a statement on society

Another artist I came to know and kind of find myself gravitated toward is Cindy Sherman and her photography. In her work, one can see the inescapability of the male gaze as if it is present even in the most private places. To me, the fact that Sherman posed as the object of her photographs is very interesting. In a series of portraits, and by posing as object in her own photography, Sherman presents women in archetypal and everyday roles. In her narratives she evokes fear, disgust, and empathy, while at the same time shows women violated. This way, especially with her centerfold series, she pulls the male viewer in, forcing him to see himself as the violator.
In Sherman's photography, the protagonist (the woman) is always alone, caught in private expressing her deepest hidden emotions. Although these pictures do not reveal much about the woman herself, they reveal problems present in a patriarchal culture and the way such society looks at women.

Response to "E-mails from Scheherazad", book of poetry by Syrian-American poet Mohja Kahf

The theme of E-mails from Scheherazad I would say is the concept of assimilation—i.e. assimilation into a society (here, American society) that adheres to conformity, and also the problems such assimilation or lack of it causes for the society itself as well as for the person making conscious decisions to work with or go against that assimilation. For instance, in the case of the narrator of the Sacred Immorality the decision is to go against the conventional and the norm as she thanks God for helping her to “[pull] away from flesh” and to “[inhale] with every breath / the oxygen of sacred immortality.” (60) The narrator certainly sees herself alive now that she has chosen to accept Islam (her “sacred immortality”) and be the other in the eyes of the conformed.
But there is always a price one has to pay to stand clear from the rest. One becomes the other. Kahf’s narrator(s)* are considered and looked upon as others. Majority of the narrators are women, Arab women who have obviously chosen to cover their hair and body as it is suggested in Islam. However, by doing so they put themselves in an otherness position. They attract attention because of the way they look, and they certainly look different as the “tenth-grade boy with bright blue hair [says] to the new Muslim girl with the headscarf in homeroom.” (41)
They are ignored for the same reason as well, as if people who come in contact with them do not see them or do not accept them as mature human beings. Hijab Scene #3 is the best example of the coarse reaction the narrator of the poem faces at a PTA while she sits next to a “regular American mother [who] shrugged and shook her head.” (25) The narrator sends up flares to attract their attention with an ironic voice. She uses American Sign Language, beats on drums, waves flags, and even tries Morse code to no avail. “Dammit,” she say, “I’m a Muslim woman, not a Klingon.” (ibid) But she might as well be one.
The same women have a complex relationship with Moslem men of the American society such as African Americans who consider Islam as a phenomenon bound to their ancestral past in Africa, as it is presented in Hijab Scene #5:

[…] When you’re wearing hijab, Black men
You don’t even know materialize
all over Hub City
like an army of chivalry,
opening doors, springing
into gallantry. […] (31)

One of the hidden reasons “regular Americans” treat a hijab-clad Moslem woman (or any other foreigner for that matter) as a non-existence or of lower stratum probably is because of the fact that the foreigners’ otherness triggers the question of allegiance in their minds. Is this person who looks different and for most part acts different as faithful to this land as I a full-fledged American? And is it wise for me to trust this person?

Besides the concept of assimilation I see another very strong theme that runs almost parallel to the first one, and that is the gender issues Kahf rightfully puts her finger on in relation to not only the white American society but to her own Arab culture and community. Although Arab men, despite their “mustachio’d, macho, patriarchal / sexist, egotistical, parochial” (29) way of life, “look so sexy in those checkered scarves” (30), she does not fall short to notice their “narrow-minded[ness] / […] even though they are my Arab brothers.” (67) Throughout the collection, Kahf raises her voice against the injustices women (especially Arab women) have encountered and demands that they sing and repeat with her and realize that they are the ones holding everything (of this world or else) together, because: “[…] the world is resting / on the back of a tortoise / and the tortoise is poised on a spider / and the spider is dangling like a drop of sweat / from the temple of the woman scrubbing the floor / under the feet of Copernicus and the pilgrims at the Ka’ba.” (61) The men who “a hundred years since we entered those paintings / [are …] still stuck in a Neanderthal cave / on that whole man-woman thing” (67) need to understand that a woman’s “body is not [their] battleground.” (58)
Kahf, as she rightfully claims, carries “explosives / they’re called words” (39) and she is here to be the voice of the women who speak “the language of silent suffering.” (51) Kahf’s poetry and her explosive words when it comes to gender issues authoritatively demands women (all women) to ask their “quiet knights” (54) “how dare you put your hand / where I have not given permission.”

