Monthly Archives: October 2016

This week’s Theme Thursday features the works of Kara Walker, whose works explore race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes.

Narratives of a Negress, “accompanied an exhibition organized by the Tang Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and the Williams College Museum of Art, presents a comprehensive overview of Walker’s work, beginning with her first cut-paper wall installation, Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart (1994). Other highlights include the 1996 series of twenty-four watercolor drawings, Brown Follies, which is reproduced in full as an artist’s book within the book, and installation views of many of Walker’s exhibitions. Recent drawings and projections are also featured. Throughout the book are a selection of the Walker’s writings reproduced as they were created typed on index cards. These writings reveal a rarely seen side of the artist, whose words are as provocative as her installations and drawings. The essays discuss Walker’s place in art history, formal and narrative readings of her work, her relation to culture at large, and issues of race, sexuality, and representation addressed in her work.”

Originally published in 1991, Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women rings just as true 25 years later. From the book cover: ““Opting-out,” “security moms,” “desperate housewives,” “the new baby fever”—the trend stories of today leave no doubt that American women are still being barraged by the same backlash messages that Susan Faludi brilliantly exposed in her 1991 bestselling book of revelations. Now, the book that reignited the feminist movement is back in a fifteenth anniversary edition, with a new preface by the author that brings backlash consciousness up to date.

When it was first published, Backlash made headlines for puncturing such favorite media myths as the “infertility epidemic” and the “man shortage,” myths that defied statistical realities. These willfully fictitious media campaigns added up to an antifeminist backlash. Whatever progress feminism has recently made, Faludi’s words today seem prophetic. The media still love stories about stay-at-home moms and the “dangers” of women’s career ambitions; the glass ceiling is still low; women are still punished for wanting to succeed; basic reproductive rights are still hanging by a thread. The backlash clearly exists.

With passion and precision, Faludi shows in her new preface how the creators of commercial culture distort feminist concepts to sell products while selling women downstream, how the feminist ethic of economic independence is twisted into the consumer ethic of buying power, and how the feminist quest for self-determination is warped into a self-centered quest for self-improvement. Backlash is a classic of feminism, an alarm bell for women of every generation, reminding us of the dangers that we still face.”

If you’re looking for a bit of social commentary, head to the fiction section of a book store or library. Authors are often the first to criticize social norms or call out the potential harm of some new trend. Alice Hoffman challenges us to think about suburban stereotypes with her story of a 1950s single-mother in Seventh Heaven.

From the book summary: “On Hemlock Street, the houses are identical, the lawns tidy, and the families traditional. A perfect slice of suburbia, this Long Island community shows no signs of change as the 1950s draw to a close—until the fateful August morning when Nora Silk arrives.

Recently divorced, Nora mows the lawn in slingback pumps and climbs her roof in the middle of the night to clean the gutters. She works three jobs, and when her casseroles don’t turn out, she feeds her two boys—eight-year-old Billy and his baby brother, James—Frosted Flakes for supper. She wears black stretch pants instead of Bermuda shorts, owns twenty-three shades of nail polish, and sings along to Elvis like a schoolgirl.

Though Nora is eager to fit in on Hemlock Street, her effect on the neighbors is anything but normal. The wives distrust her, the husbands desire her, and the children think she’s a witch. But through Nora’s eyes, the neighborhood appears far from perfect. Behind every neatly trimmed hedge and freshly painted shutter is a family struggling to solve its own unique mysteries. Inspired by Nora, the residents of Hemlock Street finally unlock the secrets that will transform their lives forever.

A tale of extraordinary discoveries, Seventh Heaven is an ode to a single mother’s heroic journey and a celebration of the courage it takes to change.”

This week’s Theme Thursday features another woman whose works were attacked when they were made public, but were praised after reports generated by men upheld her claims. Taking four years to complete, Silent Spring documented the dangers of pesticides and herbicides, showed the long-lasting presence of toxic chemicals in water and on land, and concluded that DDT and other pesticides, after entering the food chain, caused cancer and genetic damage after building up in the body.

The evidence presented Rachel Carson’s book initiated an attack on her from the agricultural chemical industry, calling the book everything from “sinister” and “hysterical” to “bland,” but the public’s concern was raised. Then President John F. Kennedy read the book and ordered an advisory committee to examine Carson’s findings. The report upheld the findings presented in the book, and in 1963 the US Senate opened an investigation of pesticides.