7 Books You Should Read If You Want to Be Human

BY JOANNA C. VALENTE

1. Between Life and Death - Yoram Kaniuk (Restless Books, 2007/2016)

Excerpt from Lit Hub:

"Near the house, right across from the calm hidden beauty where I searched for a gutter to play me the lullabies of my childhood, a little bit of sea is still open. Moshe my father would swim in it every day at exactly five in the afternoon, after most of the swimmers had already gone home, because he loved having the sea all to himself. In the spring and fall, the sea was sparkling and smooth and soft, and sometimes in the morning, on the way to school, we’d walk barefoot in the sand along the shore, and under the hewn-limestone wall, we’d take off our shoes, hang them by the laces on our shoulder, put our schoolbags on our heads like the Arab women who carry ewers of water and bundles of wood to the ovens, and we’d walk in the shallows lined with seashells, some were broken and cut our little feet, until we came to the sand dune across from the Model School."

2. The Missing Museum - Amy King (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2016)

From TS' site:

"AND THEN WE SAW THE DAUGHTER OF THE MINOTAUR

Poet, comma. It is thus the delay,
which is also a beginning. That we can link eyes
across her time-space continuum is another hyena.
The female elongates, bares fangs, and a trash
compactor recycles. Hyena gives
in the recycling fashion. Phoenix, no more false
flight from holes; now balloons eating decay.
Hunger denuded us, too. But will you give
up your death for me? With surgery, I outright hollow
the monster to breathe across windows. I don her hollow
whole. She writes back in the pauses of haze.
Her and her tragic magic. We are all cross-dressing
in tiny wings with the machines of bones to go on."

3. A Child of Storm - Michael J. Wilson (Stalking Horse Press, 2016)

Sensitive Skin Magazine published four poems from the collection:

"Edwin Davis & The Electric Chair

Brown came with a crate.
The kind milk bottles condense in.

He sat it down. In the center of the room.
I had spent the day clearing cobwebs, a rug.

I used parts of the crate to make the chair.

Stringing the wires, using the Edison diagram
The Brown instructions.

I shot 1000 volts through Kemmler
then again until he burst to flame.

The skin around the metal became leather.
        They would have done better using an axe.

I shot volts into a woman. Into the man who shot McKinley.

I got to meet J.P. Morgan. Twice.

           Every time –

The smell –"

4. Reconnaisance - Carl Phillips (FSG, 2015)

ead an interview with Phillips at NPR:

"I have, from the start, been writing about the body and power. And maybe more specifically, the gay male body, and power in intimate relationships, but I feel as if there's a lot of overlap with society's views of how different bodies are treated. So to that extent, I think there's always a kind of political resonance to the personal, and then vice versa."

5. Shadowbahn - Steve Erickson (Blue Rider Press/Penguin, 2017)

It's exactly what we need right now - a book set in a tragic political landscape along to a playlist to give song to the time we live in now - one of strange turmoil and uncertainty. All of the characters are on a journey of self-discovery, and the reimagined Twin Towers represent this. It's definitely a book to pick up once it's released this February.

6. The King of Good Intentions II - John Andrew Fredrick (Rare Bird Books, 2015)

 Read an interview with Fredrick at LARB:

"I think the books are failures too. Brilliant failures, of course. And again I don’t mean brilliant in the look-at-me sort of way, but brilliant in the sense that parts of them (and I hope the preponderance of them) truly shine. As comedy. And very very human and humanist. Isn’t that enough? Yes, I revised the first King five times. The hardest work I have ever done. Much harder than writing a dissertation on Ford Madox Ford and Virginia Woolf. I just got sick of looking at The King II, I revised it so much. I’m a Jamesian and a Joycean. I could revise all day — trying to lift the prose into poetry, trying to make the jokes zanier and tighter. There’s nothing wrong with failing. Failing is an energy. And in a way, paradoxically, the books are not failures and I am being very disingenuous about the records. You shouldn’t trust me; I’m an unreliable narrator in real life, too."

7. Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity - Edited by Fox Frazier Foley & Erin Elizabeth Smith (Sundress Publications, 2016)

Read an interview with both editors over at VIDA about how the anthology came to be. Foley stated:

"My feeling about this are complicated, and kind of conflicted. I think of poetry in the same way that I think of prayer. I’m a religious person, so to me, prayers are actually a significant factor in seeking any type of progress, including political or social progress. Prayer and poetry, to me, are both ways of centering your consciousness, and raising both your focus and your energy. They are both, on some level, ways of howling down the parts of the Universe that we don’t entirely understand (I mean, we might name them, or tell stories about them—but I think all religious apparatus is really just a way of making somewhat intelligible to us the forces that are beyond our rational comprehension) to please come to our aid in helping us fix this situation. Prayer and poetry both bring people together, too—one person’s words can forge connections among many people, so that ultimately both a poem and a prayer can result in focusing the energy and consciousness of larger groups, in a way that creates a feeling of solidarity. To me, all of that is integral to political and social progress. I understand that not everyone sees it that way, but speaking for myself and my own lived experiences, that’s how I understand it."

