#James Burden Mansion Wedding

[brooklynweddingphotographer]

James Burden Mansion Wedding

Josie + Traver’s Wedding at The James Burden Mansion

/ shot by Chellise /

venue: the james burden mansion / florals: august sage & violet catering: purslane catering / band: silver arrow band / hair + mu: face time beauty

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

The Dark Side of the Moons – Nansook Hong

November 22, 1998

Nansook Hong was 15 when she was forced to marry into the ‘True Family’ at the head of the Moonies religious cult. It was the start of two decades of physical and mental abuse, from which she has only recently escaped. Here, for the first time, she tells James Langton of the ‘hypocrisy and evil’ at the heart of the Unification Church.

In the comfortable anonymity of a Boston coffee bar, a slender and solemn but pretty Korean woman in her early thirties is sipping a cup of raspberry tea and talking openly about her marriage. It is a story of beatings, drugs, under-age sex, adultery and fraud.

What makes Nansook Hong different from other abused women is the name she shed in the Massachusetts divorce courts. The husband she disparagingly refers to now as “my ex” is Hyo Jin Moon, eldest son of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon – a Messiah to the faithful of the Unification Church, but to the rest of the world the leader of the religious cult known as the “Moonies”.

At 15, Nansook became the child bride of a deeply disturbed young man who already had a history of heavy drinking and drug abuse. Smuggled illegally into the United States by church officials in the mid 1970s, she arrived at the Moon family mansion north of New York speaking no English and never even having dated a boy.

“I have never known exactly why Sun Myung Moon chose me to marry his eldest son,” she writes at the beginning of her recently published autobiography, In The Shadow Of The Moons. “I came to believe that my youth and naivety were the central reasons for my selection. His ideal wife was a girl young and passive enough to submit while he moulded her into the woman he wanted. Time would prove that I was not nearly passive enough.” Nearly two decades later, Nansook has emerged to tell her story. It is set against the background of the increasingly turbulent affairs of the self-proclaimed “perfect family” at the head of one of the world’s most controversial religious cults.

“The evil at the heart of the Unification Church is the hypocrisy and deceit of the Moons,” she says now, “a family that is all too human in its incredible level of dysfunction. To continue to promote the myth that the Moons are spiritually superior to the idealistic young people who are drawn to the church is a shameful deceit.”

At the peak of their powers in the late 1970s, the Moonies mesmerized the popular imagination. Worldwide membership was believed to run to hundreds of thousands. The Reverend Moon would marry off thousands of young acolytes — who had never previously met — in huge public ceremonies which were every parent’s nightmare. At a higher level, Moon enjoyed the patronage of Republican power-brokers drawn by his deeply conservative message on family and marriage and, perhaps, by his lavish hospitality. What Nansook is saying now would once have seemed to her blasphemous. From her earliest memories, the Rev Moon was the Lord of the Second Coming, his wife the True Mother and their offspring the True Children. Her own parents were one of the 36 Blessed Couples, the original followers of Moon when he was an itinerant and persecuted preacher seeking disciples in the chaos of post-war Korea. Like all members of the Unification Church, Nansook knew that she would one day be “matched” to her husband by the True Father, perhaps to a man she had never met.

Nansook was studying music at The Little Angels, the exclusive performing arts school founded by Moon in Seoul, when she was ordered into a limousine and driven without explanation to the True Family’s Korean mansion. Her parents were also there, but said nothing. “My mother?” says Nansook now, “I think she knew what my life would be like. I know that she did, but that she also believed she was sacrificing my personal happiness for God.”

Nansook had been aware of Moon’s son Hyo Jin, a student three years her senior at Little Angels. In contrast to the other members of the deeply conservative church, he wore tight jeans and his hair long. There were rumors of cigarettes, girlfriends and drinking. He was, however, the heir to the True Father and, therefore, in the church’s teachings, without sin. When the Rev Moon asked her if she would marry his son, it was a question with only one answer.

For much of his early life, Hyo Jin was raised by babysitters and church elders. In 1971, when Hyo Jin was in his teens, the Moonie entourage moved to America. In a confessional speech before church members in 1988, Hyo Jin revealed that he began to take drugs after being sent to live with an elder in a wealthy suburb of Washington. The son of the “Messiah” also complained that his father was remote and uncaring. “I thought the best way was to disappear, then I would have no burden,” he said. “Many times I sat with a gun pointed to my head, practicing what it would be like.”

This was the 19-year-old who was to be given a virginal school-girl as a wife. Nansook says she was barely aware of the facts of life when she arrived in the US under the pretext of being a competitor in a piano festival, hastily organized by church officials as a cover story.

Life with the True Family proved anything but perfect. Church rules say that couples must not have sex in the first three years of marriage. Hyo Jin was having none of that. No sooner were they alone after the wedding ceremony than he demanded that his bride strip naked.

“He was very rough, excited at the prospect of deflowering a virgin,” Nansook writes. “I just followed directions. It was all I could do not to cry out from the pain. It did not take him very long to finish, but for hours afterwards my insides burned with pain.”

Nansook says now that she knew from the very beginning that her husband was a monster and that her in-laws were little better. The honeymoon was in Las Vegas — a place she had never heard of — with the True Family in tow. In the casino she watched the Mother of the True Family “cradling a cup of coins and feverishly inserting them into a slot machine”. The “Messiah”, who publicly condemned gambling, explained that it was his duty to mingle with sinners to save them. He would position a senior church official at the blackjack table and whisper instructions from behind. “So you see, I am not actually gambling myself,” he told his young daughter-in-law.

