Full Metal Jacket and the dualities of being a human The 1987 Kubrik film Full Metal Jacket stars Matthew Modine as Private Joker, an American soldier fighting in the Vietnam War. Netflix removed BORN TO KILL from his helmet and destroyed the film’s theme of the duality of human nature. Next to BORN TO KILL was the symbol of peace […]
Campus Sit-ins from 1968 Vietnam to 2024 Gaza
Campus Sit-ins 56 years ago I was late, as usual, for my sociology course at the London School of Economics because I had to take my 2-year-old child to the Infant Nursery School on Kingsway first. At the main entrance to the old building, I was invited to step under the rope that kept out the teaching staff and join […]
Israel/Hamas – with blood and fire or with doves
The right side in the Israel/Hamas war. The whole world is engaged with, but divided over the Middle East war. It’s a risk to venture an opinion, but it seems to me that there is only one right side and one way to protect children and that is to find peace for both sides. What I’ve learned in the war-torn […]
On being non-gendered
I read this wonderful piece in the marvellous The Marginalian compiled by Maria Popova and thought with delight that it may explain me and perhaps other women of my generation. Ursula Le Guin writes: “I am a man. Now you may think I’ve made some kind of silly mistake about gender, or maybe that I’m trying to fool you, because […]
Saving my stories
What are the risks to my stories Saving my stories required an agent, high-profile reviews, media links, book launches, hard work and lots of money. I had none of those and I had to save my stories myself. Publishers told me that if a book is not successfully marketed in the six months after publication, it will die. As a […]