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Gail Marlene Schwartz reviews Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair by Sarah Schulman

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Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman

“The fact that something could go wrong does not mean that we are in danger. It means that we are alive.”

– Conflict is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman

Just days after the American midterm election, it’s impossible to avoid the ever-growing polarization in the U.S. Author, playwright, and professor Sarah Schulman takes a new look at similar dynamics in her 2016 book, Conflict is Not Abuse, and posits that improving social ills requires differentiating conflict from abuse and responding differently. The ideas in the book are unique, persuasive, and practical, a great contribution to the peace movement. Everyone in a leadership position should read this book and strongly consider how they can implement its ideas to avoid escalation and crisis in conflict situations; it could literally help save lives and at the same time enable human beings to evolve and live with far less anxiety and fear and far more joy and peace.

Schulman draws on many sources for the book, including the theories and practices of psychologists, sociologists, novelists and poets. She is transparent about speaking from a queer and feminist perspective, and her methodology is more conversational and interactive than academic, making the ideas very accessible. She includes conversations with experts, quotes, tweets, Facebook posts, and concrete examples, including the Israeli occupation of Palestine, women in dangerous relationships, Canadian criminalization of people with HIV, and the killing of black men in the US by police. She does a great job of bringing many different thinkers and their ideas to the table, strengthening her argument and making the book all the more engaging.

The phenomenon of “overstating harm” is central to Schulman’s thesis. She says there is a very real difference between a woman who is afraid to go home because her boyfriend may kill her, based on past serious physical abuse, and a woman who is afraid to go home because she doesn’t want to face her boyfriend’s anger. People who have been in the victim role can overstate harm but so can people or institutions who actually have power. One example is the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians. Actions like a Palestinian protest over land being seized has resulted in ongoing killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Because of the Holocaust, the Israeli government overstates the harm of Palestinian actions; the overstatement of harm justifies the escalation and the ongoing oppression and killing of people whose actions were reasonable to their situation and in a far less powerful position.

Overstating harm happens from distorted thinking, Schulman explains, which has two very different root causes. Somebody with supremacist ideology can easily overstate harm. A supremacist is somebody who bullies, who doesn’t self-reflect or apologize, who believes he or she is simply better than others. These are the people who rape, abuse, cover up, lie, and cause scandals. But somebody who’s been traumatized by that person can have the same distorted thinking, by projecting the traumatizing event onto a current situation.

This was a powerful thought, that some of those who feel unsafe, threatened, or victimized are suffering from exaggerated thinking which contributes to escalation. It’s certainly not part of the politics of oppression. Many on the left in North America would label this “blaming the victim.” But a huge strength of this book is Schulman’s willingness to take risks like this to point out unpopular truths and perspectives to her audience, people on the political left.

Overstating harm also means that authentic danger becomes invisible. If a police department gets repeated calls about domestic violence when the perceived danger is exaggerated, the officers are far less likely to believe there is a serious problem when it happens. Those most affected, says Schulman, are the most vulnerable among us, like refugees, people of color, and disabled people. This is an important point as it shows how a personal habit or behavior can have a high and unwanted social cost.

Schulman also argues that the technological age has made this problem substantially worse. Electronic communication lacks the tools necessary to understand and connect with another person. Most of us have experienced offending someone with a Facebook post, a Tweet, an email, or a text message. Many people on Facebook have blocked somebody or have been de-friended because of a conflict that Schulman says could have been resolved had the people been in the same room. She advocates for picking up the phone and speaking voice-to-voice instead of texting or emailing, both to simplify and humanize communication and also to avoid the real dangers of miscommunication and escalation.

Another key element of the theory is that of the “bad group” or bad family that encourages the person or group to take escalating actions, like shunning, cruelty, and unilateral control. This is similar to peer pressure, something most of us have experienced. Schulman again is speaking not from a progressive or marginalized perspective but something more distanced, seeing the way the dynamic involves everyone and how escalation leads to crises nobody wants. The left often employs those tactics, and it’s valuable to question them when people around us “support” us by suggesting we use them.

Schulman gives a great example from her own life: a favorite male writing student posted a blog about having a crush on her in the early days of blogging. Her friends, most of whom are queer feminists, encouraged her to kick the student out of her class, report the incident to the police, and file for a restraining order. She resisted the pressure and instead took different steps. She asked the university to move the student to another writing class. She called and asked him if they could meet to talk. They got together several times and both learned more about the other’s position. Schulman ends the story saying she and the student have remained friends and fans of one another’s work; both emerged from the conflict feeling complete and understanding more about one another, themselves, and how to talk through a conflict.

