Isak

Destination for the Book

 

The headline on the piece I wrote for Publishing Perspectives asks: "Is America's Forgotten Flyover a Gold Mine for Publishers?" As fewer and fewer authors are going on book tours, and fewer yet are celebrating their books outside major metropolitan centers, a bookish program in northern Michigan is drawing in huge audiences, huge sales, and re-imagined literary conversations.

Traverse City is a bayside town of 15,000 people — the largest city in the 21 counties of northern Michigan. But the community has cultivated cosmopolitan appeal with a lively arts community that includes a major film festival founded by Michael Moore, the celebrated City Opera House, and an outsized literary culture heralded by the National Writers Series.

NWS spotlights authors, journalists, and other storytellers in monthly one-on-one conversations that are successful enough to make northern Michigan a prime venue for any author’s book tour; it has been known to draw up to 700 people to events, charging $20-25 at the door (discounts for educators and students). At the same time, it spearheads a multi-platform media blitz for each visiting author. The current NWS season includes conversations with Jodi Piccoult, Alan Cheuse, Michael Sandel, Anna Quindlen, and Natalie Bakopoulos — more women are intentionally featured to balance the many male authors in last year’s line-up. Founded in 2009 by Doug Stanton, himself a bestselling author, NWS calls itself “a year-round book festival” that’s dedicated to enlivening the connection between readers and writers – even as some have left the book tour for dead.

Writing Baseball

 

With spring breaking open with the slap of screen doors and the shine of early morning sun, I am writing about baseball. Over at Grantland, just after the Detroit Tigers cut Brandon Inge, I discuss why this decidedly average player (albeit, a good guy) has incited so much irrational emotion from fans. (After the piece was published, word came that the newly-available Inge got picked up by the Oakland A's.) I also got the chance to talk with Jim Abbott -- former pitcher for the Angels and the Yankees -- for a piece in the Detroit Free Press. Abbott, a native of Flint, can boast of pitching a no-hitter, an Olympic gold-medal, and being recruited for the big stage before he spent a day in the minor leagues. He also happens to have been born without a right hand; a fact, he told me, that has colored every day of his life. He has a new memoir out called Imperfect: An Improbable Life. And he is a genuinely nice guy.

The Sporting News of 1968

 

From a feature I wrote for the Detroit Free Press, published last Sunday in a really lovely large-form spread:

... what unfolded over the long, hot summers of the late 1960s continues to reverberate today. Here in Detroit, rage over inequality boiled into the streets in July 1967. Less then nine months later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he was supporting a strike of sanitation workers. Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy announced the news of King's death that night to a largely African-American audience in Indianapolis: There is video of him nervously fingering the paper of his speech as he speaks of fatal violence affecting his own family, too, and issues a call to "make gentle the life of this world."

Eight weeks later, Kennedy himself was assassinated in California, moments after winning the primary election and just as the summer of '68 was breaking open.

In the midst of all this, baseball was played.

I interviewed Tim Wendel, whose new book, Summer of '68, tells the story of that time through the lens of the ballfield. This was the year, of course, that the Detroit Tigers beat the St. Louis Cardinals in a seven-game World Series -- see folks celebrating in the image above. It was a win that was loaded in symbolism, coming as it did a year after Detroit burned in July, 1967. An excerpt of Wendel's book was printed alongside the story that tells of a new pitcher landing in Detroit at the start of a season delayed by King's assassination. In related news: today is the one-hundredth anniversary of Tiger Stadium's opening at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. (Oh, Fenway Park, which opened the same day, is celebrating today as well.)

On the Trail of Rachel Maddow's Michigan Scoop

 

On her namesake MSNBC show, Rachel Maddow has been showing an intense interest in investigating the strange turns of Michigan politics -- and calling for much more national attention to what she sees as a the rapidly accelerating diminishment of voting rights, stretching from the emergency manager law Gov. Rick Snyder signed last year to ... well, some legislative customs that raised her eyebrows and incited a 16-minute segment last week that served as the first in a series. I wrote about the story behind the story for the Columbia Journalism Review (who were nice enough to feature it as the lead article on the homepage), after speaking with a host of folks: Democratic legislators who are suing the GOP,  the Republican press secretary for the Speaker of the House, reporters in the Statehouse press corps, and Maddow's own producers.

A big story is unfolding here in Michigan, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last week professed to have the “scoop”—but she has gotten plenty of pushback for how she presented it, from Republican lawmakers, liberal bloggers, and folks in-between. In exploring that dissent and tracing the anatomy of the “scoop,” I’ve seen that many of the criticisms were valid: Maddow and her team botched the story in important ways, and that mishandling made it easy for detractors to dismiss her claims outright.

At the same time, she was on to something—and her attention to the story highlights the different approaches of national and local media, and the importance of both insider and outsider eyes on state government.

Now We Are Six: Happy Birthday, Isak!

