Dylan Farrow, Woody Allen and the politics of disbelief [TW]

Credit: http://gifmovie.tumblr.com/

Dylan Farrow, Mia Farrow's daughter and Woody Allen's adoptive daughter, recently published an open letter in the New York Times about being sexually assaulted by the renowned filmmaker when she was 7 years old.

It is a harrowing read. We don't like to believe children can be used like this, particularly by those who purport to love them. It is, however, disturbingly common. Studies by David Finkelhor, Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, show that:

• 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse;

• Self-report studies show that 20% of adult females and 5-10% of adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident;

• During a one-year period in the U.S., 16% of youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized;

• Over the course of their lifetime, 28% of U.S. youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized;

• Children are most vulnerable to CSA between the ages of 7 and 13.

• According to a 2003 National Institute of Justice report, 3 out of 4 adolescents who have been sexually assaulted were victimized by someone they knew well.

As horrifying as the numbers in those stats are, they are probably much lower than they should be, because as everyone involved in compiling them admits, childhood sexual abuse is chronically underreported. The response to Dylan Farrow's open letter gives a good indication why. Her credibility is being impugned in comment and blog, by whatever means necessary.

The Daily Beast, nearly a week before the open letter, published a piece written by one of Allen's professional collaborators (in response to an earlier Vanity Fair article) whose take on the matter is to disprove Farrow's accusation of sexual abuse by framing it as purposeful brainwashing. 

This is not a new technique in discrediting allegations of abuse, in fact, it is a classic. Marshaling disbelief is handy, since none of us want to believe sexual abuse of children happens, we're all too ready to look for a reason to say it didn't. For a time it was counsellors and therapists who were made suspect, ostensibly "seeding" memories of abuse in their clients. More recently, especially in the prosecution of clergy abusers, the victim has been discredited by focusing on drug abuse and mental health issues (regardless of whether these were prompted by the abuse itself) or by painting family members as leading the charge for prosecution from a need to blame someone for their own parental failings.

Seeding disbelief is a political act. Only those in positions of power have the means to do it. 

Credit: http://gifmovie.tumblr.com/

Allen's defenders and apologists (Robert Weide of the Daily Beast among them) have done it rather well for him, casting Mia Farrow as a harpy deranged by the movie-making genius's love for her young adoptive daughter, Soon Yi Previn, and therefore vindictively planting the idea of abuse in Dylan Farrow's mind. 

The Daily Beast story, for example, invests itself in removing the taint of statutory from the Allen/Previn story, knowing that its specifics lend credence to Dylan Farrow's claims of Allen's inappropriate interest in his young adoptive daughters. The article does this by pointing to the fact that Previn was 19 when they married, and that as distasteful as the age difference between Allen and Previn is, it is hardly illegal. The article handily ignores any questions about the 12 years before the actual marriage, when Allen was presumably falling in love with the underage child even as he was in a romantic relationship with Mia Farrow and serving as Previn's (and all of Farrow's children's) surrogate father.  

Even the Catholic Church, as much as it disavows much of the abuse its priests enacted and bishops enabled, admits that there is a recognizable process of grooming that abusers engage in, and it is hard not to see it in both the prelude to pedophilia outlined by Dylan Farrow in her open letter, or the ephebophilia in the facts of Allen's relationship with Soon Yi Previn.

Besides being a sexual violation, childhood sexual abuse is a crime of power. Look to who has the power in each of the Allen situations — in the accusation levied by Dylan, in the relationship and marriage to Soon Yi — and who has the means to most effectively shape the narrative around it. It isn't either of the young women, and never was. Allen's got a whole movie-making industry to deploy in his version of the story, and he has done so. From the Daily Beast article by his documentarian to the Golden Globe lifetime achievement award in which Diane Keaton and other Hollywood cronies extolled him for, among other things, his focus on women. 

But let's look at some of the actual narratives Allen has written: the nauseating storyline of Manhattan with its love affair between the 42-year-old character portrayed by Allen and the 17-year-old character portrayed by Mariel Hemingway; or, his recent Blue Jasmine, with Cate Blanchett portraying a brittle, bitter woman undone by her husband's affair with a young au pair.  It is only the powerful who can carry off having their pathologies lovingly rendered in black-and-white, backed by a jazz soundtrack, and praised for genius and art.

We can't anticipate what ugly stories will emerge involving Allen in future, but the ugly storylines of his past aren't going away. And strangely, they do what Allen's movies purport to do: they shine a light on how deeply divided from one another we are. Many believe the innocent storyline written by the witty predator and his sycophantic entourage, but an equal number do not (evidenced by the fact that the hashtag #IBelieveDylanFarrow is trending on Twitter). And both sets know there is no happy ending in the offing.  

