The year has almost come to a close and I’ve had the opportunity to read a few really good novels: Chang Rae Lee’s The Surrendered, Octavia Butler’s Fledgling, and Mona Simpson’s My Hollywood for starters. As far as non-fiction goes The New Jim Crow was undoubtedly the most important book I have read this year and I would highly recommend it! I have a book habit the way some people have a show habit, my apartment is overrun with them and for anyone familiar with New York City apartments, that doesn’t leave me much room!

I ‘ve always personally found reading to be one of the most pleasurable past times and I always try to carve out time to make room for them. More importantly, I would love to write extensively about each book that I complete but alas time will not permit. Nonetheless, there are a few books that I’ve heard about either through media or word of month that are sitting in my apartment on table that I can’t wait to tear into. They include:

1. The Passage by Justin Cronin. An epic vampire tale the book has received excellent reviews so I believe I may take this rather large novel with me on my trip to Japan in the next few weeks.

2. Some Sing, Some Cry — the latest novel by Ntozake shange and her sister Ife Bayeza. The book is also epic in scope and from what I’ve heard equally as impressive a read.

3. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen — Hate him or love him, he is quickly becoming one of the most important American writers of our time. I still haven’t read The Corrections or the two novels he wrote prior to it. Freedom will be my first read of Franzen’s work and I’m eager to post a review of it here.

4. The Book of Salt by Monque Truong . I hadn’t heard of the author nor this book until I heard Alice Walker speak at 92Y earlier this year. The question was asked who and what is she reading these days and she stated that Truong’s The Book of Salt was one of the best reads she had in quite some time. A recommendation from Alice Walker carries a lot of weight with me!

5. Before You Suffocate Your Fool Self by Danielle Evans — This young lady’s first collection of short stories has been profiled everywhere to glowing reviews. Needless to say, I have to check it out!

6. The Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire — This book aims to illuminate how the in the course for civil rights, violence against black women became largely marginalized as blacks fought for civil rights. In other words, race trumped gender then and continues to do so in written history. Largely recommended as a must read.

7. Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon . I’ve never read any Chabon and I’ve heard time and time again that I am missing out. Apparently he is quite the essayist and his wife Ayelet is supposedly a good writer as well and no stranger to controversy.

8. The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin — a plethora of James Baldwin essays in one collection Nuff said!

9. And the Heart Says Whatever by Emily Gould — I heard about this book at salon.com, memoir in eleven essays. Inspired enough interest for me to pick it up from the library.

10. The Whites of their Eyes by Jill Lepore — an investigation of the Tea Party, its beginnings and rise to the national stage of politics. Comes recommended by The New Yorker.

I got a lot of reading ahead of me, a lot of which will be completed on planes and subways. What books do you have on your reading table?

This week, I had the pleasure of contributing to a blog post written by the fabulous Dr. Melissa Harris Lacewell for The Nation. The blog post was intended as a response to the “never-ending story” that accompanies the narrative of successful Black single women. This narrative is often riddled with sexism and triumphs personal experiences over actual demographic or structural data. Its been very interesting reading the litany of responses that the post generated? What are yours?

1. Rethinking the Boston Massacre

2. Study performed by a group of researchers (looking at 27 nations) finds that the presence of book-lined shelves in the home,       and the intellectual environment those volumes reflect, gives children an enormous advantage in school

3.  The Single Mother’s Manifesto by J.K. Rowling

4.  In Defense of Pit Bulls

5.  Sexting, Chexting, Drexting…The Rise of a Salacious Suffix

6.  A World Without Planes

7.  Nike’s Women Problem

8. Honoring Heroes of the Civil Rights’ Era

9.  Esquire profile of Usain Bolt

10. The Unhappiness Trap

11.  Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration

12.  How to Prevent Adoption Disasters

Some great stuff came in this week, I think I’ve included a good mix below. But it is the death of civil rights icon Benjamin Hooks today that will be my top story. I’ve included an NPR  segment here on the pioneer who will be sorely missed. RIP.

