Book Review: Rebecca Solnit “Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays.” Granta 2014

I am so pleased that I found this book- just what I needed, but so terrifying to see that so much of it has come to pass such as the repealing of Roe v Wade, the fundamental rights of women being stripped from them and still the horrifying crimes committed every minute against women, such as rapes, mutilations, coercion and violence. So much violence. I am pleased that she rails against coercion in all forms, including within relationships and marriages. It is not OK and never will be to have sex with someone who very very clearly is not interested (not even a little bit.) This phrase stuck with me: “Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or will decline from it.” I wonder, is this what my son believed, my gorgeous son and first born who took his own life?

Thank you to Superfaststories for publishing my microfiction TW suicide

Thank you to DarkWinter Literary Magazine for publishing my short story “Old Mrs Twaddle” 

https://www.darkwinterlit.com/post/old-mrs-twaddle-by-lynda-scott-araya

Invisible Romans

Book review: Invisible Romans. Prostitutes, Outlaws, Slaves, Gladiators, Ordinary Women...The Romans that History Forgot, by Robert Knapp, Profile Books, Ltd., UK 2013

Sadly, I was sucked in by its glorious title and this book has, in my opinion many flaws, such as bald statements for which too little evidence is offered and ones that I even found to be offensive as they were so dogmatic, sexist and outdated. For example, he states unequivocally that “when a woman internalized this teaching [patriarchal standards of housekeeping,] she gained a certain steadiness in her life.” However, despite my misgivings, the book is meticulously researched and does offer much information about the lives of these people.

Before You Knew My Name

Book Review: Before You Knew My Name, by Jacqueline Bublitz, Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2021

This book is an absolute masterpiece and I loved every minute of it, gulping it down in large chunks, laughing, crying, worrying that the story was going to go in directions that I really didn’t want it to... and I was gripped until the very last page. So much resonates with me: the abuse - “when a man discovers where to hurt you, the way he touches you changes. He won’t be able to stop himself from pressing hard against that spot, no matter how many times it makes you cry,” the insight -”they never doubt we need them more than they need us,” the pain “tomorrow, I will be dead,” and childhoods gone wrong.

Bublitz has a profound understanding of death and of the human condition: “How easy it is...to assume you are the cause of another person’s discomfort or disdain. when the reality is, we all show up with our night befores, our midnight hours, our too-early mornings.”

I strongly recommend reading this book and then reading it again.

Book Review: Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology, Edited by Mikaela Nyman and Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen, Victoria University of Wellington Press, 2021

This is a book that I would not normally have chosen to buy. I know almost nothing about Vanuatu, but, as this year is the year when I am trying to read at least 52 books, some of which sit outside my comfort zone, I thought that I would give it a go. I am so pleased that I did and, coincidentally, Nyman has now become my mentor for the NZSA Mentorship programme for 2022!

Both unfortunately, and fortunately, this book resonates strongly with me. Feminist strong women, stories of their achievements and, in some cases, their private lives, including domestic violence. Telstar Jimmy’s “Their Lives Matter More,” reminds me of the proud defiance of Maya Angelou’s poetry and, of a video doing the rounds on social media: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cda2Nouohp6/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

and I also enjoyed Sharyn Wobur’s poem “A Strong Poem.” which is affirmative and powerful, ending with the imperative “Woman, tell yourself YES. I am a strong woman.” Such an important message and maybe one that I should stick up on my wall to remind myself that I am not who some men want me to be: diminished, not me. Elsie Nalyal Molou in “This Body is Mine,” further reminds me that “This body is mine!/Do not tell me that my jeans are too tight for you to bear.” Barriers and being clear about bodily autonomy is so important and we, as women, need to be united and strong for “so long as there is discrimination, violence and cruelty against women, I cannot...”

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota

This powerful story revolve around three young women who all live together in their mother-in-laws house. She has refused to allow her three sons to disclose their identity to their wives. Therefore, as the women go about their daily drudgery, they speculate about the three men, wonder who is the one who comes to them in the dark nights. Inevitably, a man and a woman fall in love but are they husband and wife, and if not, how will their stories and lives continue? This is a book well worth reading.

Confident Women by Tori Telfer

This book covers the stories (based on fact) of at least 13 women who, by various means, including magic, spiritualism, seduction, manage to swindle, mostly men, out of their dignity and money. Each story presents the woman as strong, confident in her abilities to deceive, and clever. A good read and something that I would not usually choose.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter. What a book! I cried all of the way through it. Such an honest portrayal of the messiness that is death and then grief. Porter uses the character of a crow to represent grief, and he early on says that he will not leave until the little family, torn apart by the death of the mother, is ready. Crow is grief but he also reminds me of the crow in Shawshank Redemption, which symbolises hope. 

Porter’s short book is narrated by the father, who grieves his wife and is thrust into the role of primary caregiver, the two sons, who speak as one, and the crow. The book, although it deals with grief is tempered by humour and the exploits of the crow. A very good read.

