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Reviews

Book Review: Revealing–The Underrated Power of Oversharing by Leslie John

My Book Review for the Washington Independent Review of Books

Turns out, TMI isn’t always a bad thing.

Finding the Goldilocks zone between oversharing and simply sharing confounds many of us. Avoiding the inevitable wincing cringe attack that follows an unreciprocated share does similarly so. Luckily, Harvard Business School professor Leslie John is here to school us in the art of sharing just the right amount in her book Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing.

John makes a compelling argument that withholding can keep us from deeper friendships, greater success at work, finding a partner, and not to mention, it is just plain bad for our health! Drawing on over a decade of research, the book shares moving personal stories, including from John’s own life, which makes sense because the things we are most often worried about sharing feel especially singular and private. When we share them, hopefully others reciprocate, and so we deepen our relationships and find (hopefully) the ever-elusive “good life.” 

Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing offers much scientific evidence for how to make disclosure decisions bravely and wisely, not just recklessly oversharing but rather thoughtfully revealing. One major finding is that people often underlook the downsides of concealing–a function of our tendency to overestimate the strength and duration of emotional events, John ably demonstrates.

In fact, rather than being concerned about TMI, we should be equally if not more concerned about TLI–too little information. “The sting of TMI fades faster than we think and is replaced by the ache of TLI.” A body of research indicates that people most often regret things they didn’t do (60%, in fact). We tend to underestimate the cost of keeping a secret, which is linked with negative physical and mental health. James Pennebaker’s 1980s research on expressive writing vividly illustrates the therapeutic benefits of self disclosure, for example.

So, how do we handle disclosure decisions with confidence and aplomb? Well, John shows us that, yes, some people are seemingly naturally better at it because they have a high disclosure flexibility–the ability to dial openness up and down depending on the situation. The rest of us might just have to rely on the good old four box pro-con decision matrix that, believe it or not, was “invented” by Benjamin Franklin when he was giving a friend advice on relocating–yes, pedestrian as it might sound! John’s demonstrates a decision aid that is a smidgeon more complicated because it also considers the con of too little information, as well as the con of too much information. Obviously, you’re not going to have a full four-quadrant reckoning for every decision, but it may help in making some big ones.

Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing also points out that some decisions feel significantly more difficult than others. When a decision is reversible, we stay in a state of cognitive and emotional limbo. A decision to reveal is irreversible, but one to conceal is. Withholding, while seemingly safer, keeps the decision perpetually open leading to a cycle of rumination and delay.

The book features chapters on disclosing in the workplace, in friendships, and in relationships. In that chapter, perhaps not too surprisingly, John suggests that staying mysterious, at least initially, is best because sharing a lot off the bat may make you seem unselective. The research of Dr. Mike Norton found that online dating profiles with the least information garnered the most interest. Could this be affirming the old saw that familiarity breeds contempt? Norton’s research shows that although people believe that learning more about others leads to greater liking, more information about others leads, on average, to less liking. In other words, ambiguity—lacking information about another—leads to liking, whereas familiarity—acquiring more information— can breed contempt. When you put a lot of stuff up there, prospective dates will find things they really love and relate to, but the more info you have, the more chances they’ll find stuff that makes them think, “That person’s not for me.” And it turns out that seeing something that you can’t relate to or is dissimilar to you in those early stages is more of a turnoff than finding points of similarity is a turn-on.

Being vulnerable and revealing ourselves is clearly a part of the eudaimonic pursuit, but finding a balance between too much and too little isn’t easy. Luckily, we don’t need some special disclosure dilemma solving savancy to get there, this book evinces.

Reviews

Book Review: Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle by Natan Last

My book review for the Washington Independent Review of Books

An overly wordy ode to word games and the nerds who love them.

As a cruciverbalist czarina (you try coming up with a better alliteration!), I thought I’d be down, up, and generally all over Across the Universe, Natan Last’s celebration of all things crossword. Instead, I found it nothing short of a Sisyphean slog. This book is not so much a love song to crossword puzzles as it is a highly intellectual but not-so-intelligible serenade by an author who enjoys the sound of his own warbling a bit too much.