Not kidding: when I debuted this website, I sent an email to my friends and family to alert them to my new home on the web, and the subject line read: "Ta-DA!" The note brimmed with the tone of a total newbie. I quote:

Hello, trusted inner circle!

I'm writing to let you know that I'm now on the blogosphere. That's right, the techno-savvy Anna that you know so well now has a WEBSITE! It's only a few days old, and it will surely evolve a lot as I work on it in the next few weeks, but I'm interested in you guys' feedback!  [...]

The address is--get ready to bookmark this now--www.isak.typepad.com.

The site-Isak-is named after Isak Dinesen, a writer I love.

Let me know what you think, and how I might make this better!

I feel so modern now.

Love!
Anna

 

Yeah.

It's been a long journey.

With a clandestine click of the clock, Isak turned six years old last week. Put another way, this bookish space has been my practice for more than a fifth of my life. This is a searing space: by turns, I feel my mind, my heart, and, on not a few occasions, my dignity are on the line -- which, curiously, is rather similar to what my reading experience is like.

In the past year, I've slowed down with Isak. There are reasons for this: a big one is my time in Kenya (which slowed me in a lot of ways, road-crossing excepted). Other creative projects sing for my attention. And, also, what I share here has taken a turn toward the longer, more detailed, and decidedly more personal. This is a different way of taking space. It seems to involve more pauses along the way.

What I love about making Isak is that it is a malleable thing. It evolves as I do. My quiet is reflected here, as well as my feverish imagining. Isak is an animal that prompts me into reflection and articulation; it dances me away from intellectual laziness. But while I'm refracted here, this site isn't about me: there is purpose in stories, and there is worth not only in reading or hearing them, but in lingering in their reverb, speaking back, connecting them, working through them line by line, tasting their metal on our tongues.

Let's make an accounting of the sixth year of Isak, and indulge in a data geek-out along the way.

 

The Story: What Happened On Isak This Year 

1. I debuted an e-newsletter (announced in last year's "five years fierce" post) and found it to be a wonderful new way of connecting with Isak readers, and beyond. I send it every five or six weeks, and feature writing that appears nowhere else, alongside articles, blog posts, and a "source of joy." The first missive was sent April 25, 2011; I sent nine in the last year. Shockingly, while the subscriber list has steadily grown, there has not been a single unsubscriber -- though there are a fair number of "did not opens." There is a 54% average open rate. You can sign up for the newsletter here.
   
   
2. "Choose Books: A Gift Guide for People Who Care About Stories" emerged in a third edition this year: expanded, updated, revised, and available for free download. It bulked up to 69 pages of bookish joy, and features hundreds of eclectic book recommendations that are spotlighted in both extended profiles and listings that target, say, wanderers, knitters, politicos, sports fan, spiritual seekers, teenagers, and people going through hard times. I expanded the section on the best literary organizations for you to offer gift donations, and updated the "Top Ten Magazine Gift Subscriptions." A brand-new section highlights the best books to pair with their cinematic counterparts. This year's "Choose Books" got more attention, and more downloads, than ever, including nice pieces on it from The Rumpus, Kinna Reads, and Feministing.
   
   
3. Isak went home, sort of. While in Kenya, I roved the creaky rooms and the vast grounds where the storyteller for whom I named this site lived. (The home is pictured above, with the Ngong Hills visible between the pillers.) I peeked through her bedroom window and saw the shadow cast over her low bed. I sat on her porch. I crossed my bare ankles when I sat at her mill-stone.
   
   
4. Three new literary conversations were added to the Isak interview series, and among them are writers, directors, readers, publishers, artists, and actors.
   
   
5. I continue to benefit from the amazing talent and skill of many smart people, most particularly Amy H., who brings scrutiny to Isak (for fun, no less!) and keeps me on firm ground -- she catches the mislaid links, the inappropriate apostrophe's.
   
   
6. Oh, come on, that last one was a joke, people!
   
   
7. Among the others who bless me: Chris M., a continual supplier of links, dry wit, and the occasional book review. Untold publishers, editors, authors, and PR people make this venture into literary culture more accessible, as well as more fun. Readers who respond in comments or emails push me to be as accurate and honest as I can be. As well, it is still a relatively recent turn for me to experiment with public vulnerability in this space: your responses have been both helpful and heartening. You have no idea.

 

Content:

Total unique posts, including this one: 3361
Number of unique posts in the past year: 333 (compared to 432 in 2010-2011 and 575 in 2009-2010) 
Yearly average of unique posts: 560.2
Daily average of unique posts: 1.53
Total number of videos (in partnership with The Collagist): 27
Number of new videos in the last year: 6
Most common post categories: Africa, Book Reviews, Culture, Literary Life, Media, Poetry, Politics
More occasional post categories: Detroit Stories, Ecological, Health, Interviews, Isak, Poverty & Economic Justice, Prisons & People, Science, Spirituality. No new categories were added in the last year.

