Fall Television:
It’s the Most Musical Time of the Year
There may be several opportunities for us to enjoy some musical television together this fall.
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Leticia Hernández-Linares:
“One Million Minus One” and “Despierta”
The poems in 'Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl' paint their own murals in words glowing with passion and conviction. There is also a good dose of sass, a quality visually captured in book’s cover photo.
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In ‘The Chair,’ Sandra Oh Combines
Acting and Activism
'The Chair' tells the trials and tribulations of Professor Ji-Yoon Kim (Oh), the first woman and the first person of color to chair the English department of “lower-tier ivy” Pembroke College.
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‘CODA,’ The Celebrated Sundance Film, Sings
If you paid attention to Sundance’s (virtual) Film Festival last January, you’ve already heard of 'CODA.' It not only took the festival’s top honors — the Grand Jury Prize as well as the Audience Award — it set a new record for distribution rights.
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Poems by Jane Hirshfield
Each column (including these three on Jane Hirshfield, one of my all-time favorite contemporary poets) was an exciting discovery and a lesson, not just in craft, but also in the endurance and resilience of the human spirit.
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This Week, ‘Remember the Ladies’
Since 1971, August 26 has been designated Women’s Equality Day. The date was chosen because it marks the anniversary of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
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“I Was a Mixed-Race Zombie,” by MK Chavez
I'm looking at race and trying to understand and explore and untangle my personal identity, but also the place and time that we find ourselves in, in this world around race. —MK Chavez
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Portraits of Motherhood
in Two New Women-Led Films
In 'Confetti' and 'Rare Beasts' a mother's love proves stronger than any challenge or even the most unhinged storyline.
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‘The Pursuit of Love’ Asks, “Are You a Bolter or a Sticker?”
'The Pursuit of Love': Gorgeous costumes, fox-hunting on a country estate, romances (both sanctioned and forbidden), countless cups of tea. If you’ve missed 'Downton Abbey' (or even 'Bridgerton,' for that matter), you could definitely do worse.
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‘Blood Dazzler’ by Patricia Smith
In Patricia Smith’s exquisite collection 'Blood Dazzler,' I find myself drawn to the stories of resilience even more for the comfort and reassurance they provide. The durability of the collection speaks to the hope and lingering fear in this pandemic moment.
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‘Playing with Sharks’ Chronicles a Lifetime of Affection and Regret
The charismatic subject of writer-director and Emmy-nominee Sally Aitkin’s new documentary, 'Playing with Sharks: the Valerie Taylor Story,' has been at home in — and in love with — the ocean since she was in her early twenties.
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“The Soft Part of the Brain,” by Maw Shein Win
'Storage Unit for the Spirit House' began as a group of poems I had been working on around the idea of containers and containment. Questions I considered: Who is held and who is not held? What do we save and what do we discard?
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People Will Say I’m in Love … with Schmigadoon!
Regardless of where you land on the “Musicals, pro or con?” debate, 'Schmigadoon!' is well worth your time.
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“I Am Writing This in My Head,
My Hands Inside Gloves That Don’t Match,”
by Silvina López Medin
Silvina López Medin’s poem is from her newly published book 'Poem That Never Ends,' itself a study of loss, multiplicity, and containment in terms of form, language, and content.
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Two New Series Get Physical, Without Much Success
Here at Women’s Voices for Change, we’ve long lamented the fact that in Hollywood, women get much less opportunity behind the camera than men do. Although recent numbers have improved (since 2018, the number of top box office movies directed by women has more than doubled), there is still a long way to go before we see gender parity. One…
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“Private Collection,” by Shelley Wong
“Private Collection” by Shelley Wong perfectly captures the experience of museum-going. Standing in a museum gallery, our speaker sifts back through other galleries, thoughts, and experiences as a woman and as a partner, a private (re)collection of sorts.
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Carte Postale De Cannes
Of the 24 films eligible for the Palme d’Or, only 4 were directed by women. This is disappointing, given the gains we’ve seen domestically over the past three years.
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“Underneath the Cuento,”
by Leticia Hernandez-Linares
The homophone of telling and counting speaks to the stories underlying my poems, to the urgency that I need to tell them so they can count. The “underneath” is silence, family secrets and traumas, multiple languages, music. — Leticia Hernández-Linares
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Two Emmas, Three Dalmatians, and 101 Reasons to Love ‘Cruella’
Cruella de Vil had incredible style and a couple of evil minions at her beck and call. She was certainly a feminist, she was all-Disney, and if she turns out to be more anti-heroine than heroine, well, that’s part of the fun.
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“Death by Chocolate,” by Sandra Beasley
This poem draws attention to two convenient plot points. One is glibly introducing the death of a woman as a narrative catalyst; the other is the crisis of an anaphylactic reaction, invoked without any regard for the lived experience.
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‘Chasing Childhood’ — A Helicopter Mother Repents
The loss of childhood fun as we knew it isn’t just something to feel wistful about. 'Chasing Childhood' points out that the disappearance of free play can have tangible and terrifying results.
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Ordinary Psalms
by Julia B. Levine
A major theme in 'Ordinary Psalms' is the speaker’s incipient loss of sight, a condition with rich metaphorical possibilities for the blindness of humanity in the abstract and also more concretely in recent American political cycles.
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‘In the Heights,’ The Fiesta We Need Right Now
'In the Heights' tells the story of a fast-disappearing neighborhood of working people, mostly Latin-American immigrants, who embrace their culture; add color and music, love and laughter to their city; and get along improbably well
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“Portent with Moonset & Blackbirds,”
by Kelly Cressio-Moeller
As a visual artist and poet, Kelly Cressio-Moeller knows what she is leveraging when she evokes the color blue in the title of her debut poetry collection, 'Shade of Blue Trees' -- a word that describes not just color but also emotion and language.
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