Showing 1 - 10 of 622 annotations tagged with the keyword "Sexuality"

What She Left Behind

Wiseman, Ellen

Last Updated: Jan-03-2023
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Izzy is a teenager who has been in foster care for a decade since the age of 7 when her mother was imprisoned and judged insane for having killed her father. She struggles with a desire to cut herself. Her current foster parents, Harry and Peg, seem kindly and engage Izzy in their task to catalogue artifacts from the nearby state asylum that has recently closed. 

Izzy is given the journal of Clara, a patient who, at age 18 in 1929, was pregnant by her Italian lover, Bruno. She was committed to the asylum by her angry father.  Clara gave birth, but her baby girl was taken from her. She observed how the brutality of the hospital damaged those who did not belong there, eventually provoking the mental illness it purported to treat. With the help of a gravedigger, Bruno planned an escape, but their plan was uncovered, and Bruno died.

Izzy’s own story unfolds as she works her way through the journal, subjected to bullying and tormented by her anxieties. Peg kindly arranges to take Izzy to see her dying birth mother in prison, where she learns that the murder of her father was to prevent him from abusing young Izzy.  

Spoiler alert! Izzy learns from an elderly nurse that the asylum director took Clara’s baby for himself and that Clara is still alive. She reunites the mother and child, who is now a grown woman. Izzy joyfully learns that Peg and Harry will formally adopt her.

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Hurdy Gurdy

Wilson, Christopher

Last Updated: Oct-14-2022
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Brother Diggery, formerly called Jack Fox, tells us that he was given to the monastic order of St Odo at the age of seven in 1341. For another seven years, he is raised in innocence within the strict rules of the community, serving the brother healer, learning herbal remedies, and playing the hurdy gurdy.  

As plague arrives in 1349, he is assigned to help care for the anticipated sick – and immediately falls ill. The brothers seal him inside his cell, where he suffers greatly, narrowly escaping death; however, when he recovers and forces himself out of confinement, he discovers that everyone else has died or fled. After filling a mass grave with the remains of his brothers, he sets out on a picaresque series of adventures, blithely unaware that he and his fleas spread illness wherever they go.  

Like a fourteenth-century Candide, Brother Diggery’s gullibility and curiosity lead him to discover the wonders of good food, sex, and marriage, the cruelty of lies, theft, and wrongful imprisonment, and the corruption of the church (p. 164). He closes his account in 1352, age 18, already twice widowed, but set for life as a lay physician and father of a young boy whom he plans to give to the monastery of St Odo when he reaches age seven.



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Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Memoir

Summary:

The author’s beloved Jewish mother is a great storyteller. A favorite tale describes how her grandmother was shot dead while sitting on the family’s Winnipeg porch nursing her baby. An accomplished investigative journalist, author Hoffman assumes it is fiction but decides to investigate. He is astonished to discover that, indeed, his great-grandmother was murdered, although the details deviate slightly from the family tradition. 

Through official records, the Census, and newspaper accounts he pieces together the circumstances of her life and death and the frustrated search for her killer. In the process, he learns a great deal about his ancestors and the world of Jewish immigrants in early twentieth-century Canada. Eager to share his findings, he is confronted by his mother’s decline into dementia and the poignant difficulties of grasping and reshaping memories, both collective and individual. 

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Wild Boy

Dawson, Jill

Last Updated: Jun-15-2022
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Young doctor Jean-Marc Itard is serving in the Paris home for deaf-mute children. When a “wild boy” without speech is found near a village in Aveyron, France, Itard accepts the challenge of educating him. Many senior colleagues, including Philippe Pinel, opine that it will be impossible, even when Itard determines that the boy is not deaf. The lad, now named Victor, seems to be about ten years old, but his small size owing to malnutrition may be deceptive; he quickly reaches puberty. Helped by the care and empathy of the home’s housekeeper, Madame Guérin, and Julie, her daughter, Victor learns to perform several domestic tasks but manages to speak only a few words.

 His situation is a mystery. Caregivers marvel at how he had been able to survive alone in the woods for several years. They wonder if he ran away from an abusive home, or if he was deliberately abandoned because of his disability. A crisis emerges when a woman appears claiming to be his relative. Itard eventually abandons the effort to educate Victor, but he is allowed to continue living with the Guérins.

