Fall 2008

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Sex is everywhere in Japan, but that doesn’t mean the average woman is getting any. This is the premise behind Sumie Kawakami’s absorbing and beautifully laid-out book of non-fiction stories, Goodbye Madame Butterfly. The title refers to Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, in which the woman waits loyally for the return of her husband, unwilling to acknowledge, despite mounting evidence, that he has betrayed her.

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Don’t expect a collection of neutral-toned, het- norm Prairie coming-of-age stories here. Chandra Mayor’s All the Pretty Girls is decorated with dirty carpets, dusty stairwells, empty whiskey bottles and shitty diapers. And don’t be fooled by the cover. These stories will not fulfill any retro fantasies for full-figured young women frolicking unaccountably in the waves wearing sturdy-yet-sexy undergarments.

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I still remember the first explicitly feminist book I owned: The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone. Of course, there have been lots of feminist books in my life since then, many of which I have admired more. But nothing quite measures up to that first time, does it?

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The trouble with being the last person in your family to walk out under the spotlight is that it takes a while for people to stop referring to your famous family. But over the course of her career, Martha Wainwright has firmly established herself as a talented artist in her own right—maybe even the one in her family to watch.

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Twenty-something singer Zaki Ibrahim has a career that musicians twice her age would envy. Born in Vancouver, she has spent time shuttling between the West Coast and the South African homeland of her father. Those cultures, coupled with her mother’s Scottish/English heritage, informed her musical education at an early age.