Tag Archives: gender

June 20, 2016 · 7:18 pm

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl: If I had a less complicated relationship with ‘fat’

I requested Mona Awad’s 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl because I wanted to be the kind of person who could read a book about body image and body size and not have it be a fraught experience. Alas. I am not that kind of person (yet) (ever). So my review here is coloured (aren’t all reviews?) by my experience hating-learning-and-now-force-loving my body (“Force-loving” your body is my term for my practice of aggressively defending my body’s right to do whatever it wants, even while I have niggling doubts. Like I can force body postivity on myself with a combination of determined repetition “soft bodies are beautiful!” and strategic disavowal “diets are tools of the capitalist patriarchy!” and yet somehow am always left wondering about the why I’m running 5km at 5am: where lies the border between enjoying an active body and policing it?).

I DIGRESS.

The book, the book. So probably it has 13 chapters. That would make sense with the title. It follows Elizabeth/Liz/Lizzie/Beth over her lifetime of hating her body. Born to a fat mom, Lizzie grows up fat. The first chapters are her as a teenager experiencing a fat body in a world that it still very okay with fat prejudice. In fact, part of the project of the novel seems to be exposing just how pervasive this prejudice is, and the societally sanctioned cruelities that accompany. As Lizzie ages she experiences different sizes of body and the way her body is read and interpreted by others. That her own internalized sense of self is at odds with how other people see her should be no surprise to anyone who has experienced an eating disorder or body dysmorphia. Or you know, has been a person in the world at all, really.

It has some fabulously rendered scenes made sharp for this reader by poignant details balanced against and occasionally undercutting, but often perpetuating, stereotypes about how women treat themselves and one another. The relationships between groups of women and food is explored with nuance: not just the dynamics of a social gathering, but the ways friendships are made (and broken) by body size and the (innumerable) activities that surround keeping a body just so. Lizzie’s frequent inability to see past how other women are presenting themselves in relation to food, and how she allows (all) her relationships to be shaped by what, how and who is eating is as sad as it is familiar.

So if you’re a person who has experienced a fraught relationship with body or food I’d suggest reading this one for the moments of recognizing yourself and feeling understood and seen. But more if you’re a person who has an untroubled relationship with food or body (who *are* you and how did you get to be this way?!) I’d urge you to read this one as it offers a – if only from one, fictional perspective – view into a life led in body distress. And might lend you some tools – and empathy – for encountering bodies differently.

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June 6, 2016 · 5:21 pm

The Paying Guests: Books to Avoid Reading On Your First Week of Carpool

Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests is set in 1922 London. Setting is important here because the backdrop of postwar changes in economics and class, social and gender expectations and disaffection with the grand truths of justice deepen the themes explored in this erotic noir. (I didn’t realize I was choosing a novel with erotic scenes when I picked it up from my shelf (the last of the holiday haul), though I ought to have known better having read – and enjoyed – Waters’ The Little Stranger and The Night Watch. Reading it during my first weeks of a carpool positions me to give this advice: be prepared to squirm for ten odd pages).

The novel follows the life of Frances as she struggles to maintain the family home in the absence of male income (see Remains of the Day). Forced to take on ‘paying guests,’ she and her mother are joined in their aging home by the lower-class, freer spirits of Lilian and Leonard Barber. If the first half of the novel traces the budding… relationships between Frances and the couple, the second half takes a decidedly different turn in exploring love tested not by societal expectation, but by conscience and trust. Rather than fuss too much about who loves whom, the novel instead explores the nervousness of (new) love and the doubt that accompanies it (and it goes to some plot extremes to do so).

I very much enjoyed this one. Well crafted, expert character development, written with careful and evocative language (*cough*) it is a delight to be immersed in.  Though I’ll admit that after A. pointed out the frequency of the word ‘queer’ in the novel I was somewhat distracted by its repetition (a project for some student to trace and explore diction in Waters’ work – the way she works the connotations of the early 20th century against that of the contemporary reader).

In entirely unrelated matters, I finished reading the novel in the campus gardens during lunch today. In writing this post a bug has flown out of my hair and now I can’t stop checking to make sure there aren’t more insects all. over. me. Such are the hazards of having this literary vice.

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May 30, 2016 · 9:12 pm

Dracula: Everything you thought you knew about vampires is wrong (views on Twilight remain unchanged)

It’s my parents’ fault that I don’t know anything about Dracula. I thought I knew little bits about the story from pop culture, but then I remembered I don’t know anything about pop culture because my parents didn’t let me watch movies or TV. And that I didn’t, truthfully, know anything about the story. Okay, my argument falls apart because my parents certainly encouraged me to read. And widely. And I could have read Dracula before my 32nd year. But I didn’t. Like the undergrad student I was chatting with yesterday, I assumed I’d have my whole life to read the pile of ‘classics’ I always meant to read but had never bothered. You know, the kind of book you pick up at the used bookstore for $2 only to let it languish on your shelf for years because you think it probably won’t be that good because it was written so long ago and besides there’s the hip new Twilight thing to read.