 CA Conrad's poem in the collection is amazing; excerpt from “act like a polka dot on minnie mouse’s skirt:”

"i am not a

family friendly

faggot i tell

your children

about war

about their tedious future careers

all the taxes bankrolling a

racist tyrannical military."

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Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (forthcoming 2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (forthcoming 2017, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She has lead workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente

Where Were All The Feminists When Amanda Knox Was On Trial?

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

This was originally published at The Huffington Post.

This was republished here as a sort of accompaniment piece for those of you watching Netflix's new documentary, Amanda Knox, which aims to uncover why the public turned a straight-forward case into a pit of sexism and injustice. 

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Amanda Knox is innocent of murder.

As a reader, you may have already chosen a side, since some have made this a battle of culture and evidentiary ping pong. Either you agree with my assertion of innocence or you don’t, but there’s a bigger social issue at play here: People’s lives are being ruined by sexism and lies.

I am making an appeal to all feminists and people of rational thought: We need to speak out, regardless of our beliefs. Beyond the fact that no credible or realistic evidence places Knox or her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito at the scene of Meredith Kercher’s murder, Knox’s very average sexual behavior and our sexualization of her image should not be spearheading the campaign against her.

When I ask people what they think about the case, most of them say, “It’s obvious to me that she is innocent!” yet rarely do people discuss the treatment of Knox or the impact this case will have on others or society in general. Why is it OK to lie to someone about their having HIV only to attain a list of sexual partners which would then be leaked to the media? This is an example of systematic character defamation — the modern equivalent of throwing an accused witch into the lake to see if she drowns. What sort of pain must we put others through in order to forge our own versions of the truth?

Let’s pretend for a moment that Amanda Knox is guilty. Would her sexual partners or attractiveness matter? No. All that would matter is her culpability; you certainly don’t need to be pretty to commit murder. But the fascination and objectification of Knox’s "bad-girl" persona (when purposefully created and pitted against Kercher’s "good-girl" persona) has constructed a sort of cinematic set of lies. Is Italy afraid that a good-looking American girl actually isn’t a threat to the very fabric of modern society? It seems yes.

Knox and Sollecito’s lives will doubtfully be untainted by this miscarriage of justice, but we still can learn from the case. First, though, we should know how not to talk about it.

Just a few days ago, Jezebel — a blog for women — published a piece, "The 12 Ways We Are Amanda Knox." While the author, Tracie Egan Morrissey, believes Knox is innocent, the article is silly, lazy and downplays the significance of the issue. I have hope that feminist journalists will start taking this case more seriously. I have hope that we will consider the repercussions of sexism when we take to social media to discuss the case. I have hope that we can look past pot and sex.

If that seems judgmental, it’s because we as a society — and perhaps we as feminists — have failed Amanda Knox. People ask me why I care about this case. It is because I am a human and a feminist.

In 2007, Knox was being held in — and consequently convicted to — an Italian prison cell until her 2011 acquittal (she is now convicted again). In 2007, I was in college and I’d seen the headlines — things like Satanic Ritual Gone Wrong and Gory Sex Game Leads to Murder. I remember thinking, this just doesn’t add up. There’s no basis for this assumption! They said she was a liar, which reminded me of a time when I was much younger and dealing with a legal case. While my experience had nothing to do with murder, I was, for all intents and purposes, considered a liar, a young girl with a bad M.O. I was slut-shamed for reporting a child-molester. She has to be lying. She wanted the attention, they said. She made the other girls lie, too.

Why are we, as a society, so quick to sexualize and blame victims on the very basis of gender? Why must we live by some imaginary angel/whore binary?

This case jolts me in other ways as well. As an Italian-American, I am ashamed and saddened that this fiasco has painted, for some, a revolting picture of Italian culture. Italians aren’t barbarians without a sense of logic, but this case isn’t helping the image. The trial of Knox and Sollecito has exacerbated the idea that many Italians are operating a witch-hunt run by stubborn, macho and misogynistic character-assassins. I cannot help but agree.

When Italian authorities celebrated the capture of Kercher’s murderer early on in the trial (due to Knox’s forced false confession, which implicated her employer Patrick Lumumba) the Italian "authorities" were revered as heroes. They had "solved" the case! They had brought justice to poor Kercher, whose bloodied, battered body called for peace. More so, and perhaps more importantly, they had caught the attention of the world, who watched as the small, rustic city of Perugia closed the case on something truly awful.

Couple this false "triumph" (it was not Lumumba after all, but Italy was already boasting) with botched forensic analysis, undeniable Italian nationalism and a bad feeling about a pretty American girl, and you have a media circus.

The prosecution’s theories have changed and morphed over the past seven years; they’ve included sexual and Satanic motives (thanks to Mignini, the God-fearing prosecutor who has been known to use psychics as part of investigations), disputes over housework and personality and a spontaneous desire to kill. Just because the newest claims include a murderous "quarrel" involving stolen money doesn’t mean we should forget the storm of sexism that set the tone for the case.

Just last year CNN journalist Chris Cuomo glibly asked Knox on national television if she is a sexual deviant, and a California porn company offered her $20,000 to star in a sex flick.

"As you may have read, and were most likely well aware of, the general consensus is you are absolutely smoking hot," Michael Kulich, the company’s founder, wrote.

