Voyeur Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I love words, but don't often read poetry these days (after my affairs with Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay back in college). After reading Voyeur, I am compelled to write my first review on Amazon. These poems are largely about women, relationships, and power. They are thought-provoking and provocative. I had to read them several times -- firstly, out loud to hear the words trip over themselves; secondly, to attempt an understanding; and lastly, to determine what they mean only to me. Certain phrases really spoke to me and would surprise me by popping into my head throughout my day, like little pieces of hard candy that I would roll around on my tongue. Oh, there are so many, but I love the phrase "We sip our due from each other's shoes to free our mattress of sides" and the bon mot "A toast and traffic jam." I believe that great poetry challenges readers to learn more about themselves and provide insights not normally gained through our day to day lives. Having been personally surprised by these poems, this book achieves exactly that -- words, ideas, paradigms that pull you out of yourself and give you back something deeply personal at the same time. I highly recommend this book and hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

Click Here to see more reviews about: Voyeur

Winner of the 2009 Los Angeles Book Festival Award for Poetry & Winner of the Gival Press Poetry Award --"Voyeur is a work of vision and virtuosity. Concerned with relationships, marriage, sex and power, the poetry is dense, rapid, dazzling, the voice commanding, and the speaker charismatic. Combining multifaceted imagery with sharply angled enjambments and jammed syntax, Rich Murphy creates poems that are like broken glass-beautiful, jagged, risky to handle. But even though they cut-or maybe because they cut-one can't resist picking up piece after piece. The poems are extraordinary as individuals, from the intriguing declarative first sentence of each down to its decisive, glistening last line. And as a collection, like 'a subtle song [that] travels / from ancient feet through hearts / to first breath in the world,' Voyeur is spectacular."-Richard Carr, judge for the Gival Press Poetry Award and author of Honey

Buy cheap Voyeur now.

Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I was very pleased with this book , but also somewhat disappointed. The way Allison delves into each subject is astounding, and her own personal experiences illustrate the culture so that an American can understand it. What disappointed me, however, was how Allison becomes bogged down in explaining everything in psychological jargon. I know as an anthropologist, she must address certain things, but I ended up just skimming the sections.
The first chapters of the book cover Japanese comics, or manga. It does not cover popular manga, but rather how certain running themes reflect on Japanese culture. She particuarly looks into "ero manga," which is erotic, adult comics. She makes some shocking insights, but nothing that isn't mirrored in the U.S. She also briefly looks into children's television shows and hostess clubs.
The second part deals with mothers in Japan. This section of the book was so thoroughly interesting it made me wish the entire book covered the topic. The amount of work that the women must do is incredible. She also looks into Japanese schools, especially nursery schools. Allison's own personal experiences and her interviews with Japanese women really flavor this section.
The third section wraps up with censorship in Japan. Allison delves more into politics here, and the section didn't grab me as much as the others. It is still interesting, and the information is well delivered.
If you can put aside her psychological ramblings and concentrate on the actual writings, this book is wonderfully informative. Recommended.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan

This provocative study of gender and sexuality in contemporary Japan investigates elements of Japanese popular culture including erotic comic books, stories of mother-son incest, lunchboxesor obentosthat mothers ritualistically prepare for schoolchildren, and children's cartoons. Anne Allison brings recent feminist psychoanalytic and Marxist theory to bear on representations of sexuality, motherhood, and gender in these and other aspects of Japanese culture. Based on five years of fieldwork in a middle-class Tokyo neighborhood, this theoretically informed, accessible ethnographic study provides a provocative analysis of how sexuality, dominance, and desire are reproduced and enacted in late-capitalistic Japan.

Get 9% OFF

Buy cheap Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan now.