SINISTER WISDOM

21

SINISTER WISDOM 21

Editors and publish e rs: Mich e ll e C liff a nd Adrie nne Rich
T yp ese tting and design: C & H Publishing Se rvices
She lburn e Falls, Mass.
Special thanks to: Janet Aalfs, Ange la Giudic e, Be th Hodges,
Pat McG loin, Crane Will e mse
Cover: two siste rs: Agnes and Inez; Alamance Coun ty,
North Caro lin a, circa 1895 ; family coll ec tion of
Cathe rin e Nic holson
Printe d by Iowa C ity Women 's Press, Iowa City, Iowa
Bound by A Fine Bind, Iowa C ity, Iowa
ISS : 0196-1853

Founding editors: Ha rrie t D esmoin es and Ca th e rin e

ic holson

Copyrig ht © Sinis ter Wisdom, 1982. All rig hts rese rved to indi vidu a lauthors and a rtists.
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Contents

Bashert, a poem by Irena Klepfisz

2

A Personal Reading of This Bridge Called My Backby Pamela Culbreth
Separatism Revisited, by Lois Anne Addison

15
29

A Different Kind of Black Lesbian Writer, interview withRed Jordan Arobateau, by Ann Allen Shockley
Nobody's People, narrative by Red Jordan Arobateau

35
40

Poems by Mary Lou Tornes, Mab Segrest, Sylvia Foley,
Lynn Crawford, laura raginjustice53

The Night the Crackerbox Closed
narrative by Anmarie Wagstaff

62

Four photographs from unidentified source

74

Three poems by Wendy Simpson

77

Difficult But Not Impossible, review by Janet Aalfs
Celebration and Survival, review by Elise Young
Photography and Feminism, review by Marian Roth

81
88
93

Responses: Barbara Macdonald. Judith Katz. Barbara Mor •Elly Bulkin • Susan J. Wolfe. Selma Miriam. Adrienne Rich.
Melanie Kaye

98

Irena Klepfisz
Bashert~
These words are dedicated to those who died

These words are dedicated to those who diedbecause they had no love and felt alone in the world
because they were afraid to be alone and tried to stick it out
because they could not ask
because they were shunned
because they were sick and their bodies could notresist the diseasebecause they played it safe
because they had no connections
because they had no faithbecause they felt they did not belong and wanted to die
These words are dedicated to those who diedbecause they were loners and liked it
because they acquired friends and drew others to thembecause they took risks
because they were stubborn and refused to give up
because they asked for too much
These words are dedicated to those who diedbecause a card was lost and a number was skipped
because a bed was denied
because a place was filled and no other place was left
These words are dedicated to those who diedbecause someone did not follow throughbecause someone was overworked and forgot
because someone left everything to God
because someone was latebecause someone did not arrive at all
because someone told them to wait and they justcouldn't any longeroba-shert: ine vitable, (pre)destined2

These words are dedicated to those who diedbecause death is a punishment
because death is a reward
because death is the final rest
because death is eternal rage
These words are dedicated to those who died

Bashert

These words are dedicated to those who survived

These words are dedicated to those who survived
because their second grade teacher gave them books
because they did not draw attention to themselves and got lostin the shuffle
because they knew someone who knew someone else
who could help
them and bumped into them on a corner on a Thursday afternoon
because they played it safe
because they were lucky
These words are dedicated to those who survived
because they knew how to cut corners
because they drew attention to themselves and always got pickedbecause they took risks
because they had no principles and were hard
These words are dedicated to those who survived
because they refused to give up and defied statistics
because they had faith and trusted in God
because they expected the worst and were always preparedbecause they were angry
because they could ask
because they mooched off others and saved their strength
because they endured humiliation
because they turned the other cheekbecause they looked the other way

3

These words are dedicated to those who survived
because life is a wilderness and they were savage
because life is an awakening and they were alert
because life is a flowering and they blossomed
because life is a struggle and they struggled
because life is a gift and they were free to accept it
These words are dedicated to those who survived

Bashert

1. Poland, 1944: My motheris walking down a road.

My mother is walking down a road. Somewhere in Poland.
Walking towards an unnamed town for some kind of permit. She iscarrying her Aryan identity papers. She has left me with an oldpeasant who is willing to say she is my grandmother.
She is walking down a road. Her terror in leaving me behind, inrisking the separation, is swallowed now, like all other feelings.
But as she walks, she pictures me waving from the dusty yard,
imagines herself suddenly picked up, the identity papers
challenged. And even if she were to survive that, would she everfind me later? She tastes the terror in her mouth again. She
swallows.
I am over three years old, corn silk blond and blue eyed like any
Polish child. There is terrible suffering among the peasants.
Starvation. And like so many others, I am ill. Perhaps dying. I
have bad lungs. Fever. An ugly ear infection that oozes pus. Noneof these symptoms are disappearing.
The night before, my mother feeds me watery soup and then sits
and listens while I say my prayers to the Holy Mother, Mother ofGod. I ask her, just as the nuns taught me, to help us all: me, mymother, the old woman. And then catching myself, learning to use
memory, I ask the Mother of God to help my father. The Polishwords slip easily from my lips. My mother is satisfied. The peasant
has perhaps heard and is reassured. My mother has found her to be
kind, but knows that she is suspicious of strangers.
4

My mother is sick. Goiter. Malnutrition. Vitamin deficiencies.
She has skin sores which she cannot cure. For months now she has
been living in complete isolation, with no point of reference outsideof herself. She has been her own sole advisor, companion,
comforter. Almost everyone of her world is dead: three sisters,
nephews and nieces, her mother, her husband, her in-laws. All
gone. Even the remnants of the resistance, those few left after theuprising, have dispersed into the Polish countryside. She is morealone than she could have ever imagined. Only she knows her realname and she is perhaps dying. She is thirty years old.
I am over three years old. I have no consciousness of our danger,
our separateness from the others. I have no awareness that we areplaying a part. I only know that I have a special name, that I havebeen named for the Goddess of Peace. And each night, I sleep
secure in that knowledge. And when I wet my bed, my motherplaces me on her belly and lies on the stain. She fears the oldwoman and hopes her body's warmth will dry the sheet before
dawn.
My mother is walking down a road. Another woman joins her. My
mother sees through the deception, but she has promised herself
that never, under any circumstances, will she take that risk. So sheswallows her hunger for contact and trust and instead talks about
the sick child left behind and lies about the husband in the labor
camp.
Someone is walking towards them. A large, strange woman withwild red hair. They try not to look at her too closely, to seem
overly curious. But as they pass her, my mother feels something
move inside her. The movement grows and grows till it is an
explosion of yearning that she cannot contain. She stops, orders hercompanion to continue without her. And then she turns.
The woman with the red hair has also stopped and turned. She isgrotesque, bloated with hunger, almost savage in her rags. She andmy mother move towards each other. Cautiously, deliberately,
they probe past the hunger, the swollen flesh , the infected skin, therags. Slowly, they begin to pierce five years of encrusted history.
And slowly, there is perception and recognition.

5

In this wilderness of occupied Poland, in this vast emptiness where
no one can be trusted, my mother has suddenly, bizarrely, met oneof my father 's teachers. A family friend. Another Jew.
They do not cry, but weep as they chronicle the dead and count theliving. Then they rush to me. To the woman I am a familiar sight.
She calculates that I will not live out the week, but comments only
on my striking resemblance to my father. She says she has
contacts. She leaves. One night a package of food is delivered
anonymously. We eat. We begin to bridge the gap towards life.
We survive.

2. Chicago, 1964: I am walking home alone at midnight.

I am walking home alone at midnight. I am a student of literature,and each night I stay in the library until it closes. Yet each night, as
I return I still feel unprepared for the next day. The nature ofliterary movements eludes me. I only understand individual
writers. I have trouble remembering genre definitions, historicaldates and names, cannot grasp their meaning, significance. A
whole world of abstractions and theories remains beyond myreach, on the other side of a wall I cannot climb over.
So each night, I walk home clutching my books as if I were a small
school child. The city is alien. Since coming to America, this is myfirst time away from a Jewish neighborhood, Jewish friends , and I
feel isolated, baffled at how to make a place for myself in thislarger, gentile world which I have entered.
I am walking home alone at midnight. The university seems anisland ungrounded. Most of its surrounding streets have been
emptied. On some, all evidence of previous life removed except
for occasional fringes of rubble that reveal vague outlines, that hint
at things that were. On others, old buildings still stand, thoughthese are hollow like caves, once of use and then abandoned.
Everything is poised. Everything is waiting for the emptiness toclose in upon itself, for the emptiness to be filled up, for theemptiness to be swallowed and forgotten.

6

Walking home, I am only dimly aware of the meaning of thisstrange void through which I pass. I am even less aware of thedangers for someone like me, a woman walking home alone at
midnight. I am totally preoccupied with another time, anotherplace. Night after night, protected by the darkness, I think only of
Elza who is dead. I am trying to place a fact about her, a fact which
stubbornly resists classification: nothing that happened to her
afterwards mattered. All that agonized effort. All that caring.
None of that mattered!
At the end of the war, friends come to claim her. With the cold,
calculated cunning of an adult, the eight year old vehemently
denies who she is. No she is not who they think. Not a Jew. They
have made a mistake. Mixed her up with another Elza. This one
belongs here, with her mother.
She is simply being scrupulous in following her parents'
instructions. "Do not ever admit to anyone who you are. It is oursecret. Eventually we will come for you. Remember! Never admit
who you are! Promise!"Four years later, the war is over. Her parents dead. She is stillbound by her promise. This woman is her mother. Her parents'
friends know better. The woman has been kind, has saved her. But
she is a Pole and Elza is a Jew. Finally, the bribe is big enough andthe child released. Elza becomes an orphan.

And afterwards? She is adopted and finally seems to haveeverything. Two parents. Two handsome brothers. A house. Her
own room. She studies Latin and does translations. Is valedictorianof her class. Goes away to college. Has boyfriends, affairs. Comes
to New York. Works. Begins graduate school. Explicates Dylan
Thomas, T.S. Eliot. Marries.
But none of it matters. She cannot keep up. The signs areclear. She is a poor housekeeper. Insists they eat off paper plates.
She buys enough clothes to fill all her closets. But nothing soothes
her. Finally she signs her own papers. Is released within a few
months. I finish college and leave for Europe. Three weeks later,
she checks into a hotel and takes an overdose. She is twenty-fiveyears old.
7

Fearing I too might be in danger, my mother instructs Polish Jews
resettled in Paris and Tel Aviv: "Don't tell her! " And to me she
writes: "Elza is in the hospital again. There is no hope. " I am
suspicious, refe r to her whenever I can. I am alert. Sense a
discomfort, an edge I cannot define. I think I know, but I neverdare ask. I come home. Seven months after her death, I finallyknow.
A story she once told me remains alive. During the war, the Polish
woman sends her to buy a notebook for school. She is given thewrong change and points it out. The shopkeeper eyes her sharply:"Very accurate. Just like aJew. Perhaps you are a little Jewess? "And Elza feels afraid and wonders if this woman sees the truth inher blue eyes.
Another memory. Elza is reading accounts of the war. She cannot
help herself, she tells me. An anecdote explains something to her.
A woman in a camp requests a bandage for a wound. And theguard, so startled by her simplicity and directness, makes sure shegets one. That woman, Elza tells me, refused to stop acting like ahuman being. Jews, she concludes, made a terrible mistake.
I am walking home alone at midnight. I am raw with the pain ofher death. I wonder. Is it inevitable? Everything that happened
to us afterwards, to all of us, does none of it matter? Does it not
matter what we do and where we live? Are there moments inhistory which cannot be escaped or transcended, but which act liketime warps permanently trapping all those who are touched bythem? And that which should have happened in 1944 in Poland
and didn't, must it happen now? In 1964? In Chicago? Or canhistory be tricked and cheated?
These questions haunt me. Yet I persist with a will I myself do notunderstand. I continue reading, studying, making friends . And as
the rawness ofElza's death eases and becomes familiar, as time
becomes distance, I find myself more and more grounded in mypresent life, in my passion for words and literature. I begin toperceive the world around me. I develop perspective.
I see the rubble of this unbombed landscape, see that the city, likethe rest of this alien country, is not simply a geographic place, but a8

time zone, an era in which I, by my very presence in it, am rooted.
No one simply passes through. History keeps unfolding anddemanding a response. A life obliterated around me of those I
barely noticed. A life unmarked, unrecorded. A silent massmigration. Relocation. Common rubble in the streets.
I see now the present dangers, the dangers of the void, of theAmerican hollowness in which I walk calmly day and night as I
continue my life. I begin to see the incessant grinding down of lines
for stamps, for jobs, for a bed to sleep in, of a death stretchedimperceptibly over a lifetime. I begin to understand the ingenuityof it. The invisibility. The Holocaust without smoke.
Everything is poised. Everything is waiting for the emptiness to be
filled up, for the filling-up that can never replace, that can only
take over. Like time itself. Or history.

3. Brooklyn, 1971: I am almost equidistant from two continents.

I am almost equidistant from two continents. I look back towards
one, then forward towards the other. The moment is approachingwhen I will be equidistant from both and will have to choose.
Maintaining equidistance is not a choice.
By one of those minor and peculiar coincidences that permanently
shape and give texture to our lives, I am born on my father's
twenty-eighth birthday. Two years later, exactly three days after
his thirtieth and my second birthday, he is dead in the brushfactory district of the Warsaw Ghetto. His corpse is buried in acourtyard and eventually the spot blends with the rest of the
rubble. The Uprising, my birth, his death - all merge and become
interchangeable. That is the heritage of one continent.
In one of the classes that I teach, all the students are Black andPuerto Rican. I am the only white. Initially, the students are
nervous, wondering if I will be a hard task master. I am nervous
too, though I do not yet have a name for it. After a few months
together, we grow accustomed to each other. I am trying tounderstand my role here. That is the heritage of the othercontinent.
9And now, approaching my own thirtieth birthday, approaching the
moment when I will be equidistant from the two land masses, I feelsome kind of cellular breakdown in my body, a sudden surging
inside me, as if flesh and muscle and bone were losing definition.
Everything in me yearns to become transpar'e nt, to be everywhere,
to become like the water between two vast land masses that will
never touch. I desire to become salt water, to establish theconnection.
I am almost equidistant from two continents.
April 17, 1955. I have been asked to light one of the six candles. I
stand on the stage in the large, darkened auditorium, wait to becalled, wait to accept the flame, to pass it on like a memory. I amnumb with terror at the spectacle around me. I fear these people
with blue numbers on their arms, people who are disfigured andscarred, who have missing limbs and uneasy walks, people whose
histories repel me. Here in this auditorium, they abandon all
inhibitions, they transform themselves into pure sound, the soundof irretrievable loss, of wild pain and sorrow. Then they become
all flesh, wringing their hands and covering their swollen eyes andflushed faces. They call out to me and I feel myself dissolving.
When it is time for me to come forward, to light the candle forthose children who were burned, who were shot, who were
stomped to death, I move without feeling . And as I near the
candelabra, I hear them call out the common Yiddish names:
Surele. Moyshele. Channele. Rivkele. Yankle. Shayndele.
Rayzl. Benyomin. The names brush against my face, invade myears, my mouth. I breathe them into my lungs, into my bones. And
as the list continues, guided by their sounds, I cross the stage andlight the sixth and final candle. It is my fourteenth birthday.
I am almost equidistant from two continents.
March, 1971. There are twenty-eight people in the class.
Eighteen women, ten men. Some married. Some single. Alone.
With children. With parents and grandparents. Nieces. Nephews.
They are here because they have not met the minimum standardsof this college. This class is their special chance to catch up.
Subject and verb agreement. Sentence fragments. Pronoun
10reference. Vocabulary building. Paragraph organization. Topic
sentence. Reading comprehension. Study skills. Discipline. All
this to catch up, or as one student said to me, his eyes earnest: "1want to write so that when 1 go for ajob they won't think I'm lazy."
1 am required to take attendance. 1 check through the names, callthem out each morning. James. Reggie. Marie. Simone. Joy.
Christine. Alvarez. Ashcroft. Basile. Colon. Corbett. White.
Raphael. Dennis. Juan. Carissa. Lamont. Andrea. Fragments of
their lives fall before me. The chaos and disorganization. A
mother needing help in filling out forms in English. A sick child.
Hospital regulations. A brother looking for ajob. Another brotherin trouble. Welfare red tape. Unemployment payment
restrictions. Waiting lists. Eviction. SRO. The daily grindinterrupting their catching-up, and the increasing sense that witheach day missed, they fall further behind.
1 am almost equidistant from two continents. I look back towards
one, then forward towards the other. There is a need in me tobecome transparent like water, to become the salt water which istheir only connection.
March, 1971. Marie wants to study medicine. She concedes it's along haul, but, as she says, "It's only time. What difference does it
make?" Slightly older than the others, she lives alone with herdaughter. To some of the women's horror, she refuses to have atelephone, does not like to be intruded upon. When necessary, she
can always be reached through a neighbor. She rarely misses class,on a few occasions brings her daughter with her, who sits serenely
drawing pictures. Facing Marie, I sometimes do not know who I am
and wonder how she perceives me. She seems oblivious to my
discomfort. She is only focused on the class, always reworking her
assignments, reading everything twice, asking endless questions tomake sure she really understands. One day, at the end of the hour,when we are alone, she asks: "What are you? " 1 am caught off
guard, know the meaning of the question, but feel the resistance inme. 1 break it down and answer quietly: "A Jew." She nods and inthat moment two vast land masses touch.
Each continent has its legacy. The day 1 reach my thirtiethbirthday, the age of my father's death, 1 am equidistant from both.
11And as the day passes, everything in me becomes defined again. I
am once again muscle, flesh, bone. America is not my chosen home,
not even the place of my birth. Just a spot where it seemed safe to
go to escape certain dangers. But safety, I discover, is only
temporary. No place guarantees it to anyone forever. I havestayed because there is no other place to go. In my muscles, myflesh , my bone, I balance the heritages, the histories of two
continents.

4. Cherry Plain, 1982: I have become a keeper of accounts.

There are moments when I suddenly become breathless, as if I had
just tricked someone, but was afraid the ruse would be exposed andr d be hunted again. At those moments, the myths that propel our
history, that turn fiction into fact, emerge in full force in me, as I
stare into the eyes of strangers or someone suddenly grown alien.
And when I see their eyes become pinpoints of judgments, become
cold and indifferent, or simply distanced with curiosity, at thosemoments I hear again the words of the Polish woman:

Very accurate. Just like a Jew. You are perhaps a littleJewess?
At moments such as these I teeter, shed the present, and like rage,
like pride, like acceptance, like the refusal to deny, I call upon theancient myths again and say:Yes. It's true. All true. I am scrupulously accurate. I keep track ofall distinctions. Between past and present. Pain and pleasure.
Living and surviving. Resistance and capitulation. Will andcircumstance. Between life and death. Yes. I am scrupulously
accurate. I have become a keeper of accounts.
Like the patriarchs, the shabby scholars who only lived for what
was written and studied it all their lives
Like the inhuman usurers and dusty pawnbrokers who werequarantined within precisely prescribed limits of every European
town and who were as accurate as the magistrates that drew theboundaries of their lives and declared them diseased
12Like those men of stone who insisted that the goyim fulfill thecontracts they had signed and who responded to the tearful pleasof illness, weakness, sudden calamity and poverty, with the words:"What are these to me? You have made me a keeper of accounts.
Give me my pound of flesh . It says on this piece of paper, you owe
me a pound of flesh! "Like those old, heartless, dried up merchants whose entire lives
were spent in the grubby shtetl streets that are now but memory,whose only body softness was in the fingertips worn smooth bysilver coins, whose vision that all that mattered was on pieces of
paper was proven absolutely accurate, when their zloty, francs , andmarks could not buy off the written words Zyd, Juif, Jude
Like these, my despised ancestors
I have become a keeper of accounts.
And like all the women, the wives and daughters, the sisters andaunts, the nieces, the keepers of button shops, milliners,
seamstresses, peddlers of foul fish , of matches, of rotten apples,laundresses, midwives, floor washers and street cleaners, whorushed exhausted all week so that shabescould be observed withfresh challah on the table, who argued in the common tongue
and begged for the daughter run-off to the revolution
and the daughter run-off with a shegetz
who refused to sit shiva and say kaddish for a living child
who always begged for life
who understood the accounts but saw them differently
who knew the power of human laws, knew they always counted nomatter what the revolution or the party or the state
who knew the power of the words Zyd, Juif, Jude
who cried whole lifetimes for their runaway children
for the husbands immobilized by the written word
for the brother grown callous from usury
for the uncle grown indifferent from crime, from bargaining,from chiseling, from jewing them down
Like these, my despised ancestors
I have become a keeper of accounts.
13

I do not shun this legacy. I reclaim it as mine whenever I see thephotographs of nameless people. Standing staring off the edge ofthe picture. People dressed in coats lined with fur. Or ragged at
elbows and collar. Hats cocked on one side glancing anxiously
toward the lens. Or standing ashamed a coarse wig awkwardly
fitted. The shabby clothes. Buttons missing. The elegant stance.
Diamond rings. Gold teeth. The hair being shaved. The face of
humiliation. The hand holding the child. A tree. A track. A vague
building in a photograph. A facility. And then the fields of hair
the endless fields of hair the earth growing fertile with themwith their bodies with their souls.
Old, rarely seen types. Gone they say forever. And yet I know
they can be revived again that I can trigger them again. That
they awaken in me for I have felt it happen in the sight of
strangers or someone suddenly grown alien. Whenever I haveseen the judgment the coldness and indifference the distanced
curiosity. At those moments I teeter shed my present self andall time merges and like rage like pride like acceptance likethe refusal to deny
I answer
Yes. It is true. I am a keeper of accounts.

