Month: January 2020

Harvey Weinstein spawned the (hash)MeToo movement. Now, the former film titan is starring in the biggest trial of its era – a landmark moment in a global reckoning that has empowered women while shining a light on power dynamics in workplaces from Hollywood Boulevard to Main Street.Opening statements and the first witness testimony are expected Wednesday in Weinstein’s New York City rape trial, where the possibility of life in prison looms for the once-celebrated “Pulp Fiction” producer now vilified as a predator by scores of women.Weinstein’s accusers include some well-known actresses who plan to testify or attend the trial and others who are looking to the New York case for a form of justice because their allegations haven’t resulted in criminal charges.”This trial is so important because the enormity of Harvey Weinstein’s international power and fame offers an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the rampant abuse of power that permeates our culture on a global level,” actress Jessica Barth said Tuesday.”Not only the outcome of this trial, but the trial as a whole, is precedent setting,” said Barth, a star of the “Ted” films who says Weinstein once invited her to his hotel suite and demanded a naked massage.Weinstein’s trial could take more than a month, Judge James Burke said. Judging from an arduous two-week  jury selection that netted a panel of seven men and five women, it could be a hotbed of protests and intense media coverage.Extra court officers have been lining the front of the Manhattan courthouse where Weinstein, 67, has been ambling in and out with a walker that his lawyers say was necessitated by a summer car crash and subsequent back surgery.In a failed last-minute push to get the trial moved, Weinstein’s lawyers said a flash mob’s chanting “the rapist is you!” at street level could be heard in the courtroom, 15 floors above.Adding to the drama, actor Cuba Gooding Jr. is due at the same courthouse Wednesday for a hearing in a case in which several women have accused him of groping. He’s denied  all allegations of wrongdoing.Though dozens of women have accused Weinstein of sexually harassing or assaulting them over the years, his New York trial involves just a pair of allegations: that he raped a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and sexually assaulted a different woman in 2006.Backed by expected testimony from four other accusers, prosecutors will attempt to portray Weinstein as a monster who used his power to ingratiate himself with women, sometimes promising a film role or other career advancement, before sexually assaulting or raping them.One of them, actress Annabella Sciorra will testify  that Weinstein forced himself inside her Manhattan apartment and raped her in 1993 or 1994 after she starred in a film for his movie studio.While Sciorra’s allegations are outside the statute of limitations for criminal charges, the judge has said her testimony can be used to prove predatory sexual assault charges, which carries a maximum life sentence and requires prosecutors to show a pattern of misconduct.Weinstein’s lawyers say any encounters were consensual. They plan to go on the offensive, pointing to dozens and dozens and dozens of loving emails to Mr. Weinstein'' they say show he and some of his accusers were in consenting relationships. Defense lawyer Damon Cheronis said some of the womenalso bragged about being in a sexual relationship with him.’’Once trailed by whispers in Hollywood circles, Weinstein was met with an explosion of allegations from dozens of women after The New York Times and The New Yorker published separate exposes about his behavior in October 2017.After opening statements, prosecutors are expected to call a former member of the board of directors at Weinstein’s old movie studio to testify about how the company handled allegations against him.One issue that has remained unresolved in the trial is the defense’s objection to a juror who wrote an upcoming novel about young women that includes, according to the book’s publicity materials, descriptions of their relationships with predatory older men. If she is removed and replaced as a juror, that’ll leave just two remaining alternates for the trial.Once the New York trial is over, Weinstein faces additional rape and sexual assault charges in Los Angeles. Those charges were filed this month as jury selection in his New York trial was getting underway.