 

Visitors:

Origin of visitors: 175 nations and territories (four more than in 2010-2011)
Nation of origin of visitors:

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. India (up one slot from last year)
5. Australia (down one slot from last year)
6. Japan (up a lot: did not make top twenty last year)
7. China (ibid)
8. Kenya (up two slots)
9. Germany (down two slots)
10. Italy
11. The Philippines
12. (not set)
13. France
14. Brazil
15. The Netherlands
16. South Africa
17. New Zealand
18. Turkey
19. Spain
20. Russia
21. Sweden
22. Mexico

I'm most surprised by the rise of China and Japan in this year's visitors. Ireland, Sweden, and Pakistan dropped out of the top twenty, but overall I feel pretty pleased by the multi-continental spread of readers. Readers from Kenya visit the most pages per visit and, by far, they spend the longest amount of time on Isak.

Nations that had exactly one resident visit Isak in the past year: Angola, Burundi, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Greenland, Gambia, Niger, Tajikistan

City of origin of visitors:

1. New York
2. Detroit (up fourteen spots)
3. Chicago
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Los Angeles
6. (not set)
7. Ann Arbor
8. San Francisco
9. Putian
10. London
11. Nairobi (up five spots)
12. Toronto
13. Naha
14. Seattle
15. Austin
16. Sydney
17. Bethlehem
18. Houston
19. Wayne
20. Portland
21. Philadelphia
22. Boston

 In total, Isak visitors came from 7,340 cities in the last year, 454 more than the year before. Brooklyn dropped out of the top twenty, as did Minneapolis, Atlanta, Cambridge, and Tucson. Portland, Bethlehem, Houston, and Wayne are making new appearances. Of the twenty-one cities I list here (let's ignore "not set", shall we?), six are international and fifteen are American.

Cities with exactly one Isak visitor (selected): Resistencia, Rio Gallegos, Toowoomba, Zell am See, Hoogstraten, Heist-Op-Den-Berg, Peace River, Hope, Nakskov, Ibadan, Monrovia

 Languages: Isak was read in 123 different languages over the last year. The top three were national variations on English, followed by, in descending order, Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Italian.

Audience snapshot (according to Alexa): "Based on internet averages, isak.typepad.com is visited more frequently by females who are in the age range 35-44, have no children and are graduate school educated." This (still) embarrassingly mirrors my personal  profile. Compared to last year, my audience is slightly older (last year: 25-34) and more educated (last year: college educated).

 

Traffic:

Links: 194 sites link to Isak (100 more than in 2010-2011) 
Average pages viewed per visit: 1.23 (.02 less than last year)
Most common traffic sources: Search traffic (52.22%, up about 5% compared to last year); referring sites (29.77%, down about 8%), and direct traffic (17.78%, up about 3%).
Specifically, the most common traffic sources are: Facebook, Google, Feministing, Twitter, Typepad, HTML Giant, and Stumble Upon
 

Top queries used in search browsers that find Isak (according to Alexa):

1. "you should have some" (Editor's note: ... what?...)
2. isak
3. lie down in darkness
4. red mars
5. jamaica kincaid lucy
6. shawntel v. clark
7. i kill giants

Most popular posts: Setting aside the homepage, here are the most popular landing spots for Isak readers ... most of which benefit, I'm sure, from image searches and assigned English papers.

1. So You Want to Apply for a Fulbright
2. Review: The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
3. Frida Kahlo, Resting in Peace
4. Jean-Michel Basquiat: Catharsis (1983)
5. Book Review: William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness
6. BREAKING: A Heart for Dean Young!
7. Choose Books: A Gift Guide for People Who Care About Stories
8. A Reading List for Writers of Narrative Nonfiction
9. Review: Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas

The most popular day to visit Isak in 2011-2012: Friday, July 29, 2011
What did I post that day?: Actually, nothing. But "So You Want to Apply for a Fulbright" was on the top of the page from the day before, and it was the most popular post of the year. I also think I was still seeing the bump from my Ty Cobb article, published the week before.
The least popular day to visit Isak in 2010-2011: Saturday, July 2, 2011
What did I post that day? Nothing you care about, probably.

 

Selected Feedback from This Year's Reader Survey:  

Top reasons you visit Isak: (respondents could choose multiple reasons)

• I like reading about books and literary culture (72.2%, compared to 65.7% last year)
• I'm just curious what Anna is up to (63.9%, compared to 65.7% last year)
• I discover interesting things -- a magazine, website, or writer I didn't know about before (52.8%)
• I like the voice (50%)
• I like the eclectic mix of news and original analysis (47.4%)

Least common reasons to visit Isak: "I'm interested in Detroit and Detroiters" and "I like the bent towards translated literature."