Bashert14

Pamela Culbreth

A Personal Readingof This Bridge Called My Back
This essay is a record of some of the questioning and searching I've
done about my own racism and about racism in "the wimmin's movement. .. I begin in my own life, trying to push beyond f ear and guilt,
bringing anti-racist analysis to my relationships and attitudes. From
my personal experience, I move to my involvement with radicalfeminism with the same anti-racist scrutiny. Finally, I look at lesbian
separatism, the ideology on which I base my politics.
I

Like many white feminists, I was introduced to politics throughthe civil rights and poor people's movements of the late sixties. I
grew up in a white working class neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia, in a family with middle class roots and aspirations and southernmanners and values. My mother loved history and my parents
talked about politics, especially during the early days of desegregation. Being a Republican in the south at that time meant you weremiddle-of-the-road to liberal, and my mother believed that
desegregation was a moral issue. She has told me how in the fifties
she and her best friepd, who had a daughter my age, decided thateven though they felt threatened by integration in the schools,
they knew that segregation was wrong. Still, my schools were notintegrated until my junior year in high school when a small group of
black students gathered nervously together in front of the cafeteria
the first day of school.
Racism has been an issue in my life as long as I can remember,and I credit my mother with planting the seeds of consciousness.
Memories: being spanked for using a racial epithet; at about age six
or seven asking my mother why most black people were poor,
having observed the black ghettos on a Sunday afternoon drive in
downtown Richmond, and her explanation of slavery and its curse ;story telling, Mama talking about her childhood, describing theracism of a small town in South Carolina. With my family I attended
a presbyterian church in which the minister preached against
racism, and I remember my parents' support of him in the midst of
the controversy his preaching provoked.

15But there were so many mixed messages. My mother told me
about World War II and the Holocaust, and tried to explain why it
was wrong for me to try to be a christian missionary to my Jewish
friends. On the other hand, my parents had no Jewish friends, andsunday school taught that Jews couldn't go to heaven. As an adolescent I argued with teachers and schoolmates that blacks shouldhave the same rights as whites, yet I was shocked and nervous
when blacks started shopping at the "better" department stores in
downtown Richmond. It made my parents nervous, too, and we
started shopping at the new shopping centers growing up in suburbia. I recall the shame and confusion that accompanied these subtle
and unspoken changes in our shopping habits.
The summer of 1968, after my fresh(wo}man year in college, I
lived and worked with young black and white wimmin and men in a
special project sponsored by the presbyterian church. The intentions of the program were liberal (it was called "Samaritans in theCity"), but the growth of individual participants was enormous, andthe experience radicalized many of us. We lived in the dormitories
of a seminary, and for most of us, it was the closest we had everbeen to people who were different from us-in race, class, educational background.
During that time I formed several close relationships with black
wimmin and men, and though my bonding with wimmin was deeper
and longer lasting than those with men, none of these relationships
endured to the present time, so I question why.
The relationships I formed with black men at the time were
mostly sexual. On one hand the relationships were little different
from my relationships with white men, in that sex was almost
always the basis for relationships with men-even though I was forthe most part sexually naive and inexperienced. At the same timethat I resist seeing the relationships as different from my relationships with white men, I ask myself whether racist sexual stereotypes were attracting me. I don't know. At the time I thought I
was simply responding in a non-discriminating way. The longest
and most significant of these relationships began and ended abusively, which raises for me the question of why I participated in
it-a question which all lesbians who were at some time heterosexual ask ourselves anyway, but a question which becomes convoluted under the scrutiny of anti-racism. Probably I was experiencing three things: my hetero~exual self-hate that settled for solittle from all the men I knew, my naive and confused racism that al-16lowed me to set lower standards for black me n than white men, andmy racist guilt that justified any bad treatment toward me as racial
anger. In one sense I probably expected less from black men thanwhite, but at the same time I believed black men would be morecapable of a deep, sensitive connection that I'd not experienced
with white men. lt didn't occur to me that the problem with myrelationships was heterosexuality.
In Alice Walker's novel Meridian there is a white womon who
marries a black man. During the course of the novel this womonchanges from a bright college co-ed to a sloppy, drugged housewife
who sleeps with all the men in their black neighborhood, earning
everyone's contempt, and clinging desperately to her husband
even though he hates the sight of her. In her disillusionment withthe emptiness of the white middle class, she tries to absorb an
identity which is not hers, losing herself in the process. ·My own life could have turned out that way. That summer I got
pregnant, had neither the resources nor the money to get an abortion in those pre-legalized days (1968), begged and pleaded withthe father to marry me or help in some way, which he would not.
My parents were horrified first that I was pregnant at all, andsecondly that I was pregnant by a black man. They refused to giveme any assistance so that I could keep my baby, which was what I
desperately wanted to do.
lt was my first and most significant lesson in the colonization of
wimmin-the white middle class culture's taboo on illegitimacy - and the most direct lesson in racism I will probably ever experience. Painfully I remember how racism wove the trap I was in,
the doctors and social workers and my parents all adamant andunited: the obstetrician who, appalled when I told him the father
was black, offered to perform a therapeutic abortion, provided I
would say I had been raped, which I would not; the social workers
who pressured me into adoption, never offering the first suggestionof how I might live if I decided to keep my baby; my parents terrified of the ostracism they thought the family would suffer with anillegitimate black child. Recognizing all this is not to see myself as a
victim, but to understand the time and place in which I made my
decision, and how racism rendered me powerless to live with andcare for my own child.
The other thing I am trying to understand about this experienceis how racism corroded the bonding between myself and black
wimmin. The black wimmin I knew during that time were kind,17

generous, loving. One womon took great risks to help me find an
abortionist, though unsuccessfully. Another black womon lived
with me during much of my pregnancy, loaned me money, and was
the only person I knew who supported my wish to keep my child.
My decision to give my baby up shocked and disappointed
her-our cultures viewed illegitimacy differently. Later, unmarried, she too gave birth to a child. There was never any questionthat she would keep her baby, though their life together would not
be easy.
A year or two after her child was born, we gradually stopped
seeing each other. I had gone back to college; she was working tosupport herself and her son. Again, racism wove a trap that I hadneither the perception nor the courage to break. True, it could
have been just one of those things, two friends gradually having lessand less in common. But the reason we had so little in common was
because I returned to the safety and privilege of my white skin.
Since that time and until fairly recently, my circle of closefriends has remained all white, and over the years I have foundmyself at a distance from the black wimmin I once knew, and frommy own experience. Getting close to that experience again, remembering it, telling my story, opening my life to new experiences andfriendships, is the making of a new and stronger anti-racist commitment.
II
I began seriously raising questions about the racism of white lesbian feminists after reading Elly Bulkin's "Racism and Writing" in
Sinister Wisdom 13. I began reading This Bridge Called My Back:
Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherr(e Moraga
and Gloria Anzaldua, l analyzing racism in the political activities
I've worked on, especially taking to task my lesbian separatism.
This Bridge raises many questions for me; it contains voices I
have not heard or heeded before-not because they weren't
around, but because they were drowned out by the relatively
homogeneous, white lesbian culture I and my friends had constructed and naively called "boundary dwelling." I was already becoming
dissatisfied with-how easy thinking was becoming.
Not that I was feeling guilty about my life or politics, just bored. I
had made peace with the kind of politics that worked in my life andthat included me-a white, university educated, radical lesbianwithin its definition. I had burned out on the issues that offered thewidest range of diversity-battered wives, reproductive freedom,18

anti-militarism - and the homophobia of straight wimmin and themisogyny of leftist males. My decision to work on primarily lesbianor lesbian-only issues was a positive decision to preserve my me ntal
health. I helped establish a lesbian newsletter and a lesbian bookstore, and I began my own work as a serious feminist writer. How I
have grown from reading and talking about This Bridge Called My
Back involves a widening of focus and a clarification of my definitions; an awakening to experiences other than those of the white,largely middle class range of experience from which I emerged alesbian separatist.
Reading This Bridge has made me aware of my own stereotyping
and misconceptions of wimmin of color, stereotypes which served
to reinforce for me a lesbian separatist politics not actively involvedin anti-racist work. In my guilty avoidance I reasoned that wimminof color are bitter, angry, and despairing of any relationship withwhite wimmin - thus there were no wimmin of color in my separatist circle. Because I want nothing to do with men or heterosexual
wimmin, who as a class oppress me, I reasoned that wimmin of color
want nothing to do with me, a white womon-relieving myself of
responsibility for their exclusion in the work I was doing.
So it is with recognition and relief that the stere otypes fall away
as I read of lesbians of color struggling against homophobia, thesame homophobia I experienced in the battered wimmin's move ment and from the left. Erasure. Audre Lorde challenging white academic feminists to hear the voices and acknowledge the presenceof lesbians and of wimmin of color ("The Master's Tools Will Never
Dismantle the Master's House," pp. 98-101). The economics ofbeing Other:In this country, lesbianism is a poverty-as is being brown, as is being
a woman, as is just plain be ing poor. [Cherr(e Moraga, "La Gtiera," p.
29JPain and isolation.
Woman love . ... Do not dare even consider the possibility of a love
relationship with a Latina, a Cuban woman, even to dream that I
could find such a partnership .. . . What does it mean to say to myselfthat only other Latina, bicultural lesbian women can satisfy myneeds? [Mirtha Quintanales, "I Come with No Illusions," p. 148J

Alienation, rejection.
The black lesbian ... must suffer as well the homophobic sexism of
the black political community, some of whom seem to have forgotten

19so soon the pain of rejection, denial, and repression sanctioned by
racist Ame rica. [Cheryl Clarke, "Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance,"
p. 130]From this recognition that lesbians of color, like myself, experience alienation and invisibility as lesbians, it becomes easier for me
to cross the bridge to the feelings of alienation that wimmin ofcolor feel in the white wimmin's movement. Even so, the section on
racism within the wimmin's movement is the most difficult, themost challenging part of the book for me as a white feminist. Writing about it now I realize that this information is just beginning tosettle into my understanding.
The articles in This Bridge which most challenge my assumptions
and experience are "I Don't Understand Those Who Have Turned
Away from Me," by Chrystos; "The Pathology of Racism: A Conversation with Third World Wimmin," by doris davenport; and" Acrossthe Kitchen Table: A Sister-to-Sister Dialogue," by Barbara andBeverly Smith, which I will discuss in another section. These threearticles, more than any others in the book, give me some new ways
to think about white feminists' commitment to ending racism, andabout lesbian separatism as a practical ideology for feminist revolution.
Chrystos is a Native Indian womon who writes about her disillusionment with the wimmin's movement, and particularly withwhite lesbians. She recalls her years of doing shitwork in a wimmin's
coffeehouse and bookstore, memorizing wimmin's names and faces,
washing dishes and nourishing sisters, only to have wimmin barely
remember who she was or what she did. She remembers backbiting
and cliquishness, and writes with disappointment, "I have felt lessunderstanding between races & from many lesbian women than I
do from some straight people" (p. 69).
When I first read these words I felt an unbidden defensivenessfor the wimmin's movement-we aren't really that bad-with an
exclusive assumption of who "we" are! Then I remembered an
Indian womon who worked on the battered wimmin's shelter project with me, who said she had often experienced racism within ourgroup. Why hadn't I noticed the racism when it occurred? I asked
myself at the time. But curiously, I didn't ask her what she meant,and I'm not sure why. I remember feeling embarrassment, as
though I had been caught or foupd out, without even knowing what
had happened.
Perhaps she meant that someone (not me) said something insensi20

tive to her, I thought. It didn't occur to me that she might havemeant there was something in our practices or philosophy that ignored the needs and realities of wimmin of color, and more specifically, the needs of Indian wimmin in that Kansas town. My failure
to explore this with my friend was probably due to my own defensiveness, a certain kind of laziness of the mind that resists
change, and most of all the fear that it was me who was racist. As awhite womon I find that it has been very difficult for me to translate newly discovered racist patterns into anti-racist action. The
fear of feeling guilty triggers resistance and avoidance of situations
and information that can increase awareness.
The issue of racism in feminist organizations appears again in"The Pathology of Racism. " Here, doris davenport offers an analysis
of how and why racism operates among white feminists:
When we attend a meeting or gathering of theirs, we are seen in only
one or two limited or oppressive ways: as being white-washed andtherefore sharing all their values, priorities, and goals, etc. ; or, if we{even aCcidentally} mention something particular to the experienceof black wimmin, we are seen as threatening, hostile, and subversiveto their interests. [po 86J

According to davenport, white feminists cling to their stereotypes of black wimmin as being more sensual, less cerebral, andless political than white wimmin.2 In what she calls a "brief but
necessary digression," she turns these stereotypes around to tell the"whole truth" about how some black wimmin really perceive white
wimmin, and she lists a number of responses such as physical aversion and repulsion to white skin, body odor, and "they can't dance"(p.87).
Davenport's stereotyping of white feminists in this passage, andmy own confused response (alternately anger, laughter, sadness),reminds me of a time many years ago when I laughed insincerely ina restaurant as a black man friend, pointing out a white baby at thetable next to us, derided "ugly white babies." My laughter in this instance was over-compensation: more a symptom of liberal guilt andself-hate than true anti-racism. And so doris davenport's "digression" becomes personal, not because she says nasty things aboutwhite wimmin, but because the defensiveness I felt while reading
her essay touches that place in me where I have felt white racism
most deeply: the place where the trap of guilt and denial preventsme from understanding myself, from committing more of myself tothe anti-racist struggle, and from bonding with wimmin of color.
21

Trapped into the guilt/denial mechanism, I lacked a political analysis that recognizes the inter-connectedness of oppressions.
Somewhere deep down (denied and almost killed) in the psyche ofracist white feminists the re is some perception of their real position:powe rless, spineless, and invisible. Ra the r than examine it, they run
from it. Rathe r than seek solidarity with wimmin of color, they pull
rank within the mselves. Ra ther than attempt to unde rstand our cultural and spiritual diffe rences, they insist on their own limited andnarrow views. In othe r words, they ac t out as both "white supremacists" ancl as a reactionary oppressed group ....
The fact is, white wimmin are oppressed ; they have b een "colonized " by white boys, just as third world people have ... . As a reactiona ry oppressed group, they exhibit a strange kind of political bonding or e litism, where white wimmin are the only safe or valid people
to be with ; all others are threate ning. [pp.88-89]

Davenport's language in this article is strong and angry and cancertainly evoke guilt and defensiveness in white wimmin. As thetitle of the article states, it is written as a conversation with third
world wimmin, not for the gentle instruction of white wimmin.
Davenport's essay is a passionate, angry indictment of both racismand misogyny, a statement that makes connections between oppressions.

III
Reading Cherr(e Moraga's preface to This Bridge Called My
Back, I bristled when she singled out LS three paragraphs into thearticle: "The lesbian separatist utopia? No thank you, sisters" (p.
xiii). Again, my guilt/resistance mechanism. By the time I got to"Across the Kitchen Table" by Barbara and Beverly Smith, I had
my feet firmly on the bridge built by the essays I was reading, and I
was ready to hear more. It was helpful to me that Barbara andBeverly, rather than off-handedly scapegoating LS for racism in
the wimmin's movement, provide a clear-headed and persuasive
analysis of the shortcomings of LS for feminism, especially as it relates to wimmin of color.
One charge against LS is that it is "only viably practiced by
women who have certain kinds of privilege: white-skinned privilege, class privilege" (p. 121). My response to this is that I don't
know anyone who rigidly practices LS for very long, and it's certainly true that anyone who does, lives a life deprived of privilege
and of all but the barest necessities of life, at that. For me, LS is aphilosophy that I practice to whatever extent feasible , rather thana lifestyle formula that I follow fanatically. But it is certainly white22

skinned privilege that allows me to even think in te rms of separatism, since I have no imme diate survival issue that ties me to whitemen. As Barbara points out, white wimmin are in "a critical and antagonistic position" (p. 121) in relationship to white men. Wimminof color, on the other hand, share oppression with men of color.
Much of the controversy surrounding LS comes from the huge
gap between theory and practice. Barbara Smith asserts that as aphilosophy, LS doesn't adequately explain and analyze the roots ofall oppression, nor does it take steps toward solving oppression. For
theory, there is very little written and distribute d by separatists
about LS per se. In Sinister Wisdom 18, Adrienne Rich reviews
some of the written mate rial, but most of separatist theory is anoral tradition, a se t of shared be liefs, bits and pieces from books
like GynlEcology and popular matriarchal re-creations. Most
separatists that I know believe that once most cultures were matriarchal ; that men, through the use of force and cultural manipulation, gradually conquered the matriarchies and instituted their own
re ligions and institutions; and that after subjugating the wimmin of
their society, tribe, or nation, they went about conquering otherpeoples-hence racism. 3 By this theory, patriarchy came into be ing
first, then racism. Thus by separating ourse lves from the patriarchy(men), wimmin take the first steps toward dismantling it.
But, as Audre Lorde says, " ... beyond sisterhood, is still racism"(p. 97 of This Bridge). Barbara and Beverly Smith point out that the
belief that sisterhood in and of itself will e liminate racism indicatesa dange rous lack of understanding of racism-a deficiency which
serves to further perpetuate oppression. The separatist theory has
the result of seeming to rank oppressions: if sexism came first it
deserves our first attention. The assumption th at men invented
racism often gives white wimmin an excuse for not taking responsibility for our racism, regardless of where it comes from .
The most persuasive argument that Barbara and Beve rly makeagainst LS is that it is "the politics without a practice" (p. 121 ). As
an ideology, I think this is true; LS ideology offers no concrete wayof changing the world. It is a passive politics in that it does not
move beyond resistance (like sitting on a path, obstructing the way,so that people have to go around you), and that it purports to recreate a past in some visionary future that most of us will never live
to see-if the planet still exists.
The practiceofLS is to have nothing to do with men or male institutions,4 inasmuch as that's possible to do and still survive. This can

