Father Gregory Boyle's Memoir "Tattoos on the Heart" Killing LA Gang Violence with Kinship and Kindness

Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit Priest who chose to move into downtown LA's poorest, gang riddled areas to solve for the vicious cycle of poverty, hatred, violence and unemployment.  Father Boyle's loosely structured memoir feels like he's directing an intimate conversation with the reader to share what he's experienced living in the Boyle Heights area of LA, the people he's come to known and love and the practices he incorporates to make positive change in the community.  The memoir does pull at one's heartstrings with shared pride in people turning their lives around, the numerous, senseless killings of young people and the joy that comes from kinship.  Kinship is the meme that has given rise to mutual understanding, respect and camaraderie.  Father Boyle brings us along on his many rides (literally) to reach young people on their terms, their willingness and their achievements.  Homeboy Industries grew out of The Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights in 1988.  It has become a major resource for assisting high risk youths, former gang members and recently incarcerated find employment through numbers programs that include counseling, legal aid, educational & work skills, seek employment.  This is all provided free of charge in a safe environment along with the free removal of tattoos for those who choose.  Many are looking for a way out of gang life with few options and no place to go.  Boyle has created loving communities of kinship to counter hopelessness, racism and cultural disparagement that separates people.  Father Boyle proselytizes on Catholicism and Jesus' teachings.  He also quotes from many poets, scholars & religious leaders.  But, what gives Boyle's memoir its power & poignancy are the quotes from the young people whose paths have crossed with his.  These young people are amazing with their resiliency and surprising epiphanies that never fail to delight and leave an indelible impression.  This comes from a caring adult who pays attention and offers unconditional support.  Boyle does not gloss over the hundreds of burials he's officiated which are painful and senseless.  He's brought positive change into so many lives and enriched the community.  The response to kindness, kinship and respect becomes a loving community where  justice is celebrated.  It becomes impossible to demonize someone you know.   Everyone needs to hear that they are wholly acceptable for themselves.   "Tattoos on the Heart" is about out common human nature to provide room for those who are left out.

"The Last Romantics" Gets Lost in Family Dynamics Dwelling in Death by Tara Conklin

"The Last Romantics" by Tara Conklin ("The House Girl") is a novel that drags on too long dwelling in the past from the impacts of deaths in the family.  The Skinner family is turned upside down by the sudden death of the father who leaves behind a wife and 4 children: 3 daughters, Renee, Caroline and Fiona.  Fiona the youngest Skinner, future published poet is the narrator of this winding family saga. She begins from her earliest memories at 4 of her father's funeral.  After her husband's early death, Noni falls into a debilitating depression for 2 years referred to as "The Pause" by the Skinner kids. Renee nearly 12 becomes the responsible surrogate mother to her younger siblings  with the help from Caroline.  Somehow they manage to keep everyone fed, clothed and safe.  Renee wasn't able to protect herself from a sexual predator.  Thankfully, her brother Joe came to her rescue and brutally assaults Renee's attacker.  During the 2 year "Pause" the siblings became used to more liberties, adventures and their dependency on their love for one another.  Joe, the only male in the household and budding athletic star is put on a pedestal by his sisters.  Fiona lets us know early they would all  assume responsibility for Joe in his adult years.  The golden boy falls from grace in college and after graduation in NYC.  His drinking & coke addiction destroy his future with his beautiful fiancee and his high paying job in finance.   The siblings once all very close are now sprawling away from each other.  Joe takes a job in FL which he detests but finds a woman he loves Luna who shares his love for drink & drugs.  Joe suffers a fatal heart attack which draws his sisters back together.  As they clean through his apartment they find a photo of Joe & Luna and a Tiffany engagement ring.  Fiona makes it her mission to track down the "last" love of Joe's life and this obsession drives another wedge between the sisters.  The paths for the sisters & their mother take off in different tangents with varying degrees of success & fulfillment. "The Last Romantics" gets lost in a rambling of relationships and failures at love. Fiona finally realizes that the idea to fulfill her brother's "last wish" was ridiculous and wasteful.  Fiona finds we all struggle to decide what to give away and what to keep and that these calculations tally the results we live with.  Finding success as a poet Fiona sees everyone as a poet when telling their own stories created out of family, friends and love.  "The Last Romantics" is best as a story of sisterly love but loses itself in various choices that destroy what is valued most.  It's human nature, some people choose repeatedly to demolish what's most cherished.   I don't recommend vesting your time with "The Last Romantics."