Among other reasons for visiting Isak:

• "A sweet combo of intelligence & humility. You're trying to precisely articulate what's true, not just to impress or persuade people."
• "Isak is the most interestingly diverse 'read' I've found online. When I donated, Anna wrote me a thank you note (handwritten, mind you). That blew me away. It's in my box of special mementos."
• "I love the layout of your website. Funky reason, huh?"
• "Inspiration for my own posts, and just a good read."
• "I got mentioned in an article, once!"
• "Though I'm not specifically interested in Detroit and Detroiters, I'm interested in Detroit as representative of American cities - especially rust belt cities - in the early 21st century. There's an article about the thousands of abandoned dogs in Detroit in the recent Rolling Stone, for example, and the situation appears similar to New Orleans where there is also a lot of overgrown land that is now the home to large packs of dogs. As soon as I read the Rolling Stone article I thought "I wonder what Anna thinks about this." I'm usually interested in what Richard Florida has to say and I think your Detroit commentary is a valuable compliment to a kind of new urban dialogue."
• "Seeing what a voracious reader it up to."
• "What's Isak?" 

Feedback on Isak's book reviews: (respondents could choose multiple reasons)

• Because of the reviews, I've picked up books I wouldn't have read otherwise. (55.3%, compared to 35.3% last year) (Editor's note: This is my favorite statistic of the whole survey)
• I like getting a distinct and interesting perspective on the review books (47.4%, compared to 32.4% last year)
• I don't read many of the reviews. (7.9%, slightly less than last year)
• I read the reviews regularly (36.8%)
• The review are fine, but they should be collected on a dedicated page so that they are easier to find (26.3%)
• I wish the reviews covered more contemporary and just-released books. (13.9%)

Other opinions about Isak's book reviews:

• "I haven't read many of the reviews. The review of Fun Home was my favorite. It got me started on a graphic book phase."
• "Though I love the literary flavor of the site I've never been drawn to the book reviews, which seem to take on a different tone somehow. I'd hate to see you eliminate them, though, because they seem a core part of what you do. ..."
• "The reviews are usually done on genres that I do not normally read. That being said- I do not believe the genre should be changed for only the public's interest in books (ie more popular or recent), I think your reviews would loose something if you chose items that you were not as knowledgeable about or felt as strongly about."

Posts you like best: (respondents could choose multiple reasons)

• The more personal essays (66.7%)
• Literary & Media Indulgences, the round-up of links (52.8%)
• Book Reviews (52.8%)
• Short posts that highlight interesting articles from around the web (52.8%)
• Interviews (47.2%)

What you think about "Choose Books": Most of you said you "loved it" and that you really valued that it is available for free. The downloadable PDF seems to work for you. 20.6% of you said that you used it to pick out a book for someone else, or for yourself. So: I guess this is going well. Onwards!

What else you had to say about "Choose Books":

• "I hate that I didn't click ;I'd be willing to pay a small amount for it' because (1) I think it's worth a non-small amount, (2) I could totally afford that, and (3) if I'm honest, I doubt I'd actually make the effort to pay even a small amount for it. Sad how the sense that everything is free on the internet affects things like this. On the other hand, I might well voluntarily donate something non-small to Isak largely on account of loving Choose Books in particular."
• "Good effort, though not an interest of mine."
• "I think it's fabulous that you do this"
• "maybe you could make an abridged version available for free and charge a small amount for the full version. or make the full version available in html and then charge for a downloadable PDF."

 What needs to change:

• "I think it might need a bit more white space. All that text can be intimidating. But I like Isak as is."
• "Including other writers, other reviewers."
• "Off the top of my head, more links especially for recommended ebooks would be nice."
• "I still would like to hear more about Detroit through your eyes."
• "maybe some redesign? It's really easy to navigate the site but it seems it could have a clearer more dynamic layout and color scheme - to my eye the third column (the one on the far right) seems to almost disappear. Since you cover several kinds of issues in some depth, it might be helpful to have them categorized in some way for easier access"
• "I'd like to continue to hear about Africa. And much more sports!!"
• "Lighthearted good news - short, simple"
• "I read sites all day long as I need breaks from work so I like seeing shorter pieces alongside longer pieces. I appreciate the longer texts but don't always have the time to read them."

 Additional Selected Narrative Feedback from This Year's Reader Survey: 

• "I'd personally appreciate a little blurb on each item in the Literary & Media Indulgences posts to describe what they are so that, hopefully, instead of opening 30 windows and then closing 20 of them after reading a couple paragraphs, I might just open 15 of them and quickly close 5 or something."
• "I really appreciate the newsletter, I enjoy the intro and appreciate the digest format so it gives me a chance to catch what I missed."
• "A big admirer of Isak, even though I don't go that often! I would like to it hit my feeds--Twitter, FB--more often, then I think I'd be a more frequent visitor."
• "Thanks so much for your time and dedication to this amazing website!"
• "Hello, Anna. Thanks for Isak. More power. I wish I could email you one day. :)" (Editor's note: please do!)
• "Talking about literature should be personal."
• "Hello and thanks for this labor of love."
• "I very much enjoy the personal essays - they're well written and relevant, not at all self indulgent. I also like the Detroit theme and would like to see a bit more of that new urbanism kind of thing. I LOVE Literary & Media Indulgences and always look forward to them. I've learned a great deal, and garnered much enjoyment from Isak and am so glad it's here. You do such good work!"
• "I'm jealous! Thanks for being a visible woman speaking on so many of the topics you write on. Keep it up!"
• "For some reason, I enjoy the paradox of seeing you, with your big world view and huge literary / journalistic talents, quietly stuffed into the little box office at Go Comedy." (Editor's note: I spend about one night a week working at an improv theater. Looks like I've been found out.)
• "Ciao from Kansas!"
  