23be and usually is a very powerful kind of action, an act of resistance.
Marilyn Frye describes it as a taking power, control. 5 Defined
another way, resisting the taboo against disconnecting from men isboundary breaking. I don't want to under-rate the significance of
this kind of boundary breaking (lesbians are also doing other important boundary breaking, such as creating a distinctly lesbian art, or
practicing magic) ; but for me boundary breaking in this sense is notenough. Desperately, urgently, I want to change the world andsave the planet.
Individually, many lesbian separatists are active in changing theworld. In my own community of the past few years, Lawrence,
Kansas, lesbian separatists are almost the only lesbians doing anything of a political nature, as lesbians. There lesbian separatists inthe past few years have established a wimmin's bookstore and a
growing lesbian newsletter. Both of these activities have attracted
non-separatist lesbians, and the newsletter in particular has
generated discussions long overdue for that community, especiallydiscussions about racism. An anti-racism eR group is meeting, and agood portion of the participants are lesbian separatists. Other
issues initiated by or involving separatists there include violenceagainst wimmin, pornography, and drug and alcohol dependency.
Lincoln, Nebraska, and Minneapolis come to mind as midwest communities in which I personally know individual lesbian separatists
speaking out, writing and organizing around lesbian issues, significantly around race, class, age, looks, and drug and alcohol
dependency.
Nevertheless, Barbara and Beverly Smith articulate some of myown dissatisfactions with lesbian separatism, primarily the myopic
tendency to oversimplify. My own LS comes from despairing of afuture in which we can all live peacefully and freely on the Earth.
Separatism as an end in itself, by gender or race, however effective
it may be for a specific struggle in a certain time, is a failure of
global vision.
It is simply not possible to separate ourselves from the problemsof the world. There is "nowhere to run" from nuclear rain or chemical wastes, and as western economies are hurtling into chaos and depression, lesbians, along with all economically marginal peoples,are finding ourselves closer and closer to the literal edge of survival. Survival politics and skills- back-to-the-Iand, understanding andusing magic, natural healing-were not invented by lesbian separatists. Indeed, there is a very strong and ancient movement of spiri24

tuality and survival led by Native Indian wimmin and me n.
What I think needs to happen with LS, as with other ideologies
within the wimmin's movement, is a re-examination and dialogue
from the p erspective of racism and other global proble ms. Not dialogue about men, but dialogue about wimmin, all wimmin, in all our
differences and similarities.
LS can grow as an ideology and provide valuable leadership to
the wimmin's movement if separatists begin to focus on wimmin in
the present, in the complexities of survival in the patriarchy. Thereis too much emphasis on ancient European matriarchies and a Wanderground future , blinding us to separatist survival tactics we canlearn from our real mothers and sisters, and to things we can learn
from differing cultures.
In Conditions: Seven, for example, Paula Cunn Allen writes
about lesbians in American Indian culture prior to European contact. Wimmin and men spent a great deal of time apart, not because
they were unequal, but because of the difference in their spiritual
powers. She describes the separations and "points of confluence"
between wimmin and men, guided by the great and unique powers
possessed by each individual.
Spheres of influence and activity in American Indian cultures werelargely divide d between the sexes: there were women-goddesses,
mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunties, shamans, healers, prophetsand daughters; and there were men-gods, fathers, uncles, shamans,
healers, diviners, brothers, sons. What went on in one group was often
unknown to the other.
There were points of confluence, of course, such as in matters pertaining to mundane survival. . . . Men and women got toge ther at certain times to perform social and ceremonial rituals, or to undertake
massive tasks such as hunts, harvests, or wars. There were certain
reciprocal tasks they performed for one another. But in terms of any
real sense of community, there were women and there were men.6

I don't mean to suggest that what Paula Cunn Allen is describing isanything like modern day lesbian separatism, but she does provide
a spiritual, survival-directed vision of a way that wimmin and men
can co-exist.
And this, it seems to me, is part of the value of LS for the wimmin's movement. It is one more option for wimmin, it is a legitimate
and powerful choice for wimmin, a choice to be respected.
The patriarchy is so enormous, so pervasive, so complex, that
there is room for and necessity within our revolution for many approaches. Lesbian separatism has a unique and liberating power for25

wimmin. There are problems that can and/or need to be worked onin lesbian-onl y groups: drug and alcohol dependency, pornography
and rape, racism among lesbians, personal healing of all kinds.
There are also many problems that lesbians should be working onthat nee d to be done in coalitions (though again, there should beroom for lesbian-only caucuses or affinity groups): wife assault,
nuclear energy, U.S . imperialism, poverty and hunger, protectionof non-human species ...
The LS uncompromising vision of a world without men is both its
weakness and its strength. On one hand, the strict exclusion of men
does not recognize the complexity of racism in the lives of wimminof color or of anti-Semitism in the lives of Jewish wimmin, and themultitude of issues and problems created by institutional racism
and anti-Semitism. But it is also true that LS consistently refuses tosacrifice wimmin in the ordering of the "isms." There has been too
much evidence of male betrayal in every important social movement in america, from abolition to ecology to gay rights, forwimmin to expect anyone but wimmin to fight the patriarchy.
The greatest strength that LS brings to the wimmin's movement,
and the reason that I still identify as a lesbian separatist, is therecognition and articulation that for thousands of years, indeed in
all of recorded history, men all over the world have been waging
war against wimmin. In the west this war has taken the form ofwitch burnings; random violence; the massive anti-female propaganda of the church, madison avenue, pornography, "art" and enforced heterosexuality. For all its erasures and shortcomings, thevalue of Mary Daly's GynlEcology is the evidence of world-wide
patriarchy and the atrocities committed against wimmin by men of
every race and nationality.
LS will grow when separatists refuse to allow the ideology tofocus on narrow, rigid issues such as what lesbian mothers should
do with their male children, or the biological determinism of themutant theory. LS is not a rigid set of rules. For me, LS is an approach to understanding and fighting my oppression. As I gain adeeper understanding of my own oppression as a lesbian, of theway in which all oppressions are connected (including the rape of
the planet), I must stretch my mind and my politics to include those"isms" which are not directly part of my personal experience. In
this way, LS is the best means for me to work toward my vision.

IV
As I examine my own racism and discuss racism with other white26

wimmin, I have found that my greatest anxiety is the fear of digging
into my own past and sharing it with others. Looking back throughmy journal, remembering conversations, I find that I've had a chipon my shoulder, that I've believed my story was unique, that noother white womon has experienced anything so devastating as
being separated from her child. Until I recognized that this was th e
source of my fear and pain, I unconsciously resented anyone who
hadn't suffered the same experience. I react the same way to discussions about class: I resent wimmin who have had more privilege
than me, and I don't want to hear their stories or reveal my own.
While white wimmin together need to talk about changing our
racist patterns and beliefs, there is much we can learn about our
racism by listening to wimmin of color. More than anything else inmany years, This Bridge Called My Back has helped me move. It is abook full of hope, full of pain, full of celebration, full of good, clear
thinking. I think about the wimmin in this book, wimmin sharing
the joy and terror in their lives, and I think about my own life,
about my own scars. I remember the lessons of my childhood, mymother's ambivalent but sincere belief that racism was wrong inspite of the contradictions she lived; and the bridge I've longed tocross, the bridge between fighting racism and fighting misogyny:
two commitments in my life, one made years ago, the tasks forgotten; the other, more recent, a glorious obsession becoming stagnant.
I think of a poem by Chrystos, "Ceremony for Completing a
Poetry Reading":
Within this basket is something you have been looking for
all of your life
Come take it
Take as much as you want
I give you seeds of a new way
I give you the moon shining on a fire of singing women
I give you the sound of our feet dancing
I give you the sound of our thoughts flying
I give you the sound of peace
moving into our faces & sitting down ...
[pp. 191-92 of This Bridge]

And other gifts: the gifts of listening to one another; of sharing ourstories; of recognizing our differences and our similarities; of intuiting, thinking, analyzing; of constructive criticism. The reciprocityof these gifts will enable us to forge a vision together, and then to
make that vision real in the world.

27

NOTES
1. Persephone Press, Watertown, Mass. , 1981; all further references internal.
2. Ano ther stereotype that some white feminists hold is that the politics of wimminof color are male identified, that wimmin of color give their first loyalty to men ofcolor an d ultimate ly to the patriarchy. This makes it easy for white wimmin not to seriously consider the conce rns and experiences of wimmin of color, and it relieves thegui lt.
3. In some instances, conquering invaders imposed patriarchal institutions on matriarchal or matrilineal groups, most notably the white Europeans on the American
Indians.
4. In most discussions I have had with non-LS white wimmin, men are always thecrux of the controversy. Resistance that arises at th e suggestion of separating frommen, even among lesbians who practice that separation in their lives, is always
frustrating and prevents any useful dialogue on the subject.
S. Marilyn Frye, "Some Reflections on Separatism and Power" (East Lansing,Mich. , Tea Rose Press), 1977.
6. Paula Gunn Allen, "Lesbians in American Indian Cultures," Conditions: Seven,
1981 , p. 79.

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28

Lois Anne Addison

Separatism RevisitedI
I started calling myself a "separatist" in late 1970/early 1971. I
did not actually write the words "I no longer consider myself aseparatist" until about a month ago. When I wrote that sentence I
had great difficulty in getting my fingers to hit the right typewriter
keys. I jumped up and down and walked from one room to another.
I did not have a clear idea about why I had finally come to that decision until a few weeks later when I sat down and started writing
this response to Rich's Notes for a Magazine ("What Does Separatism Mean?" in SW # 18, Fall 1981).
In addition to Rich's piece I have recently read in The Lesbian
Inciter #8 (April 1982) "The Evolution of Lesbian Separatist Consciousness" by Sidney Spinster. Spinster's piece stirred many things
in me-especially because it was the very first time in all theseyears that I have seen a description/discussion of a separatist paper
called Spectre that I and my then-lover put out for about a year in'71-'72. These two articles helped me to focus my thoughts and discipline myself into thinking things through.
I had a difficult time with Rich's Notes. She asks what separatismhas meant in "our movement." Whose movement? What movement? A serious answer would require a detailed description of all
separatist positions. This would be difficult since many separatist
discussions were "for separatist eyes only." Also many separatists
have never written anything. And how do you document influence?
What has been the theory? I don't think there has ever been "a"theory. How many women lived the theory in practice? Who isever to tell? Who gets to say "yes, she did" ... "no, she may claim tohave lived it, but she didn't"? Why is it important to know? We allknow that it has never been a mass movement. There doesn' t seemto be a definition that all separatists agree on. Is there a commonly
accepted definition of lesbian/feminist?
The questions seem distant-away from the reality of separatism
as an activity. Rich herself seems to have problems with the originalquestions, for at the end she writes: "I find myself wondering if perhaps the real question at issue is not separatism itself but how and29

when and with what kinds of conscious identity it is practiced, andto what degree any act of separation is more than an act of withdrawing from difference with whose pain we can choose not toengage" (p. 90) .
This reformulation doesn't help me much. I do not understandwhat she has in mind by "kinds of conscious identity" and I strongly
disagree with her assumption that built into every act of separation
is an act of withdrawing from pain.
Separating from males was simply the easiest act of my life. Differences that we choose not to deal with can be many things
besides painful . . . for instance they can be a source of frustration-a waste of time to try to sort out. They can be a distraction.
When I first called myself a separatist in 1970, there was no great
body of writing . . . no established ideology. I remember the old
Iowa City paper-Ain't I a Woman. I remember feeling strengthfrom the things they described. I don't even remember how concretely they talked about separatism. We made contacts with other"separating" lesbians through writing Spectre. We met a groupcalled "Those Women" who were later to become the Furiescollective. Very quickly we discovered that we had big differences. Separation started very early between separatists themselves.
I called myself a separatist because I was "separating" likecrazy -no working with males . .. straight or gay-nor withstraight women -nor with lesbians who related to males ... or to
straight women, etc. (You are probably laughing by now.) It wasn't
ideology. It was activity! In becoming a separatist I made enormously powerful and energy-giving decisions. I not only broke withmales-I basically broke with my whole former life connections. I
WANTED TO DO IT. It was not imposed from outside or from onhigh and it was not done for the sake of being "pure." It was done in
the process of living and fighting. I do not regret those separations.
I have not tried to remake any of them.
During those years, I would get very excited when I heard aboutor from other separatists. For all of us, I guess, that jubilation nevermanaged to last very long. It always seemed that we had seriously
different values, attitudes, priorities, etc. However, I would stillinsist on calling myself a separatist. We stopped writing Spectre.
We tried a small collective. That failed. We kept going ... appearing/disappearing . .. sending short letters here and there-identifying ourselves as RED DYKES ... trying to establish connections.
We never were successful and the reasons are numerous.
30

Getting back to Rich-my own experience of those years taughtme that there is nothing that you can assume to be true -nothingthat you can really specifically know in advance when someone
calls herself a separatist. I don't think there are any specific beliefs
or actions that all separatists meaningfully share. However, what I
have noticed is that as the published writing by lesbians who callthemselves separatists grows, there has developed a kind of clusterof issues/topics that seem to get discussed most frequently. Amongthese are:I. spirituality/goddess
2. matriarchy/amazons
3. parthenogenesis
4. genetic inferiority of males
5. world without males
6. primacy of sexism/heterosexism in the list of oppressions
7. self-sufficient lesbian separatist colonies.
Now when I first started writing this, I wrote a reaction to eachof the above topics. I was frequently snotty. I seem to have a position at odds with the usual lesbian separatist discussion or attitude.
What I was thinking at that time was that I was no longer a lesbian
separatist because my view or reactions to these topics was so very
different from some vague consensus.
Spinster's historical presentation helped me see differences between the '70s separatists and the mid- '70-to-now separatist discussions. When I became a separatist, the main question that we asked
had to do with who you would work with ... a "separating" kind ofquestion. We were trying to gain that separate space ... a space
where we could do our work. What our work was-what concerns-what would get done in that space that separation would
provide was a complete unknown. What I experience as "separatism" these days seems to be the answer to that question. Seeing
things this way has helped me understand the last twelve years of
my life better. I was a separatist because I fought for and gainedthat space. I am no longer a "separatist" because I am not interested
in what has been planted and is nurtured in that space. It is not because I don't have the right answers. It is not really because I am on
one side of the argument and they are on the other. I simply don't
want to be talking about those issues-let alone spend time andenergy taking sides. I have left "separatism" as I left the maledominated left years before - because staying was a distraction. I
had/have other things I need to be doing before I die.
31

IIThis seems to break into two parts naturally. For twelve years
now I have jumbled together a lot of things and called them"separatism." It has taken me a long time to understand that and tounravel the knotted-up threads. 1970 was an incredibly importanttime for me-it was the beginning of a radically different life. I
have those kinds of feelings about right now. There are lots of similarities-feeling unclear, unknowing of where things will lead, thelack of ideology or a model. Both then and now I feel alienated notjust from this society, but from the people with whom I am supposed to have a lot in common. The impetus for movement now asthen is very intense feelings and beliefs and a pressing need to find
new ways to work and struggle and live.
Some things are different. I am much stronger now. My years as
my kind of separatist gave me the space to make important changes
in my life-how I relate to the world, and others. I am more intouch with my feelings and able to express them. That does have its
costs. I am a very angry person. Those years of challenging andbeing challenged helped me become more honest and gutsy. It is
not that I have learned to be fearless , rather I have learned to beafraid and then push myself through that fear-to not be paralyzed
by it.
There are some things that I can say to give an idea about where
I am. After all, if it is so clear to me that I have little interest in the
topics that seem to be most frequently discussed by lesbians callingthemselves separatists, and I am not, in addition, involved or interested in creating a "lesbian" culture-what the hell am I wanting totalk about? The following is a sort of simple list of some of the
topics/issues that I want to be focusing on:
1. the ongoing discussions of racism
2. the implications of embracing ethnic identities
3. family relationships / family and the state / relationships ofobligation
4. new kinds of social relationships-not based on blood or guilt
5. different ways of describing and analyzing "class" differences
6. role of the US government, corporations, unions, and people
in exploiting the rest of the world
7. my own involvement in that exploitation and my relationshipto struggles in other countries
8. abuse of kids in this society
9. recognition of my advantages and my role as an oppressor

3210. the closet as security
11. various ways that I/others might make their resistance not
only known but felt
12. oppressed groups and the idea of "my fair share of the American pie"
13. coalition politics
14. non-mass movements / small autonomous groups / novanguards
15. how to relate to the "politics of the '80s" that I hear so muchabout
16. anger / hostility ; directness / indirectness; politeness /manipulation
17. evaluating activity in terms of its "effect" on others
18. redefining what, in fact, counts as "activity"
I am struck, as I type this that I am not listing specific lesbian or
women's issues. That is not because I am not interested-it is because they are the basic assumptions of my life and of my approachto problems. In an early Spectre we wrote something like . . . "lesbian oppression is always having to talk about lesbianism and nothing else." My lesbianism and what I feel is its political significance isjust there . .. and it is from that vantage point that I need to begin
to put many things together in a more connected way.
I want to talk about all the above topics in very experiential andnot abstract terms. I want to avoid the jargon of the Left (which I
cannot stand to listen to) but I also want to avoid what I feel is thedeveloping jargon of the lesbian writings and analysis that I havebeen reading. Just as the Marxist notion of "class" and a wholebunch of other terms are too narrow to really understand or explain
our reality, so the use of the term "patriarchy" and other similarphrases is not very enlightening. If our descriptions of the realities-the relationships of this world-are ridiculously simple anduninformative, certainly our analysis and our actions chosen on thebasis of that analysis will be doomed. The purpose of analysis andcriticism is not to distort but rather to describe so that we canbetter understand and act. I want to write and do write as a person
in struggle.
If the above list gives an idea as to topics-what about activities?
WHAT CAN I DO? is a haunting, all too frequently paralyzingquestion for a lot of us. It is re al important to me that I begin tofigure out a variety of ways of living out active resistance to thissociety.

33

I have a limited imagination and so, here for now, is my fumbling
start:
1. Obviously it comes to mind that I want to write about these different topics. In 1970 I thought that writing was a way to change
things-change people. I don't think Spectre had much effect onanyone. However, I can raise issues that I feel are important, andwriting helps me work through things and get clearer. It is also a
way of bridging some of the isolation that I feel .. . a way of reaching out.
2. When I think of writing, I think of doing another paper like
Spectre. It seems that most lesbian papers/journals are basically "literary" efforts. Some are a sort of "news of the month in review" or aseries of disconnected articles. I cannot expect anyone to publish
more than one of my pieces per issue. Doing my own paper would
provide the space to discuss a variety of issues, to try to develop a
coherent analysis to tie this variety together, and to develop a
strategy for action.
3. Study groups. There are specific things that I want to learn
about-read, share, have intense discussions and even arguments
about. The danger of a study group is that it can become distant, academic and boring-not vital.
4. Small autonomous groups. That is one of my goals-to findpeople with whom I can share my life and work.
5. Guerrilla theatre/agitation/encounters: small groups that workout activities that offer some alternative to the "let's have a march"approach to life in these United States.
6. Guerrilla bands ... small groups that would make our resistance and insurgence felt. The image of the "Shirley Temple gang"from June Arnold's Sister Gin comes to mind and brings a smile.
There have to be more and varied things. I am not one for conferences or demonstrations. I need to be finding other ways to fight. I
don't think the old ones have been very productive or successful.
As I said before, I have a limited imagination.
For me this is a new beginning. I would like dialogue, ideas, suggestions, criticisms-public or private. I even went to the post
office yesterday and got a mailbox-always a marker for trying
again. You can write me at:Lois AddisonBox 2745
Chapel Hill, NC 27514

34

Ann Allen Shockley

Red Jordan Arobateau
A Different Kind of Black Lesbian Writer
It was a cool, beautiful San Francisco day in September when
Margaret Cruikshank did me a great kindness by driving me to Oakland to meet Red Jordan Arobateau. I had long wanted to meet thewriter, after being introduced to he r work in Judy Grahn's True to -Life Adventure Stories, Vol. 1.
Her story, "Susie Q" (spelled Suzie Q in th e episode), had left an
impression on me, stirring questions which sought answers. My
main problem was with her racial identity. Was she black? The
story spoke of blackness as only a black woman could know it, written in the singular vernacular of black street language . The experiences of Suzie Q, a whimsical, vacillating black lesbian prostitute,
who moves with insight and foresight in the murky subculture of
the streets, were indeed a rarity to black lesbian writing.
This type of black female character, lesbian or hete rosexual, hasbeen largely ignored or glossed over in the whole of Afro-American
literature by black female writers. Various reasons can be surmised
for the neglect. Many Afro-American women who write, exist in an
academic environment. Here, they are riveted in the isolated, lofty
tower of scholarship, research, and pedagogy. The literary black
female writers usually focus on allegorical symbolisms, women in
search of a quest, or the ennobling of black women. Other writers
are involved in political rhetoric, or self-serving pursuits.
The experiences and lifestyles of most black women writers havebeen far removed from the social, economic, and political milieu ofthe subterranean ghetto. The streets are unknown to them, except
as a place to fear at night, or to get from one end of town to another.
Ho's, pimps, drug dealers, dope addicts, and boosters are invisible
to their lives and unimportant to their writing.
Red Jordan Arobateau's Suzie Q brought a new protagonist to
black lesbian fiction, springing to life the black lesbian street
woman in all her hard glaring reality. The story, too, places theblack prostitute in the personalized role of being human, rather
than portrayed as a piece of meat to be exploited in pornography,
or in such as the Iceberg Slim pimp stories.
Copyright ©Ann Allen Shockley, 1982