Schulman suggests that “good” families and communities get involved in conflicts to help avoid overstatement of harm and distorted thinking. This was, perhaps, one of the most radical ideas if the book, in an age where most people consider conflicts personal and “nobody’s business.” We’re encouraged to involve either the state (certainly people of color know this will rarely have a good ending, but Schulman helps us see that it doesn’t help any of us in the end) or a private therapist if we’re wealthy enough to afford one. But our friends and sometimes our family members are with us in our everyday life. They know us better than anyone; if they can point out distorted thinking and help us prevent escalation, this could be a very easy and efficient way to avoid crises.

One particularly powerful chapter in the book is a series of tweets posted by Schulman and her friends, many of them Palestinian human rights activists, during the summer of 2014 when the Israeli army killed more than 2,000 Palestinian civilians. The realities of the situation as it unfolded were horrific to read about, particularly since no mainstream media outlet in the West reported what was happening. When contextualized, it becomes clear that the distorted thinking Schulman talks about can so easily lead to atrocities in which losses are enormous and nobody wins.

Human conflict exists because of difference. But we are far more capable of resolving it than we think. We must start by abandoning the roles of “perpetrator” and “victim” in circumstances that don’t warrant those labels. When we recognize that we are simply “conflicted,” we see the “other” as a human being, and it’s more likely we can find a satisfactory conclusion and often learn and grow. This new way of approaching conflict can result in paradigm shifts, which means social and cultural change, something most would agree is massively needed across the globe at this precarious moment in history.

Gail Marlene Schwartz is an Abba fan, a Planet Earth activist, and the first in her family to heal anxiety through diet, exercise, and Facebook rants. Favorite lit mag credits: Lilith Magazine, The New Quarterly, Room Magazine. Favorite anthologies she’s been published in: Swelling with Pride (Caitlyn Press), Nature’s Healing Spirit (Sowing Creek Press), and How To Expect What You’re Not Expecting (TouchWood Editions). Gail lives in southern Quebec where she and her wife homeschool their son. She is currently working on her first novel. www.gailmarleneschwartz.com.

Gail Marlene Schwartz reviews Maggie Terry by Sarah Schulman

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Maggie Terry by Sarah Schulman

“Everyone was in a state of confusion because the president was insane.”

–Maggie Terry by Sarah Schulman

Maggie Terry is longtime lesbian author Sarah Schulman’s second dive into the crime fiction genre (her first was The Sophie Horowitz Story). The novel explores the life of an addict, post-rehab, set against the backdrop of the Trump administration and a gentrifying New York City. While the book offers readers an interesting and heartbreaking look into the mind and soul of someone struggling with addiction, the premise of the mystery is weak, the effort to incorporate contemporary issues falls short, and the craftsmanship isn’t strong enough to hook the reader, making it a difficult and less engaging read than I had hoped for.

Schulman begins with several paragraphs about the U.S. under the new Trump administration. This sets the reader up with the assumption that national politics will play a major role in the book, which they don’t. Schulman tells us that “…(Maggie’s) private deterioration mirrored that of her society.” I found this and other passages like it general and vague, with little connection that enlightened the reader about either the protagonist or the national crisis.

After the text about Trump, we soon learn that Maggie is just one day out of rehab, stunned and confused about who she is and how to relate to the world. We discover she has split up with her girlfriend, Frances, and in the process of her deterioration lost the right to see her daughter, Alina; Maggie’s primary motivation is to get her daughter back (“at least visitation”).

Maggie’s former criminology teacher, Mike Fitzgerald, gives her a job at a law firm as a private investigator.  We soon learn that something went deeply wrong in her career as a police officer before she got sober: “It could not have gone worse in the end…It did destroy her life…Now Mike was giving her a second, second chance, this time at surviving.” Later on we learn what had happened and how Maggie’s using contributed to her part in the tragedy.

On Maggie’s first day on the job, a new client, the famous actress Lucy Horne, comes in asking the firm to investigate the murder of bit part actress Jaime Wagner, whom Horne thinks was killed by Wagner’s ex, a stalker. Why is Horne so interested in Mike’s firm and making this problem go away? Because she has a contract with Disney and needs to steer clear of anything remotely shady.