  

Personal favorite posts of the last year:

Book Review: Finder, Volume 1, by Carla Speed McNeil (3.13.12)
10 Underrated Women Writers (Global Edition) (3.8.12)
On Re-Reading (2.27.12)
Book Review: Sula, by Toni Morrison (2.20.12)
GOOD Magazine Goes Bad (1.28.12)

Book Banning in Michigan High School Ignites Community (1.16.12)
Book Review: You Deserve Nothing, by Alexander Maksik (1.10.12)
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: The Classics (1.9.12)
Beautiful Things Seen This Year: 2 (12.31.11)
Beautiful Things Seen This Year: 1 (12.30.11)

Why I'm Not Finishing This Book (9.22.11)
Book Review: The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, by Alina Bronsky (9.19.11)
As It Happened: The Journalists of September 11 (9.11.11)
Coming Back (8.31.11)
Anne Lamott and the Gold Coins (8.31.11)

"Whatever it was that wouldn't let us go": On Writing and Necessity (8.19.11)
Stories of Solitary Men (8.3.11)
This Story of Ours (7.16.11)
Kicking it on Kawangware (6.28.11)
Isak Interview #13: Weslie Onsando (6.11.11)

Book Review: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (6.6.11)
Isak Interview #12: Elizabeth Senja Spackman and Emily Mendelsohn (6.2.11)
A Thesis Statement for Gil Scott-Heron (5.30.11)
Pirates, Lasers, and Lucy: Storytelling at Lavington Kindergarten (5.20.11)
This Place, Chosen (5.12.11)

Friend Frida (5.9.11)
Madonna, Malawi, and a Frustrating Article (5.6.11)
Kyle (4.25.11)
Beverly Cleary is 95 Years Old. Also, She is Awesome. (4.12.11)
"There isn't a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your own bitterness except your own desperate heart." (4.5.11)

 

 My Ask:

I love making Isak, and I believe in it: I believe creating space for "tales and truth." There is purpose in tangling with stories with ferocity and humor and constancy. While giving the site a great deal of time and my own money, I have further kept my commitment to keep this site ad-free. If you find this website valuable, please consider making a donation to support it.

 

 

To those of you who have already donated to Isak: my knees weaken in thanks. Seriously. Beyond the financial support, your moral support moves me.

 

My Other Ask:

 

join the mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

  

What's Next:

• Rearranging. I will be collecting book reviews on a new page on this site that makes them easier to navigate and explore long after they are published. The page with my writing list needs some serious clean-up: I will re-organize that according that different publication and issues I write about, and will make articles available both via links and PDF (the latter to stave off dread dead links).  In short, while I don't anticipate a full re-design, you're going to see this space cleaned out and polished up.
  
  
• Doing what I do. Honestly, my intention is to just keep bringing texture and voice (hardly my own, only) to this space. I'm considering also on variations of the "Choose Books" concept -- other kinds of freely available books, or resources of some sort.

Related:

• Five Years Fierce: Happy Birthday, Isak!
• A Weekend in Boston; or, Happy Third Birthday, Isak!
• Back to Boston
• Debut

Swing State Politics and (alas!) Women's Health

My latest article in the Columbia Journalism Review scrutinizes a The Detroit News package published this week that looks to localize a new poll revealing that large numbers of female voters in swing states are shifting support to President Obama. Reporter Christine Tierney covered the basics of the poll’s findings for the News, and Marisa Schultz offered a take on the current political battles in Michigan over abortion and family planning. It's a mostly solid package on a crucial issue, but there are distracting lapses ... and a very significant absence.

Schultz leads with this week’s opening of the first Planned Parenthood clinic in Oakland County, outside Detroit, which she puts in context of “about 30 bills” targeting reproductive health that are now before the state legislature (with two-thirds of its members opposing abortion). The piece includes plenty of interviews with lawmakers and advocates on both sides of the fight, and it explains well how a period of steady conservative gains set the table for the legislature to prioritize laws that restrict abortion and family planning. From the article:

“We do have a window of opportunity and we need to utilize it,” said state Rep. Thomas Hooker, R-Byron Township, who is pushing legislation to defund Planned Parenthood.

[...]