Back in the Moon compound at Tarrytown, 40 miles north of New York, Nansook was sent to the local high school with instructions not to mention her marriage or the Moons. In the evenings she would finish her homework and then brace herself for the arrival of her husband, usually drunk and demanding sex. Within weeks she was pregnant. She also contracted a sexually transmitted disease, the result of her husband’s continued philandering. “I tried to love him as a husband,” she says of the early years of her marriage. “I asked myself later if there was any happiness in our relationship. There was not one moment.”

In 1982, the Rev Moon was imprisoned for tax evasion, claiming the church was a charity and then spending the money lavishly on his family. There is a photograph of Nansook in a staged demonstration outside the Danbury Federal Penitentiary. Her neatly stenciled placard reads: “Religious Freedom Now.”

Today Nansook says that the family saw her as “a china doll”. For her part, she attempted to make sense of her unhappiness. “I had my faith in God that I had been put there for some purpose. I struggled for years over Moon. He was so egotistical, so selfish. How could he be the person he claimed to be?” In 1992 she went on a fundraising trip to Japan with the True Mother. Before the return journey, she says: “I was given $20,000 in two packs of crisp new bills. I hid them beneath the tray in my make-up case. I knew that smuggling was illegal, but I believed that the followers of Sun Myung Moon answered to higher laws.” Much of the Moon money was given to Hyo Jin to fuel his cocaine and alcohol binges.

Hyo Jin, she says, would frequently beat her. “I once tried to flush his cocaine down the toilet. He beat me so severely I thought he would kill the baby in my womb. He made me sweep up the spilled white powder from the bathroom floor even as he continued to beat me. Later Hyo Jin would offer a religious justification for beating half-senseless a woman seven months pregnant. He was teaching me to be humble in the presence of the son of the Messiah.” Her children, she says, were her only reason to live. “My main goal was to raise them decently.” Her children would ask her: “Why do we have a bad dad?”

By the middle of the 1990s, Nansook was old enough to realize that life could be different. Hyo Jin had all but abandoned the marriage, retreating to New York to make bad rock’n’roll in a studio bankrolled by his parents. Nansook’s parents had abandoned the Unification Church. So had her older brother and his wife.

In August 1995, she finally found the strength to leave. “I was frightened that Hyo Jin would stop us if I was open about my plans,” she writes. “He had threatened to kill me so many times, and with a veritable arsenal of weapons in his bedroom, I knew he could.” Her brother, and a close friend who had left the church, helped to smuggle her children and a few possessions past the guards at the Moon compound. A bitter and protracted legal battle followed. In the end, a settlement was reached and the divorce finalized last year, although the Moons refuse to pay maintenance.

Nansook now lives in a modest house in an anonymous suburb. In the gilded cage of the First Family, she had never cooked, never even folded clothes. Now she must do everything, but says she feels free for the first time in her life.

She wrote her book — for which her advance was said to be small — “because by writing it all down I made something of my life, it had not been just wasted. I also don’t want anyone else to go through what I did.” She has returned to college and plans to devote the rest of her life working for battered wives.

Her former husband still retains visiting rights. The children visit him in New York and return with lavish presents paid for by the True Grandmother. The exception is her eldest daughter, who refuses to see her father. She is 15, the same age as Nansook when she was handed over to the Moons. “She seems such a baby to me. I can’t even begin to think that she could get married.”

On the loss of her own youth, Nansook says: “I feel duped, but I do not feel bitter. I feel used, but I feel more sad than angry. I long to have the years back that I lost to Sun Myung Moon. I wish I could be a girl again. I wonder if I will ever know romantic love, if I will ever trust a man or any so-called leader again.”

Nansook can never fully escape the Moons. It is not just the occasional church official who arrives unannounced on a mission to reclaim her for the church. The Rev Moon, despite “shoe-polish black” dyed hair, is 78 and in the final years of his life. At least two of his children are known to have deserted the church which, according to Nansook, now has only a few thousand supporters in America, his country of adoption.

In Japan, the main powerbase of the Moonies, there are thought to be only 10,000 active members, and in Britain no more than a few hundred. Moon’s natural successor would be Hyo Jin. But because of his obvious failings, it is believed that the True Father and Mother have decided to anoint their third son instead (their second, Heung Jin, died in a car crash, aged 17, in January 1984). Hyo Jin is unlikely to abdicate his throne without a battle, however, and since he has supporters even inside the True Family, a power struggle seems likely after Moon’s death.

Nansook knows that her oldest son Shin Gil, as the crown prince, could become a pawn in any Moonie civil war and fears, as with all her children, that he might he tempted back to the Unification Church. Even as he wanes, Moon still has the power to take hold of weaker minds than his. Nansook says that he enjoys the process of humiliating those beneath him. Even so, she suspects that Moon is haunted by the problems in “the family without sin”. “Deep down, under the ego, I think that the failures of his children do bother him,” she says.

As for her former husband, she believes he is crushed by his relationship with his father. “He has hatred towards him, but he also knows that without his father he is nothing.”

The Moons, she says, would accept her back if she was prepared to apologize, even after the publication of her book, which they have studiously ignored. She still appears on official Unification Church photographs and no mention is made of the divorce.

At the lavish banquet for the Moons which followed a mass wedding in New York last year, there were place cards and empty chairs for Nansook and the other children who have long fled the True Family.

More and more, it seems, the Rev Moon is simply deceiving himself.