Last’s facility with crosswordese and language is unparalleled, but it also often requires a rereading of his serpentine circumlocution, which gives the book a noxious air of “the gentleman doth prolix too much.” Take this sentence, for example, which describes the moans puzzle-solvers often utter at puns: “But a groan is not the body implicating fairness, only taste; ‘I see what you did there’ is a registering of annoyance just as much as a literal acknowledgment.” Or try this passage, in which the author comments on his 2009 summer internship with New York Times Puzzlemaster Will Shortz:

“The environment offered, or we projected a sense that survival required a leery competence, one correlated with age, responsibility: riding the subway alone, knowing which strangers to talk to, and so on. But fluency with highbrow media — of which the Times puzzle was an exemplum — could act like a cultural fake ID.”

It’s a bit much.

Still, stories from the then-18-year-old intern’s experience are among the most interesting parts of the book, including anecdotes about how the “avuncular” Shortz eats like a “latchkey kid” and names Green Day as his favorite band. (We will forgive Last for describing buildings in Manhattan as being “huddled like gargoyles made of terra-cotta and limestone, reliefs and colonettes like ears leaning to ingest the scuttlebutt from City Hall.”)

Across the Universe also explores the crossword’s impact on and reflection of popular culture. On the origins of the puzzle in 1913, Last writes, “Whatever its narcotic middle-class charm, the crossword — like many American triumphs — is the invention of an immigrant, Arthur Wynne.” Given the puzzle’s burgeoning popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, a moral panic of sorts spread that people would be too busy solving crosswords to function; the New York Times would not even publish them until the 1940s.

Chapters on “crossword diplomacy” and crossword politics are also compelling. In “The Melting Pot of the Crossword,” Last tells the story of crossword constructor Mangesh Ghogre of Mumbai, a recipient of an EB-1A visa (the “super special person” visa) for his skill. Ghogre started doing crosswords to broaden his English vocabulary. “He could grok a puzzle’s linguistic quirks even if, some eight thousand miles away from the US, he didn’t always understand their context.” This chapter captures the magic of crosswords so perfectly.

Last’s discussion of clue politics is also amusing. In 2022, the answer “clean coal” to the clue “Greener energy source” stirred up quite a bit of dust. And a crossword I recently did had the clue “Creator of some bubbles,” with “corporate greed” as the answer. Ha!

Above all, the book is an ebullient celebration of crosswordese — a language replete with florid wordplay, puns, palindromes, and various other jocular antics. Seasoned cruciverbalists know, for instance, that the words oboe, epee, and ocher often make appearances (oboe, in fact, has been used in over 200 New York Times crosswords). Another clue I see quite often is “a real humdinger”: beaut.

Ethnicity-centric clues also hold their own — such as “bhindi masala component”: okra or atta, the flour used in chapattis — as does Princess Leia, who reigns supreme in crosswords (and for whom Last came up with an especially good groan-inducing clue: “Film character known for her buns”).

Across the Universe, then, will be a fun read for some, although it requires quite a bit of mettle to muddle through Last’s overstuffed prose. But it will never be as much fun as doing an actual crossword. Luckily, it’s not trying to be…I don’t think.

Reviews

Book Review: Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together by Dean Spade

My review for the Washington Independent Review of Books

Meaningful bonds don’t always involve romance

Love in a F*cked-Up World is an expansive engagement with the axiom that “the personal is political,” riffing on the way in which the public and the private merge and emerge in our lives and placing romance as inherently political — and, hence, as a place for liberation and resistance. Written by trans-liberation, prison-abolition, and mutual-aid activist Dean Spade, the book has something for fellow activists and “soldiers of love” (cue Sade) alike. As someone who deals in revolution, it’s not surprising that he aims here to reconfigure the way we think about (and think in) relationships.

The book begins with Spade, an associate professor at the Seattle University School of Law, contextualizing the source of the vignettes he features: Many of the stories come from activist circles, where “it’s not surprising relationships develop between organizers.” However, some activists “find the courage to confront mainstream societal norms yet are unable to treat romantic partners with generosity and care.” But this isn’t a volume only for people “in the life.” Rather, Love in a F*cked-Up World positions relationships as “a site of transformation, expression, and community building.”

Spade doesn’t hold a particularly fond view of the current crop of relationship self-help books, characterizing them, I would argue, far too sweepingly as “outdated, often sexist ideas about sex and romance” with “very few that don’t focus on white, straight, upper-class people.” Yes, his book is quite different, but it’s not necessarily genre-bending, either. It is, he states, “for and about people who are motivated to collectively resist normative cultural expectations, one relationship at a time.”