35

Despite this, when I asked around about the author, few people
knew of her or had read her work. None whom I contacted could
tell me the racial origin of the woman with the strange name. Fortunately, when in San Francisco, I got her telephone number fromthe owners of the Old Wives' Tales Bookstore, where I purchased
her self-published novel, The Bars Across Heaven (1975).
After we met, the author shared another publication with me,
her sole remaining copy of Five Stories (1977). The book had a tattered green, heavily stapled paper cover, which held together 235
numbered typewritten pages produced by Red Jordan Press. From
this, Suzie Q emerged for Judy Grahn's collection.
All but one of the five stories on the cover were scratched out.
The book contained only three: "Ladies AuxilIary of the Left,""Alexander D'Oro 1944- To Infinity," and, of course, "Suzie Q."
With the exception of Suzie Q, the stories are autobiographical.
The longest, "Alexander D 'Oro 1944- To Infinity," is a first-person
narrative by June "Flip" Jordan, which tells of her high -school
friend, Robert "Bobbie" Blake Goldberg, alias Alexander D 'Oro,their circle of friends, lovers, and what it was like to grow up poor,
black, and gay. Daring to be different, they tried to ease their painful loneliness, sharpened by societal repressions, by "staying drunkor fucked up on pills. " They had no role models, and few ventured
to help them. Gays had not yet developed a "positive culture of self
help." It is a classic rough-hewn documentation of young, black gay
life on the South Side of Chicago during the liberal-scaring fifties.
The tongue-in-cheek "Ladies Auxiliary of the Left" follows Red
to San Francisco and the women's liberation movement. The atypical style of the author, combined with the improvised idioms of
black street jive rap, replete with their sound spellings, weave thestories together in a believable pattern.
When Margaret Cruikshank deposited me at Red Jordan Arobateau's small, modest house, half-hidden by gnarled trees andbushes, a smiling woman greeted me at the door. Red had warnedme over the telephone that she "looked white." She did look whiteor possibly Latina, with her fair skin and "white folks straight hair."
She was dressed in a pair of faded jeans, a plaid blue flannel shirt,
and boots.
I followed her into a front room almost devoid of furniture , savefor three old vertical files , a small table, and three hard chairs. We
sat down opposite each other. I noticed that she smiles easily andoften. She appeared relaxed, slouched in the chair. She has a warm
earthiness about her. As I began my questions, I discerned that she
36likes to talk. Information and discoveries sprang forth, allaying mycuriosity.
The thirty-seven-year-old author was a product of a mixed marriage, which had a profound effect on her life and writing. Her
father was born in Honduras, and came to live in Chicago, where
there were few Spanish-speaking people . He married a lightskinned black woman with "tight hair," which, when straightened,
made her, too, look white. Red resembles the black side of thefamily, except for inheriting her father's "straight hair." Hair has
always been a pinnacle of black conversation, and throughout thetalking, Red frequently refe rred to her "straight hair."
She described her family life as having been "terrible," filledwith emotional stress. An only child, she was closer to her father
than mother. Her father was "something out of this world," and she
loved him dearly. When her father left home, she went with him.
She never saw her mother again after the age of seventeen.
Living with her father, she led an independent life. An averagehigh-school student, she went to college for a year, but finding it abig "social affair," dropped out. Her grandmother and mother werecollege graduates. There is unmistakable pride in her disclosure.
To look white, but think and feel black, has caused lifelong psychological and social problems for her. Particularly around white
women who take her for white. Unlike Michelle Cliff, she has
never passed for white. To cope with her emotional frustrations,she has joined the Mongrels, a group of women born of mixed heritage. The organization serves as a refuge for the women who meet,
discuss, and relate to each other. She has had both white and black
lovers. Her "lady" now is black.
She devised her name by putting an "A" in front of Robateau.
Jordan was her black grandmother's name, which to her was racial
and biblical. Fifteen years ago, she had a hairdresser as a love r,
who colored her hair red. She liked it, for Red denotes passion. She
readily categorizes herself as a "passionate person." Eroticism dominates her themes.
At the age of fifteeen, she was browsing through books on a drugstore rack and came across a lesbian novel. Perusing the pages, sheread about a woman "running her hands over another woman's
breast." The words electrified her. Putting the book down, she said
to herself: "This is what I am!" Even before, she had crushes on her
female teachers, and a couple of male ones, whom she found out
were gay. As a child, she knew that she was different.
The gay scene in Chicago, as described in "Alexander D'Oro
37

1944-To Infinity," was depressing in her time. Gays were harassedby Mayor Daley's police force. It was difficult to find women likeherself, and she was lonely without a lover. Eventually she readabout the flower people's peace and love offerings in San Francisco,and of the gay life. In 1967, she left Chicago to go where flowers ofpeace and love were supposed to bloom.
There, to support herself through the years, she held almost "anytype of job." She has been a cook, cleaning woman, dishwasher, waitress, and caretaker for disabled people. Once, she landed a goodjob selling credit cards over the telephone. With the commissions,she bought two houses. Subsequently, she sold the houses andbought the one in which she lives. Now she wants to move. The
neighbors are noisy. Trash strews their yards.
A black cat stalked majestically in, eyed me inquisitively, thenjumped up in her mistress's lap. "This is Mary," Red smiled. "Do you
like cats?"
Not having been around cats, I couldn't say, although I have anatural tendency to like all animals. I skirted the question with acomment: "I have two dogs."
Placing Mary back down on the floor, she laughed. "I have
twelve cats and two dogs!"
She began to write when she was thirteen years old. Poetry,short stories, and long rambling things. Getting up, she crossed overto the file cabinets. "Look," she said, pulling out the drawers, "thisis all the stuff I've been writing for years."
The drawers bulge with completed and uncompleted works. I
thought: Whee-e-e! She must hold the world's record for being themost prolific unpublished black lesbian author in the country!
Proudly, she announces that she has written thirty-seven novels on
both gay and straight themes. Quickly she reads out the names ofher books: Ash Can Betty, Garbage Can Sally, Flea Market Molly,
Electroshock Doctor, White Girl, and Boggie Nights, Party Lights.
Titles suggestive of pulp novels.
She writes in her bedroom and can "bat out a novel in a month."
When finished, she xeroxes five copies, binds the typed pages withpaper covers, and hand-staples them.
The Bars Across Heaven has a more professional appearance,with a slick printed cover and offset type. This is a book for which
she is known and has been reviewed. It continues the life experiences of Flip Jordan on the ghetto streets of Oakland. Flip lives on
welfare checks, food stamps, and penny ante rip-offs. She hobnobs
38with "ho's" whom she pays for their services. Flip desperately
searches for the woman of her dreams and money, but in reality all
she wants is to find peace, joy, and love.
About the characters in her book, Red says : "I've lived in someway experiences in the books. I've been around it. I've seen it personally. "In encountering the street life, she has tried drugs, which ended
when she was hospitalized. But through all of the sordidness, she
kept herself "clean," remembering the middle-class upbringing
which served as a buffer.
She has been trying to get published in the last twenty years withno success. She attributes this to a "spiritual thing. " God isn't readyfor her to get published yet. She realizes that she needs an editor tohelp refine her work. Nevertheless, she continues to write, for writing brings to life her experiences, life, and e nergy, and the people
whom she meets to capture on paper.
She is on unemployment compensation. Jokingly, she calls herself"retired." After all, she points out, look at all the work gone into her
writing through the years. Some people retire after twenty years,
don't they? All she requires is enough to feed her cats and dogs.
Her life has altered dramatically since the death of her father
nine years ago. She had been an atheist most of her life, but when
her father died she became a christian, as he had been. Her new
religious zealousness has turned some people off from her. There
are those who are alarmed by the christian fundamentalist waves
sweeping the country, fearful of the political effects on their lifestyles, ideas, and personal freedom. But her religious beliefs are
becoming part of her writing, particularly her call-and-response
poetry.o She has reconciled her lesbianism with her christianity,and can even be witty about it. She said, "I prayed to Jesus: You cantake the lesbian from me, but please, just don't make me straight! "Red is a member of the Metropolitan Community Church, which
was founded for christian gays and lesbians to worship freely andwithout hostility. Tightening her gaze on me, she inquired if I went
to church. I responded negatively. She quickly asked if I had evergone to church. I nodded yes, thinking there we re few black
people of my generation who hadn't attended church or been
made to go sometime in life. Immediately, I was invited to Sunday
services with her. I declined because of another engagement, but
felt it would have been interesting to see her in the mansion of her
Lord.
·Call-and-response originated in Africa. It is a pre ach e r-to-congregation t ype song.

39

Red Jordan Arobateau

Nobody's People"Mirror, mirror on the wall,whose the fairest of them all?""That's an interesting accent you have, are you from the South?"
Asked the man.
She looked into space, tan face cold ; profile of keen features.
He r first impulse was to slap him, but stayed cool.
"Where do you come from? " The man persisted. He was white.
"My Mommas wound." She replied with vennom.
"Where was that?""I can't remember, when she dropped me I wasn't thinking about
what state it was, I was too busy looking around me wondering'what's it gonna be like? '""What race are you? If you don't mind me asking."
This question has persued me since before I learned how to
talk-in infrences, facial expressions of curious people who saw me.
I am one drop black.
Raised black. This is the killer-your culture. What is home to aperson.
By physical appearance one could easily say I'm white mixed
with Native American. Nose & high cheek bones like an Indian. But
I have nothing in common with that culture-envision themsitting around talking about things I don't know- Teepees, and thewilderness. Deer hunting.
& I'm a nigger to my heart.
This is what it bes like.
On my birth cirtificut are two words; EGRO and SPANISH under
Race for my mother & father, respectivily. My mother was yellow,& dad a latin from South America. I resemble a black maybe to ananthropoligist-faint traces in my face that must be studied to beseen, or recognized on instinct in an instent.
Thru grammar school & high school, misunderstanding blacks
taunted me; made fun of me being so light. "Oh her nose is so big."40

"Oh, she's got a pale face. OOOWEE! 1 wouldn't want to be thatpale!" Whites avoided me-once they heard the rummor ; "she's
part black." Or, "she associates with the Coloreds." & not really oneof them.
Age 9, 10, 1 wondered why white girls shunned me. When 1 got
older branching out from my Afro-American neighborhood andwent into the larger world, when mixing with whites-inadvertently 'passing,' finally the question would spill out of their lips- "whatnationality are you? " They wanted to justify the strange cast to myskin-not quite white; other impercievable characteristics. 1 told
them I had Negro blood. They didn't like me too well afte r that.
I think back to age 13, the time my father took me aside & toldme: "You can be anything you want to be!" But 1 didn't want to be
anything! I wanted to be like mother & her family-Colored.
When he first told me this, it put words to my fears- "you can beanything. " Freedom frightened me. 'I'd rather be something! ' A
lable has confort.
So what am I? White? Black? Latin? Mixed?
There's always been people like me.-Quadroons. All down thru
hers tory since my forebarers from Africa mated with those, Caucasian.
Not black, but black. This is why 1 can't be among my p€ople inthe same way as others. This is how 1 was raised-Colored; it is myhome, and when too long gone, am hongry for my roots!
It is a passionate and angry thing, generating fierce emotions.
Making me want to kick ass, but I won't.
A round table in a tavern; black women seated. A dark skinned
woman walks in, boougiouse ; dressed to her teeth; she greets thoseat the table giving all the soul-hand shake, except for the one paleskin person. With her, the black woman switches up and shakes
hands like white folks do. This point was not missed on the sister.
Later, I've forgotten the incident, am talking to an Asian woman
when Miss Thang comes back over & speeks-aloof, her voice froma cool height like an inquisitor. "I been wanting to ask you something .. 1 heard you were black! This woman was talking about you.
She said 'she's black,' and 1 was suprised.""People are talking about me? Who? What's her name!""That's not important! " She drew back a little, a nasty smile
played in her expression: "I mean, you don't look black, and you
41

don't act black. To me, black is somebody who looks and acts
black!"
The woman was silent, she'd been thru it before.
What an effort to put on the trappings of being black-if you
don't possess the m already-to curl her naturaly straight hair into
an 'fro ; to pe rfect black english when she was raised in a home of'proper speeking.'
The cold voice continued, "You know I see your lips, your nose . .
your hair!" Words dripping like acid. "How much black are you?
One sixteenth? One 32nd?""One half. "The Asian sister intrupted, "Why are you comming on to her soangry?"The black woman yelled, "I just want to know! Somebody say's
the lady's black! I want to know is she? I couldn't tell! " She cried,
defensivly. "She doesn 't act black! She doesn 't look black! She
doesn't talk black! "Insult after insult rolled out of her mouth; the black woman wasangry, trembling with rage. The light complected woman only sat
back, allowing the woman to convict herself.-She was tired of explaining. She'd been thru this scene a million times before. And
made enough explinations to last her a lifetime. People wanting tomess with her just to get rid of their own frustrations.
"She hates white people." Said the Asian lady afterwords.
"She does that to everybody. I think it's for her ego. She has to.""She acts like Miss It."
"Just ignore her. I know her. I'm gonna make her appologize.""She want to act shitty, I can too.""Ignore her, she's drunk.""Bitch is drunk. I don't get drunk. And I don't trust nobody."''I'll make her appologize." The Asian woman stated in a firm
voice, eyes squinted in anger.
Around them, the sea of gay life was in full swing.
Many bars are a mixture of women & men, gay & straight, & allraces. In them are danger trips with hostile men. And physical violence.
This particular bar, WOMANTIME was exclusively
women-Middle class!bougiouse. But women wounded each otherjust as deeply in the privacy of that smokey club with their words-glares of their eyes, knife edge like the karatee back hand42chop-without knives. Hurt, not by lunging across the room fists
flying, but the more advanced physhological warfare, of the emotions. Acid on an intellectual level.
And subtely they turned a persons color against th em and used itfor hate.
She thought: 'I have been confronted hundreds of times; and thisis how it's always been-hostile.'
She was not in gram mer school anymore; "I stop worrying about
them so much and worry about me ."In adult life, I spend 90% of my social life aft er dark, in clubs orpartys. Lighting does strange things to skin complexion. It canmake Latino's & fair blacks look like whitefolks.
A yellow nigger like an Aryan with a tan.
'Those black women in the bars: she thought; 'they hate my guts
because they don't know what I am. Some have heard lies aboutme, some know the truth, but they don 't know who I am.'
Scenes such as these bring a lot of paranoia.
Here I am calling people 'Sister & Brother: and not even looking
like a sister or brother myself.
A mass of straight hair down to my sholders.
What race am I?
If I stay in the sun all summer and under a sunlamp by winter myskin is a shade darker. I could perminate my hair into an Afro tolook black, and fit in ; but to mee that's a lie. In the past it's been ahardship ;- that's what people are made of, hardship.
I've started believeing in myself, so I can be fre e .
Got to be what I feel.
New York City
A white woman asks me ; "What Nationality are you? Basque? ""Basque? ""It's in the Southern part of France.""No,""Italian? ""No, guess again.""You must have an Indian grandparent."
Then she told her.
" OH!" Drawing back. "Well! You don't look like it! " Her white43

face flushes re d. Suddenly the relationship between them haschanged. The power balance must be readjusted. u ~H. That musthave been difficult for you, growing up!" (A few say. "Oh, you've
had it easy!")
Or, "Excuse me! " And they walk away and avoid me like death.

In this world which literally bows down and worships anything
but God, praises people for their whiteness-or their blackness,they can't have an attitude about me! They don't know what I am.
They don 't know much about my subject.
So politely, p eople don't mention me. Prete nd I don't exist. My
prescence makes them unconfortable. I'm too allusive-they can't
pin me down.
Techinically I'm a freek-so p eople avoid me, or, race talk when
I come around.
I am the leper Jesus talked about.
I am the one who the world casts out.
The one they said to Jesus- 'why are you associating with her?'Whites ask another white- "Why do you talk to her? she's notwhite!"
Blacks hiss at blacks. 'leave that honkey alone!'
I am that one.
The one in question.
When we are different to the mainstream, the majority points
the finger of scorn-and informs us we are lepers. We havethe disease called, 'you-don't-belong-to-my-people.'
They put lepers in a prison, because we are the wrong color.
So lepers band together and be strong.
I am a leper with no one to join with.
An outcast from the outcasts. Outcast and outcast again.
There are no lepers in Jesus Christ.
Case in point :Afro American's-the lepers of AmeriKKKa. Black people whoare decendent from Africa, mixed with white, Indian, Asian &other.
Visable Characteristics:
Dark complexion
44Kinky hair
Thick lips & nose
Invisable Characteristics
Soul
Black Power & Black PrideThis has been a tremendous up lift to Afro Americans; comming
together as a race beging to love itself. And to feed itself inspiration. To be proud of it's characteristics both visable & invisable,
and to build an economic support system for it's own.
Black Power & Black Pride.
It took the despised word- 'black' the word our parents & grandparents only wispered-the word that meant stigma; misfortune,
and raised the word up in an uplifted fist. Took the word 'black'and made it a Crown. Black is beautiful! Glory filtering down theladder from slavery in pride of our roots, into the future of blackchildren.
Black is Beautiful made people come toge ther and take care ofbusiness.
Afro Americans working in cooperation.
It was a breakthru. But, as any illusion, including white supremacy, it had it's flaws. Some became obbsessed to the point that Blackis Beautiful became synonmous with Hate Whites. With Hate anything not Black.
My skin is not black.
These genes I carry in my body, that can show up in African-Trait
offspring; one drop of black blood and a history of growingup-Colored, is not enough. It is a tenuous hold on blackness.
So, she dropped out of her Momma's wound, grew like Topsey
and went out into the highways & byways of the world, a lost Iamb.
In pain she turned from God. We who are wanderers, people
who have no places, in our troubles we search ... taking whateveramount of time we need to be healed.
She was not even sure what love was like-the voluntary kiss of
one mouth to another; a pelvic thrust accompanied by affectIOn.
Had seldom known it. That long deep reaching tongue between 2
people. The calling by a pet name . The days spent together in familiarity of a married couple. The voluntary cumming together in oral

45

love of each others sex, without a bribe ; of alcohol, or cash. Not a
one night stand. Mostly she had known pickups, 2 week long 'affairs,' then, dialing a phone number, no answer. A handfull of dates
with flowers then, 'I'm sorry, but ... ' or, 'I've got something to tell
you ... 'The empty bed at night.
She didn't know how to be with people.
Didn't know how to belong in the human race in general.- Was
selfconscious, shy, paranoid .. I mean, wouldn't you be? Being alabeless entity? A misunderstood stranger? A mixed so & so, that
nobody knows your name? She had a lot of frustration which cameout in rage. Cussing, putting her fist thru doors. Wouldn't believe
after raising so much hell what she really wanted was peace.
She was proud. Was arrogant. She wore mens suits.
She had knocked but hadn't found a door.
The world; they lost a lot by not knowing her.
Los Angeles California:
My lover, a white woman says: "You're a black woman."
Chicago Illinois:
My psychiatrist informs me; "You are white." (He also tells me
it's wrong to be a lesbian. He is white. And not homosexual. This isbrainwashing.)
San Francisco California
Leaving a bar one night talking two 3 black sisters just met them:"Pardon me, can I ask you a question? - Don't take offence, butwhat race are you?""Part black," she says; & is thinking, 'here goes the whole thing
again.'"No, I don't believe it." Says the woman sitting next to her.
"Part black." She states again in a low voice.
"Nobody is part black.""Look at her hair. " someone says. "Look." Reaching out, fingering
her straight fine hair with nare' a curl. But she grabs the finger andpoints it back at the woman-who is a yellow bitch with soft, semicurly hair. "LOOK AT YO' HAIR! " She sez back-at-her. "Well ... "Sez the yellow gal, making a face.
"No such thing as half black. If you're part black you all black."
The first sister declares.
"Multi-race."46

"Well ... " The sister says, begrudgingly ; resigning herself to thefacts; "one drop of black, you're black. " Hating to acknowledg ethat this white-appearing stranger is of the same race as she.
As if this 'white person' could be one of th e m.
This hated white looking type is actually one of their own.
This person can be white and can be black simotaneously.
That this person can claim the privledge of being black whilestill looking white.
Star filled night.
All it does is serve to remind me again that 1 am not black, butsomething different. I am part of the Afro American family-if
they choose to take me in by the old laws of slavery, where one
drop of African blood constitutes a Negro,-and also by my experience-in my formative years, and by reutives, Colored & black.
But more often I am tollerated. Seen as different.
We who are, must forge a new identity for ourselves.
Meet a white sist'er in South Carolina.
Go home, take her to bed.
Wake up, daylight. My yellow belly on her lilly white one.
We talk. 1 mention, "I'm part black. " Hesitent. Without blinking
her big blue eyes she says;"I knew you were.""Oh. ""1 was raised in the South, remember? "The South-land of slavery, the cradle of misogany.
"You white."Black woman informs me-she herself is fair, curly not Afro hair,
but obviously black. Technically 3/4ths white. Mother Caucasian,father half Caucasian, half black.
"You white!" She yells. Hate sputters out ofher.-Or is it hurt?
In the dim lights of the car she rants: "THERE'RE 5 RACES ,BLACK WHITE, BROWN, YELLOW & RED! " She lists them on her
fair fingers; "YOU AIN'T BLACK, YOU AIN'T YELLOW, YOU AIN'T
RED , YOU WHITE!" Accusing.
"BITCH IS CONNA LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME SHE AIN'T
WHITE! ALLRICHT! YOU BLACK THEN! " she yells, taking a wild

guess.
"No. I'm not black! This skin is not black! " Says the woman
firmly, holding up her fair fair arm.

