BOOK REVIEW

       “Wear Your Invisible Crown” would hereby like to reinstate the Book Review section. (Tada! Did that sound pompous enough?)  Although we’ve covered Motion Picture and Indie films in the past couple of months (Mona Lisa Smile and The Giant Mechanical Man), we haven’t cracked open a book on our blog since October (when we discussed Libba Bray’s Beauty Pageants. Please click on the label below to read that column). The book that we are featuring this month is the #1 New York Times Bestseller Little Bee.

       The back cover of Little Bee proudly asserts “Once you have read this book, you’ll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds.”  When I initially read this, I scoffed the cynic’s scoff. Will Little Bee really be the kind of book that elicits Twi-hard mania in me? Will it be the type of novel that is so emotionally acute that I’m suddenly inspired to start my own version of Oprah’s Book Club? Will I blog about it?

       Yes, yes, and yes. If Chris Cleave, the author of this novel, hires me as part of his Publicity Staff, then he’ll see an astronomical rise in sales.

The Giant Mechanical Man

A Movie about Postmodernism, Struggle & the Power of being Genuine

I usually experience the abrasive reality of postmodern life during the Subway’s rush hour.

      You see, at my previous employment, the commute from my house to the Upper East Side was utter agony. I’m the official “Priestess of the Non-Morning People Population,” (that’s a mouthful, I know) but I would attempt to unglue my body from the bed anyways.

       When I boarded the overcrowded train, my lethargic brain had difficult time processing information. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t mumble Tehillim. All I could do was slink my body against the train’s door and examine my fellow commuters. Who are these people? As a writer, I yearn to know another’s story. Why is he dressed like that? What country is she from? How did that couple meet? What is he reading on his iPad? I will never know their story. They will also never know mine.

 

Mona Lisa Smile

A Movie of Female Empowerment

This past Saturday night, during a trip to Miami, my friend and I chose to stay in. (Yes—we’re prone to dullness at times). Our hotel *cough, cough* (a 1 star, mind you) barely offered 15 TV channels (7 of which were in Spanish and 1 in French). Oh, and did I mention that a remote control was non-existent?

We took turns to drag our lazy backsides off the bed and be the official “channel switcher.” Eventually we succumbed to a laptop and Netflix.

My friend and I opted to watch a film called Mona Lisa Smile starring Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, and Julia Stiles. (My friend likes Julia Roberts and I like the “Mona Lisa.” Thus, it was a fairly easy way to compromise).

Mona Lisa Smile is about an Art History professor named Ms. Watson (played by Julia Roberts) who arrives at Wellesley College in 1953. This professor notices how the all-female student body analyzes art. They utilize rigid textbook methodology. The way they approach their personal lives is not that different either. These young women are expected to marry young and become homemakers extraordinaire. Once married, they are to vacuum, iron, and cook perfectly—with lusciously lined lips and coiffed curls of course.

 

         What makes Ms. Watson indignant is seeing how her students’ sole drive is to marry well and embody the stereotypical 50’s housewife. She watches how her otherwise intelligent students shrug off their talents in favor of a purely domestic lifestyle.

         Predictably, Ms. Watson’s feministic philosophies are quickly upended by fierce opposition (from both teachers and students). It was the ‘50s after all. In spite of this, Ms. Watson continues to bulldoze over “a woman’s boundaries” by telling her students that they have a choice: They do NOT have to belittle their ambitions because of marriage. They can do both—career and family.

         This subject is obviously exhaustive and hackneyed: “Women and Work,” “Women and Family,” “Women and Societal Expectations.” We’ve seen and heard and read it all. Right?

Vogue December 2012

 

But four days later, and I'm still contemplating this movie. The characters reminded me of my former classmates, my fellow Synagogue-goers, my neighbors, and of....yours truly.

  Book Review  

Welcome to "Wear Your Invisible Crown"'s BOOK REVIEW Column. We will periodically feature a book or novel and will include our personal reflections based upon our reading. We will include books from various genres (spanning the range of fiction, memoirs, Jewish-themed books, psychology, dating, and classics). Read on for this month's BOOK REVIEW. We hope it's up your alley.

Pause for a moment and envision the following: You are a competing in a National Beauty Pageant and you (along with the other Beauty Pageant contestants) are flying to a tropical destination where the Pageant will be staged and filmed. Yet, there is one itsy-bitsy glitch in this glamorous agenda: The plane you are flying on crashes and you and the other survivors are pitifully abandoned on a cobra-infested, volcano-exploding jungle. You and your fellow surviving Beauty Queens have little to subsist on—unless you can count “four hot roller sets, straightening irons, three waterlogged beauty magazines, and laxatives” as survival provisions. You and the other young women have it far worse than the contenders on Survivor, because in addition to your minor “do or die” predicament, you must also continue to rigorously train for the Beauty Pageant, because when rescue does arrive you cannot afford to be mortified in front of the national television screen with smudged eyeliner and a sloppy runway walk.