But what does that resistance look like? For starters, it involves exploding the myth that “tells us that romantic relationships are the most important relationships in our lives and that they are the place where we become complete, satisfied, loved, and safe.” This myth has four tenets, which are all ripe for disruption:

  • “A committed romantic or sexual relationship is the most important relationship.”
  • “There is something wrong with you if you aren’t in one.”
  • “Real love lasts forever.”
  • “The right relationship will make you happy.”

Each chapter begins with a vignette and includes exercises and reflection questions. One motif that unites the topics is oscillation; Spade uses a pendulum analogy and diagrams to illustrate the back-and-forth nature of the concept. For example, there is the relationship dynamic wherein one person is demanding, while the other is distancing. Or, one is anxious, and the other is avoidant.

A major type of relational dynamic is fueled by early-childhood experiences (the Freudians may be muttering, “I told you so”). It often manifests in one of the most common patterns in a relationship: One person’s fear of abandonment is activated, causing the other’s fear of engulfment to kick in. Spade wants us to understand such patterns so we can recognize them in ourselves and others.

As mentioned, the book underscores the importance of creating all kinds of relationships, not just romantic ones. To help with that, Spade offers concrete exercises, some of which are reliant on the principles of nonviolent communication, which encourages us to share observations and feelings rather than accusations and generalizations. For example, saying, “You did not text me back, and I felt worried that you don’t want to hang out,” is more productive than stating, “You’re inconsiderate, and you don’t care about me as much as you care about you.”

(The book isn’t all seriousness and sobriety, though. I was chuckling at Spade’s description of “chasing that new relationship energy.”)

There are a couple ways in which Love in a F*cked-Up World defies the self-help norm. One is in its urging of us to get nuanced and get real. “We have to approach both our relationships with other people and our own healing with a humble outlook and reasonable expectations,” writes Spade. Just like the pendulum, our feelings swing, too, and we can’t expect “dramatic makeovers” or overnight transformations in ourselves or our relationships.

Another is in the way the book illustrates that the political impacts the personal. Structural forces indelibly affect our private lives; romance cannot be truly separate from politics. Resisting normative cultural expectations and rejecting cultural scripts is a way for all of us to be activists, one relationship at a time. As Spade reminds us:

“The romance myth is a lie. There is no happily-ever-after coming. There never was. Instead, there is the possibility of being here for what’s here. Of treating others and ourselves as well as we can.”

Reviews

Book Review: Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos

My review for the Washington Independent Review of Books

An engrossing look at Yevgeny Prighozin’s soldiers-for-hire.

Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos is a gripping, research-tome-sized account of the origins and ascent of Russia’s infamous private-military company, easily one of the world’s most notorious mercenary outfits (after Blackwater, of course). Aptly titled, the book makes the cogent argument that such “private” companies can be (and are) wielded by the state, as long as that collusion remains veiled in plausible deniability.

Author Candace Rondeaux, an award-winning journalist, public-policy scholar, and director of Future Frontlines at the New America Foundation, gives us in Putin’s Sledgehammer an expansive chronicle, making connections few have traced, some gained by analyzing 130,000 leaked files from the many shell companies of Yevgeny Prighozin, Wagner’s former head, who died in a suspicious 2023 plane crash. The detailed analysis reads more like a breathless spy thriller than an academic exploration, owing not only to Rondeaux’s brilliance but also to her personal connection to the material: She was a student in St. Petersburg around the time Prighozin first met Putin, then mayor of the city.

The narrative begins in 1991, after the collapse of Russia’s Communist Party-led government. The planned economy of the post-Soviet state is in freefall, and a new and violent market logic (aka neoliberalism) is wreaking financial havoc. Mafia rules the streets, and oligarchs form behemoth, Frankenstein-esque companies in the chaos of widespread privatization.

Following the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1991, the Kremlin cut its military roughly in half. Soldiers returning home found almost no services to help them transition back to civilian life. “The downsizing created a huge pool of disillusioned and unemployed men trained to kill,” explains Rondeaux. Many of Russia’s future mercenaries met in informal, non-state-created veterans unions. Some became security for oligarchs, some worked for the mafia, and some ended up in prison — all spaces which would become important vectors for Russia’s nascent mercenary industry. The intricate jockeying for power at the state and private level birthed the Wagner Group.