In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life In The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family, 1998, by Nansook Hong, is published by Little, Brown & Co. ISBN  0-316-34816-3

Nansook Hong, transcripts of three interviews, Inc. ‘60 Minutes’

Nansook Hong interviewed by Herbert Rosedale

Nansook Hong In The Shadow Of The Moons, part 1

Sam Park reveals Moon’s hidden history (2014)

Sam Park 2015 response to feedback from my presentation

[mercurygray]

In Haste

I was trying to work around to something else, and somehow...stopped here first. Emma and Henry hit an ...unexpected roadblock.

She hadn't meant for it to happen this way - but then again, who ever does?

She hadn't felt well for a good number of days, her stomach at odds with everything she tried to eat that wasn't a bit of dry toast. "It is all that filthy air," her mother pronounced, laying an expert hand to Emma's forehead. "You must stay home today. They cannot expect the nurses to work if they themselves are sick!"

But when one day turned to two, and two to three, even Mrs. Green was convinced it was not one of the usual complaints to be nursed with ginger and barley-water, and Emma was bundled up back to the hospital for a more thorough examination.

How strange it felt, to be the one examined! She'd watched Foster do this so many times on others to have it done upon herself was...strange. Miss Phinney lingered in the background, waiting should the examination require a more ...invasive touch.

First the usual things, pulse, tongue, eyes, heart, Foster's questions quick while he counted beats, examined sclera. Could she eat? Not much. Was she having trouble sleeping? Nothing unusual. Any sign of fever, of rash? None to be found. How were her bowel movements - regular? And her menses? Yes, and...no. She had been scant, since starting at the hospital, the stress...it wasn't unheard of...Two months, perhaps - or was it three?

Foster listened, considered - and then withdrew with Miss Phinney to the far side of the room, their faces hidden as they consulted. Emma watched Mary's posture change. Then Foster left the room, and it was Mary who turned back to the two of them.

"Well?" Jane Green did not like to be kept waiting.

Mary drew a breath, looking at Emma with a pained expression, the kind she'd often wear when telling a man he was about to die. Emma realized half a second before she said it what Mary's news was, why Foster had left and why her expression was now so very grave.

"Mrs. Green, I believe your daughter's pregnant."

Her mother stood, stunned, for a moment, and then realized that this was not a joke, but very, very real, her own mental addition totalling the same sum. She gave Miss Phinney an outraged look that the most fierce of war gods would have admired, seized Emma's wrist and nearly dragged her from the room. Emma could practically hear the shouting as her mother dragged her back downstairs. Here it was! Proof positive that all her fears had been completely valid! Her daughter, her Emma, vilely used by one of these Yankee creatures as though she were not a girl from a good family, and then left on the mercy of the world! It would not do!

Miss Phinney's exhortations for patience, given in their wake, were falling on deaf ears.

"And you may tell your Major that she will NOT be returning!" Jane Green announced stridently at the door, in full view of anyone who cared to hear, before turning on her heel and marching smartly out, Emma still shamefully in tow.

Her mother's face was a mask of anger and disappointment all the way back to the house, though she did not speak, save only to send Emma to her room. It was the silence, Emma thought, dejectedly, that hurt the most.

She heard the shouting even from all the way upstairs - her mother's explosive announcement alongside her father's wounded shouts. She half-expected to have one parent or the other burst through the door, but none came - only Belinda, with a cup of tea. Emma fell into her arms weeping.

"There, child, you wouldn't be the first," Belinda said, sitting down to stroke her hair. "Plenty of girls done it before and plenty more gonna do it after, I'm sure. And there ain't much your mama can do to change it, now, is there?" She petted her hair again. "Now you don't have to tell me nothing, but it wasn't one of them doctors, like your mama seem to think?" Emma shook her head, not trusting her voice. No, she knew exactly from whence this calamity had come - and he was now back with General Jackson. A single night, a single, stupid choice -- oh, why had she given what he'd asked? "Well, that's something," Belinda mused sagely.

That night dinner arrived on a tray.  So much the better - she didn't much feel like trying to eat with her family anyway, not when they would all stare at her like she was the new Salome, dancing wickedly before the men of Mansion House to bring dishonor on her family. Not even Alice came to see her afterwards.  

Her world shrank to four walls, her only entertainments the noises of the house -- officers coming and going, the sounds of horses in the street, the voices of her siblings in closed conference  with each other.

The next afternoon (after two more meals on trays) Belinda was at her door.

"Miss Emma, your father wants you downstairs."

They dressed her hair as quickly as they could, changing out of the nightdress in which she'd passed most of the morning for the most modest of her work-frocks.

She'd never been afraid to enter her father's study before, but now, standing outside the door, Emma's heart was pounding. What would he do? He was a man for fairness  -- but fairness, she thought, wasn't for debauched daughters. Belinda knocked and waited, opening the door when she was bid.  Her father stood as the door opened, as did  - oh, god in heaven. His visitor.

Enthroned behind his heavy desk James Green looked every inch the family patriarch, expression stern and unamused. His visitor  - well.

"Reverend Hopkins just asked me if he may marry you," her father announced without any of the usual pleasantries. Emma tried not to stare. How had - well, that was probably Miss Phinney. It wasn't as though her sudden departure had been a secret - people would have asked questions. Obviously Henry had been told the truth.  "As I have heard nothing of this... attachment previously, I can imagine it is for the usual reason." He gave a long, hard look at his daughter. "Well?"

Emma felt her father's disapproval down to the heels of her boots and, by way of acknowledgement, hung her head.

Her father's frown could have cut stone. "I’m not sure who I should be more disappointed in,” he said, eyes sliding between the two sorry beings in front of his desk. “My daughter, or you.” Hopkins, to his credit, did not break under the gaze, but still, no man liked to be called a stain on his profession. “I suppose you are doing the honorable thing now - but as her father I feel I should have the courtesy of knowing how this...travesty occurred.