Despite its virtues, there are ways the News’s package could have been better. One quibble: Schultz’s article indicates that for anti-abortion lawmakers, already “there have been some gains. Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law a late-term abortion ban last year.” But Schultz neglects to mention that a federal ban on the procedure has been in place for several years, making the Michigan law redundant. Its passage last fall was, at most, intended to ensure the procedure wouldn’t be permitted in Michigan in the event that the federal ban is ever changed. A more cynical interpretation is that the ban was pure pandering ahead of a key election year. ...

A bigger complaint is what’s missing from the piece: the voices of doctors, nurses, and patients, the people most palpably impacted by the policies debated by politicians and advocates. This is a significant, if not necessarily atypical, hole in an article on the political reverberation of reproductive health policies. With Schultz’s article pinned to the opening of a new Planned Parenthood clinic in a county that has its own Detroit News bureau, it seems like an obvious step to talk to the people who will be working there and potentially using its services—or, for that matter, the clinic’s new neighbors. But in the entire News package, there are two women quoted: Amanda Henneberg, a Romney campaign spokeswoman, and Sarah Scranton, the Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan executive director. The absence of the people being talked about—the unaffiliated women who, as Tierney notes, are hardly a unanimous voting bloc—feels glaring.

Speaking of Michigan's legislature: on The Rachel Maddow Show last night, there was an intriguing segment on (what appears to be) astonishing practices in Michigan's government that results in skirting votes not only of citizens, but of fellow legislators. I disagree on a few of Rachel Maddow's points, and am still mulling over a few others, but the core "scoop" (as she calls it) is worth attention.

P.S. What you want to do right now is fill out my amazing (yet brief) survey. Time for this is short!

Your Turn

We're nearing Isak's six-year anniversary (!), which means it's time to check in with you, readers both regular and occasional. Please take a moment to fill out this super-easy 10-question online survey.

What are you drawn to on Isak? What leaves you uninspired? I'm curious about your ideas, and about you. While I understand this space to be pretty singularly coming from my mind and heart, evolving as I evolve, this opportunity to learn from you is important to me. I'll share your responses next week when I put together my annual hyper-detailed birthday post (see "Five Years Fierce").

I hope you'll take the time to respond, even if it's simply to wave hello. My heart alights when I hear from you.

Title IX Goes to the Movies

Kate Hepburn as a pro golfer? Elizabeth Taylor as a jockey? "Bad News Bears" as a Title IX satire? And what the heck is Helen Hunt doing in a film called "Quarterback Princess"? My new feature for Grantland tells the story of women in sports by looking at the movies -- how sports films from 1937 through 2009 depict the oddity that is a female athlete. Here is an excerpt:

Hollywood reveals the still-limited understanding of women's sports. Films about female athletes are often explicitly about being a competitive girl in a traditionally masculine world. Compared to male sports movies, they feature individual sports more often than team sports — think Blue Crush, Ice Castles, The Cutting Edge, Soul Surfer, Girlfight — even though team sports are by far the most popular among female athletes. Love interests are more prominent plot points in sports movies about women, and women are hardly featured in a proportional number of sports movies overall.

Among the persistent tropes in sports movies about women is the guy whose coaching of female athletes signifies how very low he's fallen. He's a drunken ex-athlete himself (A League of Their Own), or a bitter former competitor whose success was cut short (National Velvet); he seethes with resentment because he missed his chance to coach men (Personal Best), or he "doesn't train girls" and looks for any possible way out (Million Dollar Baby). Going by the typical storyline, the coaches will soon enough have a revelation: "Hey, this woman's game is interesting and worth my time!" But the sheer ubiquity of the trope indicates that this is a lesson we have to learn again and again.

Women's sports of today? They are at once prominent and on shaky ground. It's a back-and-forth mirrored at the movies. And it's a story worth watching. Here, then, is a tour of sports films from the pre-Title IX era through today. Together, they reveal what has — and hasn't — changed about our real-life expectations of female athletes.

It's a full-on gallery of sports films and history. It was a joy to write this piece.

 

Related:

• Top Ten Reasons Why This Feminist is a Sports Fan
• Her Life Depends On It
• To Be a Title IX Dad
• Expect Great

Get Up and Get Out: Women, Action & the Media - Detroit

Join the brilliant Nichole Christian and myself at WAM-Detroit, the local incarnation of Women, Action & the Media's decentralized event series that is spotlighting the intersection of gender and media. This is your chance to connect with freelancers, journalists, activists, advocates, academics, and other leading voices in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area -- for free! We'll also integrate part of our Detroit conversation into the larger WAM dialogue about "creating spaces and places where women's words matter" as it unfolds across the U.S. and Canada. Both newbies and the battle-worn, and everyone in between, are welcome. We've got to help each other out ... and we're committed to having fun while we do it. (By the way, see Nichole riff on this beautifully over at Shetroit.)

Details on the Detroit events, and the online WAM! events, are below the jump. I'll see you soon.

