This great review from Estella’s Revenge (love that blog title) on the anthology Sugar in My Bowl (Ecco 2011) and my short story “Light Me Up.” She writes:
I downloaded it, I read it on my new Nook in two days flat (over the holidays!!!), and the rest is history. Good history…
In fact, the first story that comes to mind when I think of this collection is Margot Magowan’s “Light Me Up.” Juliet is a new mother, married to Henry, and struggling with her sexuality in light of being a new mom. She feels ugly, used up, exhausted, confused, hormonal, empowered, embittered, and a host of other swirling emotions. The confusion in this story and the struggle between the two main characters rang so true to life, I was quick to start highlighting. However, I think it was ultimately Juliet’s mental change of attitude about sex that really spoke volumes in this story.
‘There were other differences I noticed in myself. Sex, or even just blatant sexuality, on TV disgusted me–watching reality shows’ horny drunks or all those women shaking their asses in videos. Previously, even when I didn’t like something that was on, I often got sucked in, fascinated, curious, analyzing, trying to figure it all out. Now it was just gross. ‘
I was really pulling for Juliet as she worked through her feelings post-baby and I felt really sorry for her at times, triumphant for her at others. Magowan did a good job injecting a lot of meaning and eliciting an emotional response with the content of this story.
I’m writing a Middle Grade book, publishing industry-speak for a chapter book for 8 – 12 year olds (though I’m thinking age 6 – infinity). I’m a voracious reader, but mostly I spend my precious few moments of reading time with contemporary adult novels or books about politics and culture. Obviously, I read chapter books with the kids, but they read ahead on their own and when it’s my turn again, I can’t follow a thing. So I’m not counting those books as real reading time.
I’m reading The Lighting Thief on my own now and love it. I’ve always been a fan of Greek mythology, and it’s cool to read about it in a contemporary setting. It’s male dominated of course (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades “the big three” divide up the world as in the original; Percy, our hero, has adventures; females come in and out to aid his quest) but I’m not focusing on female characters right now (or trying not to, ha!) I’m mainly looking for great writing. My favorite kids’ author ever may be Roald Dahl.
I’m writing a fantasy book so that’s probably the genre I should stick to. I’m looking for good contemporary series and classics.
I’m so excited about the new book Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow by Katy Towell that instead of blogging about it, I’m going to sneak off and finish reading it now that my kids are, finally and thankfully, off at school. More soon, but try to get your hands on this amazing book as soon as possible. And, please, Hollywood, make a movie! You can order the book here.
On my birthday this year, I posted about how great it felt to be 42. With all that I’d heard and read about women on the other side of forty– who knew? I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Fascinated by my state of mind, I read several books about women and aging, trying to figure out if other people, especially women, felt like I did.
One of my favorites is called Between a Rock and a Hot Place: Why Fifty is Not the New Thirty by Tracey Jackson. Jackson is hilarious. I was laughing out loud for the whole read. Jackson and I are different in many ways, our attitudes about plastic surgery being just one, but she writes totally honestly, it seems, about what getting older is like for her. Her basic thesis is that if you accept change, go with the flow, don’t try to be thirty, life is different but good.
As I read, I started to wonder if perhaps menopause isn’t about “drying up” and nature having no use for you anymore, as I’d heard in the past. Maybe menopause includes focusing your body’s energy away from reproduction, using precious resources elsewhere. Curious, I read The Wisdom of Menopause by Christiane Northrup, an ob/ gyn. She goes into a multitude of ways that she believes menopause jump starts the brain into a mind body revolution. Again, Northrup is not saying fifty is thirty. She’s basically saying life is a mysterious adventure.
Another book I absolutely love is Prime Time by Jane Fonda. This book is so brave. Like Jackson’s, it’s another honest account about growing older. It may not be your story, but it’s Fonda’s and she tells it well. Though the book jacket and PR material promotes the book as “making the most of all of your life” this book is really about the “Third Act” as Fonda calls it. I guess the publishers thought billing it that way wouldn’t sell. Thank God Jane Fonda is Jane Fonda and can write about whatever she wants and get it published.