Emma felt her stomach begin to churn again. What would he say?

Hopkins, hat in hand and looking penitent as anything, continued the story he'd been starting when Emma had come in -- of long days and longer nights, of stolen glances in corridors and shared consolation in the face of share grief. Emma could almost see the whole thing as he spoke, as if it were the truth and not some careful embroidery on it. A long bedside vigil, a particularly late and quiet evening, an accidental encounter when one had been undressed, and then - too late -

"You forced yourself on her?"

"No, Papa!" Emma finally remembered how to use her voice. James Green's anger was in danger of becoming extreme, and no man deserved that abuse, especially when he least deserved it. He was saving her - she at least owed him this much. "It was a ...mutual desire." Long in coming, she almost wanted to say - for that was true, at least on her part. Though, for his... She glanced at Henry, hoping he could see how much she meant it, how much she wished the story he had told was true, that it was he and not Frank who held the blame. His eyes were hard to read, but his hands were tight around the brim of his hat. How she wanted to take one of them and caress it!

Or would he take that badly? He, after all, was saving her, not the other way around. Perhaps he wouldn't like that, preferring to remain aloof, a noble savior far too worthy of the thing being saved.

If the story had consolation in it to Emma, it was not so for her father - he was still adamant behind the desk.

"Well. It'll have to be a quick wedding...though I'm sure they'll guess anyway. You'd better come to dinner, and...meet the family. We can still do some things properly." At this Mr. Green glared at his daughter, a silent reprimand for having deprived him of the usual social niceties. "Of course it won't be in style, there's a war on, but her mother will want something nice. A church ceremony, of course, as you are...of the cloth."

"Of course, sir."

"Well, I think our business is concluded," Mr. Green said, rising again from his seat. "We shall ...set a date for dinner."

"Thank you, sir." Henry, hesitating, held out his hand, a gesture almost as much of peace and reconciliation as the conclusion of a deal. Her father looked at it as though he'd spit in his palm first, and, eventually, Henry let the hand drop, and nodded his goodbye. "I’ll...show myself out."

Emma watched him leave, paralyzed, and then, remembering herself, sprinted after him. What had he - had they! -  just done?

"Henry!" He stopped, half-way down the porch steps, and turned, meeting her eye for the first time all morning. What agonies were in his eyes! "How did -"

"Miss Phinney," he said. "She came to me for counsel on what should be done, asked if I knew anything, as you and I were...close." The way he said the word gave her some measure of the fallen hopes that he had in it. "I told her I did not. She was most concerned your family...should behave as they did."

She silently blessed Heaven for the angel that was Mary Phinney. "You don't have to do this," she said. "I'll...I'll tell him you've lied, tell him the truth -"

"To what end, Emma? What purpose would that serve?"

She stopped, thinking that was obvious. You're being noble when you've no reason to. I've never done anything for you that would deserve such kindness. "So that you wouldn't have to tie yourself to me."

He swallowed, took a breath. "You say that like you think it's a burden."

Emma's heart caught in her throat. "...Isn't it?"

Now it was his turn to look embarrassed and afraid. "That story I told ...could have been the truth. I...I prayed over it often enough.” He looked down furtively, ashamed of the admittance. “Good day, Miss Green."

Her heart was soaring. Could have been the truth! "Henry, wait, I --" She stopped him again on the steps. "The neighbors," she said quickly. "They'll wonder, when they hear...and haven't seen you..."

His eyes glanced at the houses to left and right, and gave a nod, letting her step down and kiss him, on the cheek, like one might chastely kiss a beau leaving after a perfectly expected visit to her father. Did she imagine that he held himself back, that he was stiff and formal only because he wanted more and did not trust himself? "Thank you," she said again, hanging on his arm. "For...everything. I hope...I won't disappoint you." Like I've disappointed you already, she wanted to add.

His only answer was a smile. Slim and sorry, but a smile. "You never could."

[mrmichaelchadler]

Sundance 2019: The Farewell, Honey Boy, Native Son

The breadth of subject matter in the U.S. Dramatic Competition of Sundance 2019 was on full display over the first 24 or so hours of this year’s film festival in drastically different works from three fresh directors of completely different backgrounds.

The best of the three is Lulu Wang’s excellent “The Farewell,” a phenomenal dramatic turn for the breakout star of “Ocean’s 8” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” Awkwafina. Wang has written a deeply personal film that claims to be “Based on an Actual Lie,” and she’s found precisely the right star to maintain the delicate balance of this story – one that easily could have become sentimental and manipulative but resonates with truth from first scene to last. This go down as one of the best performances of Sundance 2019, a genuine, heartfelt acting turn that proves that Awkwafina has a range that even her most diehard fans may not have suspected. She never once feels mannered or forced, completely disappearing into her likable, heartbreaking character.

She plays Billi, a struggling writer in New York, whose extended family is still in China. Her father (the wonderful Tzi Ma) left China a quarter-century ago for the States, and his brother raised a family in Japan, but the matriarch of the clan, Billi’s grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen), is back in China. From the very first scene between Billi and her ‘Nai Nai,’ as they have what appears to be a regular phone conversation, one can sense the support and love between the two, even though they’re hundreds of miles apart. So it’s believable that Billi is shattered when she learns that Nai Nai has lung cancer—the doctors are giving her three months.

