3 comments about When Women Played Hardball.

1. Susan Johnson leaves nothing out in her account of the 1950 playoffs series between the Rockford Peaches and Ft. Wayne Daisies. Well written with the lively enthusiam that could only be brought to the pages by an actual fan of the teams written about, Johnson's book not only gives a solid history of the entire league, but also gives a highly detailed account of particular players and games during one season. A must have book for AAGPBL enthusiasts.



2. While Lois Browne's "The Girls Of Summer" is perhaps the most complete history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, this book is the most personal account due to Ms. Johnson's own fandom of the early 1950's. It's an extremely well-done book interpolating Ms. Johnson's text with interviews of former AAGBPL players and contemporary newspaper game accounts of the 1950 league championship series. While Browne's book (and others) are a little more academic in their approach to the subject, this is the one that really gives readers the best "feel" for what it was like for women to play baseball 50-60 years ago. Parents considering buying this for their children should note that there is a little more emphasis on player sexuality in this book than the others, but that detracts little from the overall effort. I've read four or five books on the AAGPBL, and would consider this the best of them (with Browne's book a solid second).



3. I just read this book, and was surprised by how moved I was by the story of the history of women's baseball! The interviews with the former players were both humorous and touching, and framed an outstanding portrait of a unique, and practically forgotten, era. I hope a lot of young women read this book, as it is quite an inspiration.

5 comments about Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir.

1. Lisa Carver's journey to self-discovery and realization isn't fueled by her daddy's money or a trust fund that supports a jet-set lifestyle. Carver writes from the perspective of a real person, a screwed-up person who became an influential voice in the alternative music and 'zine world of the early 1990's.
   
   Although it's only a small portion of the book, Carver writes eloquently about wanting to make sure that her own child gets what he needs so that he doesn't need to seek out the basics of love, nurturing and affection from strangers, as she once did. As Gen-Xers, we are a transitory generation, most of us children of divorce, latchkey kids and caretakers of our own parents, while we were still children ourselves, and Carver's voice is a strong one, telling her own personal story in a way that touched a nerve with me. There's an entire generation of screwed-up Gen Xe'rs having babies, and only time will tell if the parentless generation will do a better job of raising their own children.



2. Drugs are Nice is a dizzying and shocking autobiography that reads like a piece of fantasy. The life of Lisa Crystal Carver--once girlfriend of GG Allin, Jean-Louis Costes, and Boyd Rice and acquaintance of Anton Levy--seems unbelievable at times. However she is an inspiration for anyone who aspires to live their life on the edge of society.
   The gem of this autobiography is the way that the focus of Carver's life narrows from a dreamlike shock culture full of sex and violence in Europe--to the glistening reality of becoming a mother of a child with a chromosomal deletion and having a lover who beats her. Over time, Carver learns what it is like to grow up without ever loosing a sense of who she is. Her thoughts and theories throughout the novel are enlightening and the book needs to be read a second time in order to fully understand all of Carver's musings.
   The only problem with this book is that sometimes Carver doesn't explain exactly how she got to be wherever she is. This gives the book a dream-like quality. Her sudden journey to Europe at the age of nineteen, her days of prostitution, her success on stage--all seems too simple. This is because Carver spends much of the book reflecting on world culture in the early 90's, when she leads the post-punk movement of a generation that is now forgotten.
   This book is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to fight conformity, break the rules, and live their life the way THEY decide. Carver is an inspiration for artist and visionaries. Her story will move you. You will never look at art and words the same way again.



3. I recommend this book to anyone with an open mind. I cant say its for everyone, but as a fan of Roller Derby (her zine) from my college days (I have been out of college for 12 years) and reading her articles in major magazines now and then, I love Lisa and her crew. its a good glimpse into the life of someone who has made her own niche in the world, who is talented and interesting. The title may be off putting for some, but I still recommend this read



4. Read it. Now. Really, stop reading this review and go read the book. Go! Go! Go!



5. 1)At least Carver writes good sentences.
   
   2)Her choice of subjects, always so lame.
   
   These are two points that I raise when I think of Carver. Oh, and one more thing.
   
   3) Her old work "Dancing Queen" was rather forgettable.
   
   (I do not know why she wrote it except that she needed the money. As it turned out in this book "Drugs are Nice," she wrote "Dancing" for money.)
   