If you can accept this strange premise and focus on Maggie’s journey, you’ll learn a lot about addiction and the mind and heart of an addict. Maggie’s character is a big strength of the book.

At Schulman’s best, she finds gritty details from Maggie’s life in New York that say a lot. About the city’s subway: “She could walk down those scum-and-gum-encrusted stairs…hang onto slimy poles, smash into clueless tourists…sit face front into some man’s crotch.”  “…men handling their own genitals like they were tough tomatoes in fragile skins.” “The smell of her daughter’s waxy ear as she gently cleaned it with a Q-tip.”

Schulman also captures the inner dialogue of a recovering addict well: slogans and values of 12-step programs, defensiveness, blame, and self-centeredness. For example, When Mike introduces Maggie to her new co-workers, he says proudly that “Enid raised four children before acing law school.” Maggie immediately compares this to her own situation: “Maggie felt the truth of her own failure. She’d lost one to custody.”

Another way Schulman shows the effects of Maggie’s addiction is how she organizes the world into good and bad people and how she is victimized: “Everyone else walked down the street thinking of themselves as pure and clean. They had it together because they were better, and the job of people who are better is to point out the ones who are worse and punish them. All of society seemed to be organized like that. Whoever could, would punish. It was linked to opportunity. Like the judge who took away her child, who ruled no visitation. He was fine with treating her so badly, then when he went home, no matter how much pain he had caused, he was better than someone. He was better than her.”

But Schulman also made Maggie complex. For example, she’s skillful in reading group dynamics. At her new job, Enid is “…the group’s emotional moderator…”, “One of those tough old ladies who never said ‘good job’ until she meant it, and Mike desperately needed a bullshit detector.”

Maggie also has a great sense of humor: “’Hi, it’s Maggie Terry. I’m here for my first day.’ Overshare.” “Mike may have been Teflon, but his beleaguered staff was certainly scratched.” When she’s being introduced to Craig, her co-investigator: “Craig looked up and smiled…once the smile was completed, Craig went back to his device, so when Maggie reached out her hand and said hi, he missed it and left her arm suspended in optimistic traction.”

Schulman structures the story of the mystery around the issue of police violence and racism, with the details of the mystery falling flat. White, blonde-haired Maggie was complicit in a police shooting, and she’s clearly in the role of someone with privilege. Although at the very end of the book she makes a shift toward responsibility, there’s no obvious arc to Maggie’s change. Because I’m not attached to Maggie nor is the setup for the assignment compelling, I wasn’t drawn in to the investigation, either as an illumination of social issues or as simply an engaging mystery.

Also, the language in the novel frequently tells when showing would be more powerful. As a reader, I never felt the thrill of being smack dab in the middle of the action and emotion, on the ground and with the characters. Examples:

“There was a weird vulnerability that came from being afraid of everyone, having contempt for them, and trying to help them while also controlling them and wanting their love.”

“Like most of the places that hosted meetings, Saint Veronica’s was old-fashioned, uncool, and a bit decrepit.”

“Lucy had good skin, an expensive body, and healthy hair.”

“When Maggie’s mother killed herself, the housekeeper made her put on her prettiest dress for the funeral, and everyone told her how beautiful she looked. What a stupid thing to say to a little girl whose mother had left her behind.” What could have been a moment to hook the reader into a very traumatic piece of Maggie’s past is lost because it’s told too directly.

Throughout the book, until the very end, Maggie also stays stuck in her blaming position towards her ex. Since we don’t actually meet Frances, or Alina, this soon becomes repetitive and stagnant for the reader. Instead of empathy, I often felt frustrated and wanting some kind of change and improvement in Maggie’s situation.

If you’re looking for an action-packed exciting crime novel, Maggie Terry is likely to leave you unsatisfied. If you enjoy well-crafted books of literary fiction with interesting relationships, in which characters move, change, and affect one another, I would skip this one. But if you’re curious to learn more about the experience of addiction and what it’s like for a smart but troubled lesbian to return to a harsh and chaotic world after rehab, check out Maggie Terry.

