This was a good month for my TV to break as the three books featured here provided plenty of entertainment: Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag by Sigrid Nunez; Annabel by Kathleen Winter; and Who is Ana Mendieta? by Christine Redfern and Caro Caron.
Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag by Sigrid Nunez (Atlas & Co.)
Sigrid Nunez’s captivating memoir Sempre Susan provides a thoughtful and surprising look into the life of American author, intellectual and political activist Susan Sontag. As an aspiring writer, Nunez dated Sontag’s son, David Rieff, and the three lived together in New York City during the 1970s.
Sontag provided valuable mentorship to Nunez, who would go on to become a successful writer herself with books such as Naked Sleeper and The Last of Her Kind. In Sempre Susan, Nunez focuses primarily on the time she spent living with Sontag and Rieff-a time of both inspiration and disruption.
An infamously dynamic and domineering personality, Sontag exposed Nunez to new literature, art, food, ideas and public figures-“This had become a familiar exchange: ‘You’ve never seen The Marriage of Figaro?’ ‘You’ve never eaten sushi?’ ‘You’ve never been to the New York Film Festival?’ Each time I said no, Susan would say, ‘Ah, you have a treat coming.’ And it was always so.” Nunez moved out of the shared apartment when she and Rieff began to drift apart, but she and Sontag kept in distant touch.
Published six years after Sontag’s death of cancer in 2004, Sempre Susan is an unsparingly honest and thorough look at Sontag’s life from many different perspectives: her writing (“Susan’s own writing was stirring, dramatic … but her style – she didn’t have a beautiful style”); her feminism (“She was a feminist, but she was often critical of feminist sisters … for being naïve, sentimental and anti-intellectual”); her relationship with her son (“for all her pride in motherhood … she was not maternal”); and her bisexuality, including her relationship with photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Sontag was a multifaceted woman and Nunez reveals her achievements and weaknesses with empathy, insight and humor. Sempre Susan provides an intimate look at one brilliant mind influencing another brilliant mind. A fascinating read for Sontag fans and critics alike.
Annabel by Kathleen Winter (Black Cat)
Kathleen Winter’s debut novel, Annabel, is a haunting and powerful tale of identity. Taking place in the isolated blue-collar town of Labrador, Canada, in the late 60s, it is the coming-of-age story of Wayne, a mixed-gendered child.
When Wayne is first born, his parents decide to raise him as their son. Assigning a gender is particularly important to Wayne’s father, the quiet and thoughtful Treadway, who believes that this is his child’s best chance at survival. Treadway has high expectations for his son, but quickly learns that managing his child’s layered identity is not as easy as paying for expensive hormone treatments or controlling Wayne’s interests and friendships.
Wayne’s mother, Jacinta, and the midwife who performed the delivery, Thomasina, encourage Wayne’s feminine qualities. When Wayne becomes fascinated with synchronized swimming, Jacinta allows him to buy a woman’s bathing suit. Though Thomasina spends much of her time traveling around the world to study, she calls Wayne “Annabel,” the name of her daughter who died in a drowning accident years before.
Winter’s prose is stunning whether describing Wayne’s confusing struggle toward understanding his body (“The skin was so sensitive Wayne was scared it might break. Flowers were bursting open between his legs, but the flowers were ugly flowers that he did not like”) or the wide-open and wild landscape of Labrador (“A swoop and whisper of wings, then the gun crack”).
Winter captures the humanity of all of her characters. Each has a story and a clear stake in Wayne’s journey, especially as Wayne begins to challenge society’s demand that he identify as solely a woman or a man – “To Thomasina people were rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It was not fair, she felt, to treat people as if they were finished beings. Everyone was always becoming and unbecoming.”
A finalist for three of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards – The Scotiabank Giller Prize, The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and The Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction – Annabel is a beautifully rich and engaging novel. Highly recommended.
Who is Ana Mendieta? by Christine Redfern and Caro Caron (Feminist Press)
I have to confess that did not know anything about Ana Mendieta, the most prominent Cuban American artist of her generation. In fact, I’d never heard her name before reading Christine Redfern and Caro Caron’s original and fascinating biography Who is Ana Mendieta?
Through a combination of essays, personal accounts and graphics, Who is Ana Mendieta? explores Mendieta’s background and influences as an artist. It also tells the story of Mendieta’s volatile marriage to minimalist sculptor Carl Andre, who was accused of pushing her out the window of their loft apartment in New York City and to her death in the mid-eighties.
Redfern and Caron, both artists living in Canada, recreate the art world of the sixties. It was a complicated time and violence against women was prevalent – from Norman Mailer stabbing his wife to Jackson Pollock killing a woman in a drinking and driving car crash. Ironically, Mendieta’s work focused on women and she often used her body as part of her art.
Who is Ana Mendieta? is part of a new series of graphic books called the Blind Spot published by the Feminist Press, which tell the stories of radicals and revolutionaries “who have changed the culture, and who lost their lives or place in history in the process.”
An absorbing look at an important (now I know!) figure in the women’s art movement, you’ll read Who is Ana Mendieta? in one sitting-then go back and read it again.