   I had to groan to read the same lame themes of hers resurface in this autobio. I felt like pointing them out and criticize what was wrong with her decisions in life, which would be same as to suggest any cleverer narrative/editorial decisions. I do not know if it is ethical to see people's lives that way and usually do not like to judge especially women by who they date and mate with. But I cannot help saying her choice of men so lame. Her letting the men dictate her life believing 'this is the shock art' even more lame. The real issue here is that she perpetuated all the problems in the name of her trying to be the borderline artisit, her life is the art performance itself. She seems actually a regular type and passes as quite fine in a psychiatric evaluation. The only pathology that I found was her bad taste in men, which obviously was rooted in her Electra complex. But it could be an incredible damage if she perpetuated it whether she thought of it as an experiment, or another element that made her look different. In the book, though, she absolutely failed the iconocalst persona and appeared more of a soccer mom to me, which was fine. But I could not help focusing on supposedly the minor pahology, that made her life sicker than necessary even if she wanted it that way. The question that I had initially was what really made her want it that way; can people afford to make ones' lives more difficult just for fun? Can an artist just live and call it her work? Is Brit S now a shock artist? When Carver had to flee, there was no art to sacrifice herself for and that was the occasion where she and we readers have to examine what it really means to create and live at the same time. Or how to draw a ilne between art and a phenomenon.
   
   I wonder if the author was lucid about her Electra complex and how much it dictated her life. She seems to be conscious of it but not enough to take control of her life. Why were her life events this lame and meaningless? Why did she always choose not only useless but harmful men? The book showed some reflection and insights about these agendas, but the real struggle was how much she could put the self knowledge into practice and would take advantage of it. To come to the point, She had to break up with an on again off again man who she had a child with, after getting beaten up badly and threw him into jail for it. It was disheartening. By this point, readers naturally question if Carver was playing with fire believing she was experimenting for art sake believing she took control over the relationship or she was really clueless when trying to protect herself from an abusive environment.
   
   Here it comes the subject of 'shock' in her life. I believe she got involved with all those useless men to schock people and most of all, to shock her own father. If I play some indie shrink here, I'd summarize that all she attempted was to outshock her father, who had fatally beaten her to it in the beginning of her life. She was compulsively compelled to get people's attention by something shocking. This just went back to her initial shock caused by her drug dealer father, who had murdered people and served in prison. By the time they finally reunited, she was already a teeneger. In her psyche, to get attention from and validated by this 'powerful figure' in her life, she had to compete and outshock him. It might be the only way for her to compensate what was eternally lost in her early life as well.
   
   All the attempt that followed was to shock and to be shocked. Getting involved with someone that would shock her more than her father ever did became her lifework. Her system was completely synthesized by this value of shock, which was defined by her father earlier. This value ultimately became something that represented power to her. She was, as she admitted herself, rather a mentally thorough, functioning and mediocre woman who was struggling to be different.
   
   But the irony was all she did was more of a bad taste, lame or boring than anything shocking. The only interesting thing that she managed to extract from the series of attemps was her sex appeal, as she was mindful about it, and writing. She writes well as she put as 'the only way to take control and put some order in caos': she focused on it as the only security she seemed to be able to count on. That is the essence of what this book was all about. If she reached this realization, all those she went through including getting beaten up by the man (Boyd? who is he?) who was not really worth would be worth... Well, would it? I do not know.
   
   This book came in handy as a source of US underground rock history as well to document how small the whole scene was and how late everything was compared to other parts of the world: what carver was at was a decade backward, or simply late.

1 comments about Drive-In Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-Movie Starlets of the Sixties.

1. This is a companion piece to Tom Lisanti's excellent 2001 book Fantasy Femmes. While that book dealt with '60s starlets who appeared in beach, biker, Elvis, delinquent youth, and horror films, this book concentrates a bit more on ladies who graced the beach and Elvis films (with no repeats). For me, a huge admirer of the beach films, that makes for an even more enjoyable read than the first book. Such Beach Party staples as Donna Loren and Luree Holmes are interviewed in depth, while Patti Chandler, Susan Hart, Valora Noland, and my absolute favorite, the Bardot-like Mary Hughes are also profiled.