In what is apparently culturally commonplace, Billi’s family makes a decision that some people might find abhorrent—they don’t tell Nai Nai that she’s dying. As Billi’s uncle Haibin (Jiang Yongbo) says, it’s the family’s emotional burden to bear. And so the family stages a wedding between Billi’s cousin Hao Hao (Chen Han) and his new girlfriend Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara) so that the family can all go to China to say goodbye to the family matriarch…without her knowing they’re saying goodbye.

“The Farewell” has some beautiful, truthful things to say about how love persists across the oceans. We often move away and leave our family, but we are more intrinsically tied to them than we ever will be to anyone else. And watching Billi, at a formative point in her life, comprehend the influence her grandmother has had on her while fighting her natural instinct to literally say goodbye makes for powerful filmmaking. As someone who recently said goodbye to a grandparent, the things this film says about how love transcends language and location struck me as powerfully true. It will likely make you wish you spent more time with your grandparents, but it will also reaffirm how important your connection to them was even though you didn’t.

A far different family connection is captured in Alma Har’el’s “Honey Boy,” a film that represents a cinematic act of courage for its writer and co-star Shia LaBeouf, who delivered the director a screenplay that’s based on his own upbringing as a child star under the thumb of an abusive father…played in the film by LaBeouf. “Honey Boy” opens with a riveting montage of a young actor in 2005 named Otis (Lucas Hedges), who first appears on the set of an action movie that is clearly a stand-in for “Transformers.” The montage ends with Otis being told that he has symptoms of PTSD. He doesn’t understand how that’s possible. What’s his trauma? It’s his upbringing. And it’s Shia’s upbringing. “Honey Boy” is the cinematic exorcism needed to deal with a major actor’s PTSD. On that level, it’s riveting drama, always existing as a personal, meta piece for a man openly and artistically dealing with his past while also being a study of child stardom, addiction, and abuse.

The increasingly impressive Noah Jupe plays young Otis, stuck in a sleazy motel with his dad James, who he pays to be his assistant. Otis is a child star of a certain level, not big enough to live the L.A. high life, but big enough to keep him and his dad alive. James is a former rodeo clown, former alcoholic, former convict, and former sex offender. He’s that classic male type of a someone who finds a way to blame everyone else for his failures. He’s selfish. His problems and needs are more important than his sons, and we know that from minute one when he’s too distracted by a pretty woman to take care of Otis. Much of “Honey Boy” plays out like a tense two-hander with Otis and James in their tiny motel room, and the audience waiting for an outburst.

There are parts of “Honey Boy” that feel repetitively over-directed and then other parts that feel under-directed—moments I wanted to live in longer or to breathe more. It has a herky-jerky rhythm at times, although that could be to reflect the way that traumatic memories often return to us. And yet my problems with “Honey Boy” are vastly overshadowed by the courage it took to even make this movie. Labeouf has become a really fascinating actor in challenging work like “American Honey,” “Nymphomaniac,” and even “Borg v. McEnroe,” and I’ve found myself rooting for that trajectory to continue. Hopefully, just making “Honey Boy” allows him the closure he needed.

As much as I went into “Native Son” excited for a modern telling of Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, with a pair of fascinating young actors, that excitement dissipated as the movie continues. Visual artist Rashid Johnson’s choice for a directorial debut is an undeniably ambitious interpretation of a challenging novel to turn into a film with a incredibly talented cast that includes “Moonlight” break-out Ashton Sanders and “If Beale Street Could Talk” break-out Kiki Layne – and the casting wasn’t the only thing here inspired by the work of Barry Jenkins. And one can easily appreciate the ambition embedded in an attempt to illuminate how the themes of Wright’s work resonate eight decades later. But there were decisions made in this production – both in how the work has been updated and how it was not – that drain “Native Son” of the momentum it really needs.

The story is certainly still a fascinating one. Bigger “Big” Thomas (Sanders) lives in Chicago with his mom and two siblings. He’s a fascinating dichotomy in that he’s the kind of guy who seems like he wants to fade into the background – just hanging out with his girlfriend Bessie (Layne, who should be a household name any day now and is the best thing here). He feeds local kids, watches movies, refuses hard drugs, and stays of trouble, including his buddy’s pleas to help rob a store. But he’s also got a fashion style that screams for attention with green hair, black fingernails, and a jacket that almost looks spray-painted. He wants to take unpredictable routes through life, and his favorite punk bands, including Death and Bad Brains, both mirror and influence his personality.

Then he gets a very unpredictable job, as the driver for a wealthy Chicago power player named Will Dalton (Bill Camp), a power player in the Windy City with an Evanston mansion and a blind wife (Elizabeth Marvel). There’s a fascinating, uneasy tension in Dalton house, which has no security cameras and still uses a coal furnace. And the Dalton daughter, Mary (Margaret Qualley) is both incredibly drawn to Bigger and kind of sees him as another notch in her list of multicultural experiences. The first time they meet, she asks him if he’s “outraged,” and wants to go to a soul food restaurant on the south side. He represents a world she’s passionate about through protest but knows little about on a practical level.

The second half of “Native Son” is as tricky as storytelling gets, and Johnson can’t quite get a handle on it, including the “big scene,” which is poorly handled tonally. And then he makes major changes to the events that unfold after that, which result in a clipped ending that lacks impact. The mannered storytelling and direction of the performances start to push audiences away right when the movie needs to pull them in, and he makes one major adaptation decision that simply doesn't work. Most of all, right when it needs urgency, it’s a movie that mistakes pregnant pauses and whispered lines for “deep meaning,” and even though the clearly-talented Sanders is totally committed, the Johnson directs his leading man into a performance that feels showy right when it needs to be heartfelt, angry, and direct.

