Jenefer Shute's article struck the very core of my psyche. As a South African living abroad for a year, I did not realize the way in which South Africans have become blasi about crime. I have friends who have been hijacked, robbed -- my own car in South Africa was stolen.

Yet we take it for granted. This article has, however, changed my perceptions. I am shocked that I have not done more for anti-crime work. Do all South Africans have to leave their country before they wake up to what is happening? I have sent this article to as many people as I can in South Africa; the change has to come from within.

-- Jason le Grange

From the time that young relief worker from the United States was pulled from her car and stomped to death by a rampaging mob, I have picked up bits and pieces about the dark side of the so-called "new South Africa." Shute's heartfelt and profoundly disturbing account drives it all home. My heart goes out to Shute and her family as her beloved country spirals into a Hobbesian state. Shute is not alone in her reluctance to face up to the simple truth her mother has long recognized. The Western press is equally culpable.

-- Greg Foltz

What happened was obviously horrible. But never has the expression about reaping what was sown been more applicable. It doesn't matter that the author's brother and sister-in-law were good people. The whites who brutally oppressed South African blacks, the people who maintained apartheid for their benefit (e.g., the author's racist mother) earned the brutality that the author's family recently endured and created the chaos that rules that country today. So any time the author searches for a root cause behind what happened, she need look no further than dear old mom.

-- James Boles

Jenefer Shute's piece worked as a moving account of her response to her family tragedy and as an illustration of the extent to which South African society is troubled. Her piece left me with the impression that she was trying to convey a message beyond this, and I am unclear as to what that message was. She finishes with the statement that what white South Africans have to fear is not "them" but what all South Africans have wrought. How is this idea different from the notion that the disorder is a "legacy of apartheid," an explanation that she is dismissive of? What point is she making? Is it simply that black South Africans bear some responsibility for the situation? Or does she feel that there is something intrinsic in "them" that makes them want to brutalize whites? Or is it something else altogether?

-- Kimuli Kasara

When presented with evil we must not lose our souls. The crime described in South Africa had nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with a culture of poverty, crime and hatred that is repeated throughout the world among all races. If you are truly revolted by the crime described, remember that evil is spread by hatred creating more hatred.

-- Tom Biggs

When the jailhouse is far from home
BY NELL BERNSTEIN
(03/29/00)

I must ask, exactly how nurturing is the mother strung out on heroin, how worthy a caretaker is the mother who opens her home to the most vile among us to trade sex or money for drugs? The vast majority of all those incarcerated may be "parents" in legal status only; I must ask how seriously one takes his or her responsibilities as parent or caregiver when they turn over their lives and livelihood to the drug culture.

The answer is not to empty the jails of people too screwed up to manage their own lives, let alone manage the responsibilities of parenthood. We need to adequately fund the wide variety of programs that would help eradicate such problems, including counseling and treatment, family services and education at all levels of society.

-- Phillip T. Stewart, Jr.

Since when is a child a get-out-of-jail-free card? As a childless person, why am I more incarceration-worthy than a single mother? If we both do the crime, we should both do the time.

There has got to be a better way to take care of these children than to create a protected class of citizens who are exempt from the laws that govern the rest of us.

-- Patrick Solomon

What a great article. It did what I'm sure it intended to do, give me a different perspective to think about. Kudos to the author.

-- Val Cartwright

Naked to the world
BY PEGI TAYLOR
(03/24/00)
The portrait of you and your daughter is simply stunning. It perfectly captures the unique relationship you two share. I feel that this type of portrait, while somewhat daring, is in the end more meaningful and revealing of our own humanity.

As Americans it is sometimes difficult to overcome our societal prudishness about the naked body. But when we do, we end up seeing something both hidden and always there: our vulnerable, magnificent and magical human form.

Thank you for bringing us your story and for being courageous in the name of art.

-- Matthew Bernick

I admire and even envy your relationship with your body. It seems absurd to me that emaciated, starving models in underwear are acceptable to be displayed in my living room every night via TV ads, while real people's real bodies are seen as vulgar. I have two young daughters who are very aware of how their bodies look and it is an uphill battle to try to make them understand that the images of women they see everywhere are not real. I tell them not to look at models or singers, but to look around at the girls at school and the women in their lives. I tell them that what makes us beautiful is not how alike we are, but how different we are. Thank you for sharing your story and the beautiful picture.

-- Jennifer Schworn

Thank you for the article by Pegi Taylor on modeling. I very much enjoyed the portrait by John Shimon and Julie Lindemann, photographers and former gallery owners I have known and worked with for many years. Taylor's story is soulful and inspiring.

-- Patrick McNamara
Memphis, Tenn.

Where you find it
BY RUSS SPENCER
(03/25/00)

Geez, how naive are you? Do you believe everything some hack screenwriter says at a seminar?

Even the New York Times noted that the plastic bag scene in "American Beauty" was directly ripped off from a silent film by Nathaniel Dorsky. Dreamworks even rented the Dorsky film to study the scene. Shameful that Ball feels he has to claim credit for this -- he has plenty to take the blame for without pirating this.

"American Beauty" is one of the worst films I've seen in years. It feels like it was written and directed by aliens, people (or creatures) with absolutely no connection to or understanding of American culture, class or suburbia.

-- Jeff Kreines
Coosada, Ala.

The floating plastic bag scene is a rip-off. Or at least an eerie case of coincidence.

It was used to the same haunting effect by Super 8/experimental filmmaker Jem Cohen in this piece he made about New York. Cohen has shot many art videos for R.E.M. as well as a recently completed documentary for the band Fugazi. The guy's work is amazing. I can't remember the name of the piece the bag scene comes from, but it is one of his most famous. While Jem isn't even in the same universe as Hollywood filmmakers, he is quite well known and respected in the museum/art-video film world. I am surprised no one has made the connection before.

-- Jim Mendiola

Russ Spencer's sentimental panegyric for Alan Ball's vacuously overrated "American Beauty" and its wind-tossed bag scene nearly had me reaching for my own bag. Of all the portentous pieces of pseudo-lyricism which make "American Beauty" a bellwether of contemporary American inanity the I-shot-a-video-of-a-piece-of-litter is by far the worst. Worse even than the laughable psychobabble about "looking at the face of God" and the saccharine gush about maple trees and night skies. Worse even than the tired, hackneyed suburban satire. If this is American film criticism, we're sunk.

-- Lawrence Osborne