   Like Fantasy Femmes, Drive-In Dream Girls interviewed 20 of the '60s most delightful gals. Those included here are:
   Sue Caey (The Beach Girls and the Monster, Catalina Caper); Andrea Dromm (Come Spy With Me, Hit The Surf); Gail Gilmore (Girls On The Beach, Harum Scarum); Laurel Goodwin (Girls! Girls! Girls!); Sharyn Hillyer (A Guide For The Married Man); Luree Holmes (Beach Party series, Ski Party); Suzie Kaye (Clambake, It's A Bikini World); Sue Ann Langdon (Roustabout, Frankie & Johnny); Donna Loren (Beach Party series, Sergeant Deadhead); Vitina Marcus (The Lost World, the Green Lady on Lost In Space); Arlene Martel (Angels From Hell); Marlyn Mason (The Trouble With Girls); Quinn O'Hara (Ghost In The Invisible Bikini, A Swingin' Summer); Melody Patterson (Wrangler Jane from tv's F-Troop; Cycle Savages); Cynthia Pepper (Kissin' Cousins); Hilarie Thompson (Maryjane, If It's Tuesday This Must Be Belgium); Darlene Tompkins (Beyond The Time Barrier, Blue Hawaii); Beverly Washburn (Spider Baby, Pit Stop); Carole Wells (The Lively Set); Lori Williams (Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, A Swingin' Summer).

   While Fantasy Femmes also profiled 12 '60s sweeties, Drive-In Dream Gals looks at an additional 30 favorites, all longer profiles than the first book. They are: Brenda Benet (Beach Ball, Harum Scarum); Diane Bond (Pajama Party, A Swingin' Summer); Cindy Carol (Gidget Goes To Rome, Dear Brigitte); Regina Carroll (Satan's Sadists, Angels' Wild Women); Patti Chandler (Beach Party series, Ski Party); Nancy Czar (WIld Guitar, Winter-a-Go-Go); Jackie DeShannon (C'mon Let's Live A Little, Surf Party); Jill Donohue (Winter A Go-Go, Nobody's Perfect); Joan Freeman (Roustabout, The Reluctant Astronaut); Susan Hart (Ride The Wild Surf, Dr. Goldfoot & the Bikini Machine); Anne Helm (Follow That Dream, The Magic Sword); Mary Hughes (Beach Party series, Ski Party); Mikki Jamison (Beach Ball, Ski Party); Candy Johnson (Beach Party series, Pajama Party); Marta Kristen (Judy from Lost In Space, Beach Blanket Bingo as the mermaid); Meredith MacRae (Bikini Beach, Billie Jo on Petticoat Junction); Dodie Marshall (Easy Come Easy Go, Spinout); Claudia Martin (For Those Who Think Young, Ghost In The Invisisble Bikini); Jenny Maxwell (Blue Hawaii, Take Her She's Mine); Mary Mitchel (A Swingin' Summer, Girls On The Beach); Laurie Mock (Hot Rods To Hell, Riot On Sunset Strip); Valora Noland (Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party); Angelique Pettyjohn (Hell's Belles, Clambake); Pat Priest (Marilyn on The Munsters, Easy Come Easy Go); Juliet Prowse (G.I. Blues, Who Killed Teddy Bear?); Bobbi Shaw (How To Stuff A Wild Bikini, Pajama Party); Ulla Stromstedt (tv's Flipper, Catalina Caper); Wende Wagner (Out Of Sight, tv's Green Hornet); Debbie Watson (Cool Ones, Tammy and the Millionaire); Venita Wolf (Catalina Caper).

   As I mentioned in my review of Fantasy Femmes, most of these lovely ladies had their careers end by the time they reached 30. A lot of that had to do with getting married, having kids, and being expected by society to concentrate on raising their family. Another key reason was the end of the studio contract system by the late '60s. Most of the gals profiled here were contract players at one time or another. With no studio to support them, they often faded away, leaving us to savor their all too brief careers and wishing we had gotten to see them grow in their work.

5 comments about Female Brando: The Legend of Kim Stanley.

1. Jon Krampner's meticilously-researched biography captures the passion and the pain of this brilliant actress and her up-and-down career and her often sad personal life. Her amazing successes, her many romantic entanglements, and her slow degeneration during the early days of television and beyond are painted on the background of a star-studded New York. I recommend this book.



