August Books & Films of the Month: Sizzling Staff Picks

Take in some new perspectives on class while you take a break from the summer heat. Class Action staff suggest a few of our favorites for reading and viewing. Cool down at the library with a good book, escape into an air-conditioned movie theater or spend an afternoon reading on the beach.

Short descriptions of the selections follow. Scroll down to read the full reviews.

Films

Harry Potter Reviewed by Zoe Greenberg, intern and director of Enough

As you travel into the magical world of Muggles and Wizards, consider Greenberg’s take on its class commentary.

Spanglish Reviewed by Rhonda Soto, Race/Class Intersections Coordinator

Find a contemporary commentary on race and class – as well as a few laughs – in Spanglish.

Fiction

Saving The World Reviewed by Dawn Faucher, Inspiring Action Campaign Coordinator

A page-turner filled with suspense, romance, inspiration, idealism and psychological drama weaving the stories of two Latinas, one an unsung hero from the Spanish expedition of 1803 and the other in the 21st century United States.

You Shall Know Our Velocity! Reviewed by Matt Bannish, summer intern

A continent-crossing journey to give away $80,000 and unload a deep sense of guilt.

Memoirs

The Glass Castle, Reviewed by Zoe Greenberg, intern and director of Enough

A memoir tracing Walls’ experiences growing up eccentric and poor in working class and desert towns across the U.S. and her eventual travels cross-country and cross-class.

Learning Joy from Dogs Without Collars: A Memoir Reviewed by Felice Yeskel, Executive Director

Through expressive prose and a gripping story, Summer chronicles her journey of growing up, sometimes homeless and living in shelters, through her attendance at Harvard on a wrestling scholarship.

FILM:

Spanglish - Sony Pictures (2004)

Reviewed by Rhonda Soto, Race and Class Intersections Coordinator

Spanglish is a fictional movie that clearly confronts issues around race and class intersections. The difference I found, however, as compared to other movies confronting these issues, is that it is done with a comical twist to it. Although I feel there is no real comedy when dealing with issues around race and class, part of me feels, if it gets people talking about these issues, then go for it.

Spanglish starts off with a narrative of an essay taken from an application to Princeton University, written by a young native Mexican girl, Christina Moreno (Shelbie Bruce). The essay introduces the person that inspires her the most, her mom. Throughout the movie, Christina’s voice narrates the journey with her mom into the states. After being abandoned by her husband, Flor (Paz Vega) crosses the border of Mexico with 6 year old Christina, and resides with her cousin in Southern California, an area that is 48% Hispanic, where they are ensured some security of their culture. Flor works two jobs to make ends meet, never needing to learn the English language. Flor concludes that her daughter is getting older and needs more attention, therefore deciding to leave her night job and seek one job that will compensate financially for two. She finds herself having to enter a “foreign land”, which Christina describes as “stepping across the cultural divide.”

Flor finds a job working as a full-time housekeeper/nanny and begins working for a clearly wealthy, white American family. Flor in particular finds herself making sacrifices, and fears the thought that her daughter might be losing bits and pieces of her cultural identity. Evidence of this fear is blatant in her questioning Christina with, “ is what you want for yourself is to become very different than me? This mirrors the experience for the immigrants that I know, leaving their native homes and coming into the U.S.; in order to make ends meet, family becomes your major support system, you work long and hard hours, while making barely enough to become self-sufficient, and you sacrifice important cultural values in order to “fit in.”

The family, John (Adam Sandler) a world famous chef, who owns a restaurant, and his wife Deborah (Tea Leoni), who is portrayed as a self absorbed, neurotic women, who recently downsized from her profession as a commercial designer into the role of a house-wife, her mother Evelyn (Cloris Leachman), who in her days was a jazz recording artist, and their two children Bernice (Sarah Stelle) and Georgie (Ian Hyland), all living in their strikingly impressive Los Angeles home. Dialogues across class and race are continuously highlighted throughout the film, all the while painting a clear picture of identity conflict, and class divisions. All involved find themselves struggling with language barriers, cultural values, beliefs and the need to protect their own cultural identities

What resonates most for me are the sacrifices a single mother has to endure to assimilate into a culture unlike her own: a culture with different norms and values around parenting, family, and language. To me, the difficulties of these relationships are symbolic of race relations in the U.S. I can’t help to think about the hundreds of years women of color have been the primary care taker of white people, often sacrificing time with their children on holidays, let alone on a daily basis.