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Practice

Berlin, Richard

Last Updated: Oct-26-2021
Annotated by:
Kohn, Martin

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Collection (Poems)

Summary:

Practice is Richard Berlin’s third book of poetry (two of which are chapbooks) in addition to two prose books. It contains 64 poems and is fronted by an essay, “Why Doctors Need Poetry”. A few pages of notes at the end helpfully explain the context for 15 of the poems. As Dr. Berlin explains at the beginning of his opening essay: “Most of the poems in this volume first appeared in my column, ‘Poetry of the Times,’ a feature of Psychiatric Times”, which, at the time of publication of this volume he had been writing for 16 years. This—and many more poems in other journals, anthologies, and books— all from a man who began writing poetry in “mid-life”. Evident in the poems in this collection is a person experiencing much more than medical/psychiatric practice, but a full cornucopia of life: his love of art, music, food, nature, and the people he shares this bounty with. The collection, presented in three sections, weaves through all of these rich encounters, with only the final section, the shortest of the three, having more of a focus on family, friends and late of the year poems.

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Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

A murder mystery set in Harlem of the 1930s. The Conjure-Man, Frimbo, is a reclusive, highly educated soothsayer and fortune teller born in Africa. His Harlem dwelling is a popular destination for local people seeking direction for the decisions that they confront. He takes pains to conceal much about his identity.

One evening, Frimbo is found dead by a client, while a handful of people occupy his waiting room. Doctor Archer, who lives across the street, is summoned to pronounce the death, and the police come soon, led by detective Dart. Then the corpse disappears, and the Conjure-Man reappears alive to the amazement of all.

The investigators use recent technology, including blood typing, to establish that the corpse was not that of the Conjure-Man. Over just a few days, the doctor and the detective work their way through all the possible scenarios to establish the identity and motive of the killer. The ending is surprising.

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Annotated by:
Schilling, Carol

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is an exuberant film by and about people who have been marginalized on screen and in their lives. It opens with black and white archival footage of Camp Jened, a quirky, free-spirited, counter-culture summer camp for disabled teenagers in New York’s Catskilll Mountains. One camper called it a utopia. The second and longer part of the film follows several former campers into their adult lives. They become parents, spouses, professionals, and disability rights activists at a crucial historic moment for disability legislation. Both parts of the film propose that the liberty and solidarity experienced at Jened emboldened several of the campers to seek opportunity and equality, for themselves and others, in the world beyond their camp.

Located near Woodstock, geographically and culturally, Jened offered a space free from the discrimination the summer residents encountered elsewhere. Campers could engage in uninhibited physical activities, uncensored storytelling, self-governance, mutual caretaking, real friendships, irreverent insider humor, romance, and fun. One powerful scene allows viewers to overhear campers with diverse disabilities share common experiences: being disrespected or ignored at school, overly protected at home, isolated everywhere. Another tracks the campers’ hilarity and pride over an outbreak of “crabs.” One camper declares his counselor’s demonstration of how to kiss, “Best physical therapy ever!” 

While the film’s co-director, former camper Jim Lebrecht, narrates the film, Judy Huemann is its political and moral center. A wheelchair user, she rose from camper to counselor. Huemann was revered around camp for successfully suing the New York City Department of Education for the right to teach. She and several post-campers reunited in Berkeley, California, where they became involved in the Independent Living Movement. An astute leader, Heumann is represented as central to a remarkable 25-day sit-in at the San Francisco Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) offices in 1977. She and her disabled colleagues risked their health and their lives—they slept on the floor and improvised medical necessities—to convince HEW to approve regulations essential for enforcing the anti-discrimination section of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. The scene of Heumann’s standoff with the HEW representative is unforgettable. As are the deliveries of food, supplies, and solidarity that the Black Panthers and other marginalized groups in San Francisco provided daily. Other archival footage, including of Heumann and demonstrators stopping traffic in New York City to demand accessible taxis and of protestors abandoning their wheelchairs to pull themselves up the steps of the nation’s Capitol, are startling images of the struggle to secure disability civil rights in the United States. Recently filmed interviews with several of the former campers affirm that, despite the work toward disability justice that remains, they live fuller, more vibrant lives as a result of their experiences at Jened and the legislation they insisted on.