2. The author spent only a few pages detailing few film performances Ms. Stanley did. I was totally floored when he said (about her performance in KCET/PBS production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) "although she'd drank enough alcohol to float the Spanish Armada, her gift hadn't entirely escaped her." She was so amazing as "Big Mama," I dare anyone to watch her in that performance and NOT feel "I'm watching brilliance personified." If she was a "drunk" - she certainly wasn't in that performance. Or in "Frances." And saying she was "grossly overweight" was cruel and unwarranted. She was playing BIG MAMA! And they're talking about her weight? It borders on the ridiculous. She looked brilliant, her eyes sparkling; and her acting is riveting. She brought that play to amazing life like I've never seen. It's unfortunate the author didn't interview Jessica Lange: They were close friends, and Ms. Lange pays tribute to Kim for helping her "go deeper" into character than she'd ever gone before. As a result, Ms. Lange is one of the great actresses of our time. The author left out that Ms. Lange and Ms. Stanley would spend hours (before filming Frances) just talking as "Lillian and Frances" to prepare for their roles together as mother and daughter. Ms. Lange said she was an amazing help to her (On "Bravo" TV's "Actor's Studio"), and wrote a beautiful tribute to Ms. Stanley that was read at her memorial service. Why didn't he include the greatness she inspired in others? Because he didn't fully do his homework. Yes, she had her demons (like all of us); perhaps the author felt he had to chronicle her wounded side so much because - in the shadow of her greatness, he's so pale in comparison, as a writer and a critic, that he's invisible. I find it sad and disappointing. Greatness like Ms. Stanley we don't see very often. The poet said, "My candle burns at both ends, it won't last the night. But oh, my friends, and oh, my foes, it gives a lovely light!" Such is the brilliance Ms. Stanley was made of, as an actress. She was nominated for two Oscars for the FOUR FILMS she performed in. That's quite a track record. But the author was more interested in picking her brilliance apart, talking about her alcoholism (to death) and weight, and how bad she looked. How petty. She's a legend. Period. And will remain so long after "Female Brando" is out of print. For those of us who didn't know her except through her friends and her films, she's inspired us to strive for excellence. The author missed the mark on that one. I wonder what demons he has that will be paraded to the public after he passes on? And how would he feel about that? The talent Ms. Stanley had comes with a high price. I was changed, as an artist and a writer, for the better when I saw her performances. For that, she's very dear to my heart.



3. I really looked forward to reading this biography as I had thought that an account of this truly accomplished actor was long overdue. By page 78, I felt something was wrong. By page 110, the answers were apparent. First, and forgivable, was the type face. It looks like the manuscript was typewritten and then bound into a book. Is the font called "Selectric Modern?" Most egregious, however, is the heavy dependency on interviews on the part of the author. Every OTHER paragraph seems to be a quote from somebody.
   Trying to delve into the persona of a person based on second-hand or even third-hand "memories," truly leaves me still puzzled as to who Kim Stanley actually was. Many of the interviewed are "remembering" events that took place 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years ago. I'm amazed at how people's memories are SO vivid.
   Perhaps one day, a truly analytical attempt at presenting this most complex personality will emerge. I do not judge this particular biography to be very successful in that endeavor.
   Oh, I agree with the other reviewer concerning Ms. Stanley's attendance at the Oscar ceremonies--she WAS there!



4. I am 41 and, honestly, until I saw a documentary on Broadway's "Golden Age," I really did not know of Kim Stanley. I had heard the name in passing and vaguely remember some brouhaha surrounding her appearance in the 1982 film "Frances," but that was it. Her life, as told by Krampner, made for a riveting, saddening read. However, Krampner's style of writing annoyed me with its often confusing, long-winded ramblings toward this or that point, with the odd non-sequitur thrown in for good measure. Overall, this is a book worth reading for anyone interested in theatre and/or mental illness.



5. My years spent living in New York City enabled me to see great theatre, especially in the 1950's and 1960's.
   
   I first saw Kim Stanley in Bus Stop and was amazed and deeply touched by her performance.
   
   This book is very well written. The author lets us know about her acting techinique and what it cost her in her private life. This reader was caught up with her life experiences and became even more grateful to Kim for her unreserved sharing of her deepest feelings.
   
   Those who read this book will learn so much about themselves and the people around them.
   
   I highly recommend this book.
   
   Thelma Norton

2 comments about Surviving Ben's Suicide: A Woman's Journey of Self-Discovery.

1. When she was in college, Comfort Shields met another student named Ben, a man who'd been in the navy and only returned to school at age 24. They began a relationship and fell in love. Eighteen months later, Ben killed himself. This memoir details their relationship alongside Comfort's struggle to survive herself, to grow and learn from the experience, and forgive herself, with which she still struggles.
   