Benjamin Busch, and What's Up With The Memoir These Days

Memoirs are odd birds. They can be powerful, even revolutionary animals, merging the introspection of autobiography with the vision of a novelist. I include The Autobiography of Malcolm X in this camp (here's me in process of reading it), and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club. Hell, we could count The Education of Henry Adams in the group too, and Art Spiegelman's Maus (my review) and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (thrilled commentary one, two, and three). The worth here is in well-told stories where the author is able to look both ways: the intimacy of his or her personal story, and the broad context that is beyond the bounds of their own lives.

Memoirs can also be dead-on-arrival: awkwardly extended diary entries, where introspection mutates into narcissism and a series of anecdotes are presented as story. I came across a lot of these when I was reading submissions for Kore Press. The publisher provides readers with individual feedback on their manuscripts, and so I had to find a way to explain this to the writers -- who were often very talented -- in ways that wouldn't be translated as me as saying "your life is boring and not worth writing about." Because that is not what I meant. Rather, I wanted to bring an itch to their ambition. The memoir invites a sense of relativity (everyone has a story, every story matters) that turns limiting (just write what happened); would-be memoirists might be brave enough to risk scope in their stories.

Across this scale of revelatory and redundancy, memoirs have found an outrageous popularity. I'm intrigued by this, and by the conversations about how memoirs can, and do, work. For my part, I come down with this fantastic piece by Neil Genzlinger in the New York Times on why most memoirs are terrible. It begins: "A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up." Among his guidelines to "restore some standards to this absurdly bloated genre", he suggests:

That you had parents and a childhood does not of itself qualify you to write a memoir. [...]

No one wants to relive your misery. ... That’s what happens when immature writers write memoirs: they don’t realize that an ordeal, served up without perspective or perceptiveness, is merely an ordeal. [...]

If you’re jumping on a bandwagon, make sure you have better credentials than the people already on it. Imitation runs rampant in memoir land. [...]

If you still must write a memoir, consider making yourself the least important character in it. ... Maybe that’s a good rule of thumb: If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it. Instead hit the delete key, and then go congratulate yourself for having lived a perfectly good, undistinguished life. There’s no shame in that.

Coming in at the other end of the conversation is Deb Olin Unferth, who offers up a "memoir manifesto" over at Guernica. Her opening call: "Let’s have no more insults hurled at the memoir, shall we?"

When Meakin Armstrong of Guernica brought up the possibility of my guest-editing a section, I immediately knew what I wanted to do: a section on innovative memoir. Let’s once and for all dismiss the notion that the memoir is a lesser form.

The writers I chose each explore memoir in a decidedly contemporary manner, while at the same time showing an understanding of the past tradition.

Other interesting weigh-ins on where the memoir is at these days? Ruth Franklin evaluated "the art of writing about captivity" on the occasion of Jaycee Dugard publishing her memoir. When Alexandra Fuller released Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness (not her first memoir), Katherine A. Power considered how memoirs are written by white Africans who lived through the fall of their sovereignty. (Fuller is Kenyan: her Scottish mother came of age during the Mau Mau uprising.)

And in the meantime, there is Benjamin Busch -- you might know him from HBO's "The Wire," or as a Marine Corps combat veteran, or an acclaimed essayist and NPR contributor, or as a filmmaker, or as the son of novelist Fredrick Busch. The multi-faceted artist publishes Dust to Dust this week, an interesting take on the memoir. From my profile and interview with him (alas, much abbreviated!) in today's Detroit Free Press:

"Dust to Dust" is a contemplative and haunting memoir that centers on what it means to look back and forth between the living and the dead. Busch, the son of liberal parents who once protested the Vietnam War, grew up to be a soldier, and though his book hinges on the harrowing stakes of war, it also puts other areas of his life into context -- everything from boyhood play in the cornfields of upstate New York to high school football to his work as an artist and actor.

Rather than moving from youth to adulthood, Busch opts to tell his story by way of elemental-themed chapters that cover water, metal, stone, blood, bone, wood, soil, arms and ash. Like Busch, "Dust to Dust" resists being categorized as any one thing.

By grounding the story in elements, Busch is able to refute the strict chronology of traditional memoirs, and presents a much more intersectional way of telling a story -- a way that elevates the chaos of memory. As he told me:

We're used to conventional memoirs, which generally take a well-established course. The narrative arc begins in youth, and it's a very linear progression. That's not the way I see and not the way I remember. I wanted this memoir to replicate the path we follow when we remember things. For me, it's so rooted in the environment. My whole life has been about water and stone and soil. All the elements, I could trace my life back to. I'd always paid attention to them.

I liked it. I liked this haunting, introspective book, riven with both violence and laughter, and grounded so emphatically in the elements of our living and dying.. Busch does not fall into the easy game of recounting first-this, then-that, with a little added flourish for the anecdotes from the realms where he has achieved his greatest fame. No. Instead, he wrote a book.

