Lauren

ana mendieta is an important figure in the spectrum of feminist art. her work is, at times, difficult to grapple with because it confronts violence against the female body in a very direct and extreme way. as olga viso suggests, mendieta's work "often defied easy classification." never gratuitous or without purpose, her art incorporates identity politics, sexuality, violence, and the body's connection with the natural world.

bell hooks is my feminist touchstone (okay, you're right. i have a few, but she was the first!). make sure you check out Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics as a primer if you're new to the field.

i love how imaginative little bailey is! dreaming sweet dreams of dresses every night... crystals and flowers and windows to the world. ewert's use of pronouns (referring to bailey as she despite bailey being told she is a boy by the rest of the world) is groundbreaking in a children's book. not to mention, rex ray's rendition of bailey's world is unique and beautiful like little cut-ups of color and dreaming. i love it!

simply amazing.

from the inside jacket: "it is very hard for a sighted person to imagine what it is like to be blind. this groundbreaking, award-winning book endeavors to convey the experiences of a person who can only see through his or her sense of touch, taste, smell or hearing."

every page is black. the text is simple white font with braille above it. all "illustrations" are embossed black lines and figures.

and from the first page, each color is described with beautiful words that evoke every sense except sight. to finish it off: we are taught the braille alphabet on the final page!

i would have to say my favourites are yellow and black.

yellow (accompanied by wispy little feathers to touch): "thomas says that yellow tastes like mustard, but it is as soft as a baby chick's feathers."

and black: "but black is the king of all the colors. it is as soft as silk when his mother hugs him and her hair falls in his face." accompanied by gentle waves of strands of hair on the opposing page... almost like waves.

“Faced with insufferable heat, smoke, and fire, and with no prospect for relief some jumped or fell from the building.” -from “Heroism and Horror,” 9/11 Commission Report Across the nation, as Americans began to live and breathe in the days after September 11th, 2001, cultural dialogue abounded on the “too soon-ness” of laughter, sex, entertainment, and most importantly, discussions about why. Don DeLillo’s novel, Falling Man, grapples with an entire nation’s realization of living through what was arguably the historical event of the 21st century: the attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City. His central image is “falling man”: a reference to both the infamous 9/12/01 New York Times cover photo and a fictional performance artist whose specialty is dangling from buildings throughout New York in simulacra. Falling Man recognizes 9/11 as both a beginning (of the new era of terrorism and religious warfare) and an end (of the 20th century, of the Cold War, of American innocence). Throughout the novel, DeLillo repeats phrases, sentences, words over and over. It is as if he is scouring the past, searching through the debris at ground zero himself, trying to find something, to give meaning to something, to write meaning into the day. The story of September 11th, 2001 will always come full circle—back to that day, those moments, the dust, the carnage. It seems that DeLillo, consciously or subconsciously, rebukes the widespread racism that infected America post-9/11. Americans seem to use 9/11 as a legitimizing tool in enacting racism and violence against Muslim and Muslim-American populations (or anyone that appears to be such). As a result of this racism, any sort of legitimate discussion of the perspective of the terrorists seems impossible and unpatriotic. DeLillo refuses to define 9/11, but he does provide us with a story. From there, we can take that story and weave it into our accounts of where we were that day, our understandings of the terrorism, and the question: where do we go from here?

this book spoke to me and changed me. i walked away from it, feeling like my sense of self and consciousness had altered... maybe forever. the kin of ata are waiting for you spoke to me in a language i have never heard but always understood. it really was like an echo i could hear inside of myself. and as much as the narrator frustrated me, i found by the end that the parts i hated about him, the parts that slayed me, were frustrating because i could see bits of him in me (asking questions, living a jaded life, etc.). i, too, commit "donagdeo" but, from here, try to live the life of dreams. follow the dream. nagdeo!