There seems to be no subject this writer is afraid of tackling from death to money to sex. Fonda has one chapter I love about how society as a whole benefits from older people. This perspective is such a different take than what you generally hear from the media about the older generation being a huge, economic drain on everyone else. Fonda writes about “generativity” an idea crucial to healthy aging where your focus moves from yourself to “a broader social radius, giving to the community and larger world.” She also writes about the “silver market:”
Economists argue that there is an important dividend that comes from the increasing number of older people who are relatively well off and who now make up the greater proportion of the market share. Many retirees have accumulated wealth and other significant spending power, which stimulates jobs and financial growth. Older individuals make invaluable investments in real estate, continuing education, technologies for independent living, travel, tourism, health services, and the like…
A study by the MetLife Mature Market Institute reported that the estimated spending power of baby boomers will soon exceed $2 trillion dollars annually…however, the degree to which the silver market thrives is highly policy dependent. In countries where sound retirement plans are provided, older individuals feel secure to spend their wealth rater than save it…
Older individuals donate more to universities, charities, and civil organizations than at any other age…
Older citizens are active citizens; their efforts to volunteer help hold up communities. They organize and participate in civic organizations, run elections, mentor young people, support their peers in long term car and hospice, lead recreation groups, and assist visitors and hospital, libraries, schools and museums.”
Another book I read is called Fortytude by Sarah Brokaw who is a therapist and noticed many of her clients became happier after 40. Though I understand her curiousity leading her to write the book when so few have been written on this, Brokaw is my age and I found those written by people who had actually experienced more aging more interesting.
I also read The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife by Marianne Wiliamson and though it had some good parts, it seemed to mostly be the same material covered in her previous, better books, just repackaged.
I do have a question that I can’t seem to find an answer to. After reading all these books, I want to know: do emotions age? There’s quite a bit written about the brain aging, and of course, the rest of the body aging. But it seems, at least from what I’ve read and lived, older adults experience emotions just as intensely as babies. And if emotions don’t wither, perhaps, as we grow older, do we potentially become more skilled in handling them? Could this be why I’m happier?
Not only do I hate housework, I’m horrible at it. Mess doesn’t bother me in some basic way it annoys other people. If I see something on the floor, I feel no strong need to pick it up.
But here’s the problem: I live with four other people in a house that fits us only if we are super organized. Our home is a Victorian built in 1911 with tiny, flat closets and no garage. Basically, zero storage space. So, though I may be missing the gene that makes you like everything in its proper place, as previously posted, I don’t like to yell at my kids and I don’t like to waste time. The antidote, I’ve slowly come to realize, is keeping life organized.
I’ve been getting lots of help in this area from a fascinating book called Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. I bought this book years ago, not because I was interested at all in keeping house. I’d read about it on Salon and was intrigued that the author was a philosophy professor, Harvard Law grad and was also obsessed by housekeeping. Why would someone so smart care so much about housekeeping? But the book was just too huge– over 8oo pages. I only read her intro and decided this woman wasn’t just obsessed, she had OCD. Whatever I was missing, she had too much of. Clearly, a smart woman cared this much about housekeeping only because she was crazy. I stopped reading.
This all happened when I was single and lived blissfully alone in a one bedroom flat I rented. But now, I need help.
Last week, after repeated letters from the library, I finally set out to search for my kids overdue books. That’s when I came across Mendelson’s book on the shelf, covered with dust (which she wouldn’t like) ten years since I’d opened it. I’ve had it near me ever since. Quite simply, this book is saving my life. Or rather, it’s helping to give me my life back. Mendelson’s housekeeping isn’t about wasting time, it’s about saving it. Because God knows, I don’t have hours to spend looking for my kids’ books. Who does? Or, maybe more importantly, I don’t have the energy to waste being pissed off at my kids while I’m looking. Instead, I need to conserve crucial resources (time and energy) by designating a shelf in the house where we keep the library books. I need to make sure we keep up with putting them there. Duh.
I’ll admit, I was a little worried I was so into this read. Had getting married and having kids messed up my brain? Had I developed OCD? If I did in fact do what Mendelson recommended, would I ever do anything but clean and organize? I wanted to know: What has this woman done since she wrote this massive book besides clean house? I googled her. Since 1999, Mendelson has written and published three more books– all novels. She also teaches and lectures. That sold me– keeping house allows you to accomplish more, not less.
