When I first discovered them back in the mid-1980s, the eye doctors at 30 East 60th Street in Manhattan were already famous throughout the entertainment world for being able to fit even the most fearful or difficult patient with a comfortable contact lens. This reputation was so well earned that for years happy clients simply referred to them as “The Contact Lens Practice”. Today, Doctors Barry Farkas, Jordan Kassalow, Susan Resnick and Associates, are perhaps best known by their surnames alone, especially now that their expertise has expanded even beyond contacts and into areas like pre-and post-op care for the kind of laser surgery which renders contact lenses obsolete. Continue reading “The Eyes Have It! A Modern Girl’s Guide to Better Vision . . . From Contacts to CRT”
Author: Carol Cooper
Nice Girls Finish Last
The $64 million question? Why, in a post-Spice Girl world, are black girl groups still forming (and falling apart) as if the Spice Girls never happened? You have to admit that the successful game plan of five self-motivated British vixens who simply hired the right lawyer to help them sell their own (TLC-inspired!) pop group with a view toward maximum profitability (and a calculated expiration date) should have inspired legions of wannabes–girls looking for culturally specific ways to take control of their own ascendance and leave the roulette table ahead of the house. Why would young, talented black women still choose the slower, less flexible, less lucrative option of a production or “development” deal, when it might be possible to model one’s career on the 1964-to-1968 trajectory of the Beatles? Continue reading “Nice Girls Finish Last”
XXX-Woman: An Interview With Comic Book Artist Amanda Conner
Worlds collide at the yearly Comicon in San Diego, California. For over three decades it’s thrived as a universe where the comic and cartoon industry’s biggest stars are profitably orbited by an array of still-striving peers and ambitious newcomers. Corporate moguls like Stan Lee rub elbows with iconoclastic self-publishers. Wannabe writers pursue Marvel or DC editors. And Hollywood suits descend from the planet Money to wave their checkbooks at a true creative underground. Continue reading “XXX-Woman: An Interview With Comic Book Artist Amanda Conner”
Spaceballs
| The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction By Justine Larbalestier Wesleyan, 295 pp., $19.95 paperBetter to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril By Judith Merril and Emily Pohl-Weary Between the Lines, 282 pp., $29.95 paper |
As inspirational as reading science fiction can be, the genre’s primary texts won’t tell you all you need to know about the “literature of possibility.” That’s because no other genre generates as much creative input or feedback from its fandom. Yeoman editor David Hartwell of TOR books, an SF tastemaker since the late ’60s, likes to recall that a few decades ago America’s SF production was so small that every fan could read every book and story published within a year, and potentially respond to every idea introduced into the field’s mind stream. Continue reading “Spaceballs”
Acupuncture, Fibroids, and You
Black women of every age and economic group share similar health problems that may be under-diagnosed and under-treated by orthodox Western medicine. So, to prevent high blood-pressure, asthma, uterine fibroids, breast cancer, and heart disease, more and more of us are supplementing regular visits to our internists and gynecologists with alternative holistic medicine. Alternative medicine often includes acupuncture and Chinese herbal therapies which have proven so effective in some cases that more and more hospitals and insurance companies are supporting them. This month we have asked Dr. Nan Lu, a prominent practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, to describe his approach to some conditions typically affecting black women. Continue reading “Acupuncture, Fibroids, and You”
Guess Who’s Coming to Dharma: Black Women Embrace Western Buddhism
In the half-century since Buddhism re-entered American pop culture via the Beats (having first enjoyed a passing vogue during the 1890s), more and more black females–children of the civil rights movement, champions of black nationalism, feminist iconoclasts, and intellectuals–have been finding their way to Buddhist practice. Quietly, without much visibility or commercial fanfare, these women meditate daily, then take the insights they receive “on the cushion” into their lives as mothers, mates, social activists, and career women. From Tina Turner’s autobiographical hat-tip to Nichiren Shoshu to bell hooks’s describing her personal synthesis of Buddhist meditation, Christian prayer, and Sufi mysticism in 1999’s Remembered Rapture to Alice Walker’s outing of herself as a practitioner last year in The New York Times, black women have unwittingly become the world’s most spontaneous lay Buddhist preachers. Continue reading “Guess Who’s Coming to Dharma: Black Women Embrace Western Buddhism”
Pretty Persuasion: Going for the Girl Market
If you passed Trina Robbins on the street, chances are you wouldn’t suspect she was the foremost pop historian of women in comics. Nor would you peg her as the author of Go Girl!, an offbeat superhero comic book aimed at adolescent girls. Today most comic books featuring female protagonists are written by men and depend heavily on the fetishized sex and violence that give television hits like Xena and Buffy a certain cross-gender appeal. But Robbins–whose last major mainstream effort was a Wonder Woman comic about domestic violence–is fighting to prove the commercial viability of comic books that neither burlesque nor hyper-sexualize their female characters. Continue reading “Pretty Persuasion: Going for the Girl Market”
World Conference Against Racism 2001
Deal Reached
DURBAN, South Africa (Sept. 8) – The World Conference Against Racism adopted a declaration Saturday recognizing the injustice of slavery and colonialism and the “plight” of Palestinians after nine days of contentious debate and brinksmanship that repeatedly threatened to unravel the gathering. Continue reading “World Conference Against Racism 2001”
About Black Folks and Buddha Dharma: An Interview With Bell Hooks
Q: In re reading the chapters in remembered rapture about faith & writing and how you came to your own philosophical synthesis, it occurred to me that you’ve already done the work of syncretizing in your own spiritual practice something that I’ve been beginning to call “black dharma” even though I know the term will be controversial and loaded for some who hear it. Especially when I compare your take on Buddhist Philosophy to that of Jan Willis, Angel Wiliams, Alice Walker, and other black female activist/ intellectuals. Buddhist philosophy seems to be the next step in their evolution as they engage it during their 30s, 40s & 50s. Continue reading “About Black Folks and Buddha Dharma: An Interview With Bell Hooks”
Higher Ground
When it comes to commercial black music, “high concept” makes the record industry very nervous. Motown initially told Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye that people wouldn’t like their political songs. Stax told Isaac “Black Moses” Hayes that radio wouldn’t play his 16-minute album tracks. Today, for every breakthrough iconoclast like Erykah Badu or Lauryn Hill there are thousands of artists whose attempts to explore spirituality, politics, or “healing your inner child” through music have stopped their careers dead in (and with) their tracks. So I’d like to devote this space to three recent releases that pursue an artistic vision too pure to rely on trendy guest stars, currently fashionable producers, or the sample-loop du jour — black music which dares to, shall we say, elevate the range of sounds and ideas aimed at mainstream black radio. Continue reading “Higher Ground”