47

"I never seen no nigger with hair like that!" she says. "Yo' hairand a white girls hair are the same! You WhUe!"She screems, showing her teeth like u cornored dog. "I don't care about your grandmammy, yo' racial heritage! It's what yo' is now! You is W.H.I.T.E!"
She screems so loud her eyelids turn into slits as ajackolantern.
And I feel in my guts that terrible frustration when a free spirit
and an imovable solid exchange blows. & tightening in my chest,
walling up in cement in the region of the heart. A living entity-aheart, tissue that palpitates, can't live in cement it cracks. It needs
to bust loose!
Rejected by both white & black; she was rejected by everyone,
so found God.
Whites found she wasn't one of them.
Blacks didn't know her.
So, in the final anaylisis, it comes back to the Spirit. Maybe allthis hell on earth has been to show us the way to God-the only
escape route. I mean, I'm rejected everywhere I go in concrete,material, facts. Not black enough, not truely white, I don't hable espano!.
I love it-just get so totally rejected, so, become totally free!
Jesus wants an army of people who have alligence to no otherthing but love. -God is love.
To no other doctrin- because they all proove false.
For us to share space with no emotions of fear, hate ; just love.
We stand together in the world as at a party & rub elbows-so
accept eachother.
"The stone that has been rejected has become the cornorstone."- I can't get that phrase out of my mind.
In the Last Days they were sitting in the bar kissing & hugging
like there was no tomorrow.
The pagen dance. So many humanbeings are living a life totally
constituted by it.
They bow down to warped powers and let other people walk on
their backs while they make fanfare, waving plumes as servants
before the eunuchs; as eunechs for the master. Applauding eachother in the wrong they do.
I am Red.
A child of God.
Woman come up to her; jet black, fat & short & say's "I'm talking
to you because I like white women. "48

'She thinks I'm white!'An acquaintence: "You're black, don't be ashamed of it! "'I'm not. Just sick of having to explain myself all the time.'
By 35 she ran out of steam. 'Don't care who knows what I am.
Just gonna live on this good earth.'Today, my woman is yellow as I am, but looks black-except
under bar lights when she can pass off as a white siste r. Her hair isnaturally blond.
"Kids in school use to give me hell about that. 'Who do you think
you are? Why do you dye your hair? Isn't your natural hair color
good enough for you? Why do you have to be different, you anigger like we is! ""I got sick of telling them my hair was naturally blond. (Her eyebrows are too) Finally I just stopped. Let them think what theywant."She sat at the kitchen table. A bowl of Gumbo on th e stove.
Suddenly, she could no longer stand it! Remembered being
knocked down by hostile blacks. The taunts from yesteryear-thejeers in black taverns. She recalled a man jumping at her, knocking
her down to her knees; she remembered the rage at th e sight ofher own blood - the feeling of futility . .. remembered nearly
being killed by niggers. Asswhippings, mouth whippings. Niggers
wild-angry because they fucked up theyselves.
She ran out of the house & thru the ghetto.
Back thru the neighborhood, the byways of my people-themembers of this dis-placed African race, in AmeriKKKa. The world
has ripped love from us, clamped red hearts in iron jaws of a garbage disposal of racial laws & color barriers & discrimination. ''I'M
ANGRY! SO ANGRY! BECAUSE I AM A MINORITY!
"TOO LONG BEEN TREATED LIKE A NOBODY! GODDAMN IT'"She raced up to the first black she saw- by a barbeque shop.
'TM NOT BLACK! " She yelled. Thrusting a pale arm out in front of
the mans face she hollored; "MY SKI IS NOT BLACK! NOT BROWN!
MY FEATURES AIN'T NEGROID. I'M NOT BLACK, SO WHAT AM I?
TELL ME WHAT I AM!!!!!"The man stood, looking down at her. His face was ebony-colorof the Queen of Spades.
The woman yelled; "I'M A VICTIM OF RACISM MORE THAN
ANYBODY! AT LEAST YOU'RE BLACK! I'M NEITHER ONE! " She confronted the tall man.
49

"NIGGERS IS FOREVER TALKING ABOUT 'OUR PEOPLE THIS:'OUR PEOPLE THAT: 'OUR PEOPLE HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO! '"She mimicked in a mock tone ; "I HA VE NO PEOPLE." She said. She
was ready to die. "FOR THE LONGEST TIME, I'VE HAD NOPOSITIVE IDENTITY! " A crowd of people in the barbeque houselooked at her. Startled, black, imovable. "BEFORE BLACK WAS
BEAUTIFUL, BLACKS HAD A UNITY-EVEN THO IT WAS
NEGITIVE-NIGGERS! 'HEY NIGGER! ' 'SAY NIGGER, WHAT'S
HAPPENING! ' YOU HEAR IT EVERY DAY! NOBODY CALLS ME
NIGGER! " Said she, "UNLESS THEY KNOW MY MAMMY AND MY
GRANDMAMMY!
"I'D RATHER BE SOMETHING! A LABLE! IT'S CONFORTABLE! "She stood there and sinned in the sight of heaven. Got angry atthose people staring at her in the barbeque house-did a stupid
thing ; and here she was baptized in water & in the Holy Ghost andat the very gates of heaven, she said:"OHHHWEEEE I WANT VENGENCE!! BACK AT 'EM! IT'S UGLY!
IT'S WRONG! WHAT THEy'VE SAID ABOUT ME! WHAT THEY'VE
TRIED TO DO TO ME! I WANT TO DESTROY ALL OF THEM!
"THEY LOOK AT ME AND HATE, BECAUSE OF MY WHITE FACE! "Shaking her fist at the crowd she yelled; "LOOK! BLACK SISTER
AND BROTHER, OTHER BLACKS LOOK AT YOU, YOU ARE A 'SIS, OR'BRO!-BUT THEY LOOK AT ME, AND THEY HATE. THIS IS NOTTRUE SISTERHOOD! THIS IS NOT UNITY! "She assailed them all: "OOHHWEEEEE GOD I WANT VENGENCE!
JESUS! DESTROY IT BECAUSE IT'S EVIL! RACE IS CORRUPT! THE
POWER PEOPLE GIVE TO RACE DIFFERENCE! "She whirled back to face the stoney face blackman who glared
down at her.
"I'M GOD 'S PEOPLE! THAT'S THE BLOOD I CLAIM! I DISOWN
EVERYBODY ELSE! " And she spat on the sidewalk by his feet ; herface in disgust ; a grimace, making a downward motion, shoving her
hands palm down as if pushing something ugly.
The tall black man opened his mouth ; "I am the black sheep ofAmerica. " He moaned.
"I am not responsible." He shrugged.
"I'm harmless. " He shifted his giant weight from one foot to theother.
"My father was white, my mother is Marylin Monroe." He said,
holding his hands, black side down, palms up as if to catch the rain
and walked away.
50

Next week in the bar, the bogiouse sister came up to her appologized.
'We each have our own cross to bear.' The woman thought ..
'she's appologized, but I still have to live with it.' The woman left,
but the burdon was still on her.
But as I said before, the fight is not between black and white,
woman against man, but between some people against some people.
I'm not going to break my heart in a cold white world, or loose
my mind in a black stupid one.
Racism-I live it, believe me. I live it more honey, then you canbelieve; not belonging to anybody's race. Nobody's.
My experiences are different then most of yours.
No black complexioned person has ever gone thru the uniquehell I go thru.
No white can understand the depth of it.
Only a person who claims the blood of a race they don't look like.
Weare something different.
New realization of myself & what I am-an exact defination;
Nobody's people!
But my own self!
It is predicted that eventually race polirazition will cease. As
slowly the planet becomes a huge metropolis, intermixing, in supersonic travel & economic exchange ; in 10 generations there will be
no more black, white, yellow, or red; just a range of brown totan-a lot with slant eyes.
The bible declares we are all part of each other & all of us arepart of God.
Personally I must say, I'm sick of black people. Not black rights,
or black struggle which I support; but blackness. And also tired ofwhiteness and everybody's lousey little supremacy.
So will do the best I can, will sing my guts out on this page!
I take out my pen as a weapon to slay evil social practices which
are killing us.
Currently, this is the winter of the soul. Everybody is out forthemselves-a human race, humans racing to distruction-not ahuman family.
Those words which have been said to me were a shellshock, it's
strong to think about. The shit I been thru-it's on a daily basis
every day, drip drop drip draping acid. Because we live in races
and walk in classes and unite in tribes & take up guns against the51

rest. I can never be free of it in the outside world, but must be free
on my inside!
And these words in this story, this is my slap back. This is the asskick. The payback-translated into finer energy!
My enemys & their insults ; I turn them into books.-I also makemy enemys look like fools whenever possible.
I could choose the easy way; I too could sit back confortable,
adapting the style of the master race; or tan my skin one shadedarker and perminite the strands of my hair into curls so I would
belong; one in a family of oppressed people and point the finger ofscorn. But for all who hate me,
the pen is mightier then the sword.
The stone that was rejected has become the cornorstone.
Re printed from Red Jordan Arobateau, Stones from the Dance of Life, #3 (1979)

Ruth"A witty working class perspective."
RADICAL TEACHER"A novel that reflects the women's
movement with honesty
and passion."$5.95

BIG MAMA RAG

PICTURESFROM THE

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by Ruth Geller&: other stories"Unique.
These stories
break
new
ground."NEW
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IMP PRESS' PO BOX 93' BUFFALO. NY 14213

52

Mary Lou Tornes

because you don't hassle me

because you don't hassle me
and because we both knowwhat boredom isand have been alone
and lonely
and because we have tried
to know and feel and be everything
and have choked on the ocean
trying to swallow it wholeand because you are the only woman
I have ever met
who also sold her blood for ten dollars
when she was out of money
and knows about drinking cokeand running around the block
when you're anemic
to get your blood count up high enoughfor them to take it
and because you don't put on anything
not anymore
7.16.7753

Mab Segrest

March Blizzard

For two days
wind blew snow sideways.
Night fell white, at dawn
cows loomed in gradual lighton a frozen plain.
Two days
we lived together in one roomand hauled wood shrinking from the pile.
The snow stretched on for miles.
All night we stumbled up to feed the blazeand basked in sudden heat. The cracks and pops
would filter into sleep. I shifted sides
as muscles tightened bones. The whole housecreaked and groaned.
I ate while the world froze.
Beans bubbled, cornbread hardenedon the stove. I piled fat against cold ribs
and stupor sank me deeper into dreamsthe rock sinks
the bottom
the stream
the house where nothing lasts
the childshe eats the day
and gets up empty from her tableransacks the house thenwatches behind crystal panes
night swallow the sun

54

Banked fires
smoulder and flame.
The house was frigid every other room.
Snow drifted under doors. Words froze the air.
She said the words I ne ver want to hear:
I am angry because you are not clean,
you left the kitchen in disorder.
The blizzard moves inside me,cold with anger
hot with shame.
The stove creaks and shudders
with a sudden flame.
This is the daythat winter never ends.
The spring that comes tomorrow
comes too late. I sleep uncovered,
touch the pulse of hate.

55

Sylvia Foley

I have wrapped anger

I have wrapped anger

like a tourniquet
around a wounding,stemming the flow of memories

I have worn bitterness like a flannel shirt
against freezing,covering an exposure
I have thrown exhaustion
over a crying,
quieting a useless desirein blankets

and still
I lie awake at night
stripped bare by her silenceand I break
again

56

Lynn era wford

Memorial for a Friend
There is no suicide in our time
unrelated to history . . . .
D enise Levertov,
To Stay Alive

I want to saythat as your image fades
you will sleep
like a slender blonde rootin the moist dark banksof our memory.
I want to saythat even there
you are busy drawing sense and lightfor us, as
often you drew us to see
light mix milky
in the tea, smoothits gold hands acrossthe sheets, or flood
through bottles and fatten
like pearson the tablecloth.
And I want to saythat I believed you
when you raised my hands as I drowsed
for the first time after
your death, and said
that we worried too
much - that everything
was going to bejust fine.

57

But I must ask
how fine and just it isthat the one woman
who found you
is now unable to snip
the cord of that memoryof you - strung up
in our dark cellar
like a sausage?
How just is itthat your friends - each hoping
to diffuse thatimage - picked somedetail: a footstep , the stool, our voices
rushing up
the stair
only to find the image
multiplyand divide
into private visions of your pain
far worse than any
you imagined we would see
had we glimpsed you
crazy with fear, or
crying. Instead
we saw you nod, andsmile, and seem to take
into your house the comforts
we each offered you likebread,hundredsof
loaves ofbread, stacked
up in
your room, and you
a woman starved to deathin Amerika.

58

Because we loved you
because we are used to turning to you
for sense and light
we struggled to draw
poetic sense
political lightfrom the roots of your lastdecision.
But on that day the October lightstill fell
soft and insensitiveon the angles of this house
we shared. Outside
people mailed letters, drankcoffee, turned
corners in
cars.
Inside there is still a screaming:
What of this revolution you so restlessly
hungered for, withthe rest of us? What ofrevolution that is not only a pressing
into new ground, but also
a turning, over
and around,a turning, sometimes
sleepless andcrying - but turningin each other's arms?
Shall that too sleep deep
within the dark banksof our memory?

59

laura ragin justiceb alb sfour years of posturing
acting as if i love myself
because i ought tobecause someone has to and it might as well be me
because if i donot
no one willfour years alone
confined solitary in this immediate world
it just is not as simple as classes papers tests and grades
it just is that there is this incongruity
it just is the interpretation/perception of it allclasssexracism
four years in this place
where the foundation of my self
was lost to me
not so brightnot so privileged
not so ext r a 0 r din air efour years to findit doesnot make a differencein the larger scheme of things
away from this fairy tale land
despite the crewnecks
one hundred percent shetland wool
despite sperry topsiders
despite levi jeans and cords

60four years and nothing has changed
though i have been enlightened
educated
my consciousness raised
my b a will not get me a cup of coffee
stillin some places in the south
and newengland
my b a will not foster equal treatment
at least
two counts still to be consideredin this country
my b a / belonging to this female of color
will not be visible
if perchance
i am walking alone at night / and why shouldnot i /even on pennsylvania avenue
washington
irrelevant newengland liberalartsinstitution
becauseit just is
not sodespitemyba
four years
posturingalone
in this place
to findnothing has changed61Anmarie Wagstaff

The Night the Crackerbox Closed
Only Lou would have the nerve to wake me at 5 a.m. on a Sunday
morning. Dressed in wilted bar clothes and reeking of cigarettesmoke and beer, she and Allison draped themselves on my sofa.
After staying in L.A. until the bars closed at two, they had stopped
for breakfast in San Fernando, and had just arrived back in Joshuaville. Lou didn't tell me this, she didn't need to, that was her Saturday night ritual. But her smug silence annoyed me.
"Jeri, you got any Pepsi? " asked Allison. "My mouth feels like a
cotton ball."Half-asleep, I looked from one to the other. "Do either of you
happen to know what time it is?"Lou glanced at her watch. "Mine seems to have stopped. Whattime do you have, Allie? ""Five after five. "Lou carefully set her watch, then smiled at me.
"For Christ's sake," I burst out. "Would you mind telling me what
you're doing here?""Bad news," Lou said.
"Don't you have any Pepsi?" Allison asked again. "I'm about todie of thirst.""What's so bad it couldn't wait until nine? I'd hate to think what
you'd do if I woke you up this early.""You wouldn't dare," Lou said.
I glared and dropped into a chair. There was nothing to do but
endure the visit. "There's Pepsi in the refrigerator.""Good-get me one, too," Lou told Allison.
Allison groaned, and shuffled into the kitchen. "She can't be
twenty-one," I said.
"No, twenty next month I think. "The propriety of taking minors to the bars was one of our recur62

rent disagreements. Lou waited, but I was too tired to argue. She
pulled out a flattened pack of Raleighs and offered me one. I
glared disdainfully and she lit up. The tiny flame in her hand
twitched unsteadily, illuminating the fine translucent lines thatcrisscrossed her face like a net of flies' wings. She was thirty-four
years old-prematurely grey. The silver strands she had once beenable to pluck out in weekly sessions in front of her mirror, now
streaked through her coal-black rug of hair like spotlights. She
coughed and I winced. "It's my health," she muttered.
"This better be good," I said.
She shrugged. "The Crackerbox is closing. Next Saturday's theirlast night. I thought you might want to know."
I laughed. "Why should I care? I haven't been to a bar in years.""I'm aware of that."
Allison reappeared with two Pepsis and a bag of stale corn chips.
"Isn't it awful? " she asked. "Poor Marie-she has three kids, you
know.""Don't tell me Marie's still tending bar. ""What did you expect? " Lou asked. "Everyone else to stop
corning just because you did?""Corne on, Lou, what do you want? You didn't get me up at 5 a.m.
just to annoy me. If you're here to ask me to go to the Crackerbox
next week, forget it. I'm sorry for Marie's sake. But you know how I
feel-there are better places to socialize.""Stuff it," Lou said. "I didn't corne here to ask you to go to the bar
next week, I'm here to collect on a favor, an old one." She paused.
"So? ""So-I want you to be there next Saturday." I met Lou's gazeshe was serious. "You haven't forgotten? ""No ... I'll be there."I assumed my debt to Lou very early in our relationship-it was
during the summer of my initiation. That is, the summer I discovered being a lesbian in Joshuaville meant drinking Coors, smoking
Raleighs, and loving Lou. She waited six years to collect.
My father had been transferred to Joshuaville in December. I
sulked into town in June-a week out of high school. I wanted tostay in Atlanta, but my parents had scheduled a summer in Europe
and somebody had to feed the cat and the goldfish. They left in
mid-June and I was alone.
There were only a handful of lesbians in Joshuaville that summer63