Not only that, something else in Mendelson’s book changed the way I think about housekeeping into something that actually inspires me. She writes that making a home a home is not about decor or furnishings. She thinks we spend too much money on all that. Nor is making a home about Martha Stewart type knick-knacks, in some nostalgic quest to make an old fashioned, homey home. Mendelson writes:
“Ironically, people are led into the error of playing house instead of keeping house by a genuine desire for home and its comforts. Nostalgia means literally, homesickness.
“What really does work to increase the feeling of having a home and its comforts is housekeeping. Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do in your home. Whether you live alone, with a spouse, parents and ten children, it is your housekeeping that keeps your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms, the place where you can more be yourself than anywhere else.”
I get what she is saying– a home that functions well, that relaxes and restores you and your family, is not about presenting a perfect, finished product. What makes a home a home is the continual process of caring for it.
If you read Reel Girl, you know I’ve got a lot of issues with Disney’s hegemony over our kids imaginations. I’ve written about how exposure to the same old narratives, repeatedly, influences how kids brains grow.
Today WWW. TRUTH-OUT.ORG reviewed The Mouse that Roared by Henry A. Giroux and Grace Pollack (though it looks like the book came out in 2010?) I am excited to read the book though the review seems pretty academic, I am hoping the text is less wonky.
Here are some nuggets from the review:
Cuddly cartoon animals and whimsical fairy-tale stories are merely Disney’s public face. The expansive conglomerate is not limited to Disney film and theme parks. It also owns six motion picture studios, ABC television network and its 226 affiliated stations, multiple cable television networks, 227 radio stations, four music companies, three cruise lines, theatrical production companies, publishing houses, 15 magazine titles and five video game development studios. This media and culture monopoly goes unnoticed by most Americans, who just want to indulge their childhood fantasies as Disney so deftly enables with its movies, theme parks and merchandise….
The authors quote Walt Disney: “I think of a child’s mind as a blank book. During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing will affect his life profoundly.” They demonstrate how Disney’s movies, TV shows and toys are doing a majority of that writing in this generation’s children.”
“The Mouse that Roared” also draws attention to the gender stereotypes in Disney princess movies, from older cartoons such as “The Little Mermaid” to their newest, “Enchanted.”
“Disney has become a major player in global culture, and the first casualties of its dominance in popular culture are, of course, those who are most defenseless – children,” the book warns.
My eight year old daughter brought this chapter book home from school Friday. It is amazing! I’d never heard of this spectacular series and know next to nothing about the author.
The main character is Yuri, is a sixteen year old pirate who time travels on a ship, the Eurastia, saving others in peril. Her dialogue is so brave and assertive as captain of the ship, commanding others, going bravely into danger, in the middle of reading I checked the author. I couldn’t remember ever reading about a girl act this way so consistently in a story, winning so much respect from other characters.
The author is Mio Chizuro. He (or she?) is Japanese. The book is translated into English. More as I find out more but wanted to post this info. You can buy the book here.
Critics love the new book Sugar In My Bowl. The anthology came out this summer, is edited by Erica Jong, and includes my short story “Light Me Up.” If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you can order it here.
Here are some blurbs:
“[A] fierce, fearless collection.”
— More Magazine
“The women of this collection make the case that good sex is never exclusively about the act, but also about how you approach it.”
— NPR
“Abundant with affairs, marriages, motherhood and our sexual sense of mortality it is a thoughtful read, a perfect aperitif on a summer evening. The stories penetrate a secret space in our brains we so often neglect: our sense of sexuality.”
— Forbes
“Jong has crafted candid accounts of love and passion from renowned female writers into a sensual and sensitive read.”
— Interview“[Sugar in My Bowl] runs the gamut from pornographic and hilarious to ironic and poignant. The result is a fun, quick, beach read, requiring as much or as little intellectual energy as the reader chooses to invest.”
— Chicago Sun-Times“You can take these women seriously, laugh, squirm, and put hand over mouth at their weird, exciting, uncomfortable, joyous tales of ardor, while still admiring the agility of their prose.”