Updated at 1:29 to correct misspelling of Soon Yi Previn's name.

Latina Bloggers React: We read, we write, we buy books

In response to the New York Times article about the lack of Latino authors and books for children, Latina bloggers have launched the "Latinas for Latino Literature" campaign which works to identify the problems in today's publishing world that contribute to this lack of diversity so that we can provide ideas for changing the situation to the benefit of not only Latino readers and writers, but to the benefit of the industry itself as they tap into this growing demographic. Look for forthcoming Google hangouts, Twitter parties, and follow-up posts as this coordinated effort to bring quality books for an emerging group of readers continues.

Way back during the two years my parents spent in Bangkok, Thailand, my Mexican-Guatemalan mother found herself in a peculiar quandary. She had two very small children underfoot and no books to read to them. It’s not that there weren’t beautiful Thai books — because there were — but my mother couldn’t read those and the books she found in Spanish and English were exorbitantly priced. So she took two of her sketchbooks and turned them into illustrated stories with versions of my brother and me as protagonists. We loved them.

Twenty years or so later, I was living on a shoestring, working for a non-profit in Central New York State. One of my coworkers had invited me to his daughter’s fourth or fifth birthday party and since my wallet was near empty (and would be for the next two weeks) I sat down and drew and wrote. I made Katie the protagonist of a story I no longer remember and which probably wasn’t very good. I was more than a little embarrassed when I handed it over at the party. Months later Katie’s mother told me it was one of her daughter’s favorite books. 

We like to recognize ourselves in books. This is no news. 

Neither is the finding in Motoko Rich’s story in the New York Times that Latino children are underrepresented in the books available to them in classroom and school library. As a Latina writer and mom, I know this is the reality. But let’s not stop in the classroom — Latinos are seriously underrepresented in mainstream fiction, in genre fiction, in literary fiction. Hell, let’s go whole hog, shall we? There are damn few Latinos in mainstream newspapers and broadcasts, movies and television shows, as well.

You see the problem here? 

To whomever is stocking those classroom bookshelves (considering submissions at publishing houses, buying properties to be developed for the screen, etc.) we’re invisible and have no dialogue. We were never the protagonists of the stories they read in school, and they haven’t bothered to find out that since then there have been thousands, tens of thousands, written with Latino protagonists by Latino writers. 

If and when we are noticed by the book industry, it is to repeat tired old claims that Latinos don’t purchase books and don’t read, so why make the effort? I’m not sure where this idea came from, but I can tell you it’s not my experience either personally or professionally. As the managing editor of Philadelphia’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, Al Día, my experience is that Latinos are far more likely to purchase and read in print than non-Latinos. Moreover, they are loyal repeat readers, picking up issue after issue of our newspaper, week-in and week-out. At Al Día we include book notes and stories about Latino writers —Junot Diaz, David Unger, Reyna Grande, Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez, just to name a few — on a weekly basis. 

What I love best about our Latino community is its delight in reading both highbrow and low, and how the comic book “Love and Rockets” (or compilations of Mafalda and Rius) is likely to coexist in the same bookstand as the poetry of Pablo Neruda, non-fiction by Cesar Millan and the fantastical YA of Isabel Allende.

The purchasing power of Latinos based on 2010 Census data is $1 trillion. We are the fast growing consumer market. If the book industry isn’t getting a share of our purchases, it needs to examine why that is.

I find reasons in Rich’s piece from the NYT: “Publishers say ... in some cases they insert Latino characters in new titles,” Rich says, then quotes the vice president of Simon & Schuster’s children’s division, who says that in a series of books they commissioned they consciously made one of the characters Latina. 

Might I suggest this is just wrongheaded. The idea that just turning an existing character into a Latino/a child is the way to serve our growing demographic is lazy and disingenuous. How about publishing some Latino writers whose Latino characters are organic to the storyline rather than a non-Latino child in disguise? And then, how about aggressively marketing those stories with real Latino kids not only to the mass market, but to the buyers for schools and libraries? 

Rich also includes this unattributed statement in the NYT: “Publishers say they want to find more works by Hispanic authors.”  Well, this is great if it is true, but it’s also little and late. I ask myself — as a Latina newspaper editor who has focused attention on a good number of fantastic books by Latino authors — what prevented them from doing that before? Why do they never send me press releases or review copies of the books by Latinos already on their lists? The “U.S. Latino writer” is no recent phenomenon. I — and every person in the “Latinas love Latino Literature” response — can name many immensely talented Latino writers (whose work includes fascinating and diverse Latino characters) working in every single marketing niche and genre those top publishers can throw at us. 

I’ll tell you who sends the newspaper copies of books to review written by Latinos and with Latino protagonists — small presses and publishers. A number of them were open to publishing the works of people of color, and books that speak to our lives, back when big publishers were still looking no further than down their noses. School teachers interested in seeing their classroom diversity replicated in the selection of books on their bookstand would do themselves a huge favor by looking through the small press lists.