   I wasn't sure I was going to like this book when I heard about it. My brother passed away when I was nineteen, and I avoid the subject of death far more than the average person my age. It's still too close to me. I took a chance, and I'm glad I did. Comfort's struggle is oddly empowering for her and for the reader, whom she has chosen to allow into her world. This beautiful memoir succeeds as both a story of her grief and her recovery and as a tribute to Ben, who struggled so much himself. Shields writes well and clearly, telling us her story in a way that makes her sympathetic while making it clear that she doesn't expect any. Despite the difficult subject, the book isn't hard at all to read and is in fact engrossing. Her struggle and the situation is clearly sad, but it is focused on the positive, not the negative. It is a book full of hope and memories.
   
   The reader watches as the relationship between Ben and Comfort is strained by his mental illness, even though they so obviously love each other and she tries so hard to keep them together. The parts when they were falling in love were extremely touching, knowing the outcome of the relationship, experiencing this dual journey.
   
   I found the most poignant and important lesson that Comfort learned is that she could not control the life of anyone else. She could not have saved Ben; it was out of her hands and she did the best she could. She discovers this over and over again throughout the course of her life, and not only is it true for her, it's true for us all. Her journey is inspiring and I can imagine it giving hope and help to not only people whose loved ones have killed themselves, but to anyone who has lost someone and does not know where to go next.



2. I have spent the last five years looking for a memoir written by someone who had survived his or her partner's suicide, and when I found SURVIVING BEN'S SUICIDE by C. Comfort Shields I felt a huge relief. At last, someone had broken through the silence and shared a highly intelligent, intellectual, sobering, eloquent, and at times even witty reflection on what it feels like to survive a lover's suicide.
   
   Comfort Shields writes with honesty and raw feeling about her passionate love affair with Ben, a fellow college student at Sarah Lawrence College. Their relationship became complex, as she became more and more aware of Ben's mental illness (he was diagnosed as bi-polar at one stage and borderline later), which culminated in his taking his own life by driving from Washington D.C. to Maine and shooting himself in the head. This act devastated the author, and it took her fifteen years to fully tell the story of the remarkable journey of learning to love and trust herself and others again. She went on to get a graduate degree from Oxford University. She married and had children. Surviving her college love's suicide permeated all of the milestones in here life and who she became. For her, the past and the present were inseparable. Part of the strength of the book is the interweaving of past and present, which Shields pulls off beautifully. I read SURVIVING BEN'S SUICIDE in the course of one day, because it was impossible to put down. By the end of the story, I felt as though I had actually taken the author's journey with her and I am wiser after that experience.

No comments about Women Behind the Camera: Conversations with Camerawomen.

5 comments about Harriet Jacobs: A Life.

1. I've always enjoyed reading Jean Fagan Yellin's work. She is a very clear writer without any of the foolish over complication of the academic writer, even in academic journals. She's firm in her beliefs. She's not neutral or oblivious to racism and injustice to oppression and exploition either in the historical worlds she has excavated or in her discussion of the present.
   
   While Yellin is accurate and in total possession of her subject, she is precise about what we and she do not know about Harriet Jacob's life.
   
   This is more than what many might have expected which is a fleshed out version of her explication of the true biological facts of Harriet Jacobs autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This a biography of Harriet Jacobs as a Black woman facing the crises of her time, both in public political life and in personal and economic life.
   
   As such, as is her practice, Jacobs takes a broad view, so what we read about Jacobs is continually inserted into the changing events of the nation, of Black people, of women. What is most compelling is Jacob's struggle to involve herself in the antislavery movement by writing her book, and then the story of Jacob's struggles to fight for support to the freed slaves and war refugees. Finally, there is a very good explanation of the split between Afrian Americans and the white section of the women's movement as figures in this womens movement turned in such a racist direction, that women like Jacobs and her daughter Maltida could no longer function within it.
   
   Jacob's remarkable life after the civil war led her into contact with a number of the most notable white and African American literary and political figures including people you might never suspect like Henry James and William Monroe Trotter, so that anyone interested in womens, literary, and African American history from the 1850s until the 1890s would profit by reading this book. Yet, despite this prominence, it was assumed by most scholars as a Black woman she had not really written her book, until Yellin and other scholars proved this in the 1970s!
   