There are still powerful moments and interesting performances, so it's far from a complete miss, but most of what works about "Native Son" is on the surface. Every time you try to dig below to find the emotion that drives it, you come up empty. I wanted “Native Son” to leave audiences short of breath, rolling its themes around in their mind. The story of Bigger Thomas needs rage and heat, but this version’s as cold as a Chicago winter.

    from All Content http://bit.ly/2sQUfta

[amazingstories]

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Analog

Apex

Asimov’s

Aurealis

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Black Static

Clarkesworld

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Forever

Galaxy’s Edge

Interzone

Lightspeed

Perehelion

Strange Horizons

Uncanny

          Current Issues is an occasional feature (mostly monthly) that provides a round up of the content of periodical SF, fantasy and horror.

Periodical logos link directly to that publication’s website. Active links within the body of the text link to the story or article in question (there’s an awful lot of ‘free’ stuff out there).

We will tend to feature the paying markets here, but are more than happy to include additional publications that are offering fiction in our fields; if you would like your publication included here, please contact us directly.

Fiction Wither And Blossom | Oka Ja Kukinto By: Suvi Kauppila I have outlived my parents and my little brother. My memory isn’t what it used to be.

Oka Ja Kukinto | Wither And Blossom By: Suvi Kauppila Olen saatellut lepoon vanhempani ja pikkuveljeni. Muistini ei ole enää entisensä.

Faces and Thoughts | څېرې او اندېښنې By: Abdul wakil Sulamal Translated by: James Caron He had commissioned one of those mansions that people have nowadays, furnished with marble and stone, that he had just moved into two weeks ago.

څېرې او اندېښنې | Faces and Thoughts By: Abdul wakil Sulamal دا چې خداى ( ج) څنګه پرې دا ه�� څه لورولي وو ، دا اوږده کيسه ده ، خو صاحب چې اوس په کومو شنو او سروکې لوبېده ، هر سړى ورته ګوته په غاښ او هک پک حيران و . نه يې د پيسو شمېر کېده او نه هم د راز راز موټرو ، بنګلو او نورو حسابونو کتابونو … داسې ماڼۍ چې نن سبا دى په کې دېره و او پوره دوه اونۍ د مخه يې نوې رانيولې وه ، کله په خوب کې هم نه وه ليدلې او نه خو هم له ده سره کله داسې تصور

Reprint Shira | שירה By: Lavie Tidhar Nur remembered a paragraph from one of Tirosh’s poems, from the single book he published, two years before the twentieth century came to an end: “The morning rises: another train station…”

שירה | Shira By: Lavie Tidhar נור נזכרה בבית אחד משיר של תירוש, מהספר היחיד שהוא פרסם, שנתיים לפני סוף המאה העשרים: “הבוקר עולה; עוד תחנת רכבת. השמיים בכחול כהה ופנסי הרחוב דולקים; אנשים, כמו תיבות טבועות של אוצרות עתיקים, יושבים במצולותיהם. מוקדם מדי להתחיל בפעולות חילוץ: לשעה קלה, לפני שהשמש תזרח, אנחנו לבד.” היא לא אהבה את הדימוי, לא מצאה בו את המקוריות הדרושה כדי להפוך את השיר למשהו מעבר למשני, אבל עדיין… היא חשבה עליו עכשיו, מכיוון שבדרכו שלו, תירוש תפש, בשיר, מהות מסוימת של מסע. לתחנה היה שם רשמי בו לא נעשה שימוש; עבור תושבי העיר, לפחות, היה לה רק שם אחד, שילוב

Poetry Celestial Nirvana—written by the Curiosity Rover upon landing on Mars | 星球湼槃─為好奇號登陸火星而寫 By: Ko Hua Chen | 陳克華 Translated by: Annie Sheng I traveled eight and a half months to finally pay a visit to / Earth’s brother, separated and scattered a distance away

星球湼槃─為好奇號登陸火星而寫 | Celestial Nirvana–written by the Curiosity Rover upon landing on Mars By: Ko Hua Chen | 陳克華 走了八個半月終於得以拜見

Podcasts

Podcast: Wither And Blossom Art by: Suvi Kauppila Podcast read by: Anaea Lay Translated by: Suvi Kauppila In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Suvi Kauppila’s “Wither And Blossom.”

Podcast: Wither And Blossom – Finnish By: Suvi Kauppila Podcast read by: Suvi Kauppila Translated by: Suvi Kauppila In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Suvi Kauppila’s “Wither And Blossom – Finnish.”

Podcast: Faces and Thoughts By: Abdul wakil Sulamal Podcast read by: Anaea Lay In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Abdul wakil Sulamal’s “Faces and Thoughts.”

Podcast: Faces and Thoughts – Pashto By: Abdul wakil Sulamal Podcast read by: Abdul wakil Sulamal In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Abdul wakil Sulamal’s “Faces and Thoughts.”

Podcast: Shira By: Lavie Tidhar Podcast read by: Anaea Lay Translated by: Lavie Tidhar In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Lavie Tidhar’s “Shira.” The original Hebrew language version of this story was first published on the Israeli SFF Society website, by editor Nir Yaniv. It is also a reprint of the English version, originally published in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Ellen Datlow, 2008.

