Poetry, Stories, Essays and Book Reviews
by Sue Rautine

	DON’T DECIDE by Susan Rautine When the wind blows boughs rock and the clumps of leaves Attached sway Breath comes with your words and sometimes when we’re close Enough I feel stray hairs move And me lulled by your breezings Physical Closeness That I desired massages me and rearranges my tight molecules Expanding them so that your breath gets through and changes me To be closer to not only you, but all this we create Thank you thank The sun shines I waited for These tears hide as a glaze of bright eyes Daring not to close them or even blink because They’ll show as tears in the corners and I will have to Acknowledge them tickling down my face and think that I have to decide What they mean, this or that. A little of each
	Intimate Politics by Bettina Aptheker “I had no content.” [page 30] Book Review by Susan Rautine      We should remember: pain can also mean the wound is healing. Perhaps the reason child abuse prospers comes from our aversion to pain; if it’s someone else’s, we turn away from it, perhaps justifying that refusal to take care of that child because we refuse to take care of our own pain. Whatever the reason, there’s a disordinate nastiness that attends ignoring the abuse we are aware of—that is, besides not being taught by the culture how to handle such situations—whether it is the childhood abuse we come to realize later in life, as Bettina Aptheker does, or the abuse our children suffer that we don’t address.      Intimate Politics is a painful book to read because Aptheker’s experiences reflect a side of life that many of us have known, and have also repressed and not validated. Sometimes memories become even more of a liability as, without validation, we come to doubt they happened. And then it becomes even harder to honor ourselves, to have compassion, and understanding. And the effects go on to those having suffered similar violations that we cannot help, most likely our children.      It is painful to read this book because we know we can’t help the author as she comes to realize what happened to her and how it effects all her relationships. But, as she braves knowledge and its consequences, the reader is shown a way to also overcome, to deal, and to heal with those that abuse, those we nonetheless love. Aptheker’s honesty uncovers the dark underside of her family life, the awakening of a bright, eager-to-please child eventually coming into her own light and life—with much struggle and agony.      What makes this autobiography more than an emphasis on a psychological struggle comes through her dive into political activism in the Communist Party (her father’s prominent political affiliation), the instigation of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, and contribution to the feminist movement, particularly through university women’s studies. Aptheker attends to women’s influence, placing it in its proper position, commensurate with men’s. Rejection, jail, demotion: nothing seems to deter her. And for that, women should look on her as the witness and supporter we should cherish, respect, and encourage iin other women. She gives the reader determination to help stop the discrimination so prevalent even here in our country—even here in what some would (wrongly) claim as a utopia for women. Unfortunately, women’s rights are not equal to men’s. For all our wealth, education, and claims as an advanced country, we have not advanced the role of women. Intimate Politics is a help in that direction.      Aptheker’s autobiography tells us as much about women’s history as about her life. We are reminded that “women’s subordination predated capitalism by hundreds of years” (350) and learn about the sexism in the Communist Party when her influence in women’s and other civil rights movements became national. And yet, she said, women collaborate with patriarchy. This is a more honest slant on gender politics than usually comes from a feminist. This honesty lays out a more solid place to launch a reformist feminist policy from.      It is possible that Aptheker’s cool-headed, straight thinking about addressing the abuses women receive from those that claim to love them comes from the deep suffering that caused her to sort out and come up with a way to work with the abuse that ultimately keeps a kind of peace. She learns from Shantideva, “In the spiritual energy that relieves the anguish of beings in misery, I lift up my heart and rejoice.” (541)      Aptheker had many teachers in her struggle with prejudice, sexual abuse, and many uplifting healings as a result of learning from her father who abused her in childhood, her partner, her children. It’s a trickle in and into and trickle out and throughout process. Through Intimate Politics she teaches ways for the reader to accept without condoning, to let go, as Korean Buddhist priest Soen has taught her from his experience. Because this is an honest work, the feel good comes as we hear the author now feeling good. Not a wallowing kind of plunging into the details that affected her, but a presentation of a straightforward account of her reactions and of the people in her life keep it from being an easy how-to for reconciling with parents, coming out as a lesbian, and speaking the truth—and a history toward a free society from holocaust to McCarthy hearings to Kent State and beyond.