1. Black by Choice: The First Black President Has Created a Definitional Crisis for Whiteness
2. Glenn Beck’s New Hero is Tyler Perry
3. Women, Work and a Name Change
4. My Abortion, Their Political Ploy
5. What’s Wrong with Shyness?
6. Male Studies vs. Feminism
7. Actor Christopher Walken returns to his boyhood home in  Astoria, Queens
8. Glenn Beck Inc.
9. Gene Weingarten’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning story: Fatal Distraction
10. A Town Divided: Allen Iverson vs. Hampton, Va.
11. Women in the Media Still Missing
12. Tea Party Anger Rooted in Issues of Class
13. Newspapers Get Whiter as Nation Grows More Diverse
14. Tell Your Life For $10
15. First African American Valedictorian of Notre Dame (and she’s a she!!!)
16. Understanding Tyler Perry

As Usual, here you go:

1. BBC Asks, Is There a Bigelow Effect?
2. Poor breastfeeding rates cost the U.S. $13 billion per year and cause 900+ preventable deaths
3. Can You Afford to Be a Summer Intern?
4. How Visa Predicts Divorce
5. Does It Matter If Writers Like Dickens Are Bad People
6. The Black Church is Dead
7. French Feminist Calls Children Unintentional Tyrants
8. U.S. births declined 2% during the recession in 2008, but there was one exception: women in their 40s
9. The Pain of Losing a Spouse is Singular
10. Death of Wilma Mankiller, first woman to lead Cherokee Nation
11. Tea Party Channels Confederacy with Reactionary Rhetoric
12. In the Face of Racism, Distress Depends on One’s Coping Method

Earlier this year, I was alarmed and disturbed by the publication of a study detailing sexual assault statistics in juvenile detention facilities. The  Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 required that the Justice Department collect data detailing the scope and dimension of the problem. Some of the results of the study were presented as follows:

1. Approximately 95% of all youth reporting staff sexual misconduct said they had been victimized by female staff. In 2008, 42% of staff in state juvenile facilities were female.
2. Female-only facilities had the highest rates of youth-on-youth sexual victimization (11.0%); male-only facilities had the highest rates of staff sexual misconduct (11.3%).
3. Males were more likely than females to report sexual activity with facility staff. An estimated 10.8% of males, compared to 4.7% of females, said they had experienced one or more incidents of sexual activity with staff. Females were more likely than males to report forced sexual activity with other youth. About 9.1% of females and 2.0% of males reported forced sexual activity with another youth at the facility.
4. Female-only facilities had the highest rates of youth-on-youth sexual victimization (11.0%); male-only facilities had the highest rates of staff sexual misconduct (11.3%).

The Justice Department revealed that sexual assault in prisons and juvenile detention centers was a serious, endemic problem in that “12 percent of incarcerated juveniles, or more than 3,200 young people, had been raped or sexually abused in the past year by fellow inmates or prison staff”. In essence, 3 out of every 25 juveniles in state or privately run juvenile facilities have reported at least one incident of sexual assault.

Just a few weeks ago, the troubling case of over 200 deaf boys who were reportedly molested by a Wisconsin broke. According to the New York Times,

“Father Murphy not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents and interviews with victims. Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities. Instead of being disciplined, Father Murphy was quietly moved by Archbishop William E. Cousins of Milwaukee to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest”.

I was similarly stunned when in the Spring of last year, the news broke out of the Dickens-esque, draconian system that over 30,000 Irish children were submitted to under the care of Catholic run institutions such as schools and orphanages . Rapes and sexual assaults were rampant and allegedly committed by the priests and nuns. All of these cases are independently heinous so when viewed collectively the agony is palpable. Whether speaking of the Catholic Church or juvenile detention facilities, there are a few commonalities between these varying incidents:

1. The perpetrators sought out occupations whereby they have full access to their victims.

2. The perpetrators were in a position of authority (and power) and their victims were either by age, reputation, or station rendered powerless to stop their abuse.

3. The abuse was allowed to go one for far too long, revealing large holes in management, social services, and the legal system.

Thinking about these cases, I couldn’t help but wonder also about the modeling industry and the potential risk their for young girls. Though issues of body image and eating disorders as well as impossible beauty standards centralize any critique of the industry, there is rarely any sort of coverage on what I suspect to be the manipulation and abuse (sexual, emotional, verbal, and physical) of young girls and women in the industry. Just like the varied experiences above, the girls are often in positions of powerlessness and around authority figures who not only control and dictate their careers but can replace them at a moment’s notice. Girls who envision themselves in a modeling career generally start in their early teens. They are often shooting long hours in various places around the world, sometimes with no parental supervision and this could be a potential offender’s prime opportunity to strike — remember the recent case of Anand Jon Alexander, who guested on America’s Next Top Model? A new documentary by Sara Ziff entitled Picture Me, speaks to her experiences both lived and seen in the modeling industry. According to a New York Magazine article, there are plenty of stories about young girls being abused,

