25 Lessons I've Learned About (Photography) Life by Lorenzo Dominguez

Book Review by Zinta Aistars

Paperback: 146 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace, 2011

Price: $19.99

ISBN-10: 1456574485

ISBN-13: 978-1456574482

In the spring of 2005, writes Lorenzo Dominguez, he and his wife became separated, and he found himself looking for a roof to put over his head. He eventually found a small room in a Manhattan church sanctuary, and while living there, going through the introspection that most of us do when going through traumatic events in our lives, he took up photography.

His hobby soon became much more than just a hobby. Photography was in itself the vehicle of his life introspection. Through images taken throughout New York City, mostly at night, Lorenzo gets a new perspective on life and realizes that many of the lessons of photography apply to life. These 25 lessons begin with "everything is beautiful" and then go on to incorporate lessons of perseverance, learning to let go, telling the truth, experimenting, being yourself, striking a balance, and many more.

None of these lessons are earth-shatteringly original or surprising. Indeed, most if not all are cliché. Still, the way Lorenzo presents these lessons, and doing so through the lens of camera, does lend them some originality. His narrative voice is pleasant, even comforting, and his journey is one with which many can identify. The places he arrives are good ones, even if he does sometimes practice rather risky behavior to get his shot.

"…I knew only failures gave in after failing the first time. Too many people just quit after failing the first try because they immediately lose their self-confidence. Winners never concede to circumstance, they just keep on trying and continue to believe in themselves and in their aspirations. And ultimately, they become whatever it is they believe to be true. For faith in oneself is the first step toward truth." (Page 92)

What these lessons might look like in photography, however … well, that's the disappointing part. In my hands was the paperback version of the book, and in its pages were just a few, small photos, not particularly sharp in reproduction, none of which particularly corresponded to the text. It seems that to fully enjoy the author's artistry, the reader is required to visit various sites online to view his work. That's not particularly reasonable. As enjoyable as the author's story could be, had it been a real photo essay would have made a world of difference.

Lorenzo's photographic journey of introspection doesn't necessarily end up with a neat conclusion, or even a predictable one, but he does stay true to himself. By end of the slim book, it's been an enjoyable enough read (and he tells of commercial success as a photographer), albeit missing the view his lens might have provided.

Lorenzo Dominguez has been called an "Internet photography sensation" by Time Out New York and is considered a "Flickr star" by Rob Walker, Consumed columnist, for New York Times Magazine. His work is represented worldwide by Getty Images.

Don't Cry, Daddy's Here: One Woman's Journey to Recovery from Incest by Brinda Carey

Book Review by Zinta Aistars

Paperback: 256 pages

Publisher: White Bird Publications, 2011

Price: $14.95

ISBN-10: 0982802463

ISBN-13: 978-0982802465

The moment I opened Don't Cry, Daddy's Here, I knew this was going to be hard to read. It's difficult to think of any subject matter more difficult to stomach than incest, the sexual molestation of a child by a family member … let alone her own father.

Yet sometimes we need to plow ahead, read and bear witness to this now grown child's story. There is tremendous healing in storytelling, and there is great healing we who listen to that story can offer to the story teller, by hearing her out and acknowledging her life experience. So I read.

This is Brinda Carey's story of her growing up years, from the time she was hardly more than a toddler to the time that she was a young adult woman. No longer a victim, but now fully a survivor, Carey would later earn a degree in criminal justice and work as a probation officer, and she would marry and have children of her own. No doubt much of this was possible because she was able to share her horrendous experience, talk about it, and she also had her husband to lean on—the story of how they met and how he persisted in supporting her even when she resisted help is part of this story.

Not untypical in this kind of story is that Carey's mother knew what was happening, at least to some degree, but turned her back on her child and failed to protect her. Indeed, at times, she acted like a jealous wife angry at the threat of her husband's "affair" with his daughter. It is hard to read about this without having to swallow the bile coming up at the thought alone. The challenge here is to stretch the mind to encompass the thought that this woman, too, was to some degree an emotionally battered woman. With time, there was a divorce, and eventually, even a reconciliation between mother and daughter.

I will not repeat here the events of this story. Suffice it to say that a child is coerced, tricked, overpowered, overwhelmed by adult mind games, threatened, and, yes, repeatedly, over all of those years, raped. Again, again, again. Finally, to the point of being impregnated, sometimes to have her pregnancy end in miscarriage, but another time to result in the birth of a child who would eventually die due to genetic oddities caused by two so closely related people as parents. It boggles the mind and breaks the heart.