No, it wasn’t a brush with mortality that made me decide it was finally time to read a classic work. It was S. and D. independently and within the same week citing it as a terrific read. And me feeling hugely embarrassed when reading the children’s version  (not a paid advert btw) that I had no idea who the two women or five heroes referenced. I laboured under the view that Dracula was about a vampire and a castle and that was that.

I. was. wrong. This book is about so much! And it’s so enjoyable to read! Enjoyable but also scary. I had a couple of nights of bat-related nightmares (for real), so if you scare easily (or at all) I might suggest avoiding reading this one right before bed, or perhaps preparing yourself to jolt awake convinced you hear flapping (probably compounded in my case in that I *did* once wake up to a bat flapping about my head after it got in through a cracked window. I DIGRESS).

It’s about science: As our heroes attempt to work out just what in the fuck is going on with all the blood loss and mysterious nighttime shenanigans they challenge positivist assumptions and make space for other kinds of knowledge: “It is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.” Well, sort of. Maybe. They still seem to use all the methods and approaches of Good Science in their quest, but Dr. Van Helsing makes it clear that there are limits to accepted truth.

It’s about gender: Oh what oh what to do with women. And their pesky desire to contribute, be independent, make meaningful lives. They must. be. eaten.

It’s about sexuality: Man-bat comes in the night and slips up under the covers to eat ladies. Ladies love. Men love. But usually only by engaging in passionate discussion and hand kisses.

It’s about form: letters! journals! phonograph records! meeting minutes! Look at all the ways plot and character can be developed in the pieced together epistolary form. There were a few moments where it felt analogous to the 2016 plot wherein characters have to explain why no one has a cellphone or cellphone reception in order to make the plot believable: characters kept explaining why they were bothering to write down what had just happened in such detail so as to convince the reader that this was not, after all, literary convention but instead the raw goods of vampire attack.

So whether it’s genuine interest or deep social shame for not having done so already (or, better still, fear that you’ll die before you read it) that motivates you to read Stoker’s classic work, seize on the interest and get it! (I’d add that I ‘lost’ my library copy (aka it was in the car and I assumed it was lost forever because it was under the seat) and found a free version online in under two minutes – so degree of difficulty in obtaining a copy can’t be an excuse here). That way the next time some punky punk of a reader gets excited about Twilight or True Blood or Insert-One-of-Bazillions-of-Vampire-Cultural-Objects-Here you can roll your eyes and explain “well, X work may be great, but it’s derivative of Stoker’s original work in Y way.” I look forward to your comments explaining the intertextuality of Stoker and how he’s really referencing Y work. Or how Twilight is in its own right a classic work. Ha.

 

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February 14, 2016 · 3:54 pm

The House of Spirits: This is how you end a novel.

Since reading Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune at the beginning of the year I resolved to read more of her work. Almost at the same time I agreed to supervise A. in a directed reading on magic realism (pointing out that I have no expertise in magic realism didn’t seem to matter as much as my willingness to do it – further evidence to those counting that enthusiasm trumps knowledge – a fact I insist upon each week at trivia in order to maintain my place on the team).

ANYWAY. The book. The House of the Spirits makes many of the top lists for magic realism because its magic is used to unsettle dominant ideas of class and gender. And because it offers such a pointed (and compelling) feminist view on class conflict. The novel makes the top lists for novels because it is brilliantly written. Okay, you want more? Because it seamlessly shifts in time and character in ways that offer nuance and depth to plot and theme. Because it has beautiful writing and crisp images. Because it captures epic love and historical moments with small moments that are at once pointed and sweeping. I loved it less than Daughter of Fortune (perhaps because it had many similar qualities and I had hoped for the new), but I loved it all the same.

If you read my last post on Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal, you’ll know that I’m only happy when protagonists suffer and ultimately end up heartbroken and alone (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but whatever). The House of the Spirits  is a perfect example of a conclusion that is at once focused on resolution and on continuation. (I’m not sure continuation is the word I’m looking for, so let me go with this a minute). The ending of The House of the Spirits is excellent both because it concludes the plot sufficiently that readers know where everyone is and probably will be, that we feel the conflict has been addressed and resolved AND because it leaves thematic questions open: paternity (in a book preoccupied with lineage and familial connection), politics and community. It’s a different result than the ending of Gone with the Wind, for instance, that leaves the plot very much unresolved, or the ending of The Illegal, which ties everything together with such a bow that you close the book and forget all about its contents. It’s a resolution of plot with a continuation of theme that makes the story linger and resurface as you read other things (or do the dishes). It’s a way of ending that lets the characters live, but doesn’t torment you with wondering what if and when the sequel will be delivered. It is, in short, an excellent ending.

Taking my own advice I’ll end this post… now.

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