In Spanglish Flor finds herself struggling with the decision of spending her entire summer caring for Deborah ‘s family in their summer vacation home in Malibu California, or lose her job. While Deborah makes it clear to her that she won’t take no for an answer she suggest that Flor’s daughter stay with them as well. Watching Flor struggle with how much quality time she spends with her own daughter while she tries to come to terms with the time she is expected to sacrifice to care for someone else’s family, strikes a cord with me.

Some critics claim James L. Brooks, writer and director of Spanglish, stuffs the film with clashing characters to suffice his ego, and question the films authenticity along with Brook’s knowledge about what it’s like to be an illegal Mexican immigrant. Other critics believe the film to depict the “real life” situations that immigrants face in order to assimilate into working towards living the “American Dream”. My thought is, if it builds some type of awareness to the complexities of race relations in the U.S, then we need more of it.

J.K. Rowlings - Harry Potter (Warner Brothers & Arthur Levine Books)

Reviewed by Zoe Greenberg, Intern and Enough Director

It’s that time again. Posters have gone up, all the cereal boxes have begun to carry a certain name across their fronts, and the countdowns are in progress. That’s right- another segment of the seven-part Harry Potter series was just released. Most magazines feature at least one article discussing the effect the Harry Potter phenomenon has on the next generation – kids are reading more! Kids are developing their imagination! Kids are learning about good and evil! With such wide, diverse circulation, we can’t help talking about the messages Harry Potter sends to its readers. And it definitely sends messages about wealth and class.

The premise of the series is that a young orphan, Harry Potter, learns that he’s a wizard at the age of 10, and leaves his terrible non-magical relatives (Muggles) to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Once he arrives, he realizes he’s not just any wizard-in fact; he’s a household name, because as an infant, he somehow stopped the most powerful Dark wizard of all time (Voldemort), even after his parents were murdered. Harry, along with his two best friends Ron and Hermione, must spend their years fighting the forces of evil that continually threaten to take over the wizarding world.

In one sense, the series offers commentary on class and classism in our own world by creating a completely different wizarding world to contrast our own. For example, when wizards want to look inconspicuous in the non-magical world, they attempt to fit in by wearing Muggle clothing. Having no idea of the class prejudices we in have so internalized, they mix together clothes from everywhere across the class spectrum: fancy suit jackets and denim jeans, top hats with undershirts, plaid pants and striped shirts and three layers of sweaters. At first glance, this seems like a clear misinterpretation of our fashion, but in a deeper way, it points out the arbitrary nature of our own class rules. Having no idea about the “proper” way to dress in society, the wizards dress any way they like.

The concept of wealth and the feelings that accompany it in the wizarding world are in many ways similar to feelings around wealth in our own world. Harry inherits a seemingly infinite pile of gold from his parents, so that he is very wealthy and doesn’t have to worry about money. His best friend Ron’s family, though, has very little money. In the scene where they meet in the first book, a trolley selling candy comes by their compartment on the train. Harry feels guilty that he has money to spend on candy, while Ron feels ashamed that he doesn’t have enough money to buy a treat with his new friend. Harry ends up buying enough candy for the whole compartment, and some of the guilt and shame on both ends is alleviated.

In addition to exploring the feelings that wealth creates within individuals, the series also sends messages about the correlation between happiness and wealth by portraying a variety of families across the class spectrum. Until Harry goes to Hogwarts, he lives with his non-magical relatives. They live on a suburban street in England and they’re described as ambitious, greedy, and overly concerned with what others think of them. Comfortable in their life but never satisfied, they are portrayed as generally unpleasant characters too consumed by dreams of money to have real depth. In their case, having money or aspiring to have money doesn’t create happiness.

Ron’s family, on the other hand, has seven children and two parents, living in a cramped but cozy home called “The Burrow.” His father works in the Ministry of Magic, doing what he loves but not getting paid very much. The children must get secondhand robes and books, and the parents struggle to make ends meet, but the family is portrayed as the happiest and most loving family in the book. The message, therefore, is that money doesn’t equal happiness. After all, Harry, even with his excess of money, is constantly worried about saving the world and doesn’t feel too secure. It seems that Harry only continues to survive because of the love and friendship he has encountered in his life; the overarching message is that relationships we create are much more important than money we have.

As in our world, other qualities besides wealth play into the class attitudes of the wizarding world. In our world, racism and classism intersect to create divides in oppressed groups that would otherwise be in solidarity. The racism of the wizarding world is expressed by an obsession with being “pureblood” (having only magical relatives.) The issue of whether one’s blood is “pure” is one that regularly creates feelings of both shame and superiority in different characters. To us as readers, the focus on pure bloodedness seems both odd and obviously immoral, because it is not a prejudice that applies to our world. It’s clearly a social construction of the wizarding world. It is used, then, to show us that our own cultural prejudices, our own forms of racism and classism, are also social constructions. They are deeply destructive to us, but to an outsider, they would be irrelevant. Why, then, are we so ruled by them?

