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Five Autobiographies That Are Good For Your Health

May 23, 2012 by jilliemae

The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman

I wasn’t a fan of Sarah Silverman before I read her book.  I knew that she was a Saturday Night Live cast member and I had seen her television show on Comedy Central where I had felt that she was “trying too hard”.  The book opens with the most shocking and candid family secret, leaving me stunned and staring into space.  I had no idea where she was taking me, but it certainly wasn’t funny.  As I read on, the layers of judgement were quickly stripped away as she discussed her experience and hardship as not only a woman trying to make it in comedy during the 1990s, but also one who often leaned towards vulgarity and potty humor-often synonymous with the masculine realm of the comedy business.  Her stories left me face-to-face with a new Silverman–witty, sensitive, hilarious, and honest with a heart as big as her ovaries.  This autobiography was a humbling lesson in shutting my mouth when I don’t know what I’m talking about.

What can I say?  Don’t judge a woman by her cover.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

If you read my previous post, which directly addresses Mindy Kaling on marriage, then you know that I greatly admire her first book.  Kaling’s autobiography describes her journey from childhood, being a somewhat overweight, comedy-loving child with hardworking immigrant parents who set the bar for her current work ethic, to present day (roughly 2011) on becoming a comedy writer, an actress, and a true believer monogamy.  She has a fiercely pragmatic outlook on life and love that is soberingly inspirational.  Kaling’s style is intelligent, smart and the book extremely well-written.

This book is A-List material for any gal or guy who has faced the following:

1. Thought s/he was too fat

2. Worked for really long and hard on what s/he loves and had to jump what seemed to be too many hurdles

3. Had an obsession with any number of TV shows and/or romantic comedies

4. Believes in the power of love

Hiding from Reality by Taylor Armstrong

Now you may be questioning why reading Taylor Armstrong’s (from Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) autobiography on her husband’s suicide would be good for your health.  True, you may not have a lot in common with a Beverly Hills housewife, you may not have ever been in an abusive relationship, and you may not even have cable and have never heard of the show.  Despite all these and possibly more, Armstrong’s book is good for your health whether it be physical, mental or emotional.  She describes a lifetime of abuse in all varied forms, low self-esteem, helplessness and co-dependency.  She shares her story to reach out to women or men in abusive relationships and also probably to make some money after the debts lumped upon her after her husband’s suicide, and also to talk about that suicide, which so many of the show’s viewers want to get the dirt on.  Hiding from Reality sneaks up on you, leaving you to reflect on your own current or past relationships and also shines spotlight on your treatment of others.

Girl Walks into a Bar by Rachel Dratch

 You most likely know Dratch from Saturday Night Live as the quirky and elvish cast member who often had a baby-arm stemming from the top of her head.  Post-SNL, she was left with a somewhat open professional calendar filled with roles that type-cast her as the butch lesbian, the best-friend, the crazy person, the old woman with severe deformities…use your imagination.  As she approached her early 40s, Dratch found herself unmarried, underworked and accidentally pregnant.  She begins by taking us back down her dating roads, filled with absurdity, alcoholism and red flags and drives us right up to her future, filled with an uncertainty that encompasses boyfriend and her baby, which she appropriately deems her “midlife miracle”.  Dratch’s point of view is refreshing as she resists framing her story through rose colored glasses.  Her life took an 180 degree backflip and she’s taking it day by day.

Oh, and she loves being a mother.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

I don’t know how she does it, but when I closed this book, I felt like we truly were best friends.  Though that may sound brimming with stalker tendencies, I also heard that same reaction from likeminded girlfriends.  Despite the fact that I am a huge Saturday Night Live aficionado, I can’t exactly pinpoint which sketches Fey had written.  However, it is clear to see that her comedic acting skills, especially as Sarah Palin, are nothing to sneeze at.  After absorbing her book for a few months now, I see that there are obvious reasons for her popularity in television–the girl has mastered the power of introspection and incredible observation.  Fey’s autobiography is similar to that of Kaling, Silverman and Dratch where she documents little girl Fey through adulthood and her journey to becoming the  comedic powerhouse that she is today.  What sets Fey’s style apart is that she talks about the obvious and while this may seem to be a simple task , it’s extremely jarring given that she has such insight into her own life experiences and what happens around her.  When Fey describes her childhood and living in Chicago (she even went to the Planned Parenthood that I worked at years ago!), it reminds us that many artists come from humble beginnings and have tripped more than once along the way.

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Happy National Poetry Month!

April 21, 2012 by jilliemae

Though it may seem a bit controversial to choose Charles Bukowski for my third selection of the National Poetry Month series, I feel that his commentary on poverty, race, corporate injustice, the environment, et al, earn him a spot.

Charles Bukowski-Born into This

(Select the above link for the video of Bukowski reading his poem)

DINOSAURIA, WE
by Charles Bukowski

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

Happy Poetry Month, you crusty old crab.

Posted in Poetry | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

Happy National Poetry Month!

