As Cool As I Am -- NOT

[devifemme]

Last night I fell into an endearing movie on TV -- As Cool As I Am, with Clare Danes and a new actor named Sarah Bolger as Lucy, the not-cool teenage narrator. It's set in New Mexico* and is atypical of coming-of-age flicks: wryly developed, and with well-portrayed adults moving the plot along. The delicious Danes plays the young mom, who's

Comments

[ggary]

I always find it fascinating when an author can completely step outside of their own identity and imagine themselves as someone else. I can remember a mild scandal which happened in the mid-80s, when Virago suddenly recalled all copies of a book called DOWN THE ROAD, WORLDS AWAY by Ranila Khan and had them pulped. It was a collection of sensitive stories about the problems faced by Asian girls growing up in a repressive, male dominated society. Khan was an 'unknown Islamic Authoress'....or so Virago believed. In fact, soon after publication, it turned out that Khan was not only not Islamic, she was not even a woman. In fact the real author was an Anglican Vicar called the Reverend Toby Forward. He had written the stories with the laudable intention of fighting racism and helping white and Asian kids to understand one another, but had decided that no-one took vicars seriously, hence the pseudonym. There were the usual arguments about the rights and wrongs of pretending to be not only another culture, but also another sex. However,

[devifemme]

VERY true, Gary! I took a few moments to process the fact of a male author here -- but concluded, with Bookslut's help, that it was quite okay to create not one but TWO excellent women. Who knows, to get himself in the proper mood, maybe Pete occasionally put on a pair of panties to get his feminism up to snuff. Whatever it was, it did produce a plot and characters worth paying attention to.