Reviews

Monday: Orbital Cloud by Taiyo Fujii, translated by Timothy Silver By: Rachel CordascoScience Fiction StoriesThe Worldless by Indrapramit Das Author spotlightDeath Every Seventy-Two Minutes by Adam-Troy Castro Author spotlightCome-from-Aways by Julian Mortimer Smith Author spotlightFantasy StoriesPhantom Pain by Eileen Gunn Author spotlightThe Debt of the Innocent by Rachel Swirsky Author spotlightThe Stone Lover by Marta Randall Author spotlightLa Peau Verte by Caitlín R. KiernanSoccer Fields and Frozen Lakes by Greg Kurzawa Author spotlightNonfictionEditorial, March 2017 by John Joseph AdamsTV Review: March 2017 by Joseph Allen HillBook Reviews: March 2017 by Amal El-Mohtar

Interview: Nnedi Okorafor by Christian A. Coleman

Exclusive Paid Content

NOVELLA: Proving the Rule by Holly Phillips

NOVEL EXCERPT: Orbital Cloud by Taiyo Fujii

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: Holly Phillips by Robyn Lupo March/April 2017 Vol. 41 Nos. 3 & 4

NOVELLA

Tao Zero Damien Broderick

NOVELETTES

Soulmates.com Will McIntosh

Three Can Keep a Secret Bill Johnson & Gregory Frost

Kitty Hawk Alan Smale

The Wisdom of the Group Ian R. MacLeod

SHORT STORIES

Number Thirty-Nine Skink Suzanne Palmer

The Ones Who Know Where They Are Going Sarah Pinsker

Invasion of the Saucer-Men Dale Bailey

Cupido Rich Larson

A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension Andrea M. Pawley

After the Atrocity Ian Creasey

Goner Gregory Norman Bossert

We Regret the Error Terry Bisson

POETRY

Mount Rushmore Marge Simon

Small Certainties Sara Polsky

Almost Certainly a Time Traveler Jarod K. Anderson

Surreal Axioms Bruce Boston

Note from Olympus Mons Robert Frazier

Rock, Paper, Scissors Robert Borski

DEPARTMENTS

Guest Editorial: Things Change James Patrick Kelly

Reflections: Forty Years! Robert Silverberg

On the Net: Screen Dreams James Patrick Kelly

Next Issue

On Books Peter Heck

The SF Conventional Calendar Erwin S. Strauss

Words from the Editor-in-Chief by Jason Sizemore

“Luminaria” by John Hornor Jacobs (Novelette)

Interview with Author John Hornor Jacobs by Andrea Johnson (March 8th)

“Waste” by Mary Elizabeth Burroughs (Short Story)

“Jesus Christ, Reanimator” by Ken MacLeod (Short Story)

Interview with Cover Artist Caroline Jamhour by Russell Dickerson (March 28th)

Books Worth Your Time by the Apex staff

Words for Thought: Short Fiction Review by A.C. Wise From the Story Vaults: Paperclips and Memories and Things That Won’t Be Missed by Caroline Yaochim

Podcast Fiction

NOVELLAS

Nexus Michael F. Flynn

Plaisir D’Amour John Alfred Taylor

NOVELETTES

Europa’s Survivors

Marianne J. Dyson

Host Eneasz Brodski

The Human Way Tony Ballantyne

SHORT STORIES

Eli’s Coming Catherine Wells

Time Heals James C. Glass

Shakesville Adam-Troy Castro & Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

The Snatchers Edward McDermott

Unbearable Burden Gwendolyn Clare

Grandmaster Jay O’Connell

Alexander’s Theory of Special Relativity Shane Halbach

Concerning the Devastation Wrought by the Nefarious Gray Comma and Its Ilk: A Men in Tie-Dye Adventure Tim McDaniel

Ecuador vs Bug-eyed Monsters Jay Werkheiser

SCIENCE FACT

Sustainability Lab 101: Cuba as a Simulation of Possible Futures Stanley Schmidt

PROBABILITY ZERO

Hidden Intentions Mary E. Lowd

POETRY

Barriers J, Northcutt Jr.

Hypothesis/Assertion Daniel D. Villani

DEPARTMENTS

Guest Editorial: Future-Propfing the Near Future: Design Fiction for Global Education Nickolas Falkner