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Jeanine Cummins’ “American Dirt,” one of the year’s most anticipated and debated novels, is Oprah Winfrey’s new pick for her book club.“American Dirt,” published Tuesday, tells of a bookstore owner in Acapulco, Mexico, who loses much of her family to a murderous drug cartel and flees north on a terrifying journey with her 8-year-old son. The novel was acquired by Flatiron Books in 2018 in a reported seven-figure deal and has been talked about in the publishing world ever since. It has appeared on numerous lists of books to look for in 2020, has reached the top 20 on Amazon.com  ahead of its release,  and has been praised by everyone from John Grisham and Stephen King to Erika Sanchez and Sandra Cisneros.Winfrey, interviewed Friday by telephone, told The Associated Press that one blurb that stood out was novelist Don Winslow’s comparing “American Dirt” to John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”“And I remember thinking, Yeah right, you better know what you're talking about because I have a first edition ofGrapes of Wrath,’ and it sits on a pedestal in my living room,’“ Winfrey said. “Now I wouldn’t say this is Grapes of Wrath,' but I would say that ... I have been a news reporter, watched the news, seen the stories every day, seen the children at the border and my heart is wrenched by that. And nothing has done more (thanAmerican Dirt’) to make me feel the pain and desperation of what it means to be on the run. It’s changed the way I see the whole issue and I was already empathetic.”Cummins, who also spoke recently to the AP, says she first thought of the book in 2013 and was inspired for various reasons. Her husband emigrated from Ireland and she remembered the many years it took for him to get his green card, and the anxiety, before they married, that he might be deported. She also was moved by what she considered the media’s sensationalized coverage of immigration, and, more indirectly, by her lasting grief over a 1991 tragedy when two of her cousins were raped and forced off a bridge, falling to their deaths.“So many of the stories center on violent men and macho violent stories about people who commit atrocities,” she said. “My hope was to reframe the narrative and show it from the point of view of the people on the flip side of violence.”Cummins, who has ancestors from Ireland and Puerto Rico, said she spent extensive time in Mexico and met with many people on both sides of the border. Her novel has raised questions, however, over whether she, a non-Mexican and non-migrant, was suited for the narrative. Cummins herself has expressed doubts, writing in the book’s afterword: “I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it.” She then added that perhaps she could serve as a bridge. “I thought, `If you’re the person who has the capacity to be a bridge, why not be a bridge?”’ Cummins wrote.Cisneros has called “American Dirt” the “international story of our times,” but some other writers of Mexican heritage have criticized it. Myriam Gurba, whose work has been praised in O: The Oprah Magazine among other publications, has written online that Cummins reinforces “overly-ripe Mexican stereotypes, among them the Latin lover, the suffering mother, and the stoic man child.” David Bowles, a writer and translator, called the book “smug saviorism.”Over the past few days, The New York Times published contrasting reviews. Times critic Parul Sehgal labeled the novel’s characters “thin creations,” criticized the language as strained and even nonsensical, and concluded that the “book feels conspicuously like the work of an outsider.” Author Lauren Groff, reviewing the book for The New York Times Book Review, found herself completely immersed but wondering whether she should have accepted the assignment.“I could never speak to the accuracy of the book’s representation of Mexican culture or the plights of migrants; I have never been Mexican or a migrant,” wrote Groff, who nonetheless “kept turning the pages.”“’American Dirt’ is written for people like me,” Groff wrote, “those native to the United States who are worried about what is happening at our southern border but who have never felt the migrants’ fear and desperation in their own bodies. This novel is aimed at people who have loved a child and who would fight with everything they have to see that child be allowed a good future.”After her review ran, Groff tweeted: “I wrestled like a beast with this review, the morals of my taking it on, my complicity in the white gaze.” She called Sehgal’s  take “better and smarter.”As a turning point in deciding to write the book, Cummins, 45, cited a conversation with Norma Iglesias-Prieto, a professor of Chicano and Chicana studies at San Diego State University. According to Cummins, Iglesias-Prieto told her, “We need as many voices as we can get.” (Iglesias-Preto recently told The Los Angeles Times that “everyone has the right to write about a particular topic even if you are not part of this community.”)Winfrey chose “American Dirt” last fall and, when asked (before the Times reviews ran) about the controversy, said she wasn’t aware of it. But she cited her own visceral response as a sign that Cummins had fulfilled a vital role for fiction.“She humanized this issue,” said Winfrey, who hopes to interview Cummins somewhere along the U.S-Mexico border. The interview will air March 6 on Apple TV Plus.Winfrey has been boosting sales for books, sometimes by hundreds of thousands of copies or more, since 1996. She has championed first-time authors such as Ayana Mathis, and has looked back to such classics as “Anna Karenina” and “A Tale of Two Cities.” Cummins’ novel, Winfrey’s third pick for the partnership with Apple she began last year, continues her recent pattern of choosing high-profile new releases, including Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Water Dancer” and Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive, Again.” Winfrey said she follows no pattern except that the books compel her to tell others about them.“There is no strategy. There is no plan,” she says. “I am open to all books.”Cummins is the author of three previous works: the novels “The Crooked Branch” and “The Outside Boy,” and the memoir “A Rip In Heaven,” about the assaults and deaths of her cousins.  She is hoping to start soon on a new novel. Cummins says she hasn’t decided on a plot, but expects the setting will be tied to her background — Puerto Rico. 
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