When I was thirteen, I had a yearlong correspondence by mail and over the phone with Rodney Bingenheimer. A peculiar icon of the sixties and seventies, Bingenheimer had opened a famous club on the Sunset Strip; he was a live-in publicist to Sonny and Cher, he accompanied David Bowie to London, and through his adjacency, his fandom, and his…

The stones come to dance; parachuting up, four black rocks gasp slowly for air like fish in a daze. My feet dart ripples in the water, cool and neat as knives. Wind aching to peel down my pant- ies. It sings my skirt off my skin, ripped in fishbone-two. It wants inside me, the Black Girl Reading by the River. And I may just be the Black Girl…

At the premiere screening of Bandit Queen in Delhi, Shekhar Kapur introduced the film with these words: "I had a choice between Truth and Aesthetics. I chose Truth, because Truth is Pure." To insist that the film tells the Truth is of the utmost commercial (and critical) importance to him. Again and again, we are assured, in interviews, in reviews…