- hardly enough to form a softball team. In fact, at game time on
the opening night of city league, they could only muster eight players, and were forced to draft a ninth from the stands. The umpires
were already planning their pizza order, when a wiry, sun-bronzed
woman with a shy grin approached, introduced herself as Devonand asked if I would like to play. Dazed at being singled out of the
opening night crowd, I nodded and followed her into the dugout.
Introductions were briskly made and without further ceremony I
was handed a glove and sent to right field.
The logic behind my selection was not revealed until some timelater. It seems the one factor that weighed most in my favor wasthat no one had ever seen me before. In Joshuaville, where softball
is a summer necessity, the spectators are as regular as the participants, and frequently as caught up in the rivalries and feuds. For
this reason, every other spectator in the bleacher was well-known- well-known to be straight. On the other hand, I was a dykeylooking question mark. My hair was cut very short; I was wearing
Levis and a t-shirt; and, according to Devon, I was staring at them.
For Devon, that was enough. The others were more hesitant, butwith forfeit time approaching, and a ninth lesbian still not in sight,
Devon was given the go-ahead.
By the third game I was playing first base and had convincedmyself that at least half of the team was gay. The majority of teammates, being equally perceptive, had agreed that I was an authentic
dyke. But not until the fifth game did we get past inquiring looks.
When I arrived at the park, Devon, Melinda, and Blair were sitting on the grass behind the bleachers. An embarrassed silence
greeted my approach. I assumed I'd interrupted something and wasabout to make some excuse to walk away, when Melinda blurted
out, "Devon has some thing to ask you.""I do not," countered Devon, blushing fiercely.
"Then you owe me a six-pack," said Melinda.
I knew there' could be only one question worth a six-pack. My
heart skipped a beat, then pumped rapidly. "Go ahead-ask," I
said, trying to sound nonchalant. The other two sauntered off
toward the drinking fountain, leaving Devon and me alone. An embarrassed silence followed. "What was your bet?" I finally asked.
"Either you know already or I've lost it," she said, curling a long
blade of grass around her finger. ,"I think I know.""Well then-say it."64

"I can't-you haven't asked yet."
She smiled shyly. "Why should I ask if you already know the ques· ?"t IOn.
"Because I might be wrong.""But you're not. ""I can't be sure.""I'm telling you-you're right. "I hesitated, then shook my head. "If you're so sure, why don't you
ask ?".
"Okay, I will." There was a long pause.
"When? Next Christmas?""Okay already. Give me a minute to phrase it." There was another long pause.
"It's not that hard to phrase.""Okay-then you phrase it."
"Why should I be the one to say it? ""Say what?"
I took a deep breath. "That you're gay and so am 1." After thatthe rest was easy.
Lou played catcher. She had a reputation for being "tough" andno inclination to let it lapse. She dived snarling after pop-ups,
guarded homeplate like a two-ton truck, smoked in the dugout,cussed incessantly, and was thrown out of one game for throwing
her bat on a called third strike. I was afraid of her. If she sat at one
end of the bench, I took care to sit at the other. At the parties towhich our games, won or lost, were always a prelude, she was discjockey, drink maker, dance leader, and the one whose mood dictated whether or not the party would "go." In return for her social
gifts, we provided her with all the food, beer, and love she needed.
Lou was also a self-taught mechanic, as Devon informed mewhen my Volkswagon developed a cough and a lurch. I had my
doubts, but asked her to take a look at it anyway. She arrived thenext Saturday morning dressed in freshly laundered overalls and asnug-fitting black t-shirt that contoured her tight-coiled muscles.
Carrying a heavy wrench, she looked invincible. After a short test
drive and a moment's muttering, she asked when the car had last
been tuned up. When I confessed I couldn't remember, she glanced
at me in disbelief and opened her toolbox. Inside, the meticulously
arranged wrenches, pliers, and screwdrivers glittered in the sunlight like polished silverware. I complimented her organization.

65

She grunted and said, "People who don't take care of things don't
deserve to have them."
All morning I "assisted" Lou. For the most part this meant giving
her work an audience and keeping her supplied with beer. Only
occasionally was I allowed to hand her a tool. By mid-afternoon thetune-up was complete and Lou scrubbed and changed clothes. She
was drinking my last beer when I made the mistake of pulling out
my checkbook. She looked at me in hurt amazement. "We'refriends, aren't we?" I assured her we were. "Then put that thingaway.""I can't let you do it for nothing," I protested.
"I wouldn't do it for nothing," she answered. "I've done you afavor, now you do me one. Come with Devon and me to the bar
tonight.""I wish I could," I said. "But I'm underage in California."
Lou laughed. "If that's all that's stopping you, forget it."
I had never been to a gay bar. It was one thing to sit in the cornerof Devon's living room, chug beer, and cough on Raleighs. But to go
to a bar in L.A.! What if the place were raided? or if there were afight? or if some diesel dyke with slicked-back hair tried to pick me
up? No doubt Lou and Devon would get plastered, then I'd be left
to fend for myself. I panicked and reached for the phone. I evenwent so far as to dial Lou's number, but at the sound of her voice,hung up. I was as intimidated by Lou as I was by the unknown horrors I'd face at the bar.
From the outside, the Crackerbox looked like a small warehouse.
There were no neon lights, just one glaring bulb shining on a sign
above the door. We parked a half-block away and walked back up
the street. I stayed between Lou and Devon, trying not to look at
the dark windows where I imagined hidden eyes might be witnessing my approach.
At the door a broad-hipped woman with a flat nose greeted us.
"ID's and a dollar cover charge." My heart fluttered when I handed
her the license Lou had given me. She glanced at it and unhooked
the rope across the entrance.
I followed Lou and Devon toward the rear of the half-filledroom. In one corner a couple of women played pool, a few more satat the bar. The rest were sca tered among about twenty small
tables crammed into the back half of the room to make space for adance floor. When we crossed it, no one was dancing. Lou slid a66

couple of tables together, and I sat down between the two of them.
A long-legged waitress wearing jogging shorts and a football jersey
walked by with an empty tray and Lou ordered two pitchers ofCoors.
At the front of the room, on a small raised platform, stood astereo flanked by two six-foot speakers. A disc jockey rocked backand forth tapping her foot, sorting through stacks of albums. At thefirst break in the music she picked up her microphone and bleated,"Welcome to the Crackerbox, where the music never stops. After about with the flu Marie's back behind the bar tonight. Be sure to
say hello. And don't forget about our buffet dinner tomorrow atfour, and remember-no cover charge on weeknights so come on inand see us."
A woman asked Lou to dance. She accepted, exposing my left
side, and I risked a glance at the table of women next to me. A
bulky woman with a double chin was talking. "It would have beeneasier if the guy had never shown up. Foul ball? What foul ball? I
swear he didn't even see it. And then the other team comes yellingat me. But it was his call; what could I do? Lucky the game wasn't
close. The Barons would have lynched him." Her friends werelaughing and shaking their heads. One had her arm around thewoman beside her. They didn't look too threatening.
Our beer arrived and I downed half a glass. Devon looked at me
strangely. "Hey Jeri, are you okay?""Yeah, sure. Why do you ask?""You look a little funny, that's all. How do you like the place? Is itmuch different from the bars in Atlanta?""Oh, not much. I guess these places are pretty much the same."
More women were arriving, mostly in groups. Those who camealone either immediately attached themselves to a group or took aseat at the bar. Lou flitted from table to table, greeting women by
name, tossing out compliments, and collecting free beers.
"Want to dance?" Devon asked.
"No thanks. I really don't feel too good.""Well, maybe if you didn't drink so fast," Devon said gently. My
face flushed. Drinking was the one inconspicuous thing I could
think to do.
The dance floor filled for every song now. All the tables weretaken, and as the bodies packed closer together I felt less exposed.
At a table close by two women sat across from each other, leaning
forward, talking intently under the music. They looked very young,67

about my age. When a woman nearby knocked her drink to thefloor, they didn't look up. They danced only once, to a slow song,and returned to their table holding hands.
Devon pointed me toward the restroom and 1 took my place atthe end of the line. "Good crowd," the woman next to me said. It
was the double-chinned umpire. "I've never seen you before. Do
you come here often?""No, this is my first night.""Really? Where are you from?""Atlanta," 1 said. "But now 1 live in Joshuaville.""Then you're with Lou's crowd."
1 nodded.
"That Lou's a special lady. When she misses a Saturday, everybody knows it."
When 1 found our table again, Devon was dancing and Lou had
returned. "They must think I need a babysitter," 1 thought. "Atleast they'll never ask me to come again." 1 lowered myself into achair and refilled my glass.
"Having agood time? " Lou asked.
"Sure," 1 said, guzzling the warm beer.
"This is my favorite bar," she told me. "I go to the others now andthen for a change, but this is my home turf. Come with me, 1 want
you to meet someone."
Lou nudged a path through the crowd as 1 swayed along behindher. There were two empty stools at the bar and we sat down. At
the other end, a short, skinny, middle-aged woman with kinky
black hair was simultaneously taking orders, wiping down the
counter, and mixing drinks. As 1 watched her quick synchronized
movements, my head began to spin. When business slowed, shecame to our end of the bar and leaned against the counter. "Well,
Lu-Lu, what you doing off the dance floor?""Come to see myoId pal, of course.""Ha! Don't need to sweet-talk me, honey. You know 1 don't giveout free beer.""You ought to the way you water them down. "Marie made a motion as if to slap Lou across the face . "Hush yourlying mouth, girl. We lose any more business, we'll have to close
down. And then what would you do? ""There are lots of bars in this town.""Ha! There's only one Crackerbox. No other bar would put up
with you week after week."
68

Lou laughed. "Marie, I want you to meet a friend. This is Jeri."Marie squinted. "You're robbing the cradle again, Lu-Lu. This
one don't belong in here yet." Lou laughed again and Marie said tome, jerking a thumb in Lou's direction, "Your friend here's a good
woman, but she's a bad influence on young ones l ~ you. You try toimitate her, you end up with trouble. They ought to make her wear
a sign that says 'Lou Miller may be hazardous to your health' or 'For
mature audiences only.' ".
"Mature audiences?" Lou asked in astonishment. "And he re I
thought I was strictly X-rated."
Marie tousled Lou's hair and kissed her on the cheek. "Don'tlisten to me," she said. "I'm just jealous."I thought Lou was marshaling me back to our table until I felt her
wrap her arms around my waist. She danced naturally, and I floatedin her arms like driftwood in a lazy current. Then she tightened herembrace, molding my body, like soft wax, against hers. I closed myeyes and tried not to think.
The rest of the evening I spent at our table with either Lou or
Devon at my side. In between beers I smoked all of their cigarettes.
I said nothing, but from within my smoky cocoon I watched thewomen in dazed fascination.
At one-thirty the waitress in jogging shorts collected the glasses
and at two Marie pulled the plug on the music. Everyone groaned
and stumbled through the smoke, trying to locate jackets, hats, andfriends. I didn't move. The room had begun to spin like a sluggish
carousel. Lou lifted me up, and leaning heavily against her, I tottered through the door and out into the street. With my first gulpof night air, I knew I was going to be sick. "Lou," I whispered frantically, digging my fingers into her shoulder. She lowered me gently
to the ground and held my head while I threw up in the gutter.
When I woke up the next day I was lying on a lumpy tan sofa inLou's living room. My feet were tangled in a pink blanket and when
I rolled over to free them, I broke out in a cold sweat. I tried toraise my head, but a wave of nausea flattened me against the sofa.
Within the hour the nausea subsided, but a much more painful
queasiness replaced it. The night replayed in my head like a flawed
film , in which only isolated frames flashed on the screen. Eachframe spun me closer to total humiliation. When the tears came, I
did not try to stop them.
Lou came in and I blinked away the evidence. "How do you
feel?" she asked.
69

"Like I went over Niagara Falls without my barrel.""Good-you'll live. Here, take some of this," she said, handing
me a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. "Guzzle this the way you did yourbeer last night and you'll feel fine in no time."
I gagged down several swallows, kicked the blanket off, and sat
up. "I'm sorry about last night," I said, focusing my eyes on theother side of the room. "I don't know what was wrong with me. I've
never been like that before."
Lou shrugged. "You don't have to apologize. You're not special. I
threw up in that same gutter once. But why didn't you tell us you'dnever been to a bar?"So they knew that too. Not only could I not hold my liquor, but I
was a liar as well. "I just didn't want you to know," I confessed. "It'sbad enough being so young without acting like it.""Now don't go feeling sorry for yourself. You got drunk and you
got sick. So what?""Yeah, but what a way to pay you for fixing my car.""If that's bugging you-forget it. Let's just say you still owe me. It
will be nice to have somebody owe me for a change.""You won't forget to collect?"
She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the forehead. "No way,love."
Despite my shaky introduction to the Crackerbox, I went back,and for several years even earned distinction as a regular. Like
Lou, I visited the other L.A. bars, but more for my education as alesbian than because I found the Crackerbox lacking. I liked to go
into a place and know all of thJ faces, even if I didn't know all thenames. Some of the names I never did learn. In fact, I never formeda lasting friendship with anyone I met at the Crackerbox. I arrived
with the Joshuaville contingent and, for the most part, my socializing was limited to my Joshuaville friends, women I could have seenat the ball park or in their homes for a lot less trouble and expense.
But I kept going back. When the rope across the door was drawn
and I stepped inside, I left the other world-what some would callthe "real" world - behind, and in so doing became a "social" person,
a quality I never suspected myself of having, needing, or even wanting. I could dance and talk and laugh like all the people I'd enviedand despised for so long.
During most of my bar year Lou and I lived together. She tookcare of things (like cars, the plumbing, and high-strung appliances),70

while I took care of her (her hangovers, her insecurities, and he r
temper) . In the long run, Lou was more successful than me. None of
the faucets leaked and car trouble was rare, but Lou still smoked
three packs a day, consumed huge quantities of junk food , andkicked doors if she didn't get her way. After three years of riding
her emotional roller coaster, I moved out.
At roughly the same time I quit going to bars. At first it was to
avoid seeing Lou. Later it was because Sunday mornings were too
valuable to waste with a hangover. I was writing and I needed
those long weekend mornings to work. Besides, I was now going
through my second initiation as a lesbian-the one that taught methat being a lesbian meant eating vegetarian, reading Rita Mae
Brown, listening to Meg Christian, and facing up to what I had been
doing to myself every Saturday night. Week after week I had drunk
myself into a stupor, releasing a week's worth of pent-up energy. It
was a dead-end life, and I knew it. So I gave up the Crackerbox. It
was harder than giving up Raleighs or Coors. Almost as hard as
giving up Lou.
On Saturday night I was almost as scared to enter the Crackerbox
for the last time as I had been for the first. Everyone knew how I
felt about bars. What would they think when I showed up now? I
drove down alone, hoping Lou would be too drunk to notice if I
slipped out early. From the outside the Cracker box looked thesame. But when I passed through the magical rope, I found theplace had been remodeled. The pool table was gone, the bar was
twice as long and twice as shiny, the dance floor had been raised sothat colored lights could flash up through its translucent surface,
and the disc jockey, instead of standing on a platform, sat in a boothin the corner. There were also new tables and soft chairs withwicker backs.
Lou gave me the customary bar greeting-a warm hug. "Welcome back, kid.""When did all this happen? " I asked, disoriented by the strange
surroundings. "If it weren't for the sign out front, I wouldn 't know
the place."
Lou nodded. "It's been about a month now. The owner's selling it
to some guy who wants to make a straight bar out of it. Fixing theplace up was part of the deal. It takes some getting used to, doesn 'tit?"Some friends from Joshuaville had spotted me and made frantic
71

motions for us to join them. Devon squeezed through the packed
house to meet us halfway. I was welcomed like a lost sheep returned to the fold. They hugged, kissed, and toasted me. A beer
was placed in my hand-yes, still Coors-and so as not to disappoint
them, I drank it.
Devon asked me to dance. "I'm a little rusty," I confessed.
"Well, if you'd come out of hibernation more often- " Shepaused and I avoided her glance. "We have missed you, you know. "The dance ended and I started back toward our table. Allison
grabbed my arm. "Not so fast. It's not every night I get the chance
to dance with a legend. ""What's that supposed to mean?"She laughed. "Don't think I haven't heard about you. Rumor has
it you're the only one that can keep up with Lou when she reallygets going."
It was my turn to laugh. "Then I must have improved considerably since the last time I tried it."After this song I slipped away to the bar. As soon as Marie wasfree , she brought me a beer. "On the house," she said.
"What? The first thing I ever heard you say was that you nevergave out free beer. ""Then I had a job. Now I can afford to be generous. Drink up,
love. Besides, the last thing I heard you say was that you'd never beback.""That makes us both liars.""So what else is new? Now, get away from here. Go dance. I
don't have time for your talk."
I finished my beer and took her advice -I asked Lou to dance.
"You haven't lost it," she told me. Neither had she.
After that I stayed on the dance floor, sloshing down drinks between songs. I 'd anced with every woman I knew and some that I
didn't. Even Marie came out from behind the bar to dance with me.
My glasses fogged up, my damp clothes stuck to my body and, morethan once, Lou wiped the sweat from my forehead with her sleeve.
I didn't try to talk. I didn't try to think. Nothing mattered but thebeat and keeping my body with it.
Around one-thirty bar crowds usually start to thin. Tonight thedance floor gradually cleared, but no one left. The lights flashed,
the stereo blasted disco music, b,ut the disco mood was gone. Lou
was reeling drunk. She made her rounds through the crowd crying
and hanging on everyone. Most sat at their tables in stunned silence,72

like the accused awaiting the jury's verdict ; but the verdict was already in.
Lou circled back to our table and sat down beside me. She
leaned her head on my shoulder, crying so softly I could feel , rather
than hear, her sobs. I put my arm around her and fought back my
own tears.
Marie pulled the plug. The flashing lights danced unaccompanied, then darkened. No one moved. "Closing time," she said quietly. We sat in silence. I gently removed my arm from around Lou's
waist and stood up. Calmly and deliberately I took hold of our tabl e
and pushed it over. The glasses, that for the first time no one hadcollected, shattered to the floor. The next instant tables crashedaround me like dominoes. Marie picked up a chair and hurled itover the bar. Lines of smashed bottles spewed liquor in every direction. In five minutes it was all over.
Lou had not moved. She sat at the center of the ravaged room
like a queen on her throne. I helped her up and she leaned heavily
against me as I picked our way through the broken glass.

73

These photographs were contributed to Sinister Wisdom by Dorothy Johnson,of the Common Reader Bookshop in ew Salem, Massachusetts. She foundthem, unidentified as to source, in a rummage sale in New Hampshire,summer 1982.

74

75

76

Wendy Simpson

To Scratch at the Earthfor Audre
1
Once again you and your words
brush the flesh
that antiseptic strangers have bruised, misshapen,that lovers cannot touch
because it is not just mine ye t.
There is no incubation or masturbation
for this pain,

Just constant dialogue,
some words at the podium
to scratch at the earth
for the bones suspected to hide there.
We were forced to evacuate our words,
fight our way backby wayof a liferaft
we built when the doctors, nurses, family and friends
were asleep
and we roamed the white of the hospital,
wondering where to find solid veined timberamong the gauze and chemicals
to fashion our escape.
The child's jacket
thrown upon a chair,
two mittens on one umbilical yarn
hanging from sleeves,are the jacket and one pair of mittens
and not the child
Not the child, not the child,a six week old on chemotherapy,
limbs and face swollen Not the children, the women, the men
who collapse into the surgeon's
artificial limbs
77

2
There was the other way,
I too not knowing
how much I can give anymore
now that I understandhow much I must love myself
in order to keep breathing he re,In, out,in, out,rhythmic bellows allowing me the touches

and when I really touch
I touch the ocean
and I am quite alone.