Putin’s Sledgehammer really stands apart from other books on Wagner in its thorough, nuanced take on Prighozin. The public perception of him comes in disparate, singular labels: a former small-time criminal; a wildly successful hotdog salesman; a restaurateur-turned-government-caterer fondly referred to as “Putin’s Chef”; an internet-disinformation maverick; and, finally, leader of a formidable global mercenary group that eventually marched to Moscow, posing a first-of-its-kind threat to Putin’s rule.

And, indeed, Prighozin was all those things, but Rondeaux truly fleshes out this complicated, mercurial character. We ultimately come to see Prighozin as a marketing and entrepreneurial master (a doggedly hardworking one, at that), an image that belies the brash, uniformed strongman seen most recently before his death.

For example, Prighozin’s culinary acumen is often overlooked, his success as “Putin’s Chef” chalked up to favoritism. But the book tells a different story. In writing about the now-famous Russian state dinner at the Peterhof Palace on May 31, 2003, that hosted George W. Bush and other G8 leaders, Rondeaux paints the scene in mouth-watering detail:

“Sumptuous blinis stuffed with caviar and cream were served. Prighozin had spent nearly two years planning the menus and training the waitstaff on the intricacies of silver-service catering for heads of state. It was all part of the artful diplomatic ballet that Putin and the Kremlin had choreographed as part of Russia’s bid to return to the center of the world stage.”

But that return came to a halt after Russia’s takeover of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014. Putin’s Sledgehammer’s argues that although this was a turning point in lifting the veil on the state’s global backstage-military maneuvers, Putin had begun to see Russia as pitted in a Cold War 2.0 against the U.S., and private military companies were the most expedient means of waging it.

“There is always a [mercenary-for-hire] middleman [like Wagner] in the US-Russia conflict,” Rondeaux writes. “The central tension had always been over who in Russia would reap the greatest share of profits and political rewards from Prigozhin’s successes and who would pay the price for his failures.”

In 2016, U.S. and E.U. sanctions began to bite at the Russian economy. Putin had long been fixated on the idea that oil and gas were his country’s pathway back to wealth and to a commanding place in the world order. As Rondeaux narrates in the cleverly titled chapter “Guns, Gas, and Oil” (a satirical nod to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, a 1997 book challenging notions of Eurasian superiority), the Wagner Group emerged as the perfect solution for evading sanctions. By embedding itself in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, and Mali, Wagner enabled the Russian oil-and-gas industry to expand outward. Similarly, Russia is a prime exporter of arms in the world, second only to America. Wagner, with its plausible-deniability cover of not being a state actor, made sure Russia had arms clients in the Middle East and Africa, sanctions be damned.

And once again, Prighozin, ever the diligent employee (and employer), ensured that natural resources kept flowing freely. When the group took over the Hayan gas plant in Syria, says Rondeaux, “Wagner didn’t just deploy fighters: they also flew in geologists, engineers, and fire control experts.” Prighozin also hired anthropologists and other “academic types” when he launched the now-infamous Internet Research Agency, the entity behind the 2016 U.S. election interference and a worldwide-disinformation campaigner of unrivaled sophistication and influence. To dismiss the IRA as a “troll farm” would be a gross mischaracterization; the book tells of Prighozin’s recruitment of bright young polyglots from Russia’s top schools, who had a keen understanding of the issues du jour and knew how to amplify prejudices.

With the war in Ukraine, Prighozin would become even more important: The Wagner Group was an expedient solution to Russia’s manpower problem. “For Putin to call for a full mobilization would have been tantamount to admitting failure, that the war was a war, not a special military operation, and that victory would not come as swiftly or cheaply as he had promised,” Rondeaux explains. Until its downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 — which left 298 civilians dead — Wagner had been mostly a (fearsome) battlefield rumor. Soon after, it sledgehammered its way into notoriety, helped by Prighozin’s ability to deliver pithy, fiery speeches on social media.

Putin’s Sledgehammer is a seminal work of incisive insight not only about the Wagner Group and its late charismatic leader but also about modern mercenaryism and why we should care about it. Rondeaux draws parallels few others have, the kind that could only come from a Russophile like herself. The famous quote of sociologist Charles Tilly that “war made the state, and the state made war” is borne out in her riveting story of the murky, byzantine ties between the state and its mercenaries (or, perhaps, the mercenaries and their state).

 

Reviews

Book Review: Fierce Desires by Rebecca L. Davis

My review for The Washington Independent Review of Books

Rebecca L. Davis’ Fierce Desires is impressively comprehensive in scope and depth, offering an account that spans four centuries of American views on sexuality. Building on John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman’s 1988 Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, Davis’ book examines the same history through the lens of the popular zeitgeist, dispatching the notion that the currently “fiercely contested” questions about sexuality and gender are, in fact, new.