Gail Marlene Schwartz is an Abba fan, a Planet Earth activist, and the first in her family to heal anxiety through diet, exercise, and Facebook rants. Favorite lit mag credits: Lilith Magazine, The New Quarterly, Room Magazine. Favorite anthologies she’s been published in: Swelling with Pride (Caitlyn Press), Nature’s Healing Spirit (Sowing Creek Press), and How To Expect What You’re Not Expecting (TouchWood Editions). Gail lives in southern Quebec where she and her wife homeschool their son. She is currently working on her first novel. www.gailmarleneschwartz.com.

 

Anna Marie reviews Girls, Visions & Everything and The Gentrification of the Mind 

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The cover of Girls, Visions, and Everything as well as Gentrification of the Mind by Sarah Schulman

Over the summer I set myself the challenge of reading one Sarah Schulman book per month – my interest had been sparked because my queer platonic partner had written her dissertation on one of Schulman’s novels Girls, Visions & Everything and the dissertation was really great! I ended up reading 4, one each month of summer with a bonus one in july! The other three were After Delores, The Gentrification of the Mind and Empathy. Here are reviews of my two favourites, both of which I gave 5 stars to.

Like I said, girls, visions & everything was the first book I read, and I read it in about two days whilst I was on holiday, by a pool soaking up the heat. My setting perfectly mirrored the books sweaty summer time atmosphere. At that time it was the dyke-iest book I had read so far in 2018 (I think it’s now been slightly eclipsed by Sarah Waters’ book tipping the velvet). The story gives us a brief glimpse into dyke-about-town, Lila, who lives in new york city and is exploring and finding new relationships and making art. It’s unapologetically queer, sexy and sharply meaningful. The prose is really beautiful, like drinking water: simple and clear. As a character, Lila has stayed with me, and the lessons she learns in the text are relatable and sweet. The book includes some moments of harassment & discussions about sexual violence.

The other five star book I read of Schulman’s was not a novel, and in fact I think it was probably the best nonfiction book i’ve ever read! It was the 2012 book the gentrification of the mind: witness to a lost imagination. The book is about the ways that gentrification was affected and accelerated by the AIDS crisis both in terms of its physical & financial affect on life in New York City, but also in how it lead to a gentrification of the mind – of art and artist practice and community space too. it’s very tragic, but it honestly blew my mind as i read it, and it really made me consider and question my role in continuing gentrification(s) and inspired me to make active choices about the art I make and the spaces I encourage and support with my presence and my money. It is focused on the US and I live in the UK, but I still found it to be pertinent and interesting to my gay life. I definitely think if you’re an artist you should read this book!!

I’m excited to read more Sarah Schulman books, especially Rat Bohemia, and her first novel The Sophie Horowitz Story. If you would like to hear my thoughts on all four of the books I read I made a video about them here.

Bessie reviews After Delores by Sarah Schulman

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aFTERdELORES

Sarah Schulman is a writer and ACTUP activist. Her novel After Delores was published in 1988. It’s a mystery set in the aftermath of a breakup, with the narrator trying to understand how to exist in the world now that her lover Delores has left. She creates a vivid portrait of New York City at the time, while also offering timeless observations about mourning a relationship.

The New York City Schulman writes about is downtown and dirty. No one is very clean or good-looking, and those who come close aren’t to be trusted. Schulman is interested in what it means to be a lesbian in a city like that. In the introduction she writes about the danger that came with living openly as a lesbian in the 70s and 80s, which “produced a kind of desperation, a desire to exist when one was not supposed to, especially on her own terms.” One character says that, “It’s too easy to be gay today in New York City. I come from times when sexual excitement could only be in hidden places. Sweet women had to put themselves in constant danger to make love to me.” In the past the danger was romantic, while in the present it’s just rough.

The mystery plot about a missing girl shows just how dangerous the city can be, and gives the whole novel a noir tinge. The mystery gives the novel forward momentum, driving the protagonist to go out and do things instead of wallowing in her heartbreak. It plays with the language of hardboiled investigators and femme fatales, but twists it, having women play all the roles.

Early on in the novel the protagonist acquires a gun, which she is fascinated with. Guns are an obvious phallic symbol, and one question hiding in the novel is what does it mean for a lesbian to bring a gun around?  Shulman is teasing out how to romanticize a gun in a non masculine way, what it means for a woman to hold that weapon and bring it into situations with other women. Whether guns should be romanticized is another question, but what she does in this novel uses a symbol in a profoundly different way. The gun is a weapon, and a prop, and a symbol of power. Schulman writes,

I slipped the gun into my right hand and posed, Wyatt Earp style, in the ladies’ room. I wanted to see exactly what Delores would see if I stepped in front of her one afternoon clutching that little piece of metal. Except for the mouth I looked exactly like myself, but happier somehow. And it was all because of the machine in my hand could make her shut up and listen for once.