April 14, 2012 by jilliemae

Poem numero dos in honor of National Poetry Month celebrates Dorothy Parker!

I have included two short, but oh so poignant of Parker’s poems.

New Items

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live. 

Posted in Poetry | Tagged , | 6 Comments »

Exploring Feminisms Is All Grown Up!

April 10, 2012 by jilliemae

Exploring Feminisms put on her big girl pants, or rather big girl hat, and is now a website!

www.exploringfeminisms.com

Posted in Vagina Dentada | 7 Comments »

Happy National Poetry Month!

April 7, 2012 by jilliemae

  Happy National Poetry Month!  It’s one of Exploring Feminisms’ favorite months!

This first poem of the April poetry month series is written by recently departed but always feminist, lesbian, activist, amazing… Adrienne Rich.

Heroines
(1980)

Exceptional
even deviant
you draw your long skirts
across the nineteenth century
Your mind
burns long after death
not like the harbor beacon
but like a pyre of driftwood
on the beach
You are spared
illiteracy
death by pneumonia
teeth which leave the gums
the seamstress’ clouded eyes
the mill-girl’s shortening breath
by a collection
of circumstances
soon to be known as
class privilege
The law says you can possess nothing
in a world
where property is everything
You belong first to your father
then to him who
chooses you
if you fail to marry
you are without recourse
unable to earn
a workingman’s salary
forbidden to vote
forbidden to speak
in public
if married you are legally dead
the law says
you may not bequeath property
save to your children
or male kin
that your husband
has the right
of the slaveholder
to hunt down and re-possess you
should you escape
You may inherit slaves
but have no power to free them
your skin is fair
you have been taught that light
came
to the Dark Continent
with white power
that the Indians
live in filth
and occult animal rites
Your mother wore corsets
to choke her spirit
which if you refuse
you are jeered for refusing
you have heard many sermons
and have carried
your own interpretations
locked in your heart
You are a woman
strong in health
through a collection
of circumstances
soon to be known
as class privilege
which if you break
the social compact
you lost outright
When you open your mouth in public
human excrement
is flung at you
you are exceptional
in personal circumstance
in indignation
you give up believing
in protection
in Scripture
in man-made laws
respectable as you look
you are an outlaw
Your mind burns
not like the harbor beacon
but like a fire
of fiercer origin
you begin speaking out
and a great gust of freedom
rushes in with your words
yet still you speak
in shattered language
of a partial vision
You draw your long skirts
deviant
across the nineteenth century
registering injustice
failing to make it whole
How can I fail to love
your clarity and fury
how can I give you
all your due
take courage from your courage
honor your exact
legacy as it is
recognizing
as well
that it is not enough?

(Note: the formatting here is not how the text was originally laid out on the page.  Click here to see the actual layout of the poem, which can be read in her work, A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems from 1978-1981.)

Posted in Poetry | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

Delicious Ambiguity: A Look Back at Gilda Radner’s Autobiography, “It’s Always Something”

March 31, 2012 by jilliemae

When I checked out Gilda Radner’s autobiography, “It’s Always Something” from the library, I had no idea what I was getting into.  The extent of my knowledge merely spanned Saturday Night Live comedian and cancer, breast? Divine providence, nosiness, morbidity, who knows, something drew me in.  In the end, what it amounted to was two days of reading, about four break-down, hysterical crying sessions, about two weeks now of slight depression, and a new name for my unborn or adoptive daughter.

In 1986, Radner was given the sentence of ovarian cancer after getting the proverbial runaround from physicians, all ending in one misdiagnoses after another for nearly a year.  From start to finish, Radner writes this book as she is experiencing cancer treatments including chemotherapy, radiation, barium in every orifice, water flushes, microbiotic diet and about everything in between.  For three years, she is put through hell on earth, both of the physical and mental kinds.  She describes just about every thought and experience, including fights with her incredibly supportive husband, Gene Wilder, her fears concerning her prognosis, her many bowel blockages, losing her hair (and she means everywhere), her involvement with The Wellness Community, bulimia, jealously, her inability to bear children, and one of her biggest support systems, her dog, Sparkle.  You are privy to her ups and downs, to her raw depression, desperation and the depths that she explores are beyond what most of us can conceive of.  The book is in essence her diary, and this is how she pulls you in and makes you her friend and confidant, whether inadvertently or otherwise.  My appreciation of this text arose within the first two chapters when I realized that she wasn’t pulling any cheap shots.  There weren’t any defense mechanism type of jokes to lighten any of her or our uncomfortable feelings concerning cancer; it was pure honesty.  She puts it all on the table so we’re all on the same page and look at her situation for what it really is–cancer that could be life threatening and how to deal with that.