Pretending
Today the ground is a woman on her back,unsheltered as the snow seeks refuge
upon her belly
The needles and tests
have ceased to stand out by themselves
It is one long sigh,one longer headacheof muddy-footed soldiers marching The memory is poisoned as well as the veins,the few crisp notes of a saxophone
six months buried Like the room she is inert,
the colorful table of flowers and cards
touch neither she nor the room,
but float there, unattached
She removes herself, pretending
she is not a rotting corpse
but a seven year old playing tricks,
pretending to be sick to miss school,78

She visualizes the cancer cells,
places each cell on paper
and with scissors, bare hands, flam e
destroys themand Oh it feels so good to feel the cells
burning in her own hands

The Chosen Look
Who is speaking when the tongue
lies so quietly,
so asleep and so inside ;A magnolia blooms in my mind
but once in the light that is outside the bodythe pink edges go brown
Had you come today, friend,
You could have walked with me,
helping to dismiss the leaves,
helping me to believethat all of their last gasps are laugh ing ones hahaThis is the right way,
the cars travelling northto delight in the brilliant dyingof leaves
Yet in the aisle
I see another carrying cancer,
helping her daughter
choose pencils for drawings that she may never see,and am not craning my neckto see the chosen colors,
the chosen look upon her face
Had you come today,
Perhaps you could have begun my instruction
on how I will write with the eyes so closed

79

This sculpture of skulls
my brain carves unde r this subheading: cancer
is not a snow sculpture to melt in April
but one that will surely have grown by May,a sculpture of colorless fl esh,
Had you come today
how would I gree t you, in bathrobe or song.
These floorboards can hardly support
the tired parent of this child,the child who whimpe rs of losing flight timeanddoes not think of the New York City bums
w hose wings fa ll forward across their shoulders
because they do not know, never knew
how to fl y.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~~

lady-unique-inclinQtion~f-the-night

Cycle 6
Special issue forthcoming 1982

Women's Altars and Shrines
Hand laid covers, numbered. perfect bound$6.00 postpaid
Cycles 2, 3, 4 @ $3.00 each + $.75 postage each
Cycle 5 @ $3 .50 each + $.75 postage each80

Difficult But Not Impossible
Janet Aalfs
A review of Outlander, stories and essays by Jane Rule. Publishedin 1980 by Naiad Press, P.O. Box 10543, Tallahassee, FL 32302.
207 pp. $6.95.

Outlander is a collection of stories and essays about the lives of
lesbians. The author, Jane Rule, a Canadian citizen who is active inthe writers', women's, and gay communities, is originally from theUnited States. She lived with Helen Southoff in Vancouver, British
Columbia, teaching and writing, for twenty years before moving to
Galiano, off the coast of B.C., where she now resides. Outlander is
her latest book. Other works include Desert of the Heart (1964) ,This Is Not for You (1970), Against the Season (1971), Lesbian
Images (1975) , Theme for Diverse Instruments (1975) , The Youngin One Another's Arms (1977), and Contract with the World(1980).
I am writing from the perspective of a white lesbian involved in
the women's movement in the United States, aware that other countries have issues and problems that differ culturally, racially, andethnically from those in the U.S. I also know that women fromother countries resent assumptions that questions of concern in the
U.S. should necessarily be dealt with in a similar manner elsewhere,
a form of cultural imperialism, to be sure. I am personally interested
in learning as much as I can about any group of people who havebeen or are silenced in some way. My own desire to explore silenceand how it is imposed, or chosen as a means of survival, is the basisof my questioning. Outlander reflects the courage it takes to speakout of imposed silences-and in doing so, makes room for the stories
that have not yet been told.
The strength of Outlander's diversity lies in its portrayal of lesbians of different ages, class backgrounds, physical abilities-perspectives that are often overlooked. Its weakness is the absence ofThird World lesbians. Rule makes many important connections
about lesbians as real people with real wants, fears , hang-ups, andjoys. She addresses herself at various points to the oppression of all81

people. Therefore, I need to question her silence in regard to lesbians of color as more than a conscious choice to limit her scope. If
it were conscious, I would want the author to make her choice
clear. As it is, I assume that all her characters are white based on
physical description and cultural reference, and what I learn in the
essays in the latter part of the book. The inherent racism in such an
exclusion needs to be examined in all areas of our life and work.
I don't expect any author to write about everyone's experiences.
But I think we must ask why an author makes certain choices,
whether conscious or unconscious. Outlander has challenged me to
examine the ways I read between the lines and the assumptions I
make. For instance, if I am not told otherwise, do I automaticallyassume a character is white because that is who I've been taught torecognize? Do I read dialogues and, based on stereotypes ofspeech, conclude who each character is? I believe that fiction is areflection of values, judgments, and philosophies that an author hasinternalized. A character takes on these values and becomes acomposite of the author's ideas and perceptions of whomever thecharacter is meant to portray. In projecting herself into other people's life experiences enough to express deep feeling, the author
must risk that her insights will have meaning to readers beyond
those with similar values and perceptions. Racial boundaries are
difficult but not impossible to traverse. Rule states part of the problem in her essay entitled "Reflections."
The difficulty for gay people as for other minorities is that we have solong been e ither ignored or portrayed in negative stereotypes that itis hard not to be a defensive audience even for our own artists. [po204J

And equally hard not to be defensive writers ; to try to make a point
while at the same time be aware, as I am, that I have a long way to
go in my own process of understanding and conveying my beliefs
with honesty and clarity. If an author is willing to portray, for instance, a different class background than her own, why can't she
risk communicating her perceptions of someone from a different
racial or ethnic background? To imagine oneself in the place ofsomeone whom we have been taught to see as "other" in order towrite about that experience, takes an immense amount of work andcourage. But how else are we to know ourselves and each other? In
Rule's own words:
What we have to fear and fight against is not each other but the gar-82

bage in our heads that can make us see each other as symhols of theestablishment, as enemies rather than as people who must learn tobreak the regulations togethe r. [po196J

Jane Rule's stories and essays inspire me to challenge my own
view of the world, my place in it, and my relationships to others.
The settings and characters she describes and brings alive with her
words are ones that I am familiar with in some way-whether it is acertain look in the eye, tilt of the head, or recognizable personality.
Those which I have not experienced directly become a part of me
through her vivid use of words. These stories are about lesbians
living on the edge- "Outlanders" -outside of society's rules, andyet never totally disengaged from the ways we have been affectedby society's values. Without being idyllic or tragic, Jane Rule sustains a drama that expresses the day-to-day struggles of real people's lives.
"Home Movie" reads like a film in that it is so intensely visual,sensual, tactile. It begins with Alysoun, a musician from the U.S . ontour in Greece, watching someone else's home movie through awindow from a cafe where she sits drinking. She is brought back to
her own childhood and memories of watching films that her father
took of her and the rest of the family; how in order to be acceptable, she had to be something for someone else. This story shows
the process of a woman learning to accept herself, her music, herfeelings for women, and in that process, coming into her own. In a
letter to Eudora Welty, Alysoun writes:
I've discovered that fear is desire, not shame or guilt or inadequacy or
any of those other things. The question to ask about fear is not what
are you afraid of but what do you want. If you know what you want
and you can have it, then fear doesn't seem like fear at all. [po13J"The Day I Don't Remember" involves the never-ending feelingof being pulled to make our lives more acceptable, especially to ourfamilies of origin-and the contortions we go through to cover over
who we re.ally are when our identity and security are threatened. It
is about how the frustrations that grow out of having to "pass" tearat our heartstrings and cause rifts in the fabric of our lives.
"The Puppet Show" involves a threesome and a child. Lesbians
with children have a whole set of proble ms to deal with that thoseof us who are childless can often not even imagine. This story gaveme insights about some of these issues. What I appreciated most is
how Rule seemed to understand the viewpoint of the child as well83

as the intricacies of the three women's relationships. So often,children are not seen as the full and complicated human beings thatthey are. Rule is obviously committed to the honest education ofyoung people. Her essays focus on moving away from sex-role stereotyping and increasing children's awareness of it at a young age.
I suppose that even a six-year-old could write about being "an aging
lesbian," might even feel the need if she'd already suffered a coupleof years at the hands of a he terosexual nurse, been reprimanded by amother for picking forget-me-nots for the lady next door, and been
told in kindergarten to stop drawing the same picture over and overagain: a stick figure a t the top of a pointed mountain. [po 205J

"Outlander," the title story, is about life on the edge in an actual
physical sense . In a harsh natural environment, you must be willingto accept help from people you might not otherwise be drawn to.
Two women "companions" move to a farm in New Hampshire.
They grow together in the struggle to weather harsh winter conditions and the various influxes of family members who have neverbeen particularly sensitive to Ann, the main character, and herneeds or desires. Ann is an alcoholic who has spent time at a sanatorium and is familiar with life on the "edge." With the help of Fran,
whose role is originally a sort of nurse, Ann begins to understandher anger and where it comes from. As Fran has taken care of her,so Ann learns that she must finally care for Fran :She did not need Fran to keep her sober. And she didn't need her
cows e ither. She needed onl y her own strength to offer up for whatever Fran needed now, wha tever the simple land as ked, whatever theCawes or Ganges might require tomorrow or the next day. That was
the bargain, deep in debt and credit, of accounts kept only in theheart. [po 55J"Miss Wistan's Promise" is about the relationship between Belle,a younger, single woman and Berta, an older married woman, andthe insights and advice that Miss Wistan, Belle's landlady, provides
for Belle. I am particularly struck by phrases that Rule uses to describe Miss Wistan- "a prim-faced old lady," and "that extraordinary little old lady, a spinster who had spent her working life teaching little girls that intelligence is mannerly." Because the general
tone of the story is one of great respect for the knowledge and experiences of Miss Wistan, these phrases, descriptions that have long
been used to keep older women in their places and belittle theirachievements, seem incongruous with the rest of the story. Again, I
question whether these phrases were used consciously or not.

84

Rule's stories often leave the physical description of a character up
to the imagination of the reader-her characterizations are based
more on emotional composition. "Prim-faced" and "little old lady"
conjure in my mind certain stereotypical images of older, especiallysingle, women. The danger in not being more specific is that thereader can fall back into old patterns and ways of thinking about,seeing, and categorizing various groups of people. We must be
scrupulous in using the English language which has developed somany ways of silencing ideas other than those of the status quo , tobreak the very silences it tries to enforce.
Other stories in Outlander include "Pictures" - two women who
are lovers and live together accept a request for short-term lodging
from a traveling woman and the visit brings many aspects of theirrelationship into question; "The Killer Dyke and the Lady," aboutbarriers between women of different classes and their styles of selfprotection; "Lillian," about an old love and the pain that can return
even when that part of life is past and gone. The opening paragraphof this story is a marvelous description of how pain recurs "like thepages of a pop-up book, the scenes of love remain .. . " (p. 89); "In
the Attic of the House," about old age and the loss that becomes anintegral part of daily life as one's friends and loved ones die; "A Perfectly Nice Man," about the relationships between women who
have been or are to become involved with one particular man andwho end up more involved with each other than with him; and"Night Call," about the impositions, boundaries, and frustrations ofsuperficial contact between women.
My expectations of an author who is obviously committed to discovering the truth of our lives are high. Combining the story andessay form in one volume is consistent with Rule's dedication to presenting the characters she chooses as whole beings; dispensing withthe separations of imagination and reason that we learn in American
mass media culture at an early age. Rule's stories give us detail andin doing so break the silence of invisibility and denial that we as lesbians experience in the world. The essays create a larger framework for understanding the environment in which we live and thatwhich we continue to create for ourselves. In combination, thevision is one of integrity and strength. In her essay on sexuality in literature, Rule speaks about relationships between equals and how"a whole new poetry beginning here"l can arouse a desire in themind undivorced from the body, a desire for resolution which isneither union nor death (p. 150). Trusting the body's responses to85any given situation and acting according to what we know not onlyin the mind, but in the heart, allows us to experience the truth.
"Preserving pain and courage and love betrays nothing but theworld's hypocrisy. Our only real defense has always been the truth"(p.193).
One of the dangers in speaking the truth is that we can become
entrenched in feeling miserable about all that is wrong with theworld and our lives. Jane Rule does not. She maintains a sense ofhumor, an irony that allows for transformation. In the midst of confusion, her characters keep fighting for dear life, often with laughter. In "Sightseers in Death Valley," a diverse group of p eople who
would probably not choose to be together in their daily lives because of ingraine d assumptions and stereotypes, make contact
during the Christmas season at a tourist resort. The cast of characters includes a Jewish family trying to deal with the Christmas
mania, a gay man who must contend with constant homophobiccomments, and various women who are afraid to express feelings
for each other because of how they might be viewed.
"A t least we're not all on the same bus," Miss Jensen observes as
they walk into the parking lot.
"It would have saved gas," he r friend answe rs. [po117J

In "Sightseers," Rule is more specific than in the other stories in
Outlander about the cultural biases that people hold. In this ironic
portrayal of the pervasiveness of Christianity and heterosexuality,
all three me mbe rs of the Jewish family, close friends of the gay
man, are kille d in a plane crash in Death Valley while trying toescape from all the trappings of Christmas day; an isolated incident
yet symbolic of the historical attempts to erase Jewish people andculture, and the existence of this oppression today. No one in thestory, except the gay man, understands the significance of such a
tragedy. They go on talking, trying to act as if nothing has happened, their worlds seemingly still intact. Yet they are left disquieted; th e tragedy of their lives being that they are not aware of theirown ignorance, biases, and lack of integrity. Rule makes it clear,
without beating her readers over the head, that ignorance is no
excuse. That if we are to live as full human beings, we must question
our own attitudes and their effect on others who may have very different ways of being in the world.
Rule 's use of irony is a thread in her writing. In "First Love, Last
Love," Rule writes:

86Those horribly in love discover sarcasm. When Justin e complained of
growing older, I told her I was hag-ridden. When she said the color of
my eyes were the color of the sky, I told her hers were a smog ale rt.
When she said I was clever with words, I fell silent. [po109 J

The retort, the comment that calls what is being idealized into
question, the "Why not? What's wrong with being other than who
you always believed you were or who others see you as?" attitude.
The stance of self-acceptance in a situation that calls for conformity; struggling at all times to lessen our own doubt and others' denialof who we are.
Rule does not romanticize our lives. In "Reflections," she says,"I'm more apt to feel sorry about the trouble beauty causes people
than to celebrate it, and I try to spare no one real life" (p. 203). Because she does examine so many of the assumptions ' we are taught
to make about what life is supposed to be like, I am struck by theabsence of viewpoints other than mostly that of white America, despite a woman-identified cast. Still, Outlander paves the way for further exploration and discovery. Reading it inspired me to question
myself and my perceptions. Rule's stories and essays give me avision of hope for the future and growing olderAs my grandmothers taught me the real lessons of erotic love with
their beautifully requiring flesh and speaking faces, so I wou ld wish
to teach the children I love that they are capable of tenderness andstrength, capable of knowledge because of what they can see in myface, clear in pain and wonder, intent on practicing life as long as it
lasts. [po207J
1. Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.,New York, 1978.

tUl~tl€ (jRanbmoth€R

Books
Mail Order Books
Specializing in Worksby Women of Color
Catalogue $2.00
P.O . Box 33964
Detroit, Michigan 48232
~ ,.

87

(3l3) 381-3550

Celebration and Survival
Elise Young
A review of Lifetime Guarantee: A Journey Through Loss and Survival, by Alice Bloch. Published in 1981 by Persephone Press, P.O.
Box 7222, Watertown, MA 02172. $6.95. 132 pp.
Women's Voices Writing Workshop. Someone asks Alice Walker: "How can
we know anybody is listening, when we write alone?"
Alice Walker says: "Get in touch with your dead. Your dead are listening toyou."
Not only Barbara and my parents, not only my ancestors. The dead of mytribe. All the Jews, all the lesbians, all the women of courage.
They hear me when I type. Like thumping the ground, like stomping thefeet in a tribal dance .
Alice Bloch, Lifetime Guarantee

Alice Bloch is the oldest of five children. Her mother died ofcancer when she was nine ; five years later her father remarried. In
1972, withiQ months of each other, Alice's father's sister died ofcancer and her father died of liver failure. On June 22, 1973,
Alice's only sister, Barbara, died of leukemia at the age of twenty.
Alice and Barbara had planned to write an article describing theirexperiences during Barbara's illness. It was never completed. Instead, Alice wrote Lifetime Guarantee, using excerpts from Barbara's journals and letters, reworked passages from her own journals,
and poems by both.
This is a book that confronts issues of survival in patriarchy. Alicenames her lesbianism and her writing as primary to her survival.
Her identity as a Jew informs and illuminates her work. She rejects
misogynist traditions of patriarchal religion and affirms her connection to a tradition of survival. Capitalism, homophobia, racism are
the diseases that foster competitiveness, guilt, fear: the final stages
are the cancer diseases, the leukemia that killed her sister Barbara.
The complexities of feeling between sisters are honestly exploredin this book. There are the tensions of prescribed heterosexuality:"There were things I concealed from her that year, things I was
afraid to tell her: that I was dreaming night after night about
making love with women. I was afraid she would be uncomfortable
sharing a room with me. I was afraid she would think I lusted afterher" (89). This passage refers to the year that Barbara and Alice
lived together in Jerusalem. Barbara writes to her friend Toni:
Thanks to Michelle, Anita, Trina, Tremor-patient readers, inspired commentators.

88

Shabat really is lovely. Like a shower, like crying that brings relief
I can't tell you how much I'm digging festive things
Shabat with candles & kerosene light & rest & sharing & visiting & taking the sunshine in. (12 )The year together strengthens their love, but also clarifies ways
they are caught in roles prescribed by patriarchy: "If you wantyour sister to be happy, give her a man .. .. Especially if she's theolder sister. Older sister should have a man before younger sister"(88). Their relationship continues to nourish them because they areopen to, and learn from, each other's unique ways of experiencing
the world, and because they are open to the unique gifts of that relation: "I learned sisterhood from loving Barbara. Barbara gave mesome of my spontaneity and creativity. The vision was accurate :she is a part of me, in a way that I can grasp and appreciate andcherish right now" (80).
What were Barbara's choices when she learned that she had leukeumia? Barbara hated hospitals, and Alice wanted to get her out.
But neither at the time trusted, or knew of, an alternative. (Arethere any?) A doctor was given control over Barbara: he lied to her
about the seriousness of her illness to hide his ignorance and to protect the medical establishment's "right" to experiment. Only after
six months, and after her father's death, does he finally admit to
Alice what is never told to Barbara: "The kind of leukemia Barbara
has is called 'myeloblastic.' It's the hardest kind to control. We
haven't had much success treating it; in fact, Barbara's four-month
remission was one of the longest I've seen. A patient's first remissionis almost always the longest. Barbara is going to get sick again, andwe're going to lose her" (59). Barbara's decision-making power was
taken away from her at the time when she needed it most. Herfriends, her work, everything that nourished her, were replaced bysterility, lies, the physical torture of medical treatments. Alicefought against this, but she also had to fight against fusing with
Barbara: "I have to remind myself, as I reminded the nurses, 'I'm
not Barbara. I'm Alice, her sister' " (36). She more and more rejects
a system (familial, medical) that does not allow her a voice:
I confront Mom [her stepmother] in Barbara's hospital room,
across Barbara's bed. I say, "Mom, Barbara's the patient here. She
should have the power to decide which visitors she wants to see, andwhen . Her wishes should be respected."
Mom says, "Are you kidding? She's delirious. She isn't responsible
for herself. I'm responsible for her. Someone has to make these decisions. Now that your father isn't here, I'm the one in charge."89

I see from Barbara's expression that this is nothing new.
I don't speak to Mom again .. . . I tell Nancy, "When we leave here,
I will never re turn to Youngstown again . Not for a goddamned funeral ,not for anything. If Barbara ever gets strong enough to travel, I want
to bring her to California. But I will never come back to Youngstown."(71 )Alice's decision not to return to Youngstown from Los Angeles
when Barbara is clearly dying, is consistent: her courage in staying
in touch with herself is an affirmation of trust between herself andBarbara. Alice told me, when we talked last October, that Barbara
understood this and would have done the same. This is probably
one of the most controversial decisions of the book and will stimulate creative dialogue. I think that what is critical here, is that Aliceacted out of her own integrity. She did not passively, out of guilt or
fear, follow a role: there is a death in the family, one must go home.
The decision is also consistent with Alice's rejection of sentimentality in favor of following , and being in touch with, her own truth.
Passivity is one of the themes of this book. Alice's valuable interpretation - her turning over and over-of an event in the familyreferred to as "the accident," makes clear how passivity is learned.
The family car, holding Barbara, Alice, Alice's younger brother
Eddie, their mother who is pregnant, and their grandmother,almost rolls off of a cliff. No one is able to act to stop the car. Alice's
grandmother, the only grown-up in the front, doesn't know how todrive. Alice, six years old, instructs Eddie to hold on to the backseat.
Her mother opens the door in an attempt to get into the front , andfalls out. The car is finally stopped by a bush and no one is hurt.
The family mythology for ye ars after is that Barbara, one year old,played with "the buttons" and set the car rolling. Alice's father
never acknowledged that he failed to put on the emergency brake.
Alice accurately points to the ways children are scapegoated, andto "a stupefying rigidity, a role division so strict that even a life ordeath test could not bend it" (123). Without the presence of "themen," her grandfather and father, the women and children are"powerless." Maintaining roles becomes more important than survival. This piece of writing is an example of the Jewish Talmudic
tradition of exegesis - the continual reinterpretation and rereadingof a text. Alice calls herself the exegete of Barbara's life: she turns
over and over her letters, her drawings, what she knows about her
life, each time gaining new insight into the forces that affected hersister. For instance, there is Alice's uncovering of racism: "A woman
who treated me well and treated Barbara badly once told me
90