By the way: Busch is igniting a 50-state book tour this week. Detroit-area friends can find him at Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor this Tuesday. I encourage you to check him out.

When "Tales and Truth" Get Mixed Up

News broke this afternoon that Mike Daisey's famous monologue on the atrocious working conditions in Apple's Foxconn facility in China -- aired to immense popularity on PRI's This American Life -- contains serious fabrications. Rob Shmitz from Marketplace uncovered the (true) story. This weekend, This American Life is dedicating its entire hour to the retraction, and it has released a statement that says that Daisey blatently lied to host Ira Glass and the show's fact-checkers.

We're horrified to have let something like this onto public radio. Many dedicated reporters and editors - our friends and colleagues - have worked for years to build the reputation for accuracy and integrity that the journalism on public radio enjoys. It's trusted by so many people for good reason. Our program adheres to the same journalistic standards as the other national shows, and in this case, we did not live up to those standards.

This is significant -- the broadcast of Daisey's story became This American Life's most downloaded podcast, and it played a huge role in drawing scrutiny to Apple's labor practices, as well as the tech industry more broadly. It led to Apple -- for the first time ever -- permitting third-party investigations into its factories, and releasing the names of its suppliers. Daisey, for his part, argues that since his monologue was intended as a theater performance, he wasn't beholden to the expectations of journalism. He continues to perform his one-man show around the nation, though there have (so far as I know) been no indications that his performance was anything less than a dramatic rendering of a factual story.

This incident provoked me into responding via a series of tweets on the nature of mixing up "tales and truth." (It's a conversation that's also gotten play with the whole "Lifespan of a Fact" madness.) What follows is an amplified excerpt of what unfolded over the course of an hour, with grammatical and clarity clean-up, for your reading pleasure. All tweets are authored by me unless otherwise indicated.

 

PEOPLE: PRI distributes This American Life, not NPR. Also, let's take this Daisey debacle as an opp to value facts again, not just stories.

It's fashionable to bash objectivity. But objectivity is an exercise, not a reality: practicing skepticism and self-questioning because we value facts.

There's a place for point-of-view and interpretation in media (I practice this!). But our pact as journalists is to be grounded in real world.

There's also truth that *cannot* be told in true, fact-checked articles and radio features. This is why we have art.

RT @JDK12Reporter @annaleighclark To me it reemphasizes that reporting is real, hard work. That it's so much easier to fake makes real thing more worthwhile.

Daisey claims that b/c his story originated in theater, he could blur facts in ways journalists wouldn't. But this misunderstands hybrid art.

I think it underestimates power of art. Apparently, Daisey thought that if listeners didn't think story was *fact*, they wouldn't be moved.

But literature & theater are full of stories that resonated in real world news: The Jungle, Death of a Salesman, Lynn Nottage's Ruined.

RT @JDK12Reporter The easiest counterexample to that line of thinking is The Wire or Treme. Reported fiction has a long, proud history.

Daisey could've gone that route: chosen art, in its full potency, to tell the story he wanted to and have real-world resonance.

But he didn't.

He chose to present his story as verifiable reality: effectively journalism well-told and with a point-of-view. Okay, then.

Even as times are a'changin' in journalism, there are different expectations than in art. Here, stories come from the world we share.

If I make up quotes, stories, and present them as "real" to you, it's an act of violence against communities I pretend to portray. And to you.

RT @matthewjsimmons @annaleighclark Isn't his argument here that he chose to present his story as "theater," though? Not as verifiable reality or journalism?

@matthewjsimmons Yup, but he didn't make that plain til now. He worked with a news org and fact-checkers to tell his story in this incarnation.

@matthewjsimmons What's weird is that TAL *does* air fiction, theater, non-factually based stories. But he didn't go that route.

Awful things happen at Foxconn. But Daisey still fabricated their reality, *used* them to present a reality he imagined not as art, but news.

Foxconn employees deserve better. As @JDKReporter put it, reporting is hard, hard work. We need more people up for the job.

Oh, and hey: YOU. You people who care about the real world, real people, real injustices, real stories. You deserve better too.

Final words: Daisey did not value the potency of art, the truth that comes from stories that are not true. We need them too.

Daisey also did not understand how we the people still want, need stories grounded in the verifiable world that you and I share.

If we are to truly *know* this world, to discover it more and more through journalism, we must be honest about what we see. And don't see.

Anything less exhibits a lack of loving respect for the world, and its people -- both those whose stories we tell, and those we tell them to.

And -- most relevant to Daisey's best intentions -- it hinders our ability to right wrongs. I want truth to motivate me, not propaganda.

I want art to motivate me. Not fictions cloaked as news that make me feel demoralized -- both as an audience of art and of journalism.

I have a whole website dedicated to "celebrating tales and truth." I love both. But I get that they are different things...

... both worthy of our attention, our scrutiny, our skepticism -- our curious and joyful discoveries.