The book ends in 1988, approximately three years from start of cancer treatments to current day, and she sums up by saying that she is still receiving treatment and is hopeful.  We are left, as she is, in a state of “delicious ambiguity”.  An uncertain future is a good future because we don’t know what will happen, and that means that anything is possible.  Only we know all too well the outcome of this story: Gilda died in 1989 after being in a coma for three days while being put under for a CAT scan.  What makes this book so amazing is that it is in essence a documentary of three years of her life, straight from the horse’s mouth.  What also makes this book so amazing, and so sobering, is that we are privy to real-life dramatic irony.  She confides in us that she wants to live and we are unable to tell her the painful truth.

Was her struggle for nothing?  Of course not.  Though I am left with feelings of torment as I reflect on her story and anger at how unfair it was that she had to suffer for nearly five years (with nearly two years of unnamed pain and discomfort).  And though I am having trouble seeing past the injustice and senselessness that life sometimes throws at us, the strength and raw hutzpah that Radner threads throughout her trial is palpable.  She relentlessly keeps her chin up, and when it’s down, it’s part of the dialogue.  Living from day to day is a huge priority for her–potlucks, interacting and sharing experiences with others with cancer, swimming, tennis, and even making the doctors and nurses laugh are all therapeutic for her emotional and physical recovery.  Towards the beginning of her treatments in the hospital, she would arrive with several pairs of silly slippers and moan comically and tragically through the intercom from her bed, all in the name of keeping her spirits up.  Whenever possible, she tried to make the process hers.

Three days after finishing the book, I returned it to the library in which I work and was reluctant to release it.  Sure, I could have deviously discarded it and kept it for myself in the name of collection development.  But then I thought, if I keep it for myself, then no one else at the library will happen upon on it as I did, maybe changing their lives as well?  Later in the day, the dark cloud of Gilda’s death was still hovering over me as I was coincidentally searching for obituaries on microfilm when it shut down unexpectedly as I was making a copy.   After four failed attempts at printing Mr. Jones’s obit, I went for help, only to find out that it was just out of paper.  As I shook my head and cursed my carelessness, my library director walked by and said, “never mind”, in the voice of who else, Gilda’s famed and opinionated social commentator, Emily Litella.

Delicious ambiguity.

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments »

Watch Your Women’s History!

March 7, 2012 by jilliemae

You didn’t think that I’d forget Women’s History Month, did you?  Of course not!  But what to discuss?  Let’s talk women and film this year and appreciate seven known and less-known female directors, past and present.

Let’s face it, these women make me swoon.

(In no particular order)

Daughters of Dust (Directed by Julie Dash)

Daughters of the Dust is told from the point of view of an unborn child, and draws in female family lines, displacement and the history of slavery in the United States and its effect on black women.  Daughters is one of those canonical feminist/black diaspora films that any feminist minded gal or guy needs to see.  Think film studies students not watching Citizen Kane–it’s just not done.

Antonia’s Line (Directed by Marleen Gorris)

This is the quintessential feminist film.  It’s egalitarian, woman centered, matriarchal, and there’s a lesbian sex scene not from a male’s perspective!  I get excited just thinking about it!

Eve’s Bayou (Directed by Kasi Lemmons)

Directed by Kasi Lemmons, co-star to Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs (if you need a reminder), Eve’s Bayou is about an affluent black southern family, the relationships within that unit and how the history of the family line, slavery and geography all intermingle.  Watching this film along with Daughters of the Dust is also a political act.  By using our renting/purchasing power in favor of these movies, we show our cultural institutions, whether they be the library, Netflix, or even Hollywood, that we support black female directors.

Fire (Directed by Deepa Mehta)

I was told recently that some people believe that Mehta makes Indian films for an American audience, and because of this her films are not taken seriously by Indian audiences.  Being an American gal, I can only speak from my point of view and I will argue any day of the week that there is good stuff here.  Forbidden love between two women, arranged marriage, Indian food, and hope amongst all odds–all good stuff.  Maybe this film is geared towards Americans, but if it motivates more Americans to watch films directed by Indian women, then so be it.

Cleo from 5 to 7 (Directed by Agnes Varda)

This French flick details two hours in a Parisian woman’s life as she awaits what could be terminal results from her doctor.  We follow her as she walks the streets of France and with her we contemplate life, worry, and possibilities, and further, it shines a light on what we have in front of us.

Swept Away (Directed by Lina Wertmuller)

This is a true “exploring feminisms” moment because even though I’ve seen this Italian film over five times, I still don’t know if it can be considered a feminist film.  Despite this, it always ends up on my best-of lists for feminist films.  You could love this film about a man and woman getting shipwrecked where sodomy, lust and coconuts ensue, or you can hate it.  Either way, it’s provocative and will spark some great discussion.

Marie Antoinette (Directed by Sofia Coppola)

 Still considered by many to be an Indie director despite her famous director father and family, Coppola is one of my favorite contemporary female directors because she directs with the heart.  She also dabbles with a delicate touch that is so affective and yet has such an assertive voice.  Marie Antoinette is fun, whimsical and is so subversive for a period piece that you can’t help but become absorbed in the frosting and bubble gum that is this movie.  Celebrate Women’s History Month with one tough queen!

Posted in Movie Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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