   Jacob's wrote so opens the struggle of my life. Yellin presents that life of struggle not for the seven years that Jacobs hid in her closet, but throughout the seven decades of her life.
   
   Again, Jean Fagan Yellin is a good readible, accurate writer who makes this a page turner without losing any of the dignity, scientific precision, and historic importance of this task.



2. The story of Harriet Jacobs is compelling. She was a fugitive in the North and in the South. Her autobiography, INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL, was published prior to Emancipation.
   
   Her home town was Edenton, North Carolina. The text of INCIDENTS was authenticated through documents by the author and other researchers. In her lifetime Jacobs achieved some celebrity as the writer of INCIDENTS.
   
   Until she was six Harriet did not know she was a slave. She was born in Chowan County, North Carolina, in 1813. Prosperity in Edenton ended after the Revolution. In 1795 a hurricane closed Roanoke Inlet. A canal through the Great Dismal Swamp impoverished Edenton.
   
   Harriet's father was a carpenter. She learned to read and to write and to sew. A twelve Hatty was moved to another establishment. She had been willed to a three year old mistress. Next she learned that her father had died. He was buried In Providence, (rediscovered, cleared, and reconsecrated in February 2001). Hatty and her brother John were preoccupied with freedom. They knew of four people who took passage on a ship to Liberia from Elizabeth City. Hatty's grandmother became emancipated. The war of Hatty's life began as she opposed a Dr. Norcom. She formed an alliance with a person of greater reputation in the community with whom she had two children. It was a teenager's solution to vulnerability.
   
   At age 21 in 1835 she ran from Edenton but ended up spending seven years hiding out in the vicinity in very restricted quarters. In her cramped hiding place Harriet Jacobs experienced sensory deprivation. In 1842 she was taken by boat to Philadelphia. Workers in the anti-slavery movement were impressed with Hatty's beauty and with her efforts to overcome her isolation.
   
   Jacobs went to New York, and to Boston, and to England. She stayed in England for ten months. Later her freedom was purchased. Her venture into becoming a published writer began with a letter to a newspaper. Her autobiography was anonymous. L. Maria Child edited the manuscript and supplied an introduction.
   
   During the Civil War Harriet Jacobs worked in Washington, D.C. as a relief worker among the so-called contrabands, former slaves. After the war she and her daughter traveled to Savannah and later to England to raise money for some of the destitute former slaves. They settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts and then went on to Washington, D.C., probably to enable the daughter to obtain a teaching position.



3. Jean Yellin?s Harriet Jacobs: A Life is readable, interesting and energetic narrative. It is a model biography that presents Jacobs in the context of her time. When Jacobs died in 1907, she was nearly forgotten, but Yellin?s biography restores an important woman to public scrutiny and well-deserved approbation. For most a century, Jacobs was unknown as the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, but in 1985, Yellin?s edition of Incidents established Jacobs as its author. If there was any lingering doubt of authenticity, Yellin?s fine detailing of Jacobs? life conclusively settles the issue. We are immersed in Jacobs?s drama, provided with a compelling narrative of her life and given glimpses into her family, her children, and social life of the South and North before and after the Civil War. What Yellin does so well is to document the dignity and intrepid character that raises Jacobs above the wretchedness of slavery and racial prejudice wherever it surfaces. This is a fitting life of a woman whose soul burned for freedom and whose heart was steeled to suffer even death in the pursuit of liberty and equality for African Americans and women.



4. If you have ever read Harriet Jacobs's narrative, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", you will be gasping to know more about the lives of this extraordinary woman, her two children and the other players in the plot of her young life.

   Given the information available, Jean Fagan Yellin serves it up for us brilliantly thanks to her many and well presented, often extremely detailed accounts of Jacobs's movements after escape from North Carolina.

   It is clear from summation of events in Jacobs's life that not only was she an intensely loving, protective and self-sacrificing mother, and seemingly held in good regard by all she came into contact with, she was also an extremely dedicated and active ambassador to the poor, the weak, and the defenseless, travelling all over the country and abroad for this singular cause, remaining to her death a champion of her people.

   One of the great things about this book is that in detailing Jacobs's life, we get a better glimpse into the lives of the people important in her own life - her grandmother Molly Horniblow, her brother John S., her son Joseph and daughter Louisa, her half brother Elijah, the Norcoms and, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, Sam Sawyer. By documenting aspects of the lives of those in Jacobs's immediate affairs, we are able to form a clearer understanding of her character, values, motives and relationships with others.