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Hair

Corso, Gregory

Last Updated: Apr-25-2021
Annotated by:
Mahl, Evan

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poetry

Summary:

The poem, through an account of the narrator’s experiences with losing hair, explores issues such as aging, sexuality, and our impotence when faced with the vagaries of nature as it transforms our bodies. Ranging from ancient Egyptian lore to dime store pharmacies, Corso weaves a kaleidoscope of images about how humans treat and worry about their hair and how hair has been a mythopoetic vehicle for millennia.Much of the poem employs angry though humorous language whereby the narrator speaks to his hair and pleads with the gods to reverse his fate. Corso writes, "To lie in bed and be hairless is a blunder only God could allow--"; and later, "Damned be hair! . . . Hair that costs a dollar fifty to be murdered!" The poem ends with an angry diatribe against hair and an inspired denigration of its mythological power.

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Holding the Man

Armfield, Neil

Last Updated: Jan-10-2021
Annotated by:
Brinker, Dustin

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

This film chronicles the short lives of two Australian gay men from their teenage years into the AIDS epidemic. Following the perspective of Timothy Conigrave (Ryan Corr), the audience witnesses the beginning of his relationship with John Caleo (Craig Scott) at an all-boys school in Melbourne during the 1970s. The two lead distinctly different lives: Timothy is a typical, sexually charged teenager involved in theatre, while John is a subdued, Catholic rugby player. With the help of three female friends, Tim finds himself kissing John at a private dinner party, beginning a stereotypically endearing teenage romance. Alas, their idyll dissolves with John’s father’s discovery of a love letter. He forbids the two from seeing each other, but being typical teenagers, the two disregard his wishes. They continue to date into college. While John is content with their relationship, Timothy expresses his desire to branch out, both in his romantic and professional lives. He applies to and is accepted by NIDA (the National Institute of Dramatic Art) and asks John for a separation while there. Tim, now unencumbered by a relationship, sleeps around in a montage of homoerotic encounters. Eventually Tim and John get back together, but their relationship, like those of most other homosexual men at that time, has become haunted by an insidious illness: HIV. On a seemingly routine check in 1985, both men are diagnosed positive. They assume that John was infected first given his worse lab values; however, Tim returns to his parents’ place for a wedding a few years later only to discover from the Red Cross that he was likely positive in 1981. Tim and John spend roughly the next decade in and out of the hospital, John’s condition being markedly worse than Tim’s. John dies in 1992. Tim is acknowledged as a “friend” in the funeral to appease John’s religious family despite their 15-year-long relationship. Having worked as a writer and activist since leaving NIDA, Tim makes use of his skill to write a memoir with John as the subject. Tim completes the memoir in 1994 Italy and dies ten days later.

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Call Me by Your Name

Guadagnino, Luca

Last Updated: Sep-28-2020
Annotated by:
Brinker, Dustin

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

The story begins “somewhere in Northern Italy” in 1983 chez Perlman, a multicultural and well-educated family. Every summer, the family (Michael Stuhlbarg & Amira Casar) host a classical-arts graduate student for six weeks at their holiday home. Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), the family’s 17-year-old precocious son, is expected to act as host and guide to the selected student, this year a 24-year-old American named Oliver (Armie Hammer). From the beginning, the two have a love-hate relationship; an unspoken emotional tension exists between them. Uncertain of how to handle this tension, Elio begins exploring his sexuality with his female friend, Marzia (Esther Garrel). He eventually, albeit obliquely, admits his feelings for Oliver, and the two begin a brief love affair during which Oliver suggests, in bed, that they call each other by the other’s name. Noticing the closeness of the young men, the Perlman parents suggest that Elio accompany Oliver as he spends a few days in Bergamo prior to leaving for the United States. The sojourn concludes with a bitter goodbye: Oliver departs by train, leaving Elio on the railway platform. Unable to complete his journey home alone, Elio makes a tearful call home for his mother to come pick him up. Back in town, Marzia, seeing a grief-stricken Elio, approaches and forgives him, insinuating that she knows about his recent tryst and that she will always be his loving friend. Months later, the Perlmans return to the town for Hanukkah. While his parents are in the process of picking next summer’s student, Elio gets a bittersweet surprise: Oliver is calling to inform the family that he is engaged, to a woman. The film concludes with Elio, grappling with a tumult of emotions, staring into the dining-room fireplace, the light flickering in his red, tear-sodden eyes.

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