The author’s thesis is that matters of gender nonconformity, non-heterosexual sex, permissible sexual behavior, and birth control have been around for ages, but that we’ve shifted away from “interpreting sexual behavior as a reflection of personal preferences or values to defining sexuality as something that makes a person who they are.”

While it’s debatable whether she proves her thesis, the book’s breadth is incontestable. Although Davis’ narrative device of devoting entire chapters to one obscure person — a colonial Virginia indentured servant named Thomas/Thomasine Hall, anyone? — is a little clunky, she nevertheless has a knack for choosing topics whose popular perception belies the historical reality. For example, she explores how Puritans were actually very fond of female pleasure within the context of marriage. And though they viewed sexual intercourse as necessary for procreation, they also believed sex was an important way to build a loving bond. Indeed, there’s precedent for long-ago husbands being censured for coming up short on their “duties of desire.”

The chapter on enslaved peoples’ relationships is particularly poignant and tackles that story in a trenchant way. Similarly, Davis always has an eye toward how race affected attitudes regarding sexuality, tracing, for instance, how defenders of slavery weaponized the specious claim that Black women were loose compared to allegedly chaste and faithful “respectable white women.”

Queer relations also receive excellent coverage here. “Suspicions about what went on in those beds might occasion gossip,” Davis writes, “but same sex and queer relationships of the 18th and 19th centuries were generally tolerated so long as they were not flaunted or disruptive to neighbors.”

The author makes the interesting point that in the 18th and 19th centuries, many queer people didn’t classify their desires or themselves as such. Neither law nor language included or excluded same-sex relationships. Furthermore, she argues, a person’s gender, not the object of their desire, determined social acceptability. This is why lesbianism was tolerated as long as the woman didn’t attempt to assert the privileges of manhood. (Patriarchy was strong back then, just as it is now.)

Davis has an especially fascinating chapter on groundbreaking sexologist Alfred Kinsey, as well as chapters on Gay Liberation Front cofounder Kiyoshi Kuromiya and pleasure activist Betty Dodson. She also engages with ideas of motherhood, delineating how, after the American Revolution, a new ideal emerged; women were encouraged to have fewer children, whom they could then better educate as “future citizens of the nation.”

Fierce Desires shines as a robust, well-researched, and expansive history of American sexuality, one written in non-academese. Its core argument — that our gender-centric system gave way, in the early 20th century, to one in which sexuality is considered fundamental to a person’s identity — gets a bit lost, but Davis’ ultimate assertion that sexuality has moved from being a reflection of social or religious status to being a marker of individuality still rings true.

Reviews

Book Review: You Just Need to Lose Weight by Aubrey Gordon

My book review for the Washington Independent Review of Books

Co-host of the “Maintenance Phase” podcast and Self magazine’s “Your Fat Friend” columnist, “You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths about Fat People is an urgent, well-sourced fatifesto ready to be nailed to the door of our collective fridge. In 20 pithy chapters, Gordon offers historical background, current research, reflection questions, and “opportunities for action,” leading the reader toward meaningful allyship and advocacy.

Fatness is so feared in our culture that a Yale University study found 46 percent of 4,283 respondents would rather give up a year of life than be fat; 15 percent would prefer to be severely depressed. “You Just Need to Lose Weight” unflinchingly pushes back against those attitudes and dispels popular myths, laying bare the speciousness of “body and health” weight-loss arguments. Cloaked as prescriptive and factual, these arguments hide a dark underbelly: fat bias, one of the last socially accepted prejudices.

In her incisive, robustly sourced treatise, Gordon takes on everything from the influential “calories in, calories out” paradigm (based on a 1959 study), to the notion that losing weight is a choice, to the accusation that fat acceptance glorifies obesity. She rejects outright the idea that being fat is a failure of willpower. “According to the NIH,” she writes, “very fat women — like me — have a 0.8 percent chance of becoming thin in our lifetimes.”

The book takes a decisively intersectionalist stance. In tracing fat activism’s roots in the work of fat Black women during the civil- and welfare-rights movements, Gordon encourages the reader to connect fat discrimination with all the many isms: racism, classism, healthism, and ableism. She offers, too, an outstanding overview of the kinds of protest actions people have taken, including the first Fat-In (organized in 1967 by radio host Steve Post).