Book Review:

Landfall 242 Aotearoa NZ Arts and Letters

Edited by Lynley Edmeades and published by Otago University Press, November 2021

As usual, this issue was an absolute masterpiece of literary achievements, although, I must confess, that I was not really drawn (ha ha, see what I did there?) to the illustrations. Maybe, I am simply not, as my cousin said, when gifting me Emma Neale’s The Pink Jumpsuit, intellectual enough?

This time, it was the poems that most of all struck a chord with me, especially those with a focus on death, loss and mourning. Ruth Arnison’s poem, “Winter Calls,” is the standout piece for me. The narrator describes a visit to a dying friend or relative where they “conversed in the present tense.” Later, she walks through the Botanic Garden, as I have too so many times, “kicking autumn skywards.” She knows, as do the birds, that “winter calls,”

Then there is “Crematorium” by Megan Kitching in which she plays on both the sounds and look of the word, “the rounded o to the i

come to rest at the end, the em, the um” I recall standing in the crematorium carpark in Christchurch ready, but never ready, for my son’s funeral, the ending, the beginning, the beginning of the end. The um of it all...what happened and what to do now and the cross, white and stark against a startling blue sky, the shadowed dark blue hearse in the background, the foreground of it all.

Jenna Heller outlines grief in her list poem, “Kintsukuroi” and the mess of it all.

One of the short stories that I enjoyed in this issue include Diane Comer’s “Son, Sword, Chocolate” as the narrator’s son talks incessantly while she drives him through town, just as my son, just a few years ago, did the same. Sometimes, although he is almost 21 years old, he still does. Soccer. Soccer. Soccer. 

Book Review: As Long as I Hope to Live: the Moving True Story of a Jewish Girl and Her Friends Under Nazi Occupation,” by Claudia Carli.

Published by Hodder & Stoughton, 2021

This fictional book is based on the recovered autograph book of a young Jewish girl and Carli attempts to recreate the lives and final stories of the mainly young people and fellow students and playmates of her. Although her research is meticulous and far-ranging, I, unfortunately did not really enjoy the book. I think that this was because it did not, for me, at least, capture the true horror of the Nazi occupation and the Holocaust as it skipped between autograph entries and different characters which made it seem to lack coherence and cohesion as a whole. I was conscious throughout that the words and events had been ‘pinned’ onto the historical identities and that the text was a fiction, despite its historical foundation.

Billy Connolly Windswept and Interesting My Autobiography, published by Two Roads, 2021

A Book Review

I bought this book for my husband for Christmas and read it straight after him. What a fantastic book! Connolly’s wit, intellect and quirky nature shines on every page. He admits, for example that he has “always had a problem with sex” and that sex “is a very, very important thing. Terrible stuff happens when people are fuckless.” He also devotes a number of paragraphs to recounting in detail the three times that he was vomited on by three different women. 

His autobiography, therefore, does not shy away from many of Connolly’s less endearing traits and escapades as, true to form, he tells it like it is, or at least was: “I have violent tendencies myself....early on, I found there were quite a few people who needed a smack in the mouth, and I tended to oblige....A healthy smack in the mouth does a power of good,”

The book is a testimony to his career spanning decades of crazy antics, lots of drinking and many, many performances, all of which he tailored to the local audiences. In Dunedin, New Zealand, he once carried on into the next day at the insistence of the crowd. New Zealand is one of his particular affections and, in a comparison between Australia and New Zealand, he notes that “the worst that will happen to you in New Zealand is that you will scrape your toe on one of those wee ferns.”

I really enjoyed reading this book and learning more about Connolly’s back-story, his affinity to different countries and cities. His optimism and humour are up-lifting.

This year I am going to read (and write about) at least 52 books, challenging myself both to read more widely and more often. First up: Vanda Symon's Containment, first published by Penguin Books (NZ) IN 2009.

SET in my home town of Dunedin, and opening with scenes of looting at Aramoana where a container ship has tipped over, the novel, with Detective Constable Sam Shephard as the main character, gripped me right from the start. I read the entire book in a day and was captivated by Symon's gritty realism, her believable and well-rounded characters and her references to all the different parts of Dunedin, all of which I know well.

Along with Sam, I journeyed again to the majestic sad dignity of Aramoana; to the sodden leaflet-strewn streets of the central campus, all decorated with old supermarket trolleys and beer bottles, and on to the leafy genteel streets of St Clair where once I sat on a leather couch at a jeweler's house to choose diamonds for my wedding ring.

I imagined Sam, back at work but still unwell, feeling the slight tilt and sway of the police station and, having worked in different male-dominated and misogynistic workplaces, I could identify with the way she started at the jibes and insults of some of her colleagues.

Symon's fast-paced plot, the complexities of her characters, and the way in which she used dialogue so skilfully made me want to keep reading to find out who did the crime. I was pleased that there were twists and surprises along the way and that I could not guess.

