. arts and dining . by Karen Lyon
No Girls Allowed
the LITERARY HILL
Back when female reporters were “usually confined to the women’s section [and] still wore white gloves to work,” a few courageous women forged a new path. The Vietnam war, because it was undeclared, gave them a way around the US ban on women reporting from the battlefield—and it became their crucible. In “You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War,” journalist Elizabeth Becker highlights their remarkable careers. Catherine Leroy was a feisty French photographer who landed in Southeast Asia with meager prospects but a fierce drive. She endured the rigors of battle with the troops and, as an accredited parachutist, even jumped with them. She nonetheless remained “an interloper,” constantly having to prove herself “because she wasn’t a guy.” Frances FitzGerald had to overcome the stigma of being seen as an “overprivileged dilettante.” But, like Leroy, she immersed herself in the filth and stench of war, covering stories others did not. Her unique vision resulted in the prize-winning book, “Fire in the Lake,” which helped define the war for “generations of journalists and historians.” Australian Kate Webb was the first reporter on the scene when the American Embassy was overrun during the Tet Offensive, describing what she saw as “a butcher shop in Eden.” She was captured by the North Vietnamese, but having “survived nearly six years of war…still lobbied to return to cover the end.” Becker herself began her career as a war correspondent for the Washington Post in Cambodia in 1973. By retracing the steps of the groundbreaking women who came before her, she pays tribute to the “pioneers who changed how the story of war was told”
A Compendium of Readers, Writers, Books, & Events
goin’ on,” the chief says, “and we’re always the ones with the blindfold?” Eventually, it falls to the ever-resourceful Sky Pirates to get to the bottom of things. Rich in atmosphere and period details, “The Dead Man on the Corner” is a terrific adventure that captures both the joyous freedom of kids let loose to explore their world and the potential dangers that lurk behind the chicken coop in even the most innocent back yard. A decorated Vietnam vet, Jim Magner is an award-winning author and artist who has written the Hill Rag’s popular art column, “Art and the City,” since 2002. www.jamesjohnmagner.com
Race as Wallpaper
In James Magner’s “The Dead Man on the Corner,” the appearance of a dead guy is only the first odd event in a Tucson neighborhood in 1953.
and ensured that “the term ‘woman war correspondent’ was no longer an oxymoron.’ An award-winning journalist, Elizabeth Becker was the senior foreign editor of the National Public Radio and a New York Times correspondent. www. elizabethbecker.com.
The Pirates of Tucson
“You can try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes,” writes Tamara Lucas Copeland, “[but] we never know what it’s like to be of another race.” She nonetheless does a remarkable job of showing what life was like in the segregated South in the 50s and 60s. In “Daughters of the Dream: Eight Girls from Richmond Who Grew Up in the Civil Rights Era,” Copeland relates the experience of a group of girls who became friends in elementary and high school, went their separate ways in college, and came together again 25 years later to form an even stronger bond. During her childhood, Copeland “lived in a segregated neighborhood and attended a segregated school,” but because her parents deflected the impact of those harsh realities, “I didn’t know I was being denied anything.” When she and some of her friends entered an integrated junior high school in 1963, the year of the March on Washington, they protested the school fight song of “Dixie” and worked to elect a Black homecoming queen. But, like all teenage girls,
Every neighborhood has its characters. And Tucson in 1953, the locus for James John Magner’s new novel, “The Dead Man on the Corner,” is no exception. First, there are the Sky Pirates, a gang of kids who swagger around in buccaneer gear, bury treasure in the desert, and gather in a scraggly vacant lot to fight epic battles with their rigged kites. Then there’s Tom Sullivan, an aging barber who entertains the kids with tales of the Old West; his friend Nino, an Apache who is the grandson of Cochise; and an assortment of gangsters, creepy photographers, eavesdropping old ladies, and veterans refighting WWI. “And right in the middle of it…the glue, so to speak, that held it all together, there was the mysterious dead man on the corner.” The guy found sprawled on the curb is only the beginning of the neighborhood’s sense that “there’s something funny going on.” The police are flummoxed. “You ever Author Tamara Lucas Copeland writes a collective memoir Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker pays tribute to about a group of friends who grew up together in Richmond three groundbreaking women war correspondents in “You feel like there’s a game of blind man’s bluff Don’t Belong Here.”
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in “Daughters of the Dream.”