“You Just Need to Lose Weight” also deftly interrogates how body positivity essentially defanged the more “radical” fat-justice movement. The personal accounts in the book are especially poignant. Gordon shares a story of being called a “fat lady” by a kid whose mom gets furious when Gordon tells the kid that she is, in fact, a fat lady. Gordon eloquently explains how avoiding the word “fat” continues to “stigmatize my body and insist that describing my skin must be an insult.” She elaborates:

“For me, and for many, many fat people, reclaiming the word fat is about reclaiming our very bodies, starting with the right to name them. Fat isn’t a negative aspect of one’s body any more than tall or short is. It can, and should, be a neutral descriptor.”

Similarly, the oft-heard laments “I feel so fat” or “This dress makes me look fat” create the impression that fat is a feeling. Gordon has a helpful solution: Ask yourself for consent before engaging in negative body talk. Notice how you describe other people’s bodies and whether their size is relevant to your discussion of them. Stop treating thinness like an accomplishment and fatness like a failure. (The example of congratulating ill people on the “bright side” of now being thin is a glaring example of this sickening fixation.) And try to see food for what it is: a comfort, a celebration, a pleasure, or simply fuel.

Ultimately, “You Just Need to Lose Weight” lays bare Western society’s treatment of fatness as a moral failing. Gordon’s manifesto is essential reading in the intersectional conversation around fat acceptance and provides an excellent roadmap toward fat activism.

 

Reviews

Book Review: Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos

My review for the Washington Independent Review of Books

Melissa Febos’ latest essay collection, Body Work, is “not a craft book in the traditional sense,” she states. Nor is it a flowery ode to the writer’s life. Instead, it’s a practical, clear-eyed take on the intimate (and intricate) connection between our bodies and our bodies of work. Throughout, Febos beautifully narrates the ways in which writing is “integrated into the fundamental movements of life,” asking readers to go beyond writing about their lives to writing their lives.The author, whose previous works include Whip Smart, Abandon Me, and Girlhood, is a keen social critic, and she makes a cogent argument as to why women’s writing about trauma has been dismissed as unartistic, trite, and self-indulgent:

“Resistance to memoirs about trauma is always in part a resistance to movements of social justice.”

Indeed, while male navel-gazing has been valorized as the kindling for many a Great American Novel, when the introspection comes from women, it is scorned as so much whining no one wants to hear about yet again. (No wonder the words “histrionics” and “hysteria” sound so similar.) Febos makes an impassioned defense of self-reflection as a subversive act that personifies the notion “the personal is political.” Further, the freedom it creates benefits not just the writer but society. From it, we all wrest a bit more license to be honest about our truths.

Her essays are well researched, and much of the excitement here comes from the way in which she curates writing from Native and other non-mainstream voices. In “In Praise of Navel Gazing,” Febos discusses the work of social psychologist James Pennebaker, who found that writing about trauma is healing. She also examines how her “own internalized sexism” shaped her view of what a “real” writer does — craft fiction in the traditional American sense. This essay made me think about similar criticisms leveled against actors for “playing themselves” and thus “not acting.”

As you might guess, her chapter on how to write about sex is less about the mechanics and more about refusing to be shamed into silence. Her inclusion of an Audre Lorde essay on what sex actually is — and it’s not just sex — is especially well developed. When someone in an audience asks Febos if she feels any shame writing about the act, she responds, “I am shameless.” But shameless is not the same as vulgar or vacuous. Rather, writing about sex “might free me from shame and replace the onus of change onto the society in which we live.”

Even though Body Work is not meant to be a manual on memoir writing, it offers a useful, nuanced take on many issues that come up when tackling any sort of nonfiction. The third essay, “A Big Shitty Party,” explores writing about other people — a thorny subject faced by journalists and anthropologists alike. “It is profoundly unfair,” asserts Febos, “that a writer gets to author the public version of a story.” It is moments like this where her vulnerability and thoughtfulness are truly illuminating.

Febos also discusses ways in which writers can strengthen a story by taking a “casualties be damned, this is my artistic vision” approach or, conversely, by declining to add something “when a detail felt cruel.” She is never reckless in her own story-making; this is not slash-and-burn truth-telling. Rather, she explores how one can stay true to their recounting of an event while maintaining care for those woven into it.