   Yellin's biography is a fascinating historical tome in its own right, capturing the political atmosphere and mood of Civil and post Civil War America. Yellin does a grand job documenting key events, attitudes and individuals to shape the pre war Abolishionist movement, post war reconstruction and emerging institutions, and the Suffragist movement for women and freed African Americans.




5. Above all else, there is a single conclusion to be drawn from this truly remarkable book.

   Anyone who has a sincere interest in the history of the United States should feel slighted that Harriet Jacobs? story isn?t already entrenched in the American consciousness alongside Harriet Tubman?s or Sojourner Truth?s. In HARRIET JACOBS A LIFE, Jean Fagan Yellin unequivocally reinvigorates a truly unique and vital American perspective all but lost to us.

   Here is the story of a woman born into slavery, fighting that condition with a resolve almost unprecedented in its selflessness. To save her children from the sexual torment she experienced as a girl, Jacobs hides in the crawl space over a store room for nearly six years, before finally escaping to the North.

   And though the boldness of her resistance is indeed characterized by such large singular acts of heroism, it is also made palpable by her persistent and unrelenting immersion in the mechanics of 19th century social activism, a mechanism not altogether ready for the sort of sexual realism she would air. She speaks plainly of that which the 19th century woman traditionally did not, and in doing so galvanizes a population by the raw horror of her experience as a chattel slave.

   Yellin?s biography not only places Jacobs? life in its proper historical, cultural, and political context, it does so with rich descriptions of the world she inhabited; the smell of the Edenton docks, the lecture halls and drawing rooms of Boston?s abolitionist movement, the grim specter of war torn Savannah, and the wizened frames of Freedmen refugees in the nation?s capital.

   This is what makes the book so compelling, the utter pervasiveness of Yellin?s research, fleshed out in masterful prose. And she is not content merely to paint the broad technicolor picture, but also to reduce the story of Jacobs? daily life to its very nuts and bolts, the struggle to keep food on the table, to keep herself and her family at the imparting end of charity. Here is a woman who in one hour effects the core of the anti-slavery movement while in the very next toils as a nursemaid, cook, or seamstress.
   
   The expression of that seeming dichotomy is the miracle of this book. And gives the modern reader precious little room to make any excuse for not standing up. Yellin?s book is an unforgettable biography of a remarkable woman, as well as an invaluable point of inspiration in troubling times.

3 comments about Revelaciones / Revelations: Mis amargas experiencias con Gloria Trevi, Sergio Andrade Y Mary Boquitas / My bitter experiences with Gloria Trevi, Sergio Andrade and Mary Boquitas.

1. No lo he leído ni lo pienso hacer, menos aún perder el dinero en semejante estupidez. Y ojo que no defiendo a la tal Gloria que no es más que una cómplice y coautora de varios horribles delitos!! Por favor, lean algo más productivo y dejemos que sea la justicia la que se encargue de castigar a estos criminales. Ojalá tanta exposición en los medios sirva para que los padres se dejen de ingenuidades y ni si quiera piensen en la posibilidad de dejar a ir a sus hijos (as) con el primer vividor que aparezca.
   Aunque claro, cuando se vive con malos salarios y aparece una "soñada oportunidad" para que tu querubincita salga del anonimato y se convierta en estrella, que puede esperar que decidan gentes sencillas, que no saben nada de la basura que hay en el medio artístico! Cuántos pobres padres habrán caído en este tipo de problemas por tratar de cumplirle el sueño a sus hijas en un país como México, donde todos quisieran ser estrellas de Televisa!



2. It's imposible to read this book without feeling so many different things... you get nervous, scared, annoying, disgusting, excited... in fact I don't know who is telling more lyes or (somehting?!?) true in this story. But something is really sure... no one is saint here. Gloria has her faults, the girls like Karina too... but this is a really incredible story to think about and I think inlude to be studied by psiquiatras. It's certain that Sergio Andrade is the biggest monster here. But so intelligent. So crazy history...



3. I think this books really express what the author was thru and it make to the people who read it to feel all the pain and also make us to hate them more (gloria and her band) because I really belive to this girl

5 comments about A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

1. With a prodigious breadth and fearless depth, she takes the segue to a high art. Anything can be the occasion for connection. Any sentence can break your mind or heart wide open. Her most personal, and my personal favorite. Reading this book makes me feel alive.



