Faced with choosing one of 600 odd channels on my sister’s satellite dish last night (and I thought I had choices to make in my pathetic TV-free life), we decided on a CBC show called Who Do You Think You Are?. The show is a genealogical exploration of 13 Canadian celebrities, one per half-hour episode. It’s part detective story, part biography, and part big-picture Canadian history. Lucky me, I caught the show on Avi Lewis. Avi Lewis, well-known Canadian “journalist-activist” and son of AIDS in Africa crusader Stephen Lewis, uncovered more of his politician grandfather David Lewis’s past. He discovered that the RCMP and CSIS kept scrupulous records on his grandfather’s activities, but couldn’t get many of the records released. He traces his grandfather’s passion for political change all the way back to his membership in a socialist, labour-focused, Jewish political party in Svisloch (now a part of modern Belarus). Much of the information was unknown even to Avi’s father.

So it turns out that Avi’s passion for social justice goes way back. Pretty cool, huh? What I found inspiring about this story is that we never get to see old histories of resistance, in our familes and otherwise…how many feminists back can you trace in your family, for example? These are the stories that aren’t often documented enough. Their site also offers a chance to see the methods used on the show and uncover your own family tree.

Other celebrities on the show include Don Cherry, Scott Thompson, Mary Walsh, Shaun Majumder, Margaret Trudeau, and notably Chantal Kreviazuk - who explored her family’s big unspoken secret of Metis heritage.

Oh yeah - and Avi is partnered with Naomi Klein, most recently the author of The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. When she spoke at my university a few years back, she organized a meeting with a bunch of us student activists and made sure to centrally mention our struggle against our university’s administration in her very public speech later that evening. The university’s president looked none too impressed. We were pretty happy to have a high-profile author and intellectual on our side!

(OK, I admit it: afterwards we watched the first hour of The Celebrity Apprentice. I swear it was my first time.)

See below for a call for submissions for the awesome Worn Magazine!

“Everything I know about fashion, I learned from my mother.”

Almost every one of us got our first lessons in style from our mothers. Whether by practical advice or in setting an example, how (and with whom) we grow up has a huge influence on the evolution of our aesthetic tastes. Hell, even the complete absence of fashion effects us somehow.

Do you have a story about how your mother influenced your sense of style?
Do you have sage advice the rest of us need to hear?
Have you carried your mother’s sense of style with you all your life?

We think you do - and we think a whole bunch of people are going to want to hear about it.

Worn Fashion Journal is sending out a call for submissions.

We are putting together a ‘zine all about how moms shape our view of fashion and how their influence and advice follows us all our lives.

Pitch us your best stories and get your mom the recognition she deserves.

We are looking mainly for essay/anecdotal stories, 800 - 1000 words.
You may include pictures, but it’s not required.
We will consider other formats for your ideas - just let us know what you’d like to do and we’ll let you know if we can swing it.

Send us your pitches and ideas by: February 10, 2008

All final drafts by: March 1, 2008


Unfortunately, as an independent magazine, Worn can’t pay writers for selected submissions - but we will make sure you get a free copy of the ‘zine so your mom won’t think you made it all up.

Don’t procrastinate.
Just think what your mother would say…

Contact Worn with your story ideas or let us know if you have any questions: dearworn@wornjournal.com

Check out our website for more contact information or find Worn retailers in your neighbourhood.

…I bring you Cat and Girl, from the brilliant Dorothy Gambrell.

I don’t know about you, but for me nothing eases the sting of term papers, bibliographies, and external examiner nominations than this comic strip. Calvin and Hobbes meets Dorothy Parker? Al Burian meets Judith Butler? Samuel Beckett meets Le Tigre? All of the above get together for a slumber party where they start a Ramones cover band and read The Babysitters Club to each other? Who cares, this stuff is genius.

Sorry I’ve been remiss. Back on the blogging team soon.

p.s. if no one buys me her “Capitalists Do It Ruthlessly” shirt for my next birthday, I’m disowning the world.

There’s a piece in the Feb/Mar 08 issue of Bust Magazine about career waitresses. I haven’t had a chance to pick up a copy, but a post on Girlistic brought me to careerwaitresses.com, “a multimedia project that profiles career waitresses aged 50 and older who have been dishing out everything from eggs to insults for up to 60 years.”