There are a lot of great Latino writers to be introduced to, and a lot of great Latino characters to meet through their work. Here are some titles (across genres and market types) you might not have heard about (and of course you'll know why the first two are first ;)):

Ink by Sabrina Vourvoulias (science fiction-fantasy)

200 years of Latino History in Philadelphia by the Staff of Al Día (non-fiction)

Salsa Nocturna by Daniel José Older (ghost noir short stories)

Ocotillo Dreams (fiction) and How Fire is A Story, Waiting by Melinda Palacio (poetry)

¡Ban This! The BSP Anthology of Xican@ Literature (fiction, poetry, essays)

Dancing with the Devil and Other Tales from Beyond (bilingual) by Rene Saldaña (YA)

Let's Dance and The Poet Upstairs by Judith Ortiz Cofer (picture books)

Bilingual is Better by Ana Flores (non-fiction)

Help your Children Succeed in High School and Go to College by Mariela Dabbah (non-fiction)

Love Trips: A Collection of Relationship Stumbles by Sujeiry Gonzalez (memoir)

Muy Bueno: Three Generations of Authentic Mexican Flavor by Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack (cookbook)

Not news to us

An article on racial profiling of Latinos appeared in the April 15 online edition of the New York Times:

Many police officers in New Jersey are misusing a 2007 directive by the state’s attorney general by questioning the immigration status of Latino drivers, passengers, pedestrians and even crime victims, reporting them to federal immigration authorities and jailing some for days without criminal charges, according to a Seton Hall Law School study.

“The data suggests a disturbing trend towards racial profiling by the New Jersey police,” said Bassina Farbenblum, a lawyer with the law school’s Center for Social Justice, which gathered details of 68 cases over the past nine months in which people were questioned about their immigration status for no apparent reason, or after minor infractions, like rolling through a stop sign. None involved drunken driving or the use of false documents.

Read the article at: http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8826224074525081488