The very act of having a gun leads to the possibility of using a gun. It doesn’t really provide security, but creates an opportunity for more violence. The gun drives the protagonist further into the mystery, allows her to operate on its level.

The protagonist’s preoccupation with the mystery helps distract her from the pain of her failed relationship. Delores has left her for someone else, and the whole world has started to fall about. Her heartbreak is everywhere and all consuming. When she puts the grip of the gun in her mouth she finds that, “it smelled like stale licorice or polished wood and it tasted like Delores.” It all goes back to Delores being gone: everything connects back to that loss. When she’s sitting alone in the bar, “Somebody played Patsy Cline on the jukebox and that made me even sadder, but in a pleasurable melancholy way, not a painful Delores-type way.” The hurt and preoccupation is present on every page. It hurts.

If we only ask for positive representations of lesbians we’ll never get books like this: nasty, mean books that ring true. Lesbians can be terrible people, can be terrible to each other, can do terrible things.

Yet, at the end, when the mystery is unraveled, there’s a man as the real villain, which isn’t surprising. As roughly as lesbians might treat each other, it’s still men who cause the most damage because they start off with the most power and influence. Schulman resists a sentimental ending, is not at all interested in any vision of sisterhood or unity. She articulates something much more subtle and desperate: that while lesbians can be terrible to each other, ultimately we need to stand together in solidarity against patriarchy and homophobia that can kill us so easily. Schulman sums it up beautifully:

I’ve trained myself to avoid all potentially unpleasant situations with men, even though I walk into them constantly with women. Once I realized women could be pretty nasty, I actually considered boys for about five minutes until I remembered they bored me very quickly, and if someone you love is going to bring tragedy into your life, you should at least be interested in them.

It’s a very honest novel. The writing is very direct, and very lovely. I love all the small details Schulman weaves in, details, observations like “Under her leather gloves were five long and polished nails on her right hand and three long polished nails on her left. The index and middle were cut, not chewed, to the cuticle.” My favorite part of the whole book might be the thought that, “The only thing that happened in the last two decades that made any sense to me at all was Patti Smith. When Patti Smith came along, even I got hip, but then she went away.” That’s just cool.

Danika reviews The Mere Future by Sarah Schulman

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This was a puzzling book to me. The Mere Future takes place “In the future, when things are slightly better because there has been a big change.” I was expecting a dystopia, but I finished the book still not certain whether things were, in fact, slightly better. “The big change” is a political one, involving housing costs plummeting (eliminating homelessness) and a ban of chain stores and public advertising in New York. Also, the “Media Hub” provides almost all employment.

The characters, however, seem to be sacrificed to the satire. The main characters are unlikeable and self-obsessed. Their relationship is dysfunctional to say the least. This isn’t inherently bad, but I didn’t feel any personal investment in them or their relationship. They seemed to just be vehicles for information about the reality of the “big change”.

The plot also seems to be secondary to the message. Not much seems to happen in the first two-thirds of the book, other than revealing the consequences of the “big change” (which is fine, because it’s a small book and there’s enough there to pull it along), but then suddenly there’s a murder and trial involving side characters. It seemed sudden. I suspect it was to emphasize the downsides of this “big change”, but to me the consequences didn’t seem to naturally follow.

This isn’t a bad book by any means. It’s written well, and it’s definitely clever. I spent most of the book feeling like it was going over my head. And although I wasn’t into the “dystopic” (or utopic) elements to begin with, they stuck with me. I found myself thinking about them after I finished the book, and discussing them with other people. I’m still debating the merits of the “big change”, and it’s a change from the usual dystopias I’ve read, which are unequivocally bad.

This is the first Sarah Schulman book I’ve read, and I definitely plan to read more, but this one isn’t a perfect fit for me. I definitely think there are lots of readers who would really enjoy it, however, especially if you’re looking for an intellectual read.

As a side note, the main characters are a lesbian couple (of course, that’s why I’m reviewing it!), but as I said to my partner while reading it “You don’t really want them on our team…”