken me a few years to get through this book. If, for that reason, you hesitate to go this route with your gender studies, don’t forget that some of the best things in life are worth that extra effort.

“Mercurius —the place where he lies confined is not just any place but a very essential one-namely, under the oak, the king of the forest. In psychological terms, this means that the evil spirit is imprisoned in the roots of the self, as the secret hidden in the principle of individuation. He is not identical with the tree, nor with its roots, but has been put there by artificial means. The fairytale gives us no reason to think that the oak, which represents the self, has grown out of the spirit in the bottle; we may rather conjecture that the oak presented a suitable place for concealing a secret —” The Connection Between Spirit And Tree (pgs 155-57). From Aspects Of The Masculine; the collected works of CG Jung: Volumes 4, 5, 8, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14. Between the years of 1929-1977. Translated by RFC Hull.

James Baldwin – Giovanni’s Room – “There opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots...His touch could never fail to make me feel desire; yet his hot, sweet breath also made me want to vomit.” The unpredictable aspects of desire is presented through an ambiguous story, one impenetrable. Baldwin’s enigmatic prose is both nourishing and unpredictable. David is our narrator, and entrapped by regret he repents for his sins. Yet with vivid evocations, he becomes an observer of intimacy, delivering a terror, a wisdom, a humble characterization not yet exposed to an audience of the 1950’s. At the age of 32, Baldwin completed one of his most outspoken autobiographical pieces that has yet to disappear from view. Giovanni’s Room is not to remain solely a testament of sexual rites and disparities, it is also a dramatized crisis at the helm of self delusion and highlights the importance of the art of seduction. James Baldwin’s work has always dealt with the euphoric state of love and exile. The story follows the path of David, an American man exploring his sexual relationships with men, and women, while residing in Paris. David, our narrator, describes unsparingly his observations and confesses to the reader a message which is so honest that it is difficult to return to your own life after your first sitting. A story about bisexuality, while further addressing the manner of how desire barges its way into our lives, promising a new identity.

Will Self – Cock and Bull – This tale is an unusual one, and brings to life one of my biggest fantasies. I can recall Chapter 8 being the segment which I had waking-dreams about for weeks, “The Icing Gun” : “Dan’s sexual feelings had never been anything but intensely vulnerable, childlike and sentimental. The fabled coupling when he had accidentally sandpaper-stroked Carol into orgasm had almost scared the life out of him.” What’s so intriguing about this story is that you are given access to a fascinating new world; where girls grow a boy’s pleasure stick, and boys develop a woman’s sacred cavern. Finally, equality amongst the sexes.

Beth A. Firestein (editor) – Becoming Visible: Counseling Bisexuals Across the Lifespan – I’ve come to believe that insights surrounding bisexual identities are somewhat ignored, culturally. During the Stonewall Riots of 69’, gender variance had just begun to pierce the social sphere, rendering our expectations of love and relationships into a totally new light. Not only does Firestein comment on western gender ideologies, she also explores the roles of queer people in the Middle East and Latin America. There are some vital chapters in this book, such as “Race and Ethnic Minority Status as Cultural Factors affecting Bisexuals, and Sexism and Heterosexism”. These gender wars have such a vast and complicated timeline, how can we not do as much research as possible? I would love a revised edition, as this one was published in 2007. So much has changed over the last ten years.

Cari Beauchamp –Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood – This is a highly political work which follows the history and impact of the original feminist movement. What led me to this book initially was a quote I’d found by Marion, where she talks about the novel she wrote to warn women, using storytelling and self-deprecating humor, that the entertainment industry was a big trap for the ladies. Marion referred to her book The Rise and Fall of Minnie Flynn (considered her lost novel of the 1920’s) as more of a propaganda piece.

Judith Halberstam – Female Masculinity – The chapter I departed from in this case was Chapter 6 – A Rough Guide to Butches on Film. What’s wonderful about this segment is that you are given an insight into a very specific history. In the chapter titled “The Androgyne, the Tribade, the Female Husband”, Halberstam reveals to the reader specific sexual practices associated with each social category of the “woman”. On page 200, Halberstam discusses films such as Caged (1950), which was directed by John Cromwell. It’s here where we explore two types of lady prisoners in film: “The innocent femme who needs to toughen up and the predatory butch who will either protect the femme or take advantage of her.” Everyone loves role playing, right?

Looking back on where I initially got started in my gender studies, I’ve realized that although the Gender & Sex section of my bookshelves are getting crowded, I still have so much to dive into. I started at such a young age too —what a strange time that was; when Y2K was just a broken theory, I still thought I was a boy, and 9/11 had instilled all of that fear into our spirits. To the lot of us born in the 80s we had only dreamt of the bright future which is ever so recently collapsing before our tired eyes.

Gender roles have transformed over the last twenty years, and I have to say that these books helped me to embrace the boy that I am inside. I always say, why pick one side? Enjoy the best of both genders. I know, a longer discussion than what we have time for is at hand. And okay, I didn’t get into losing my virginity. Was it with a girl, or a boy? Well I didn’t lose it ‘til I was in my 20’s. So that’s a whole other story that I’ll save for later…