This was the first text of Symon's that I have read but it definitely won't be the last.

The Struggle is Real.

The week began with International Women’s Day when inboxes and social media feeds were flooded with positive affirmations; “fight like a girl” slogans gracing clips of women doing martial arts, women of all shapes, sizes and colour climbing mountains, loving family, breaking glass ceilings and climbing corporate ladders that should rather be dismantled and burned. However, it quickly became a grotesque showcase for all the reasons why women still need a day, a week, a year, a lifetime to also highlight discrimination and unmitigated horror.

In America, Meghan Markle calmly outlined the misogyny and racism of “The Firm,” and very many people decried her stance: she was entitled, privileged, seeking attention, outspoken, rather than being simply a person, a woman pleading for compassion and opening about her mental health issues.

In Britain, Sarah Everard was murdered during a walk home from her friend’s by a serving police officer. She had spent fifteen minutes of that walk talking on the phone to her boyfriend, no doubt following the advice that she grew up with: call a friend, be ready to run, have your keys in your hand, don’t dress to draw attention to yourself. At protest rallies held over the weekend, women were held down by police. One dramatic photo shows a woman held face down on the ground by male officers, head uplifted, eyes pleading above her face mask. It is a photo that has had many iterations throughout time. A suffragette’s face muddied in the streets, petticoats deliberately raised as she dared to voice her rights to vote, a young Maori mother having her baby uplifted from a maternity ward in New Zealand; women held down, held back by men.

In New Zealand, I sit and read in one morning of an Australian man laughing and filming a policewoman die after he had run her and three of her colleagues down. He rained down expletives on her as she breathed her last: she had ruined his expensive car; he had only been going to buy sushi. The crash, and so her death, was her fault. I also read of a man, who had breached his electronic bail, murder his ex-partner in a fit of jealousy. The police were aware that he was not meeting his bail conditions but had not followed it up, just as in England police had known of indecency complaints made against the officer who killed Sarah Everard.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Ms. Jacinda Ardern, has just been made a Lego figurine to commemorate International Women’s Day, yet, when she announced her pregnancy, she was confronted with diatribes of misogyny. Men openly wondered whether she would be a better fit in the kitchen, looking after her partner. How, they questioned, would she ever be able to keep her mind on the important matters of state when breastfeeding a child? Yet, she did and manged a country through the devastation of earthquakes, a terrorist attack that killed 51 people, a fatal volcanic eruption and tsunami warnings. However, despite our strong feminist leader, the fact that New Zealand was the first to grant women the right to vote in 1893, we have one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the western world. My father and ex-husband were perpetrators and now, each day, I wait for my husband to turn, to call me a bitch or worse, to label me as deluded, hysterical, or even a rabid feminist. It all must stop.

#internationalwomensday

#feminism

#misogyny

Not being OK does NOT make you: hysterical, irrational, overwhelmed, ill, mad, deluded, confused f×××××××ing useless, convoluted or any other misogynistic put down nor is it an excuse for people to say that you are and that they need to "make allowances for you."As for "walking on egg shells..." do people the realise the strength of one or the potential that it holds?

Today, my interview on grief and the appalling treatment that I, and so many women endure was published. Apart from my name being misspelled and another spelling mistake, I am pleased with the article:

https://www.oamarumail.co.nz/community/its-ok-to-be-awkward/

#grief

#suicide

#misogyny

The NZ Prime Minister has been made a Lego figurine...

yet, New Zealand continues to have one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the western world. We were the first western country to give women the right to vote in 1893, but still men on a daily basis deny women their autonomy and their voice. I am often told by my husband that my voice is too shrill, too loud, that I speak too much and ‘overtalk.’

My husband and I have just brought a second house which we plan to rent out. The real estate agent is a man-child and is only about 24. Although it was ME who organised a builder to provide a builder’s report and who spoke to him about the house, the real estate agent STILL rang my husband (at work) to clarify what I had said. This is even though I initiated the purchase, I looked at the house first and it is ONLY my contact details/those of our business on the contract documents.

I made it clear that, since it was a joint purchase, both of us needed to be contacted BUT the real estate agent did it again. He emailed and phoned my husband to tell HIM that the house purchase was finalised! I sent him this message. Of course, he has not replied: 

 Hi I________, Please use the ____________ email to communicate house matters, rather than call ________ during work hours. This means that a)we both are informed regarding the process of the sale and b) that the correct contact for the sale. For business or matters involving both of us, we always use the _______________address and my phone number/ the _______________ number. You have these details. I contacted the builder yet ____________was then contacted.  Today, I did not receive notification that the house had officially gone unconditional despite talking to the lawyer earlier in the day and the purchase being a purchase under both our names. It is really important that all people are communicated to equally. Our lawyer, for instance, uses either both of our personal emails or our business emails. Thank you for your consideration in this matter. Regards, ____________

I #Choosetochallenge