“Model Sena Cech described a casting with one of the industry’s top photographers when she was just 14 years old:

Halfway through the meeting Cech is asked to strip. She does as instructed and takes off her clothes. After taking a few test shots, the photographer unbuckles his pants. “Baby — can you do something a little sexy,” he tells her. The photographer’s assistant – Cech describes her as a pretty, edgy blonde of about 22 – eggs the young model on. “Show us how hot you are, Sena. Come on, we need you to be real sexy.” What’s supposed to be the casting for a high-end fashion shoot turns into something more like an audition for an adult magazine. The photographer’s assistant tells Cech to touch the photographer sexually. “Sena — can you grab his cock and beat it real hard,” his assistant tells her. “He likes it when you squeeze it real hard and twist it.”

Cech did it, as the photographer and assistant continued to coach her along. Later that day, she got an excited call from her agent that she had been offered the job. Sena turned it down, though, because she feared the audition was only a taste of what the campaign shoots would be like. The photographer never wanted to work with her again. Her agent was livid. Once word got around the tight-knit fashion community that Cech wasn’t game, her career floundered and she was forced to returned to her studies in Poland.

As studies about rape, sexual assault and manipulation of young people in institutions gains more traction, I hope someone will do like Ms. Ziff did and turn their eye to the modeling industry. I have a sneaky suspicion that it may be one of those under the radar institutions that may have many more problems other than skewed definitions of beauty.

Its official, we’re in the era of the mistress, the other woman (or women depending on the celebrity). Right now Jesse James and Tiger Woods are tag-teaming for the position of America’s number 1 douche bag husband but even more salacious than the actions of the husbands are the mistresses’ time in the spotlight. New York Magazine’s Lisa Taddeo published a piece on Rachel Uchitel, one of Tiger’s many women. And one by one, the mistresses are getting their 15 minutes. Vanity Fair has a photo spread and accompanying article on Tiger’s mistresses, most prominently featuring Uchitel. Oprah Winfrey will soon be sitting down with Rielle Hunter, John Edwards’ mistress. Eliot Spitzer’s favorite call girl Ashley Dupree got her own sex column at the New York Post.  And I’m sure Jesse James’ Michelle McGee is negotiating a wide variety of offers right about now. But what preciously does this cultural moment that not only shames cheating husbands and publicly draws out their infidelity but launches various careers and accompanying notoriety (complete with photo spreads in mags such as Vanity Fair) mean for the mistress. I’m sure as an expected counterpart to this unfortunate cultural trend is the rise in fear about the mistress. I see a larger piece forming in my head on this very idea — why exactly is the mistress having her moment at this particular time, at this particular cultural moment?

So I decided to post weekly the most interesting ideas, articles, new trends, controversial points of view, etc. that are making there ways along the net. Please enjoy! The first link in the list will take you to Erykah Badu’s website and ultimately to her video “Window Seat” (for now, you can only view the video on her website) The video is polarizing folks left and right! Its causing quite a stir, perhaps being one of the biggest stories of the week. Later this weekend, I’m going to write up a blog post that dissects the video from my perspective. If you feel that I’ve missed something (or someone) or have burning opinions about anything, please do post to the comments section. Enjoy

1. Erykah Badu’s Video “Window Seat” Off of Her Newest Album “New Amerykah 2“

2. The Lady Behind Fashion’s Newest Trend — “Funeral Couture”

3. Why Being Female is a Pre-Existing Condition

4. Latoya Peterson’s Five Part Series @Racialicious.com on Women of Color & Wealth:

a. Part 1: The Scope of the Problem

b. Part 2: Looking at the Wealth Gap

c. Part 3: Starting Points and Class Jumping

d. Part 4: Measuring the Intangibles

e.  Part 5: Looking at Outliers and Outsiders & Part 5.5: An Aside on Consumption and the Pressure to Shop

5.  Can Animals Be Gay?

6.  The Sandra Bullock Trade

7.  Why I Won’t Attend Easter Mass?

8.  Laptop Killer? Pretty Close

9. Ricky Martin Comes Out: I’m a Fortunate Homosexual

10. David Mills (who was one of the primary people behind the upcoming ‘Treme’), Television Writer & Producer Dies at 48

11. Female Politicians Don’t Cheat because they’re mommies

12. Jill Scott on Interracial Dating