The Kandy-Kolored gossip is with us again and, with a poisoned egret feather, Wolfe pinions the "Radical Chic" adventures of Lennie Bernstein and his circle. And in the second piece he presents a scurrilous vision of the conciliatory white (ibid. his humble flak-catcher) routed in a "community" anti-poverty fund program. Wolfe does an elegant hatchet job on Bernstein, "The Great Interrupter, the Village Explainer. . . Mr. Let's Find Out. . . ." Through a very dark glass indeed the famous Bernstein affair for the Panthers is reconstructed. And there are the "delicious" "most intimate nuances of status" involving white servants and the "proper scale" of decoration for the outre presence of the oppressed brothers — a presence which sends vibrations through well appointed halls like a "rogue hormone." Part II deals with another bizarre confrontation — Wolfe's forte: an hypothetical "mau-mauing" by a black militant group of a white bureaucratic slob caught in the sticky anti-poverty network. It's wired for noise: " 'Dat's right, Brudda! We be seeing you' Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram 'We coming back!' " Funny, facile, completely irresponsible, a pique performance of a talented mockingbird with, as Murray Kempton recently said of a New York politico, "the social conscience of a cat." Radical Chic appeared in altered form in New York Magazine.
Pub Date: Dec. 7, 1970
ISBN: 0312429134
Page Count: 142
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1970
A well-crafted, absorbing account of Islamic women's lives as seen through the eyes of a secular-minded, Australian-born feminist journalist. Wall Street Journal Middle East correspondent Brooks describes with sensitivity and clarity her conversations and relationships with Islamic women, from the blue-jean-clad, American-born queen of Jordan to a devout Palestinian who shares her abusive husband with another woman in a four-room hovel with 14 children. Many of the obstacles she describes are well known: Some Islamic women are not allowed to show flesh or pray out loud in public (their voices are too arousing and could provoke unholy thoughts in men); many professions are closed to women; and severe sexual double standards still exist. However, Brooks's lively interpretations of Islamic tradition offer a useful challenge to Western stereotypes. According to her, Mohammed's teachings on the role of Islamic women, not to mention his living example, are complex and contradictory, often in direct opposition to the gender politics of today's extreme fundamentalists. Unfortunately, the author's naive faith in her own culture's progress allows her to make some rather arrogant statements, such as, ``Like most Westerners, I always imagined the future as an inevitably brighter place, where a kind of moral geology will have eroded the cruel edges of past and present wrongs. But in Gaza and Saudi Arabia...the future is a place that looks darker every day.'' Stemming from a similar blind spot, perhaps, is the short shrift given to Middle Eastern feminist activists and scholars. Few organized women's movements are discussed, and Brooks's treatment of Egyptian feminist Nawal Saadawi's persecution by the radical Islamic group Jihad and the Egyptian government totally overlooks the influence she has had; many believe Saadawi and other feminists are responsible, for example, for the Egyptian government's partial banning of clitoridectomy. Nonetheless, Brooks is a fine storyteller, though at times her tales feel incomplete. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-47576-4
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
Collections of articles often lack a unifying theme and consequently make unsatisfying books, but this thought-provoking volume is an exception. Reading a series of loosely connected essays is actually a good way to encounter Elshtain's (Social and Political Ethics/Univ. of Chicago; Democracy on Trial, 1995, etc.) fundamentally idiosyncratic scholarly and personal convictions. The selections are presented in five parts, ostensibly addressing five topics: embracing reality as a whole in political discussions; relating language and political content; reining in feminist extremes on the family and the realities of female existence; rejecting victimization as a basis for feminist politics; and searching for a politics that embraces the middle ground of actual human life. In fact, the groupings are so amorphous and the articles so pointed, however, that the volume is best understood as a selection of individual essays that together convey a sense of Elshtain's soul. At her core she opposes scholarship that substitutes sophistication for content and political activism that places stridency over common sense. She is a politically aware intellectual, sensitive to the dangers of alienating ideas and discourse from the substantive if occasionally banal realities of daily life. This leads her to suggest that families must be preserved despite identifying with a feminist community more concerned with throwing off traditional social institutions than looking to them for groundedness; Elshtain has even labeled those critical of the bonds linking mother and child as ``repressive feminists.'' In another example of her independence, she rejects the typical literary depictions of small towns as emotionally and creatively stifling environments. For Elshtain the personal connections definitive of human existence are to be found in the real world of families and towns, not in political and intellectual abstractions, and she is not shy about stating her position. A fascinating study that pulls no punches in support of an original yet moderate political vision.
Pub Date: Oct. 3, 1997
ISBN: 0-8018-5599-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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