Literary Hill by Karen Lyon

by Karen Lyon

No Girls Allowed

Back when female reporters were “usually confined to the women’s section [and] still the LITERARY HILL 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 wore white gloves to work,” a few courageous A Compendium of Readers, Writers, Books, & Events to the bottom of things. women forged a new path. The Vietnam war, Rich in atmosphere and period details, because it was undeclared, gave them a way “The Dead Man on the Corner” is a terrifaround the US ban on women reporting from ic adventure that captures both the joyous the battlefield—and it became their crucible. In freedom of kids let loose to explore their world and

“You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Re- the potential dangers that lurk behind the chicken wrote the Story of War,” journalist Elizabeth Beck- coop in even the most innocent back yard. er highlights their remarkable careers. A decorated Vietnam vet, Jim Magner is an Catherine Leroy was a feisty French photog- award-winning author and artist who has written rapher who landed in Southeast Asia with meager the Hill Rag’s popular art column, “Art and the prospects but a fierce drive. She endured the rig- City,” since 2002. www.jamesjohnmagner.com ors of battle with the troops and, as an accredited parachutist, even jumped with them. She nonethe- Race as Wallpaper less remained “an interloper,” constantly having to “You can try to put yourself in someone else’s prove herself “because she wasn’t a guy.” shoes,” writes Tamara Lucas Copeland, “[but] we

Frances FitzGerald had to overcome the stigma of being seen as an “overprivileged dilettante.” In James Magner’s “The Dead Man on the Corner,” the appearance of a dead guy is only the first odd event in a never know what it’s like to be of another race.” She nonetheless does a remarkable job of showing what

But, like Leroy, she immersed herself in the filth and Tucson neighborhood in 1953. life was like in the segregated South in the 50s and stench of war, covering stories others did not. Her 60s. In “Daughters of the Dream: Eight Girls from unique vision resulted in the prize-winning book, and ensured that “the term ‘woman war correspon- Richmond Who Grew Up in the Civil Rights Era,”

“Fire in the Lake,” which helped define the war for dent’ was no longer an oxymoron.’ Copeland relates the experience of a group of girls

“generations of journalists and historians.” An award-winning journalist, Elizabeth Becker who became friends in elementary and high school, Australian Kate Webb was the first reporter on was the senior foreign editor of the National Public went their separate ways in college, and came togeththe scene when the American Embassy was overrun Radio and a New York Times correspondent. www. er again 25 years later to form an even stronger bond. during the Tet Offensive, describing what she saw as elizabethbecker.com. During her childhood, Copeland “lived in a

“a butcher shop in Eden.” She was captured by the segregated neighborhood and attended a segregated

North Vietnamese, but having “survived nearly six The Pirates of Tucson school,” but because her parents deflected the impact years of war…still lobbied to return to cover the end.” Every neighborhood has its characters. And Tucson of those harsh realities, “I didn’t know I was being Becker herself began her career as a war corre- in 1953, the locus for James John Magner’s new nov- denied anything.” When she and some of her friends spondent for the Washington Post in Cambodia in el, “The Dead Man on the Corner,” is no exception. entered an integrated junior high school in 1963, the 1973. By retracing the steps of the groundbreaking First, there are the Sky Pirates, a gang of kids who year of the March on Washington, they protested the women who came before her, she pays tribute to the swagger around in buccaneer gear, bury treasure in the school fight song of “Dixie” and worked to elect a

“pioneers who changed how the story of war was told” desert, and gather in a scraggly vacant lot to fight epic Black homecoming queen. But, like all teenage girls, 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 Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker pays tribute to on.” The police are flummoxed. “You ever Author Tamara Lucas Copeland writes a collective memoir three groundbreaking women war correspondents in “You feel like there’s a game of blind man’s bluff about a group of friends who grew up together in Richmond

Don’t Belong Here.” in “Daughters of the Dream.”

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