Kathryn Harrison's "The Kiss" An Appalling Memoir of Romanticized Incest

Incest is vile, repugnant, immoral and illegal.  In all but 2 states, incest between a parent & adult child is illegal.  In what universe would a 4 year sexual relationship between a father and 20 year old daughter be condoned or understandable?  The resounding answer is none.  Kathryn Harrison (b Amer 1961) is a critically acclaimed novelist, memoirist and regular critic for the New York Times Book Reviews.  I have nothing but harsh criticism for Harrison's memoir "The Kiss" which details her abhorrent incestuous relationship with her father from when she was 20-24 years.  "I am wearing no underpants and he opens my legs and puts his tongue between them.  What he does feels neither good nor bad.  It effects so completely a separation between mind and body that I don't know what I feel."  This detestable consensual sex began when Kathryn an adult.  There is no vindication for either party.  Yet, Kathryn seeks sympathy for having a loveless childhood.  Her teenaged parents separated when she was very young.  Her mother moved out of her parent's home leaving her to be raised by the grandparents.  Her mother visited only intermittently.  Kathryn's attempt at justification is "A mother who won't see me and a father who tells me I am there only when he does see me."  The memoir is a clarion call for psychological intervening.  It does come from her mother who brings Kathryn along to a psychiatrist whom they consult together.  Her mother tells the Dr. she thinks Kathryn is having sex with her father which Kathryn denies and the lies remain dormant.  But she cannot deny, cauterize or victimize her willing participation in this lurid and revolting conduct.  She claims herself powerless and ineffectual. "My need is inexorable.  I can't arrest it anymore than I could stop myself from falling if having stepped from a rooftop into the air.  What I feel is not so much guilt as dislocation."  I felt nothing but distaste & revulsion for her salacious lack of self-control.  I condemn her father, the preacher of his local church.  She questions him if they will face Hell.  He replies "There are rules that apply to most people and there are people who are outside of those rules."  There is nothing redeeming in "The Kiss".  It's an arid & numbing read suffused with shocking & disturbing revelations.  

"Tell the Wolves I'm Home" by Carol Brunt Is A Seminal Coming of Age Tale that Rages with Emotions

Carol Brunt's debut novel "Tell the Wolves I'm Home" deserved being named "one of the best books in 2012 by the WSJ".  Brunt's integrity into the heart & mind of 14 year old Greta make this Bildungsroman scale inner demons howling to be exorcised.  Greta is the gangly, awkward younger sister to June.  June is blonde, beautiful, talented and heading off to college next year.  The two sisters were close but June is distancing herself from Greta. Greta realizes she's a complete loser with foolish hopefulness of making friends, being accepted or even normal.  It's hard not to feel sympathetic towards Greta as a lone wolf longing to fit in.  Uncle Finn is the one person with whom she's in simpatico.  This is an understatement in Greta's view & that of her sister & mother.  Greta's believes her love for her uncle crosses into wrong love - embarrassing love - and perverse love.  Yet, this is a 14 yr. old who knows she doesn't understand the people she's with nor understood who she is to other people.  The story is set in & around NYC during the 80s; the epoch of the AIDS outbreak.  Brunt immerses the novel in the period with its cultural pop phenomena & the fear & repulsion directed towards people suffering with AIDS.  Uncle Finn is a renowned painter, doting uncle & dying of AIDS.  Finn has his nieces pose together for a painting he titled "Tell the Wolves I'm Home."  Uncle Finn dies shortly after finishing the painting and leaves it to Greta & June.  The painting becomes infamous & highly sort after by collectors & art museums.  Greta's grief for uncle is overwhelming to the point of being incomprehensible & immobilizing.  Her mother, Finn's sister tells Greta she's reacting being macabre & inappropriate mourning her uncle at her age.  "Like 14 was some kind of turning point in my great journey to becoming a fully grown woman."  Finn also leaves behind his lover Toby shunned by Greta's family for "causing" Finn's death.  Toby is completely alone and beseeches Greta's companionship.  In this seminal year of reckoning, Greta discovers the power in being needed and having a driving purpose by clandestinely caring for Toby.  She also unsheathes the darker truths within herself.  "All I wanted was for Toby to hear the wolves that lived in the dark forest of my heart.  And maybe that's what it meant.  Tell the Wolves I'm Home.  Tell them where you live because they'll find you anyway."  Brunt's searing portrait of a young girl's quilt and sensitivity bays both pain & tenderness.  "That all the jealousy and envy and shame we carried was our own kind of sickness.  As much a disease as Toby and Finn's AIDS. "  "Tell the Wolves I'm Home" was nominated for a Good Reads Choice Award ('12).  I recommend this book for teens & adults alike.