Tragedy piles upon tragedy, until Carey is finally able to mature and break free, once and for all, in spite of her father's threats to commit suicide, using this as emotional blackmail in his attempt to keep her in his life. It is at this point that it would have been powerful to read more about how this breaking free happens. The author might have shared more of her inner thought process and emotional processing, to the point where she finds the strength and wisdom to escape her abuser. It would also have been powerful to read more about how Carey achieves recovery—arguably much more powerful than the pages of quotes in the second half of the book that, I would guess, few will bother to read.

The book is, in fact, in great part comprised of biblical and other quotes, lists of resources. Carey's story, dotted with a few black and white photographs, comprises only about half of the book. Since this doesn't appear to be a part of the book's marketing or description on the cover, that can no doubt lead to disappointment for some readers expecting more of a full-length book.

Bottom line: this is not necessarily a gracefully written book, but it carries weight as an addition to the resources available for the too many children growing into damaged adults, trying to regain emotional health after being abused and molested by those they trust most. It is important for all of us to be aware that this is a problem in our society, and that the perpetrators can very well be the man next door, the one you wave hello to when outside mowing the lawn. I acknowledge the tremendous courage required of this author to speak up and go public with her own story.

A Mind Like This, poetry by Susan Blackwell Ramsey

Book Review by Zinta Aistars

Paperback: 112 pages

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (September 1, 2012)

Price: $17.95

ISBN-10: 0803243383

ISBN-13: 978-0803243385

Susan Blackwell Ramsey's first poetry collection, A Mind Like This, is rich with humor. Read it and weep, probably with laughter, sometimes with a wince, but never because she missed the mark. It is humor knit with wit, laced with the outrageous, intertwined with the meticulous and wonderful detail that makes up life. Because we all know life is in the details. 

First collection, sure, but Ramsey is already well known in her community, and in the literary community far beyond the geographical one, for her poetic skill. This collection, after all, has been some 20 years in the making, revised so many times, the poet says, that she's not sure anymore what's in it and what's not. 

I bet she knows. Ramsey's mind is crammed with detail, dates, places, odd but fascinating tangents, one branching off into another, and another, and another. She likens her mind to a junk drawer, but don't be fooled. These aren't the scraps; these are the poems that matter. Between the lines of seducing Jimmy Stewart, and pickling heads because we want to make things last, third wedding receptions and scarlet bird houses and useless beads that indicate an equally useless civilization, thawing turkeys and picking apart names like Kalamazoo, children in church and Pablo Neruda at Water Street Coffee Joint, Ramsey weaves pure and complex ideas, the deeper understandings of, yes, life. She gets it.

Her mind is like that. It's like this poetry. Witty, clever, sharp, precise. The poets among her readers will recognize the forms she uses as skeletons to build upon, layering muscle, flesh, skin. Sestinas, pantoums, sonnets, villanelles, iambic pentameter, yet nowhere does the poetry bog down with form. The flow is easy, even between chortles. 

And honest. She writes about Bell's Palsy, her own coping with it, and bladders that are forever too small to bear the hour-long wait. It's the honesty that makes the humor work. Yet for all the grins, this lacing of words is never without beauty. It's all in there, all of it. "Joy, daughter of the difficult," Ramsey writes in a poem called "Washing My Husband's Kilt Hose: A 32-Bar Reel." Light requires dark, and such keen humor requires a knowledge of suffering. 

Ramsey's mind, never missing a thing, is just as likely to make a quiet observation that haunts long after the reading (from "Why I Hate Storytellers"):

Good stories sneak up, they're glimpsed, overheard

from the booth behind you at the diner,

from the back seat, six hours into the trip,

on the radio, half over when you tune in.

Real storytellers are quiet, even reluctant.

Casual is their camouflage. After a long

march, supper cooked, night coming down,

the conversation passed around like a pipe,

one voice starts ambling down a path that forks

in unexpected directions and you feel

the great beast purring next to you in the dark,

its bristly chin on your shoulder, its breath in your ear.

Ramsey's voice of poetry is the one with its chin on your shoulder, its breath in your ear, and it is a voice you will want to listen to, again and again.

Susan Blackwell Ramsey is the winner of the Prairie Schooner Prize in Poetry for 2011. Ramsey earned her bachelor of arts at Kalamazoo College, and her MFA at the University of Notre Dame's Creative Writing Program, where she received the department's Mitchell Award. She has taught high school, gardened for hire, worked as a horticultural transparencies librarian, and for many years as a bookseller. She is now an instructor of spinning, knitting and creative writing at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Ramsey lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband, Wayne, with whom she raised three children, her knitting, her garden, and with her Kalamazoo College writers' group closely circled in around her.