Coatesville redux

Coatesville is one of my family’s favorite weekend destinations.
Those of you who know the once-thriving steel-town as the site of 20-odd deliberately set fires since the start of 2009 might wonder at this. (The latest fire was today. Click here to read the AP report: www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5haiMlONh4ms_FKw0lkwUZgeMDvLwD96GLQC00.)
But the town has, for the past five or so years, seen a main-street revitalization common to a number of faded steel-towns along the eastern and central Pennsylvania corridor – it has developed a strip of small Latino businesses from grocery stores to retail shops to eateries. This is what draws my family to the town. I go to replenish the food stuffs I can get nowhere else: fresh verdolagas (purslane), plantain leaves to wrap the tamales I make, recado rojo (an annatto and spice paste used in Yucatec cooking) and cecina, an accordioned piece of beef my butcher husband tells me is unbelievably difficult to cut. My husband – an Anglo who genuinely loves authentic Mexican food – prompts the Coatesville jaunts whenever he wakes up with a hankering for chilaquiles.
Two weekends ago we headed out to our favorite taqueria in Coatesville. I expected the atmosphere in the eatery to be subdued – after all, the town has declared a state of emergency and instituted a curfew as a consequence of the arsons. That sort of thing tends to have an effect that can be felt at all hours of the day.
But I was unprepared for what I saw.
Most of the storefronts that had enlivened this stretch of Route 30 with images of Our Lady of Guadalupe and colorful paper banners and piñatas were shuttered. Gone was the store that stocked an amazing selection of cowboy boots, and the one that sold an idiosyncratic mix of soccer jerseys and Spanish-language CDs.
The taqueria, though open, was emptier than I’ve ever seen it. Whenever we’ve come before it has been full of workers on lunch break, or if it is a Saturday evening, families dining together after attending the Spanish-language Mass at St. Cecilia.
“Have the fires affected business?” I ask the waitress. None of the newspaper reports I’ve read about the arsons have mentioned Coatesville’s Latino community, but the waitress nods.
“One of the fires burned out a number of [Latino] families,” she tells me.
But it is not the only reason this once vital section of Coatesville is experiencing a second death.
The economic crisis has hit small, resurgent towns like this one particularly hard. Juan Tornoe, a Hispanic marketing professional, wrote in early December 2008 that he expected the Latino immigrant community to weather the economic downturn better than most communities because Latino immigrants (generally) rent rather than own houses, and because they operate mostly in a cash economy rather than a credit-driven one. (Read his analysis at http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/02/latino-immigrants-and-the-current-economic-crisis/.)
But Tornoe’s entry was written before the crisis turned from a credit and housing crisis to a jobs crisis. As immigrant wage earners have left communities like Coatesville following jobs, so has the money they poured into the community through rental payments and purchases of food, clothing and household goods. This has greatly impacted the small businesses that sprang up to meet their needs. In an interesting sort of synergy, the businesses that had relied on the immigrants’ purchasing power had also served as their safety-net – extending credit when necessary, allowing services to be paid out over time, and in some small measure, creating employment opportunities.
Additionally, immigrant communities such as the one in Coatesville have been hit with another stressor – an escalation in efforts to round up immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally. According to a study released by the Pew Research Center last week, nearly half (48 percent) of Latinos currently convicted of federal crimes have been convicted on immigration charges (www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/us/19immig.html). This seems to fit hand-in-glove with revelations that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) teams have been given higher arrest quotas to fill (www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/02/18/us/AP-Ice-Raids.html).
Raids and 287(g) agreements to deputize local law enforcement as immigration agents have struck at the heart of many immigrant communities, where, immigration advocates and some ethnic media reporters suspect, the motivation for arrests may be money. A recent Boston Globe article about cash-strapped county jails counting on the federal dollars they receive in return for incarcerating detainees seems to bear this suspicion out (www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/09/jailed_immigrants_buoy_budgets/).
The economic crisis is exacerbating an already corrosive divide in the way we, as a nation, view immigrants.
In Trenton, N.J., at a November 2008 meeting of comprehensive immigration reform advocates (including participants from the N.J. Catholic conference and Catholic Charities of Camden and Trenton), discussion touched on the often-neglected reality that immigrants are vital contributors to the economy. This is a reality made all too visible on Coatesville’s main street.
I think about this as I fill my shopping basket at one of the few Latino grocery stores still open in Coatesville. It, like the taqueria, is not as busy as it has been in the past.
I remember how difficult it was for my mother when we moved here from Guatemala 30-some years ago. There were no grocery stores out this way that carried Latino ingredients, and even fruits that are now commonplace – mangoes and avocados – were hard to come by in those days. She used to try to make bananas stand in for plantains, and blessed Campbell’s for making a black bean soup from which she could, more or less, make refried black beans reminiscent of the ones from home. She would have thought she had died and gone to heaven if she had stood in front of the bin filled with Mexican sweet rolls and bread I pause at during my Coatesville shopping spree.
Funny what makes a place feel like home. Food, custom, language, even décor. We know this when we set foot in Italian markets, Chinese restaurants, or those church festivals where the pierogies or baklava are homemade and people are happily chatting in their language no matter how many years they’ve lived here.
“How is business?” I ask the owner of the grocery store as I go to check out.
“Terrible,” she answers.
“You’re still going to be here next time I come to do my shopping?” I ask, alarmed.
I want assurances. I want to know that we are whole enough to continue to nurture dreams, no matter how tough the current circumstances. I want to believe we will sustain communities like this – striving, beset by difficulties, but beloved.
The owner gives me a wan smile, and I see her eyes dart to the corner, where a candle is lit on a small shelf altar that holds images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and an infant Jesus I can never rightly identify – either the Infant of Prague or the Holy Child of Atocha.
“Si Dios quiere,” she answers, meeting my eyes again. If God wills it.
Then, at my stricken look, she rushes to add, “Yes, yes, we’ll be here.”
On our way out of town I stare again at the empty storefronts. I think about the families who opened them, worked hard to staff them and keep them viable, and who built up a whole community within walking distance of their church.
It is Coatesville’s story writ again and again – through subsequent waves of promise and hardship. And maybe it is that history of faith ever-renewed that heartens me as I leave.
Little towns are tough. Particularly little steel towns.
Fires, arrest quotas, job losses – they don’t hold a candle to the dream I saw still living in that waitress’s and that storeowner’s eyes.
Hope resides here.

'A degrading spectacle'

“It has come to this: In Phoenix on Wednesday, more than 200 men in shackles and prison stripes were marched under armed guard past a gantlet of TV cameras to a tent prison encircled by an electric fence. They were inmates being sent to await deportation in a new immigrant detention camp minutes from the center of America’s fifth-largest city.

The judge, jury and exhibitioner of this degrading spectacle was the Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, the publicity-obsessed star of a Fox reality show and the self-appointed scourge of illegal immigrants.”

That is from the Feb. 5 op-ed piece in the New York Times. It is worth reading in its entirety [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06fri2.html?_r=2&scp=9&sq=immigration&st=cse ]

Here is the Associated Press report about the event:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IMMIGRANTS_TENT_CITY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

And the excellent report from El Diario/La Prensa, if you can read Spanish:
http://www.impre.com/noticias/nacionales/2009/2/5/encierran-en-carpas-a-220-indo-107447-1.html

Or, read the Catholic News Service report in the Catholic Standard & Times issue of Feb. 12.