— The Daily“Jong partners with 28 collaborators to create this fierce and refreshingly frank collection of personal essays, short fiction and cartoons celebrating female desire…A smart, scrumptiously sexy romp of a read.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“In this no-holds-barred collection of essays by ‘real women’ about ‘real sex,’ Jong has assembled an eclectic group of authors. [Sugar in My Bowl] is at its most profound when truth illuminates sex as a force in which these women found empowerment.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Jong cast a broad net to bring together women writing about sex. The resulting anthology attests the wide range of female sexual experience.”
— Booklist
“Sugar in My Bowl is proof positive that women can write seriously about sex and live to tell. It represents a remarkable smorgasbord of experience and perspective, and there’s a dish here for everyone.”
— Shelf Awareness
“These pieces honestly and thoughtfully explore sex and its role in our society from a woman’s perspective, from its place in youth to the golden years….with Sugar in My Bowl Jong has curated a consistently eye-opening and thoroughly readable volume.”
— LargeHearted Boy Blog
“The enticing, thoughtful Sugar in My Bowl proves to be a powerful exploration of women’s relationship to sex.”
— Entertainment Realm
“This book is a Thanksgiving dinner in which each story is a dish more scrumptious, more touchingly homemade than the last. All are so very different, but together they comprise a joyous feast: [an] examination-cum-celebration of female sex and sexuality. A must-read.”
— Gender Across Borders
“The passion, tragedy, and hope—offered by courageous women who express raw feelings that society tends to silence—will resonate.”
— Library Journal
“A refreshing and new contribution to literature about women’s sex lives.”
— HerCircleEzine.com
Some mommy blogs are upset that in Erica Jong’s Op-Ed in Sunday’s New York Times, she suggests women may have lost interest in sex, choosing kids and monogamy over lust and romance. Moms who have babies and young kids blog in response– they don’t have to make a choice, they have kids, they have sex, it’s all good.
Sugar In My Bowl features 29 women writers and includes fiction and essays about sex. Keep in mind that Jong is the one who edited this book, amplifying the voices and stories of 28 different writers with many views, experiences, and stories different that her own. Jong has never been one to tell women not to voice their own stories or opinions. Quite the opposite.
My story “Light Me Up” is about motherhood, monogamy, and sex. But I didn’t choose to write about sex in this context because sex is “too messy.” I wrote about it because sex is messy. As is marriage. And kids, too. Instead of concealing that, I wanted to write a story about it.
For too many female protagonists, the story always ends when the girl scores the ring; she disappears into narrative oblivion. But marriage is a great story, precisely because it turns out to be the opposite of ‘settling down.’ Marriage is more like jumping off a cliff. My story in the anthology is about a newlywed couple, deeply in love, and I threw some intense, but pretty universal challenges their way involving sex, money, and a new baby.
For women after Erica’s generation– I’m 42, Gen X– being single and sleeping around was pretty safe and normal, thanks to a lot of taboo busting by her’s. At least if you lived in New York or San Francisco and carried condoms. It wasn’t radical to be promiscuous, it was expected.
Picking just one guy to love and lust for, committing to him, having a baby with him– that is fucking terrifying. But I don’t think that’s because it’s a novelty. I think it’s because our generation, and those after us, see marriage more clearly for what it is: high-risk behavior.
We don’t marry because we need a male breadwinner or social acceptance. So why do we do it? Why do we, literally, put all of our eggs in one basket?
I think, for many of us, it’s because we’re brave romantics.
There’s a non-fiction book on this issue by Stephen Mitchell called Can Love Last? the Fate of Romance Over Time. Mitchell’s basic thesis is: contrary to popular belief, romance doesn’t fade naturally. We kill it. And we kill it because it’s terrifying to lust for and depend on the same person. The more you need your partner, the more courage is required to risk perpetually experiencing the roller coaster highs and lows that come with being desperately attracted to him. Mitchell argues that instead of committing to that dangerous ride, for a lifetime, no less, we flatten our romantic partners into something more stable.
In her bookVindication of Love, Cristina Nehring makes a similar point, taking on the belief that ‘love is blind.’ Nehring argues just the opposite, that it is at those moments when we’re in love, when we see the world through ‘rose-colored glasses’ that we perceive reality. She writes: “Love, far from being blind, is the very emotion that allows us to see.”