"Vox" by Christina Dalcher Is Overkill on the Apocalyptic "Maiden's Tale"

"Vox" is a debut novel by Christina Dalcher which delves into a dystopian American future that appropriates heavily from Atwood's masterpiece "The Handmaiden's Tale" and proselytizes too overtly against unchallenged authoritarian rule.  Dalcher's debut doesn't deliver as a suspense novel, a political protest or sci-fi apocalyptic terror novel in the not too distant future.  It tries to achieve all three and fails on all fronts.  Jean "Genie" has a doctorate in linguistics but as a female, she's cuffed with a band on her wrist that limits the daily number of spoken words to a 100 or else receives a shock for each  enfracture, escalating in voltage with every additional word over the allotted amount.   Jean's husband has a job with the powerful elite working for the President of the US; an evil punitive tv evangelist.  The president heralds in an era overtaken by the extreme right & Bible Belt religious zealots which has paved definitive roles for men & women.  The men are omnipotent, the women all subservient.  Jean got her degree at the apex of the seismic shift which now holds her hostage to her household duties with little to say about that - aloud. Her eldest son is a senior in high school and has been easily converted to the predominant "Pure" way of thinking and behavior.  She also has twin sons & her beloved youngest, Sonia is just starting kindergarten.  Sonia like all females is constricted by a wrist band that will zap her into silence & servitude.  This unbearable plight seems to fall on the heroine shoulders of Jean who is called back into service by the President to recreate the formula she devised to cure aphasia.  The ulterior sinister plot is to reverse the anti-aphasia serum into a potion for use as a weapon of mass destruction to render all foreign powers or enemies - without the power of speech.  There aren't enough words to describe how absurd & incredulous I found this sci-fi thriller plot.  I will say Dalcher recounts endless examples of historic horrors of a small faction obtaining too much power as to become unstoppable:  the Spanish Inquisition, Salem Witch Trials, Nazi Germany, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia and so on.  Dalcher also borrows from brilliant & harrowing authors such as Atwood, Orwell & Huxley but botches "Vox" like the Bubonic plague.  I can't vouch for this amateur attempt to politicize corrupt leaders within a supercilious sci-fi genre.   Dalcher's trope - evil triumphs when good people do nothing is something she drones on relentlessly til it falls on deaf ears.  I agree with the intended messaging, it's essential to use our voices & protest injustice.  It's her novel I found disagreeable.  Still, she's right, "Memory is a damnable faculty."

