SPOILER ALERT: This post contains major spoilers. Also, TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE. I am not really into gore for gore’s sake: When I go to horror movies, I want to be held in suspense and suddenly surprised, not just grossed out. Luckily for Sam Raimi fans, the new version of the 1981 cult classic The Evil [...]
I readily admit I did not read The Host. I couldn’t face it after immersing myself in all things Twilight while researching my book Seduced by Twilight. I started it, but less than 20 pages in I couldn’t stomach any more of Stephenie Meyer’s purple, flaccid prose. No, I agree with Nicki Gerlach—that “Meyer is [...]
I’ve never met Raquel Cepeda in person, but we come from the same family. That is, the family of adult children of immigrants with our feet in two or more lands, inextricably torn between the lands of our ancestors and those of our descendents. Cepeda’s latest project, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina, is [...]
As the DVD of Spielberg’s latest epic, Lincoln, hit shelves last week, the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. was telling a different Lincoln story: that of Mary Todd Lincoln and her dressmaker, former slave Elizabeth Keckley. Keckley, author of Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, was [...]
Dorothy Gale—the girl who went to Oz—has been called the first true feminist hero in American children’s literature. Indeed, she was condemned by many readers, including children’s librarians, for daring to have opinions and act on them. My grandmother introduced me to the Oz books as a child, and I have always seen her as [...]
I’m perhaps not the best reader of Nicole Brossard’s new book of poems, White Piano, first published in 2011 in French as Piano Blanc and translated for this 2013 Coach House Books edition by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels. I’m not a translator, I don’t read many poems in translation and I tend to be disappointed by [...]
In honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, Women and Girls Lead is launching #SheDocs, an online film festival that gives people everywhere the opportunity to watch gripping, women-centric documentaries from their computers. Ten acclaimed independent documentaries will be available online free during the month of March. One of the most prominent films [...]
Warning: This post contains language which may be considered profane, sexist, ironic, feminist and/or totally quotidian. Oh Mamet. Mamet Mamet Mamet Mamet Mamet. Fuuuuucking Mamet.”Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting. In his tail? In his tongue.” Ask almost any theater practitioner what they like about David Mamet and they’ll tell you: [...]
I’m a movie person, not a play person. Suspending reality in a dark room with a stage is not one of my fortes. And I’m drawn to movies with strong female characters, whether it’s Silence of the Lambs or Alien or Bridesmaids. So when someone told me “You’re going to love this Off-Broadway play about [...]
You may not know it yet, but there’s a new hero in town—specifically, in Gloria City, the Gotham-esque setting of the innovative online comic book My So-Called Secret Identity which just published its first issue last week. Rife with violence and bursting to the seams with a cadre of grandstanding superheroes, Gloria City is also [...]