The Alternate View John G. Cramer

In Times to Come

The Reference Library Don Sakers

Brass Tacks

Upcoming Events Anthony Lewis

ISSUE 126, March 2017

FICTION

Two Ways of Living

by Robert Reed

Real Ghosts

by J.B. Park

Waiting Out the End of the World in Patty’s Place Cafe

by Naomi Kritzer

Crown of Thorns

by Octavia Cade

Goodnight, Melancholy

by Xia Jia, translated by Ken Liu

The Discovered Country

by Ian R. MacLeod

At the Cross-Time Jaunter’s Ball

by Alexander Jablokov

NON-FICTION

SF Short Fiction Markets in China: An Overview of 2016

by Feng Zhang

Howling at the Lunar Landscape: A Conversation with Ian McDonald

by Chris Urie

Another Word: Reading For Pleasure

by Cat Rambo

Editor’s Desk: Recognizing 2016

by Neil Clarke

PODCASTS

Two Ways of Living

by Robert Reed, read by Kate Baker

Real Ghosts

by J.B. Park, read by Kate Baker

Waiting Out the End of the World in Patty’s Place Cafe

by Naomi Kritzer, read by Kate Baker

Crown of Thorns

by Octavia Cade, read by Kate Baker

Goodnight, Melancholy

by Xia Jia, read by Kate Baker

The Discovered Country

by Ian R. MacLeod, read by Kate Baker

ART

Jungle Deep

by Sergei Sarichev

Fiction

No Regrets on Fourth Street by Lauren C. Teffeau

Shell Game by Tom Jolly

proLong by James Van Pelt

Defensive Posture by Eric Del Carlo

Real Rachel Winterbourne by Tim Jeffreys

Short on Thought, Quick on the Trigger by Dave Creek

Last Times by Jez Patterson

Natural Eyes by Benjamin Sonnek

Shorter Stories

Floating Rocks by L.L. Hill

Goddamn Marvel by James Wesley Reid

Ligeia is Waiting by Russell Hemmell

Articles

Drones in the Daffodils by Wyss Institute

Mapping Time Travel by Daniel M. Kimmel

NOVELLAS The Man Who Put the Bomp – Richard Chwedyk

NOVELETS Driverless – Robert Grossbach

Ten Half-Pennies – Matthew Hughes

The Avenger – Albert E. Cowdrey

SHORT STORIES

The Toymaker’s Daughter – Arundhati Hazra

A Green Silk Dress and a Wedding-Death – Cat Hellisen

Miss Cruz – James Sallis

Daisy – Eleanor Arnason

POEMS Spacemail Only – Ruth Berman

DEPARTMENTS Books to Look For – Charles de Lint

Musing on Books – Michelle West

Science: Robots in Your Pants – Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty

Films: The Language of Loss, Trust, and Heptapods – Kathi Maio

Coming Attractions – Curiosities – David Langford

CARTOONS Arthur Masear, Arthur Masear, Nick Downes

COVER Bryn Barnard for “The Man Who Put the Bomp”

From the Cloud Editorial

When I tried to go to England by Sarah Hart

Wind Farmers from Outer Space by Robert Cox

Hyter and the House That Stands by Steve Toase

Dissecting SF: The Enduring Influence of Kafka on Speculative Fiction by Lachlan Walter

Not Born of Woman—Artificial Wombs in the Vorkosigan Saga by Renée Turner

More Fiction

Auspicium Melioris Aevi by JY Yang

Rising Star by Stephen Graham Jones

With Cardamom I’ll Bind Their Lips by Beth Cato

The Red Secretary by Kameron Hurley (available Apr 04, 2017)

An Abundance of Fish by S. Qiouyi Lu (available Apr 04, 2017)

And Then There Were (N-One) by Sarah Pinsker (available Apr 04, 2017)

Poetry

time, and time again by Brandon O’Brien

Protestations Against the Idea of Anglicization by Cassandra Khaw

The Size of a Barleycorn, Encased in Lead by Bogi Takács (available Apr 04, 2017)

The Axolotl Inquest by Lisa M. Bradley (available Apr 04, 2017)

Editorials

The Uncanny Valley by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas Essays

Act Up, Rise Up by Elsa Sjunneson-Henry

Resistance 101: Basics of Community Organizing for SF/F Creators & Consumers, Volume One: Protest Tips and Tricks by Sam J. Miller

Thank You, Patreon Supporters! by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas

Fandom in the Classroom by Paul Booth (available Apr 04, 2017)

A Work of Art Is a Refuge and Resistance by Dawn Xiana Moon (available Apr 04, 2017)

#beautifulresistance by Shveta Thakrar (available Apr 04, 2017)

Interviews

Interview: Stephen Graham Jones by Julia Rios

Interview: Sarah Pinsker by Julia Rios (available Apr 04, 2017)

The Editor’s Word

FICTION BRAGGING RITES by Samantha Murray

THE TRAGEDY OF THE DEAD IS THAT THEY CANNOT CRY by Sunil Patel

THE LOYAL ORDER OF BEASTS by Kay Kenyon

YOU CAN ALWAYS CHANGE THE PAST by George Nikolopoulos

IT TAKES A SPECIAL-SPECIAL PERSON by Andrea G. Stewart

LOCKED ROOM by Kevin J. Anderson

GOLF TO THE DEATH by Alex Shvartsman

MY MONSTER CAN BEAT UP YOUR MONSTER by Brennan Harvey

THE OBSERVER by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

YOUR GRIEF IS IMPORTANT TO US by Yaroslav Barsukov

DO NOT CALL ME BENTO by Tina Gower

IN THE GROUP by Robert Silverberg

INTERVIEW Mike Resnick by Joy Ward

SERIALIZATION Double Star (Part 2) Heinlein’s First Hugo Winner by Robert A. Heinlein

COLUMNS From the Heart’s Basement by Barry N. Malzberg

Science Column by Gregory Benford

Recommended Books by Bill Fawcett & Jody Lynn Nye

Issue #222 — Mar. 30, 2017

The Shark God’s Child

Jonathan Edelstein

Nightshade

J.W. Halicks

Audio Fiction Podcast:

Nightshade

J.W. Halicks

Forever magazine

Forever has reprints by Ian McDonald, T.R. Napper, and Ken Liu.

Fiction: The Influence Machine by Sean McMullen illustrated by Richard WagnerA Death in the Wayward Drift by Tim Akers illustrated by Richard WagnerStill Life With Falling Man by Richard E. Gropp illustrated by Richard WagnerA Strange Kind of Beauty by Christien Gholson illustrated by Martin HanfordThe Common Sea by Steve Rasnic Tem

Guest Editorial by Steve Rasnic Tem

Future Interrupted: #Resistance Jonathan McCalmont

Time Pieces: The Voyage Home Nina Allan

Ansible Link David Langford

Reviews: Book Zone Peter Tennant, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Jonathan McCalmont, Stephen Theaker, Elaine Gallagher, Duncan Lunan, Jack Deighton, John Howard, Lawrence Osborn

Mutant Popcorn Nick Lowe

  CURRENT ISSUES: Periodical SF, Fantasy & Horror Current Issues is an occasional feature (mostly monthly) that provides a round up of the content of periodical SF, fantasy and horror.