When you see the fifth Harry Potter movie or you read the last book, think not only about the intense storyline and the lovable characters. Use it to start dialogues within your own communities about classism and its effect on our selves and our communities. Hey, the outcome—it could be magical.

BOOKS:

Julia Alvarez - Saving The World (Algonquin Books, 2006)

Reviewed by Dawn Faucher, Inspiring Action Campaign Coordinator

If you are in search of a page-turner filled with suspense, romance, inspiration, idealism and psychological drama, check out Saving The World by Julia Alvarez. Saving The World is an intricately crafted novel within a novel. It’s two tales of two women centuries apart.

First, there’s the novelist Alma Heubner, who is trying to cope with writer’s block, a midlife crisis, the prolonged illness of a close friend, and the lengthy absence of her husband. Then, there’s Isabel Sendales y Gomez, the only woman to accompany the Spanish expedition of 1803 to bring the smallpox vaccine to the Americas.

Alma becomes obsessed with the story of this expedition that was lead by Spanish doctor Xavier Balmis and utilized twenty-two Spanish orphan boys as live carriers of the vaccine. But, of even greater interest to Alma, is the story of the boys and their caretaker Isabel Sendales y Gomez. Alma is not satisfied with leaving their stories as a footnote in history and so she sets out to give them voice in her latest novel.

As the story of the courageous Isabel unfolds, so does Alma’s own “crisis of the soul.” Alma, like the heroine of her novel, must come to grips with plagues, poverty and politics.

Each character is compelling. The transition between the two stories is seamless. The questions posed by Alvarez riveting: “Why do we go hungry? Why do people die of curable diseases? What is it that has excluded us? What is it that has isolated us?” And, how does one find the faith to carry on in a world where greed trumps idealism?

David Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity!(Vintage 2003)

Reviewed by Matt Bannish

As David Eggers’ firstforay into fiction, You Shall Know Our Velocity! is a tremendous success. In his signature style, Eggers uses eloquent prose to weave a story of personal tumult and triumph. His descriptions are adorned with uniquely powerful imagery; his dialogue is witty and engaging; his well-developed characters demand attention and analysis, each possessing curious idiosyncrasies and inclinations. Eggers presents his protagonist and narrator, Will Chmlielewski, as a complex and profoundly tortured individual. He paints Will’s companion, Hand, in a very different light. Hand is a confident and interactive character, his loose mouth at times betraying a streak of volatility. The book’s main characters are perfect foils, Will the thinker, and Hand the stimulator for action.

The novel begins shortly after Will has become the recipient of a financial windfall, an occurrence that has burdened him with a deep sense of guilt. Still reeling from the death of his best friend, and a violent altercation that has left him unsightly and image-conscious, Will embarks upon a journey to quell his chaotic mind. A six-day trip is hastily planned, its goal being to unload Will’s $80,000 upon as many strangers and across as many continents as possible.

Will and Hand set out to accomplish something meaningful, wishing to connect with the world’s inhabitants on a personal level. It is Will’s goal to achieve some sort of clarity, to find balance in a world that has just sent him into an emotional tailspin. Where the channels of destiny and fate do not naturally render any logical balance, Will and Hand attempt a manual override. They travel the third world with the aim of bringing financial justice to the doorstep of the world’s poor. In the face of such extreme poverty their goal seems monumental and Will becomes overwhelmed by his perpetually churning mind. He wrestles with a self-doubt that elaborates on hypothetical situations, paralyzing his decision-making and tempering his passionate objective. ‘Who deserves the money? Who am I to decide?’ Meant as a generous act of charity the money giveaway now seems to manipulate and cheapen pure human interactions in a way that leaves Will disenchanted. It becomes clear that two men and $80,000 cannot calibrate a scale that has for so long remained unbalanced. Only when Will begins to come to peace with his past and clear his mind of self-criticisms does he find it easier to distribute his cash, finding reason in every check endorsement and beauty in each recipient.

Jeannette Walls - The Glass Castle (Scribner, 2005)

Reviewed by Zoe Greenberg

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, is a memoir about growing up eccentric and poor in a variety of working class and desert towns across the U.S. Walls’ mother is an artist who can’t quite seem to leave her brilliant but alcoholic husband. As the Walls family goes from creatively unconventional to purely dysfunctional, the children decide to leave home and move to New York City. Their parents eventually follow, but as the children become wealthier and more successful each year, the parents choose to live a homeless life on the streets and within the abandoned buildings of New York City.