* I don’t think there is only one narrator in Mohja Kahf’s collection of poetry as it is difficult to pin point a character and chronologically follow her development. The sequence of the poems is neither chronological nor autobiographical; hence my belief in a multi-narrator collection.

Kahf, Mohja. E-mails from Scheherazad. University Press of Florida, 2003.

Determined against all odds

I have always liked Frida Kahlo although at times I find myself not at ease with her paintings. I guess I am more attracted to her personality than her art. Maybe or maybe not; I still cannot decide. I appreciate her strength at times when life was not easy for her, at times of Diego's wandering and womanizing, at times of pain and surgery, at times when she lost many babies to abortion, and many more instances of frustration and pain. I also appreciate her resistance in staying out of any categorization. She never let anyone to label her as a surrealist, and never joined the communist party while at the time it was kind of en vogue to do so. She always stood her grounds, and was an active agent of her life as well as in her art.

I find it amazing that she used her life and her personal experiences as subjects of her paintings, such as in the Two Fridas, in which she uses one Frida (on the right) to show herself as loved and happy while the other one shows the rejected Frida, sitting stoically while bleeding to death. The rejected Frida along with her heart are both broken and damaged while the other one--the happy and contented one--is dressed in traditional Mexican garb holding a picture of Diego Rivera in her hand.

By looking at any of her paintings, one can easily see and, I would like to claim, feel the pain and the misery this woman experienced in her life while keeping herself strong and upright at all times, and determined against all odds.

Afterword: It is disturbing to see that MS Word does not recognize the name of this great artist and underlines it in red. >:(

Ziba Karbassi and the poetry of gasp

I am posting a short note I wrote back in February of last year mainly because I believe Karbassi is a powerful voice to consider and recognize.

During a reading in San Mateo (CA) on February 8, 2009, the London-based poet Ziba Karbassi—who has been touring California—mesmerized the audience with the depth of her understanding of poetry in general and what she refers to as the poetry of gasp in particular.

At the same time, the unsurpassed beauty of her words and the provocative and at times offensive language she is recognized for was enough to make the seemingly older and more conservative Iranian audience much nervous and the mood of the reading hall a bit tense. However, her deliverance of her own poetry sprinkled with bouts of anger at the Islamic regime of Iran on one hand and her flirtatious and sensual reading of her love poems on the other left the crowd in much admiration and respect for the young poet.

The 33-year-old poet categorizes the Persian poet Rumi as the poet of exhale while in her opinion, Rumi’s guru—Shams—is a poet of inhale as Hafiz and Khayyam are; with the same conviction, she labels herself as a poet of both conditions—inhale and exhale. A poet, she believes, is the hunter of the moments of suffocation in whose poetry all the living creatures and lifeless things are in constant love making. The poem is the result of a state of restlessness in the poet’s soul which is usually marked by heavy breathings and severe panting before and after the birth of a poem. It is in the poetry of gasp, Karbassi suggests, that we encounter eroticism in language.


Indeed
By: Ziba Karbassi
Translated from Persian by Shirindokht Nourmanesh

And you—the innocent, virtuous, and chaste ladies
with your bent necks
and your effeminate walk
with your precious thousand-year chokers of stillness,
you are indeed right,
I am a whore.
And certainly this sun too
is peeking out from underneath your skirts
here
on my paper.

© 2009