The story of Nella Larsen's literary career is one of the great tragedies of American letters. One of the Harlem Renaissance's most influential and enigmatic writers, she published two novels and several short stories before disappearing into obscurity. Surely the work of countless black American women writers never reached the audience it deserved or was …
Alhamdulillah in Marrakech
Highlights from our recent visit to Marrakech to visit my niece Isobel McPhee, 19, who has been studying Arabic there this year. Goats eating nuts in a tree on the road from Essaouira to Marrakech The Spice Market in the Marrakech Medina Where we discovered a very swank, delicious, gourmet Moroccan hipster hang out of …
JUMPING INTO AN ORGY WHILE STILL SHAVING YOUR LEGS: ON WOMEN FILMMAKERS (My February column at Bookslut)
(Courtesy of Rachel Levit) We've all heard the latest appalling statistics regarding women in the film industry: according to a San Diego State University study, only 17% of directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 grossing movies of 2014 were women. Despite the near parity of women and men …
MALINCHE’S REVENGE AND OTHER CHICANA LESBIAN FEMINISMS: My January column at Bookslut
La Malinche by Rosario Marquardt, 1992 Malinche, the Nahua slave girl who became mistress of the Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés, was also his interpreter, advisor, mother of his children, and a key figure in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. In Mexican popular culture she is perceived as the ultimate traitor, an Eve figure …
THE JOANS OF ARC: My December Column at Bookslut
THE JOANS OF ARC Joan of Arc's life story, seemingly so incredible, so implausible, so full of mystery and the doggedly unknowable, has inspired centuries of artists and writers to retell it in their fashion. Already in Joan's lifetime, Christine de Pizan seized upon it to write "Song of Joan," an epic ballad about divinely …
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“GREAT HERA!” “SUFFERING SAPPHO!”: THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN: My November column at Bookslut
In 1937, William Moulton Marston, Harvard-trained psychologist, inventor of the lie detector test, and soon-to-be creator of Wonder Woman (first appearing in 1941), earned himself headlines when he declared that women would one day rule the world. In her extraordinary biography of Marston's female alter ego, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Harvard historian and …
Ai Weiwei (and friends) at Blenheim Palace–Go, Go, Go
You arrive with the hoards to an ostentatious display of wealth: You yearn for a taste: You sympathize with the oppressed: You get angry at global injustice: You thoroughly enjoy the absurdity of it all: This is truly an art event not to miss: Go, go, go.
ESSENTIAL FEMINISM: My October column at Bookslut
How did I miss out on the legendary Ellen Willis? I'm embarrassed to admit that before reading this stunning, provocative, erudite, fun, challenging, witty, dire, brave, and above all incisive collection of her journalism and essays, I was unaware of one of the great feminist writers on the politics and culture of our times. Intelligently …
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HAPPY UK POETRY DAY: The Loneliness of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò
The Loneliness of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò I am Irene Westcott. I am Lady Jingly. I am Mrs. Osborn and Mrs. Melville. I am the middle-aged woman who doesn’t feel like herself anymore. I want to crawl into that big ugly gumwood cabinet radio and stay there forever. I want to listen to the loneliness of the …
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOFIA LOREN (80 today)
"Her feet are too big. Her nose is too long. He teeth are uneven. She has the neck, as one of her rivals has put it, of 'a Neapolitan giraffe.' Her waist seems to begin in the middle of her thighs, and she has big, half-bushel hips. She runs like a fullback. Her hands are …
Jenny McPhee 