Comedian Lewis Black's Seriously Funny Thoughts on Religions in "Me of Little Faith"

Lewis Black is a stand-up comic whose observational humor is absurdist, astute & wickedly funny.  Lewis (b Amer 1948) is also an author & playwright.  His memoir & religious commentary "Me of Little Faith," trust me, is hilarious & pithy.  Of course, I'm sure Black is preaching to the choir concerning unquestioning faith and religious zealots.  Lewis talks about his Jewish upbringing which included becoming a bar mitzvah & Jewish education although not raised within a rigid religious household. "By the time I was 15 and my religious education at the temple was over, I was over Judaism.  I rarely looked back to the fold."  Black doesn't attack various religions but questions the need for religion and points out its failings & foibles.  "The excesses of violence committed in the name of God wherever you look and the obscene power of religion in politics, in our homes and in our lives."  This may be the dividing rod that religious zealots will condemn (should they read Lewis' book).  But, he begs the question - how does religion serve humanity rather than destroy it.  Black contends "What's at the root of all religions. Death! Or, more precisely, the fear of death."  Again, Black's contemplations have merit.  Getting his observations off the page, Black can't resort to his stentorian voice or pervasive profanity.  He does however, rely heavily on his humor & wit.  Unfortunately, Black commits a blatant sin at the end of "Me of Little Faith" by including the short lived play he co-wrote & co-starred in with Mark Lin-Baker at the Public Theater.  The critics panned it and me, of little patience, found it a droll attempt at redemption for having been poorly crafted.  Still, "Me of Little Faith," has lots to proffer those who love humor combined with conscientious insight.  "In a land that should take great joy in the differences of its people - and in the knowledge that those differences are what make us strong, we generally choose to fear diversity." You got that FUCKING right!  And, I too can never understand "...the need for people who believe they have to get everyone else to believe the same thing they do."  Believe me - everyone should read Black's book "Me of Little Faith."

ZZ Packer's Short Stories "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" Receives Acclaim Everywhere Finalist PEN/Faulkner

Reading ZZ Packer's short story collection "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" is tantamount to the gods drinking ambrosia on Mt. Olympus.  Packer's stories are seething with cunning observations and written with extraordinary flair.  Packer (b Amer. 1973) is on par with paramount writers such as Alice Monroe and Flannery O'Connor.  "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" put her in in the class of 5 under 35 honorees by the Nat'l Book Foundation.  Other short stories by Packer have been published in the Best Short American Stories ('00 & '03).  The protagonists in these coming of age collection are all young blacks.  They all share a keen awareness of being outside the privileged white communities & somewhat apart from their own families & peers.  There is a commonality of perseverance while perceiving the inequality & injustice of being black in a "white man's world."  In the final story "Doris is coming," Doris, a high school student watching the sit-ins and protests of the Civil Rights Movement & wants to be participate despite restraints from her parents & parish.   Doris could "...see that the rest of the world was different from Fourth Street {where she lived}, prettier, more certain, full of laughter and dresses and men who wore hats not only when they went to church but when they want to work in offices and banks too."  The first story in the collection, and my favorite is "Brownies" a group of young black girls are sent to a rural camp for several days and the girls in this troop are egging for a fight with the white girls & acutely aware of the difference in their surroundings from home.  "Wow! Drema said, looking up, Why are all the stars out here?  I never see stars back on Oneida Street."  There is a tipping point to each of these stories where indignation finally gives way to anger or resignation.  In "Our Lady of Peace," Lynette is pushed too far by the unruly disrespectful students she tries to teach and the violence in her classroom spills over where Lynette no longer wishes to restrain herself.  "She had a chance to slow down, and she didn't want to.  She'd scare them, for once.  Make them run.  Her foot slammed on the accelerator for what seemed like not time at all."  Packer's prose is provocative & crystal clear.  Her characters either go over the edge or feel powerless.  The stories possess a stark beauty that is unshakeable.  "She {Doris} knew that she should hurry, but she couldn't.  She had to stop and look.  The sky had just turned her favorite shade of barely lit blue, the kind that came to windows when you couldn't get back to sleep but couldn't quite pry yourself awake."  Rejoice in the energy, hostility, frustration & unflappable characters that leap from these brilliant short stories.