2. The first question is, what is a field guide to getting lost? Field guides help us with finding, not losing or getting lost. We use them to classify the unfamiliar and figure out what surrounds us. They reassure us that the bewildering array of natural phenomena has an underlying order. Solnit's title suggests we might also want our schemas to break down. Can we catalogue the various ways of getting lost as we might catalogue songbirds? The paradox feels whimsical, mocking, alluring. Like the title, the tone of the book will hover between the urge to know and the urge not to know, between rationality and mystery.
   
   In the middle of the first chapter, Solnit gives us a manifesto: "Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction." "Lost," for her, means we lack a narrative for what we are experiencing. Getting lost is a kind of Zen rebirth because "to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty." Getting lost also has connotations of spiritual longing. Solnit titles every other chapter "The Blue of Distance." Blue "represents the spirit, the sky, and water, the immaterial and the remote, so that however tactile ansd close-up it is, it is always about distance and disembodiment." Voila the tone of the book--grand, abstract, sensual, yearning and inexorably aloof.
   
   With a topic like the beauty of longing and loss, it is surprising how rarely Solnit lapses into cliché. Her prose is as smooth and bare as polished stone. It creates the feeling of waking from a dream and encountering the world, dazed and receptive. If Thoreau is the most cerebral of the philosopher-poets and Whitman the most sensual, Rebecca Solnit belongs at the midpoint. She does not allow herself academic verbal tics, or excess verbiage, but neither does she shy away from the syntactical complexity of acadmic writing. She integrates lyric sensuality and philosophizing as if these modes belong together, as if western civilization had never tried to separate mind and body. I admire her poise and authority a little as I admire Susan Sontag's. Solnit's is a supremely self-possessed voice, which may be the same thing as a voice that has abandoned the antic whining of the self. She draws deeply on experience, yet she resists the confessional mode.
   
   You might say that Solnit offers an optimistic way to confront the globalized, alienated world of the twenty-first century, a sort of "If God gives you lemons, make lemonade," or "If God gets you lost, revel in it." You could argue that she offers a sophisticated alternative to the self-help genre, though I imagine Solnit would look down on self-help. She likes slipperiness and paradox too much. Still, she is interested in finding a way forward for the soul, and I, for one, am glad because my little soul is often bewildered.
   
   I think Solnit dances between lostness and foundness. She notes that "nomads have fixed circuits and stable relationships to places," and her own wandering through the west is ritualized, repetitive. She doesn't need to go to Antarctica; she gets lost in America. Her home territory is simply vast and ambitious, her spirals broad. Still, in order to lose herself time after time, she has to find herself in between.



3. Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide To Getting Lost discusses experience and getting lost in the everyday, examining how people move from cities to wilderness, how they search for sense of self in an uncertain life, and how her own explorations in the world have changed her life. At once an autobiography and introspective examination, A Field Guide To Getting Lost surveys connections, ancestry, history, and modern culture in a personal odyssey of exploration.



4. A mesmerizing book that is three separate tales told at the same time. At times humorous and sometimes it made me want to cry, this story was hard to put down. I would highly recommend it.



5. Solnit's book is as the title suggests--a discursive reflectoin on the many nuances of the idea of 'getting lost.' You find out that 'lost' is from the Norse meaning 'the dispersal of armies,' and that early Renaissance painters use blue to designate distance, that children are better (i.e., less likely to die) at getting lost because they don't rationalize the way adults do--all in just a few pages where the insight garnered is both spun out by the author, but left to the reader to stop and pursue in his/her own reflections. Of the twenty or so books of all genres which I've read in the last few weeks--and of those I will read in the next several I suspect--this book incarnates why I read: erudite, entertaining, entrancing. Solnit's book reaches out toward Wordsworth, Dillard, Thoreau--and the Clash, Plato, Robert Hass. The voice and perspective, though, are her own. The essays here can not be read in great, long gulps; switching metaphors, there is hearty sustenance here--you take in only so much, and you are sated with good things which you must digest before moving on. Side note: whoever edited the book did a disservice--occasional glaring errors, such as 'form' being spelled out 'from' and 'good' repeated a second time in a context where the repetition makes no sense (and when you know the author would have easily used another expression to capture the nuance intended over against using something as clunky as redundancy of such a limited word).

No comments about Mother Teresa: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters Series).