This offer made the news, sure, but the sad matter is that it barely shocked anyone. This is a woman whose life has been turned upside down by a wrongful conviction, and all we can think to do is comment on her looks? If Kulich sat in prison for four years for a crime he didn’t commit, would he think his gesture so clever?

Like all murder cases, the facts should dictate the proceedings. The defendants shouldn’t have to go on trial for their lives, their interests and their sexuality — especially when it doesn’t relate to the crime. But this isn’t a normal murder case. This is an inquisition.

One fact — perhaps the only fact we need to know — is that Rudy Guede murdered Kercher. Another fact is that he partied in Perugia and fled to Germany immediately after the murder. Yet another fact was that his DNA was found on Kercher’s body and in the room, while Knox and Sollecito’s DNA was not. Guede admitted to being at the scene.

The DNA evidence for Guede and lack thereof for Knox and Sollecito isn’t magical or a due to a fantastic bleach-clean-up (you can’t see DNA). These are simply facts that have been ignored, manipulated and lied-about, not only by the court but by lazy reportage.

Asserting that Knox and Sollecito casually, you know, joined a criminal for a night of murder-and oh, yeah, maybe a bloody orgy-defies logic and lacks motive. The “facts” have been manipulated to fit the "theory." In this case, 2+2=5.

Just look at this list of Knox nicknames. How is it that most revolve around her sexuality, when Guede is most certainly the rapist and murderer? Knox has been called everything from "evil temptress" to "Luciferina" to "she-devil with an angel face."

Why have we turned her into a filthy, sex-obsessed slut and why aren’t more journalists, writers, advocates and lawyers speaking up about this? Why should Knox have to explain her sexuality to Diane Sawyer?

This seriously flawed case is teaching us that we can be punished for being sexually active or good looking, and that it’s OK to draw parallels between "sexual deviance" and homicide.

This case hinges on not only ignored and circumstantial evidence but preconceived notions and cultural expectations of "the good girl."

First, there’s the case of Knox’s "offness." Salon.com writer Tom Dibblee wrote,

What’s compelling to me about Amanda Knox is that it was her slight offness that did her in, the everyday offness to be found on every schoolyard and in every workplace. This is the slight sort of offness that rouses muttered suspicion and gossip, the slight sort of offness that courses through our daily lives and governs who we choose to affiliate ourselves with and who we choose to distance ourselves from.

When people talk about Knox’s reaction, they’re placing a gendered expectation on her: Should she have been weeping publicly and often? Should she not have kissed her boyfriend? Would only a horrible she-devil derive pleasure while her roommate is dead in the morgue?

How we experience and move-through trauma is personal. It is not up to anyone to determine how one should behave during difficult times. Knox was 20 years old, an age somewhere between the never-land of youth and the terror of adulthood. Are we, as women, expected to be sensitive, sad and weak? I rarely hear critics discussing Sollecito’s post-murder behavior. So Knox did a split and kissed her boyfriend? I would have done the same.

All other "evidence" is circumstantial or forced.

A grainy CCTV video, "pale eyes," a school-aged nickname and a few sexual partners does not a murderer make. Most women I’ve spoken with have indulged in far more drug use and have had far more sex than Amanda Knox has had, but because this is a modern-day witch-hunt we’re talking about, Knox will continue being one of the most slut-shamed people in major media.

When you search "Amanda Knox" on Twitter, you’ll see just how angry, uninformed and irrational some people are.

And if the public is being fed inaccurate information by the media (because Italy’s judicial system is all about false and circumstantial evidence) they aren’t going to know how to discuss the facts either. Social media has made it easy to report error and exaggerate information, and we should be using it for good. We should be taking a stand against these sexist allegations.

However, sexism isn’t the only problem here. There’s the issue of race — only we’re focusing on the wrong elements.

When people talk about racism and this case, they point to Knox’s naming Patrick Lumumba as murderer. This is understandable without further information. Wrongful convictions based on race are all too common.

We should remember that Knox was interrogated for many hours without food or water. She was slapped and screamed at in Italian — a language she barely understood at the time. When the police found her text message (which said the English equivalent of "goodnight, see you another time") with Lumumba, they psychologically tortured her and coerced her into confessing that he was involved in the murder. If her text message was sent to anyone else of any race, the same would have occurred. She named him because they named him. More so, false confessions aren’t rare. According to the Innocence Project, "In about 25 percent of DNA exoneration cases, innocent defendants made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions or pled guilty."

The real racial issue is this: Perhaps we wouldn’t even be talking about the Knox case if she wasn’t white and beautiful. This world spins on a white, heteronormative, image-obsessed axis, as does the justice system. In 2011, civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom told Larry King Live that society ought to be outraged by fact that pseudo-confessions and scant evidence would prosecute a young black defendant but slide under the radar of major media. Bloom is right. We need to stop paying media attention to only those cases where white is the central color. We need to be open to our flaws as people and as a system in order to jumpstart any change. We can begin by speaking up.

When we learn how to fairly talk about this trial, we will be able to see clearly — or at least as clearly as possible — through the mire Italy has left in its wake.