The Glass Castle is the story of a class straddler, and it is a sort of coming out about Wall’s childhood and both the gems and horrors of growing up the way she did. The term “class straddler” generally refers to a person who comes from a poor or working class background, but over their lifetime moves into the middle or owning class. They have the experience of "straddling" two class identities.

Jeannette has mixed feelings about the poverty of her youth. In the earlier years, before her father started drinking so heavily, the Walls family moved from place to place, staying in shacks and run-down houses. Each move was an adventure, though, and there was joy in each new town. Jeannette’s parents taught their children how to find majesty in nature and how to make something out of nothing. The early message Jeannette got was that her family had enough love and joy to survive anything. She also didn’t know any kids of a different class than she was, so she didn’t have anything with which to compare her own family’s wealth.

The Walls ended up settling down in the father’s impoverished hometown in West Virginia. Overwhelmed by a sense of defeat for being unable to break free, Jeannette’s father began drinking much more. In their new town, there were times when both parents were unemployed, and the family lived in a falling down shack with no electricity or running water. This is the point in the book when Jeannette suddenly became class-conscious. Going to school with other children who looked down on her poverty made her aware of how poor she really was. This consciousness was accompanied by shame and embarrassment; at one point, she colored her legs with magic markers to hide the holes in her school pants.

The parents became hopeless and almost completely neglected their children in West Virginia. Earlier in the book, poverty was endlessly exciting, but at this point, poverty became constant and devastating.

One by one, each of the children left home to go to New York City. As Jeannette moved up the class ladder in New York, she was too ashamed of her past to be truthful about it, and so the security and happiness that came with her success was marred by a sense of guilt. She could not be fully present in her new owning class status because she felt like she needed to hide her childhood experiences of poverty.

The book details the process of growing up poor and becoming rich, but it is also a medium Jeannette uses to work through the pain that came from hiding her true self.

Although The Glass Castle is only one person’s experience of navigating class in our society, it is a book that will resonate with people from all walks of life.

Lauralee Summer - Learning Joy from Dogs Without Collars: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster: 2003)

Reviewed by Felice Yeskel, Executive Director

Learning Joy from Dogs Without Collars was written by Lauralee Summer when she was 26. It chronicles her journey of growing up, being raised by an eccentric single mother, sometimes homeless and living in shelters, at other times in one apartment after another, and for a while in a foster home. Lauralee doesn’t learn who her father (a successful judge) is, until she meets him when she is 19 years old and attending Harvard.

Summer shares insights and reflections on class and class differences, and describes her experience of homelessness without glorifying it or wallowing in shame. Although at times quite poor during her growing up, surrounded by others who shared her situation, Summer felt “normal.”

After winning a wrestling scholarship to Harvard, she attracts the attention of the media; the ubiquitous headlines proclaimed triumphantly: "Homeless to Harvard." Once during a TV interview, she was asked what it was like to be homeless and given a sound-bite’s worth of time for her answer. As a result she decided to write this memoir to provide the nuanced answer the question deserved.

Her class awareness grows by leaps when she attends Harvard and is surrounded by students who uniformly come from more economically privileged situations. Talk about being a class straddler. Summer never uses that term to describe herself, but she does straddle different class universes. Her outsider’s perspective provides insight into class privilege without being didactic. Although, non-fiction, Summer’s expressive prose was easy to read and her story gripping. For an educational and enjoyable summer read, I’d recommend it.

View previous Class Action Book of the Month selections...

July Book of the Month: Theory of the Leisure Class

June Book of the Month: Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons

May Book of the Month: Death in the Haymarket

April Book of the Month: Food Politics

March Book of the Month: Psychology and Economic Injustice

February Book of the Month : What's My Name, Fool?

December Book of the Month: Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming

November Book of the Month: Awol

October Book of the Month: Class Passing

September Book and Video of the Month: Beyond Silenced Voices and Declining By Degrees

August Books of the Month: Human Cargo and Gathering the Sun

July Book of the Month: The Overworked American by Juliet Schor

June Book of the Month: More Money Than God by Steven R. Leder

May Book of the Month: Global Class by Jeff Faux

April Books of the Month: Classified and Strapped

March Book of the Month: Welfare Brat, A Memoir by Mary Childers

February Book of the Month: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

January Book of the Month: Invisible Privilege: A Memoir about Race, Class, and Gender by Paula Rothenberg

View last year's Book of the Month selections...

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