The site is worth a look because it, through the beautiful photographs of Candacy Taylor, honours women in a field that of faces the stigma of being “just a waitress,” and values them as “some of the healthiest, most vibrant, hardest working women in the U.S.” The photographs are currently on tour. Check out the gallery here.

photograph: Candacy Taylor

If you haven’t yet read Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis books, you now have the chance to see it on the big screen. The two graphic novels detail her life growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution as well as her schooldays in Vienna at a French lycée. The film was produced in France (Satrapi’s adopted country) and has English subtitles.

In Persepolis the film, nothing from the original books is lost. The stark black and white images are cleverly reproduced on the big screen. The whole film is hand-drawn, not computer generated, and you can tell.

I would say that the film enriches the books. And music, which plays a big part in Marjane’s youth, brings depth to the story. Watching prepubescent Marjane listen to black market heavy metal tapes produces a moment of cognitive dissonance that is simply priceless! Fluid movement boosts the emotional meanings of Satrapi’s images. The scenes where she floats towards God and Karl Marx to discuss her dreams and disappointments are particularly moving, in both senses of the word. When her father attempts to right her formal education about the Shah, Satrapi animates the historical leaders of his tale as mechanical marionettes, giving visual representation to the idea of “puppet dictator”.

But really, as I’m not an artist and I know nothing about how animation is achieved, I really can’t debate the technology of the film. All I know is that it looks and feels genuine. But as a feminist, I CAN debate how the film represents women. (Take that, all you family members and friends who wonder what skills my women’s studies degree has wrought upon the world!!!)
(more inside…)

Via Feministe

As we all wait in breathless anticipation of Shameless publisher Stacey May Fowles‘ new book, Be Good (launching tomorrow, details in the post below this one), I though I’d tip you off about another kick-ass book I’ve been reading.

Bottle Rocket Hearts, by Shameless contributor Zoe Whittall, was released in the spring, but it took autumn’s chill to remind me that it was time to start snuggling up with good books again.

I just reviewed Zoe’s book for eyeweekly.com, but because it’s so shamelessly awesome, I wanted to post my review here too. And so, without further ado…

Zoe Whittall knows what it’s like to get kicked in the lip ring by love. Her first novel, Bottle Rocket Hearts (Cormorant Books, 189 pages, $19.95), is a queer coming-of-age story that captures the rush of falling in love and subsequent crash of realizing your lover is more fucked-up than you are.

(more inside…)

Shameless publisher and tireless blogger Stacey May Fowles is about to launch her very first novel, Be Good.

Be Good, the debut novel by Stacey May Fowles

Here’s a description of Be Good:

Be Good interweaves competing accounts in the first person of the same series of events: love affairs, failed relationships, obsessions, and moving from familiarity. The faulty nature of memory and recollection are revealed as each voice speaks only from personal experience and therefore ultimately contradicts the other. The experiences of these twenty something characters are often their first taste of departure from the familiar, from home, revealing their ongoing alienation and isolation where the only reliable narrator is the future.

And here are the details about the party. Hope to see you there!

Wednesday, November 14th, 7:30 PM
Revival
783 College Street West @ Shaw
Toronto, Ontario

Featuring a performance by Tomboyfriend and DJ Ashley Olsen, and a reading by Dayle Furlong.

Congratulations, Stacey May!

Now Hear This!, an outreach program that sends professional writers into schools to conduct writing workshops with students, is launching their first anthology of student and teacher writing:

“Descant Arts & Letters Foundation‘s Now Hear This! literacy program is in the mood to celebrate.

Between February and May 2007, over seven hundred students, ten writers and ten teachers took part in twelve weeks of innovative writing workshops in Toronto high school classrooms as part of Students, Writers and Teachers (S.W.A.T), a Now Hear This! initiative. After a smashingly successful inaugural year, S.W.A.T. is proud to present The Armadillo, an anthology of creative writing by student participants of the program. The Armadillo showcases the greatest hits of the S.W.A.T. program: student-written stories, poems, personal essays, reviews and screenplays documenting the success of Toronto’s first-ever ongoing writers-in-schools program.

Join us at the Now Hear This! celebration, Monday, November 19 from 7-9pm at the Gardiner Museum (Terrace Room, 3rd Floor, 111 Queen’s Park). This evening is a chance to recognize everyone’s enthusiastic participation in the program, hear from writers-in-residence and students about their experiences, give kudos to those who helped make the program possible, enjoy some nibbles and generally celebrate Now Hear This!’s success. Everyone is welcome, so tell your friends and fans.

The details:
WHEN: Monday, November 19, 2007, 7:00-9:00 pm
WHERE: The Gardiner Museum, Terrace Room (3rd Floor)
Subway Station: Museum
WHO: Everyone is welcome at this free event”