The must-read Body Work is a captivating, eloquent paean to the power of working through a “pain that has been given value by the alchemy of creative attention.” In its pages, Melissa Febos posits self-appraisal as a brave act that is both intensely personal and also communal. “The only way to make room is to drag all our stories into that room,” she writes. “That’s how it gets bigger.”

 

Reporting, Reviews

Lady Octopus Tattoo Shop

My article for District Fray magazine

Jonathan Reed, the co-owner of Lady Octopus Tattoos, is a proud third generation Arlingtonian. In 2016, he was looking for a female tattoo artist to create an homage to South Ivy Street, the street he grew up on.

The first hit on a Google search of “female, tattoo artist, DC” pulled up a picture of Gilda Acosta, standing in front of a shark mural, blowing it a kiss. I guess you could say it was love at first bite because this was the start of a professional and personal relationship that would weather the turbulent ocean of tattooing.

Gilda Acosta graduated from art school in 2003 and went right into tattooing. “Jonathan was looking for new creative outlets and an ivy sleeve tattoo, and I was looking for a partner to help establish a presence in Arlington, VA. An easy friendship ensued, and we became life and business partners over fish tacos and tattoo sessions.”

Gilda is well-known for her delicate, precise line work and colorful, illustrative natural themes. “I love doing botanical designs, birds, and creatures of all types. A love of biology and art marry perfectly in tattooing.” Originally from Panama, she is a rarity as a Latina who co-owns a business in an industry dominated by men.

Lady Octopus Tattoos’ intentional inclusivity draws customers in. “Being a woman in the tattoo industry and seeing how some shops operate and treat vulnerable clients impacted our original vision and commitment to providing safe, inclusive spaces for all.”

Body positivity and professionalism, combined with treating clients like family are another thing that makes Lady Octopus so special.

“I learned early on that an open, friendly approach goes a long way in tattooing. I sincerely enjoy getting to know all my clients, truly enjoy our conversations, and cherish their trust. We can’t help but to have forged life-long friendships, and the shop becomes a place where friends catch up, crack jokes, and vent,” says Gilda.

Despite the fact that the artists at Lady Octopus often book more than 6 months in advance, they respond to customers with great care. “We put care and expense into our shop’s safety–from controlled bio disposables, tattoo before and aftercare education, and over all follow-up on our work. It’s extremely important for us to produce the utmost highest quality of tattoos,” says Jonathan.

Lady Octopus Tattoos recently moved to a location in Clarendon Crossing, right across the street from the very famous/infamous (for dudes with brown flip-flops) Whole Foods in Arlington, VA. In addition to Gilda, James Haun, who has been tattooing since 1996, is another part of the family. James is so beloved that he often books not months but a year in advance. His son, Lance Haun, is currently also an apprentice. Gia Catauro is a resident guest artist from RI.

 

Jonathan is a filmmaker whose documentary,The DC Eagle, Bound by Leather, 40 Years of LGBTQ History in the Nation’s Capital won the NJ LGBTQ QFest Film Festival award in 2017 as Most Original New Subject.  In the coming months, he will film and post video vignettes with the theme of “My tattoo, my story.” These vignettes will offer a unique look at the special friendships that form between the artists and their supporters and the meaning-making behind the process.

 

Lady Octopus Tattoos is a hidden gem in the ocean of tattoo shops in its professionalism, experience, and genuinely positive approach. And their new location in the heart of Clarendon is sure to further their reach.

Reporting, Reviews

Shriek-Worthy, Feminist-Friendly Horror Flicks

October 30, 2021 @ 10:00am | 

What exactly is a feminist-friendly horror film? Well, it is no secret the genre has catered to the male gaze for a very long time, with its penchant for big-breasted women who seemingly have never had “The Talk” (you know the one about walking alone in the dark with keys as a makeshift ‘weapon’) and blithely waltz into peril, defying any logic or self-preservation instincts. Then, there are the characters fitting into the promiscuity-hyper-inflated-for-the-male-gaze trope. In other words, girls don’t have sex in the woods because, well, Jason. It seems that the only strong female characters in horror are victims of particularly grisly violence who seek to wreak their revenge.

