- Monday morning on my way home from Angela's I returned two books on CD and paid the accompanying $8.75 in late fees. I walked out with a 23 cd unabridged edition of Ben Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. Disc 3 puts him in his early 20's and one can see the greatness he will achieve over his many decades to come. I'm especially looking forward to his work with libraries and how his legacy enabled and influenced the Free Library.
- Thursday evening Angela and I went to hear Khaled Hosseni speak and read from his new book A Thousand Splendid Sons. This is Hosseni's follow-up to his first novel The Kite Runner. He was very humble and appreciative of his success, quick-witted and quite thoughtful. A couple times he spoke of how people had read The Kite Runner and asked him how they could get involved, whre they could donate money to, etc., in matters related to Afghanistan or more recently women in Afghanistan (this book's subject) or Refugees (he's a global ambassador for UNHCR). And he is very reluctant to give people recommendations. I respect that he doesn't feel like he has the answers and that he hopes people will find their own way, but I think that's a bit of a cop out and if literally thousands of people are asking for his advice, he should at least offer some suggestions.
- Saturday afternoon I went to a lecture on great gardens in the greater Philadelphia area. I, like everyone in the audience, was already familiar with Longwood Gardens, but I was not familiar with Chanticleer Gardens in Wayne, PA, Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ, or Nemours Mansions and Gardens in Wilmington, DE.
- After the lecture I ventured to the 2nd floor of the library for the first time and skimmed a couple books that caught my attention. The first was about sex and architecture. How men have been building societies for a long time and men and women create differently. Men create buildings of power and fortification and often phallic looking buildings. Since women have been left out of positions of power for basically ever, their instinctual building and creative impulses of broader inclusivity and warmth might be cornerstones inside the home, but not in constructions.
- That book got me thinking about women in a different way. Driving home from DC last weekend, Angela and I played the Categories game. I chose living male actors of the screen. Back and forth we named actors and though we exhausted our knowledge at that time, since we have been adding new names to the list. For example, today I was reminded of Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding, Jr. (super small role in Coming to America when he was a teenager) and Aidan Quinn. But had the category been living female actors of the screen, I am sure that that game would have ended earlier. As I said earlier about women being left out of society and, especially leadership roles, so is the case in movies - as movies are the stories of life. I'm trying to think about movies that I've seen lately, and almost all are dominated by men and the female role is largely as a seductress/wife/romantic interest. I could argue that the lack of female leading roles is Hollywood representing society. As women continue to be oppressed, though a bit more subtly these days, film is merely representing a world still dominated by men. But that's mostly a load of crap. The mesmerizing grasp that Hollywood has on not only our culture, but a global culture too, contributes to the objectification and degradation of women. I just watched Legends of the Fall on Demand. Granted it takes place in Montana in the early 1900's, but there are 3 leading male roles to one female lead. Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Brad Pitt to Julia Ormond. Or earlier today I watched Coming to America. Here my argument is made very easily as Akeem, the prince of Zumunda, comes to America, to Queens, to seek his bride.
- I also skimmed through a book on body painting. It's a topic I have thought about more of recent past, especially now that I have a tatoo. I'd like to have some body art or henna tattoos done soon. Our bodies are works of art, inside and out, and I'd like to experience myself a little more. Also, the tradition of body art is thousands of years old. While body art and tattooing are of a branding and humiliating nature for my heritage (numbered tattoos in the Holocaust and previously other ways to make the mark of a Jew), I like to think of myself as part of a tradition of mankind that is much older than a few hundred years and much more connected to the people of the Earth - current and past.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
3for Library Week
It has been too long since my last post. I've been to the main branch of the Free Library in Philadelphia three times this week:
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2 comments:
Your post about women and thinking about women differently-- got me to thinking about how we women have changed how we think about ourselves and the larger struggle for women's rights. In many ways the struggle for women's rights has followed the course of the struggle for civil rights for people of color both legally, socially and politically.
In the earliest stage it was a big step-- just to name the oppression-- things that were taken as normal-- as the way they were and should be had to be pointed out as wrong and not what the norm should be. We had to show society new possibilities for being.
Those first steps were dangerous, sitting at lunch counters, drinking from "white only" fountains--the conciousness of what was usual and normal had to shocked into changing--
Then once that boundary was crossed-- it doesn't have to be that way-- we see the effort to win equality which initially focus on our sameness and discourag a look at our differences-- phrases like "we are all really the same" become the slogan of the day.
And while there is truth in our basic sameness and the commonalities that bind us together, this oversimplification obscures the richness and beauty of our differences--
It also advances the idea that the underlying rationale for fair treatment is that like things be treated the same -- and not the idea that there is an ethical code of conduct that is universal and should be accorded even to things that are different. -- more about that later--
The struggle for women's rights followed much the same course. First women in their living rooms and dormrooms named their oppression-- hopes and expectations for their lives limited because of gender-- no say in the political process, limted freedom to be smart or athletic, limited freedom and control over our bodies and sexuality--
Then the struggle to show we were the same as men is used as a rationale for our equality-- the power suits I once wore-- little men's suits with skirts--
the books we read---
My favorite was "Games Mother Never Taught You" it purported to tell you (and it did a pretty good job) how to survive in the foreign world of a male-dominated work setting.
And now like the civil rights movement women have come to see that there may be oppression even in the struggle for equality-- that the emphasis on our sameness can be as much of a prison as before-- the reality is that there are differences, cultural differences, gender differences and there are differences within these differences -- and that's good and ok.
Moreover, important aspects of what had been viewed as women's roles: nurturing families and children and making a home were undervalued-- it was as if, to win equality we had to buy-in to the belief that the work and social structures that had been developed without the input of women should be the norm.
Now we are seeing some push back on that- a willingness to look at the whole construct and ask "is buying in to this model good for anybody or are there others."
For me the heart of the civil rights and women's movement is self-determination and the equality principle is the equal right to self-determination.
This is a very long comment-- but you got me thinking.
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