This low bar notwithstanding, there are plenty of feminist-friendly horror films that eschew these essentialist portrayals to offer much more nuanced imaginary. What fascinates and what horrifies us is very much a social commentary. Feminist-friendly horror films make us question gender, sexual, religious and political givens. They make us wonder who gets to define what is horrific. From the days of the OG Mary Shelley to the present, there are plenty of horror films that tear apart the veil of normalcy to give us a glimpse of something weirdly intriguing. Sometimes, the film between the comical and the serious, between the imagined and the real, is so flimsy as to be imperceptible — this is what makes a good feminist-friendly horror film. Or if not cerebral good, at least entertainment good, like in the original 1978 John Carpenter-helmed “Halloween,” when Laurie Strode uses such staples of domesticity as a knitting needle and a clothing hanger to whip “The Shape” into shape.

Reporting, Reviews

The DC Palestinian Film & Arts Festival Returns

My article for District Fray Magazine

Founded in 2011 by three women — Noura Erakat, Huda Asfour, and Nadia Daar — the DC Palestinian Film & Arts Festival showcases Palestinian culture from Palestine and the diaspora.In its eleventh year, this fall’s lineup included a double-feature documentary, play, feature films, shorts and a discussion on the art of tatreez: Palestinian embroidery. One theme that echoed throughout the films was love and border-crossing, with many works questioning: Can love cross man-made boundaries? Can boundaries prevent people from plying the craft they love? Could we come to take boundaries as so omnipresent that they are a part of our emotional milieu like love is?In “200 Meters,” the opening feature film, a father is separated from his family by 200 meters and an unscalable wall. In a strange riff on “The Great Gatsby,” he says goodnight to his kids with a light show from his balcony. The film sets a somber tone for the slate of features to follow.The “Fishless Sea” documents the challenge fishermen in Gaza face in sustaining this age-old tradition in the face of the borders erected during the occupation. It leaves us wondering, How can there be borders in something as boundless as Earth’s waters?Under the Oslo Agreements, the fishing range for Palestinian fishermen was 20 nautical miles. Over the years, however, the Israeli military dramatically reduced this range simply by harassing and jailing anyone who dared to go past the seemingly arbitrary limit. For a brief period, Israel expanded the range to six miles, only to once again reduce it, ostensibly in response to missile fire coming from the strip.

The fishermen are not allowed to go further than 3-4 nautical miles and that very limited perimeter has them mired in depleted waters, where few sardines remain. Abu Alaa’, the patriarch, poignantly talks about taking out a bank loan so his oldest son can get married. Despite what is clearly economic violence, he and his family remain stoic in the face of it, with the past continuing to live in their hearts, albeit spoken of wistfully. “The sea is all they know,” he says, and he remains anchored there, despite the invisible but stark chains the state has placed in his path.

“The Bride Dress,” similarly, is the story of how checkpoints box something as intensely human as marriage in a checkmate. The film captures the journey of two Palestinian brides, Lubna and Sumoud, who share the same wedding dress and the same challenge of having their grooms there for their weddings. A political prisoner, Sumoud’s fiancé watches his engagement party on video from behind bars.

Lubna’s groom, denied an entry permit, has to be smuggled into Nazareth. What could be perhaps shocking to a Western audience is that this situation is not uncommon. Israel currently has a 18-year-old ban on family reunification, known as the Citizenship Law. The family reunification ban was passed in 2003 as a temporary security measure in the wake of the Palestinian uprising known as the second intifada. The law has been renewed every year since. This law keeps some married couples permanently apart. As one of the women in the documentary puts it, “It is easier for me to marry a foreigner than to marry someone from the West Bank or Gaza.” “This is sick, but what can we do?”

In both of these documentaries, we see very little overt pathos or polemics; it is almost as if the characters have internalized these borders and found a way to resist them by holding on to celebrations ever so staunchly and bravely. In a scene where Lubna tries on her wedding dress for the first time, her family invites her fiance Abdallah to take a selfie as it might be the only photo they have from their wedding day if he is not able to come. Lubna’s mother reassures her with “I hope your groom will come, honey,” in a scene so poignant in its banality. Clearly, this is a fate that is felt by others, too.

Both of these documentaries also portray life in occupation in all its surprising normalcy. In The Bride Dress, we are treated to many scenes of the pre-wedding festivities, such as the dolma rolling party and the henna hand-painting, along with the singing of traditional songs. We see the bride and her family going through the same universal trepidations of leaving one’s family and starting on a new chapter of one’s life. The films offer such a rich, engrossing immersion of everyday life behind borders.

Though the festival was October 21-24, you can still stream the films on other platforms, and support the DCPFAF through volunteering and donating.

To learn more about the DC Palestinian Film & Arts Festival, visit dcpfaf.org. Follow the festival on Instagram @dcpfaf.