Barbara was dirty. I protested and asked for proof. 'Barbara is . ..
swarthy,' she said with disgust. This was the first time I saw thatracism could intervene between sisters. Barbara is 'swarthy,' I am
pale. Our hair is the same dark color, but Barbara has 'Jewish hair'-kinky and unruly - and mine hangs limp and straight. Barbara hasoily skin, and I have freckles" (23). Alice goes on to say that in her
family she is the Litvok and Barbara, the Galitziane r. "The family
mythology goes thus: Litvoks are intellectual, res trained, modest,tidy, methodical ; Galitzianers are creative, messy, theatrical, outrageous, irrational. When Barbara acted wild, Dad would shake hishead and say, 'The Galitzianer.' No one ever shook a head andcalled me a Litvok" (23). The re is perhaps a relationship between
this racism and the "role" Barbara was put into when th e "accident"
happened. We are left with a sense that Barbara was blamed because she was the youngest, because she was the "Galitzianer.""How did she stand it? How did she push away the blame, over andover? Or did she take it, accept it?" (122).
I love who Barbara is in this book-her poetry, her lette rs, he r
love and trust of Alice, her persistence. Courageous women, Barbara and Alice. I think about my own siste rs ; our sharing of Jewish
ritual, roles we acted out with each other, our physical similarities
and differences. This book illuminates for me much of what has
been difficult about these relationships and much of what has been
concealed by patriarchal lies. I celebrate Alice's pe rsistence andcourage in writing about the complexities of Jewish experience. I
celebrate her persistence and courage in findirg a form for thisbook that reflects the truth of her experie nce. A dream of Alice's- "a bearded patriarch shows Barbara and me the story of his life
and tells us to write our story in the same way, and I can think ofnothing to write" (111). And so she tells the story in her own way,
not in the form of an analytical research pape r on cancer (she tried
and rejected that), or even a traditional novel (as she was encouraged by other publishers to do). The book is a form of diary. Sections representing each year from 1970 to 1981 may be one page ortwenty, poetry, prose, letters, or dreams. Passages have a rhythm
and life of their own, as Alice explores themes, feelings, observations. Another gift that Alice gives us in this book is her ability to
put her losses into perspective:
Another friend said, "It's not fair. Your fam ily has had too muchgrief. You've had more than your share."I had never thought about this issue, but my response was immediate : "More than our share hy what standards? There are places in the91

world where most children starve in their first year. If we were a Vietnamese family, it wouldn't be at all unusual for me to have lost bothparents and a sister by now. "She looked at me oddly. I guess she was thinking, "Denial. Alice
doesn't want to face her pain, doesn't want to get angry."Maybe. Maybe I couldn't afford to think about fairness. Maybe I
didn't want to spend my life sitting on a heap of ashes and shaking myfinger at the sky. Maybe my expectations were too low. Friends of myparents had lost their entire families in the Holocaust. How could I
grow up knOWing that, and ever expect life to be fair? How could I
grow up knowing that, and not now put my own losses in perspective?
(129)

This book asks us to take seriously that we must fight against
racism, which threatens not only our sanity, but also our survival.
And that passivity only leads to our destruction: we cannot afford
to allow anyone control over our lives. We cannot afford to take theblame for the mistakes of the "fathers." Alice fights against that
passivity in herself by forcing herself to "think about what I cannot
bear to think about. All the clues I need are hidden there, in the unbearable" (122). She fights against it by celebrating that she is a lesbian, aJew, a writer.
As I write this review, the second earthquake within a month has
shaken the Northeast. Southern California is working its way out of
mudslides that have already begun to change the shape of the landscape. Last night yet another accident at a nuclear plant was reported, in New York state. I think of the river Alice describes that wasrechanneled for economic reasons. It jumped its bed and flooded
homes that had been built on the original riverbed. A reporter interviewed on of the flood victims-a woman-who said: "Well, theriver was here before we were. I guess it had a right to the land"(130). And I think of the last part of a letter Barqara wrote in
February, 1973:
Anyway the week dragged on in there and I had one chat with thegood doctor. Those miracles I believed in a year ago don't seem to beworking now. The drugs work for a while, then the disease gets resistant and something new is needed. If I'm ok I may split to the East. I
plan to look up this naturopath Aunt Ethel's stepson goes to in NYC
who prescribes natural diet for diseases like mine. Anyway I'm curious about that! Can you understand my bitterness toward a country
that pollutes everything we live in and then tells me I'm lucky formodern medicine's marvelous strides in adding time to my respitewith death?
It's hard to explain but I'm angry.
Love, Barbara (68)92

Photography and Feminism
Marian RothA review of The Blatant Image: A Magazine of Feminist Photography. Published by The Blatant Image, 2000 King Mt. Trail, Sunny
Valley, Oregon 97497. Editors: Caroline Overman, Tee Corinne,
Jean Mountaingrove, Ruth Mountaingrove, and Jan Phillips (withhelp from Lynn Davis). 96 pp. $10.

The Blatant Image is a new magazine of feminist photography,
and it marks a turning point in feminist and lesbian culture. For the
first time, photographers have a vehicle for showing their work to
the community at large ; most of the artists represented have not
had their work seen widely. The impact on photographers ought tobe tremendous, if I can gauge from my own response. Seeing thework of so many other photographers not only inspired me to get
my own work out, it filled me with a sense of communality that I
have not experienced as a photographer before. Although I knew a
lot of women were doing photography, I don't think I ever realized
how much our work has in common, or how many women seem tobe experimenting with the same visual language. It is one thing totalk about our work, and quite another to see the similarities andshared concerns in the work itself. Taken all together, the images
point to a growing body of work, to a place where the concerns ofindividual artists converge. A sense of seriousness about photography is communicated; I can see that other women, like myself, aregaining control of the medium. The Blatant Image generates an excitement that comes with recognition and appreciation for thework of other women.
Looking at the photos in The Blatant Image, one senses a growing
ability among photographers to communicate thoughts and feelings
through a purely visual imagery. While the magazine gives us theopportunity to look carefully at a developing feminist photography,
in its conception, layout, and ideology, it presents the reader with atension that exists in lesbian feminist culture between a trust of thepurely visual image and the traces of both a "literal" esthetic and aconstraining political viewpoint.

93

Of all the visual arts, photography seems to have acquired a very
distinctive place in the lesbian feminist community. Unlike painting
or sculpture, for ~xample , photography is not expected to present
an abstract visual language; it is perceived in a very literal way.
The photograph is expected to tell a story; it has come to be perceived as a visual extension of language. Photos are used in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals, often to "illustrate" or tocreate a mood setting for a story. The photograph does not have alife of its own as a purely .vi~ual image. Even the editors of The Blatant Image use photographs (which probably were sent in as image
entries) to illustrate articles. There is, for example, a stunningphotograph by Louise Luczak of a Black woman lool<ing out awindow, and it appears under an article about the images of Black
women in films. Within the context of a photographic magazine,
the pictures are still serving a "literal" and secondary function.
The lesbian feminist finds herself surrounded by a culture which
is linear and literal. Photography is a visual art which lends itself toa literal use, and unfortunately this may account for its popularity.
Feminists speak of creating a new non-literal, non-linear imagery,yet many women find themselves unable to understand or appreciate purely visual images. To help gain access to the visual image,there is an expectation that the artist will speak about her work,
will provide verbal cues to understanding. Sinister Wisdom, forexample, asks the visual artist to submit "comments" on her work,
along with the portfolio. Even The Blatant Image editors asked for
a 250-word statement with the photographs. Would it seem absurd
to ask a writer to "comment" on her poem, or to send in 250 words
along with her writings? I think so, yet we ask this of visual artists.
Why?
The Blatant Image contains many articles about photographic
techniques and history. In addition, there are many excerpts fromthe statements that the artists submitted. Some of the "comments"
act to take power away from the visual work; the words explain
what one can already see, robbing the image of its purely visual language. Why try to explain the beautiful composition of breasts, forexample, that we find in the work of Clytia Fuller, or the expression
on the face of a young man in the hospital by Shari Gladstone?
Mary Beth Edelson presents a wonderfully executed collection ofphotographs taken at wom.e n's rituals in which she records the pathof light from candles. The images are drenched in mystery, butthey are accompanied by a long dry text, detailing every aspect of94

the making and recording of the images. I am not arguing withthose articles which explain how we, as photographers, feel about
our work or process, such as Jan Phillips's wonderful essay on integrating life and work. I am speaking of a felt need to have a literal
rendering of a purely visual image-to confine vision to a literal impulse. It is my feeling that the most truly revolutionary work will
come when we can find a new way of seeing, and I believe that wevisual artists are moving there , as the work in Blatant Image
demonstrates. Yet so many of our notions are tied to a literal imperative at the time when we need to be free to explore the visualand tactile imagery of our collective selves. The "feminist" vision or
the lesbian vision probably lies deep within our memories and experiences. It cannot be dictated. It may not be "literal."I can only hope that the next issue of The Blatant Image will havefewer words, will not demand 250-word statements, and will give
more space to the photographers. In this first issue, the pictures
have to fight the words, and sometimes they have to fight eachother for the viewer's eye. There is too much crammed together,with the visual images surrounded by a sea of words. I am sure theeditors felt there was much to say, but our pictures need space to
speak. Perhaps, we need to trust them more and control the urge to
use words. I realized, in looking through the magazine, how important it is for me to put more trust in my own images. Like the rest ofus, I have been educated in the world of the literal imperative,
struggling against allowing the title of a visual image to define it.
The tendency to be literal in lesbian feminist culture holds us back ;many of us feel the need to be "relevant" or "correct," to tell theright story. Perhaps we fear our images might be judged "counterrevolutionary" because they look like "art for art's sake" (i.e., "nocontent").
The political viewpoint of The Blatant Image is set out by the editors in an introduction and is made into theory by Ruth Mountaingrove in her essay "Making Ourselves Real." Mountaingrove uses
Susan Sontag's book On Photography to frame her argument that itis the responsibility of the feminist photographer to validate
women's lives by taking "true" images of ourselves. According to
Mountaingrove we should utilize photography to correct the portrayals of women's lives that are found in the mass media. Mountaingrove argues that if we photograph women who have been traditionally "invisible" or who do not conform to society's notion of
beauty, then we will be rendering them beautiful, or at least impor-95

tant, because their reality will be affirmed through the photograph.
She claims Sontag as a support in this thesis. But Sontag, in her original argument, was trying to show how the mass culture uses photography as a means of experiencing reality, as a substitute for(being in) the experience. Sontag points to the touri~t who goesoverseas and takes a picture of the Eiffel Tower. When she comeshome she has the evidence that she was there; in fact , many people
seem to go on trips just to have the pictures of the experience. Because photography can be used to render the moment as a document, it has been used as a substitute for living. Unlike other art
forms which we know are "interpretations" of reality, Sontag
argues that photography is popular partly because it fits nicely into
the mass culture's alienation from the world. It is the apparent ability to render "truth" which is both the power and the illusion of photography.
Knowing that photography can be used to represent reality does
not destroy its power as a medium for communicating whatever wemight wish to say about reality. Documentary photography exploits
this aspect of the medium, and there are many documentary photographs in The Blatant Image, powerful images which move theviewer deeply. Deborah Hoffman, Leslie Parr, and Mary McNally's
work come to mind. But I believe it is a confusion to argue, as Mountaingrove does, that photography can make our lives real, canaffirm our lives and give them meaning. Yes, one can record something and, with artistry, communicate its importance or impact. But
no one can make my life real but me; "making ourselves real" is thepolitical task of our lives. Perhaps a good photographer can capture
the qtlality of the life, but the life must be there first . There is ag:reat deal of difference between bringing a picture of something tolight and believing that a picture affirms its existence. Besides, arevolutionary image may not have any of the elements which Mountaingrove advocates; it may seek to communicate vision throughthe texture of a feeling , of a color, or by the way light hits anobjecL I don't think Ruth Mountaingrove wants us only to take "correct" photographs, but her argument, along with the editorial positions of The Blatant Image, permeate the magazine and suggest thisunderlying political imperative.
Rene Magritte, a surrealist painter, once argued that the paintercannot make the invisible visible-one can only show what isbrought to light. This is profoundly true with photography, which
only can show what is lit. There is a difference, he argues, between

96

what is hidden and what is invisible. The hidden becomes the mysterious; it is lit, but is not seen. When we bring our lives to light,
they will be seen because we will be showing them. I lived in apolitical commune during the formative years of my art, and always
felt the burden of the "right line." In fact, I did not dare take a picture of a tree for three years, thinking it was frivolous and counterrevolutionary. One day at a workshop, I brought in a picture of atree and confessed my fears. A fellow photographer told me thaton the side of the tree she could read the message, "free the Attica
Brothers." I was relieved. I only hope that we do not have to continue this constraint and foreclosure of imagination any longerhow many of us have to suffer under the imperative of what weshould be doing, as measured by some notion that we got from aclassist, sexist, and racist system. I feel , that for myself, my art
comes from my need to be free, and I consider this also to be theroot of my political consciousness. The images in Blatant Image
show us that we can make beautiful art which speaks truth, if only
we would collectively stop trying to define and constrain ourselveswith the need to be literal and correct.
The Blatant Image II will appear before the end of this year.

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97

Responses
Response to "Nadine Pagan's Last Letter Home":
Dear Nadine,
I got your last letter home and wanted you to have one last letterfrom me. You seemed to be telling me that you are very brave andvery wise, more brave and more wise and more able to foresee destruction than I have been. You tell me that I am a compromiser,that I say in the face of danger, "Give a little." You blame me because I did not understand your need to wear your labrys, but you
seem never to have understood that your grandmother and I would
never compromise, either, in the face of danger, by wearing anything that "looked like a cross."Your letter did not make me feel good about myself, and nothing
in it recognized that I, t00, am afraid or am brave-you gave me
nothing in your letter to confirm me. I wondered, after I read it,
how you could assume I wanted more of them-notes, and postcards and long letters from your travels.
You are right. I do not know whether they will hunt you down because you are a woman, or a Jew, or a lesbian, or whether they will
come for me first because I am less mobile, easier to find, and I ama woman, a Jew, and old. I do not know whether it is braver toremain at home and wait for them to come for me, or whether you
are braver to take flight .
I do not have "the wherewithal" to travel, jobs would be closed
to me, and my aging body is not flexible enough to go through thebathroom window; nor did you ask me, I noticed. But do not assume
I am less brave. I have travelled. I came to this country, just as you
take flight now, hoping that I could save my life as a woman and asa Jew, and that I could grow old here with integrity.
I do not understand the ending of your letter and the role you areasking me to play. For you to have such insensitivity about my own
struggles, that you can indulge yourself by describing, for my benefit, your heroic death-being thrown in boxcars and burned, andthat you need to fill this dream of heroism in by having me play the
woman's role of mourner, grieving over your letters if I do "get toread them," sounds so male. You seem to visualize yourself as one of
the favorite sons who goes off bravely to die and who wants a weeping mother waiting for his ashes. Is this lesbian?
98

You cannot borrow the heroism of your grandparents without
having paid the price for it. Neither of us can; neither of us knows
whether, in the face of true terror, we will, or will not, "give alittle. "There are assumptions in your last letter that I feel I must correct. You seem to assume that I am going to serve you as yourmother all your life; that, whatever happens, I will remain here in
the family home waiting for postcards or notes from some state official and possibly at great risk to myself. I cannot invest in your life
while you do not invest in mine. I do not want to risk my life foryours.
The same forces that pursue you, pursue me. So do not cast me in
the historic role of the passive woman who stays at home to attend
the funerals of the brave and who "gets to read" their last letters. I
have my own life to live and its ending to take care of.
Ma
Barbara Macdonald
Nashua, N.H.
April 1982

Judith Katz responds:
I wish Barbara Macdonald had written a critical response to"Nadine Pagan's Last Letter Home" directly to me, Judith Katz,
from herself, Barbara Macdonald. It isn't that I don't want to be
publicly criticized or held accountable for the words I've writtenor the politics which those words express-further on in this response I will specifically address Barbara's objections and criticisms. But before I do, I need to say this: I have been developing
the character of Nadine Pagan's mother, Fay Morningstar, for many
years. I have been laboring carefully and dutifully to create awoman who is true to my experience and the experience of others-a character who speaks in a voice so particular to herself that it
will ring familiar to women who know women like Fay Morningstar,as well as to women who are meeting her for the first time.

99

Fay Morningstar, like her daughter Nadine Pagan, is a member ofa larger work in progress, The Monster in My Mother's House or 41
Laments, of which "Nadine Pagan'!. Last Letter Home" is one element. The voice which Barbara Macdonald assumes in answering
Nadine's letter is not Fay Morningstar's voice, and I don't like theidea of an imposter mother answering Nadine's letter in print. I'm
not generally selfish in my creative process - I'm a terrific andopen collaborator when that's what I set out to do. But this particular story-the story of Nadine Pagan and her family and friends-is
one which I feel very strongly is mine alone to tell. I did not invite
Barbara Macdonald or anyone else to respond to Nadine in thevoice of Nadine's mother, or in the voice of any other member ofNadine Pagan's family .
In her last letter home, Nadine Pagan takes careful pains to explain to her mother the following:a) she is going awayb) she is going to stop contact with her family , her mother in particularc) the reasons she is going awayd) the reasons she will send no more letters homee) how, as a lesbian, Nadine's reasons for going underground anddisappearing are not dissimilar from a Jewish person's reasons forgoing underground and disappearing in Europe in the 1930sf) she and her mother and the rest of the world have good reason to
be afraid for their livesg) she and her mother are connected as Jewsh) much of what Nadine herself knows and understands about the
oppression and prejudice against both Jews and lesbians she haslearned from her motheri) Nadine and her mother are psychically connected and will continue to be in contact psychically no matter what the outcome of
Nadine's own story.
There is of course an unspoken message between the lines of"Nadine Pagan's Last Letter Home": Nadine is very, very angry at
her mother. The spoken proof of this rage is the news that Nadine
will stop sending letters home.
One reason Nadine is so angry at Fay is that she doesn't understand how a mother who has taught her so much about the compromises Jews have been forced into for generations could ask her own
daughter to deny her lesbianism. In this letter home, Nadine wants
desperately to show her mother that denying you're a dyke is like100

denying you're a Jew, and that both denials come from the sameroot.
Nadine is also afraid as she writes this letter that her mother will
not see or understand the correlations she is making, or for thatmatter, Nadine herself. So she chooses e xamples she is sure that her
mother will understand : Nadine tells her mothe r the story of Anne
Frank and the Nazi Holocaust.
It is very wrong to say that Nadine Pagan is "borrowing th e he roism of her grandparents." Nadine is a Jewish woman who has spent
two days a year reading the Haggadah at Passover time and learning the story of the Jews' escape from slavery in Egypt; she has
spent many Sunday mornings of her childhood in Hebrew school
reading about her people's escapes from other Jewish-hating cultures and governments in ancient times ("it was a lesson common as
the chumash books I studied from in Hebrew school ... "); andNadine has heard stories all her life about the Nazis, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms in Poland, and the pogroms in Russia, fromJews like her mother who know the stories because Jews like theirmothers have surely told them. So Nadine Pagan has learned this"heroism" well. It isn't borrowed-it's inherited.
The end of Nadine Pagan's last letter home is not about leaving
Fay Morningstar home alone to wait for the Nazis, nor is it about
leaving Fay Morningstar home alone to wait for Nadine. The end of
Nadine's last letter, specifically the words, "they may shortly thereafter burn me too. If this happens, you will feel me so clearly in theair, no words will be necessary," is about a deep psychic connection
which Nadine feels she has with her mother. She is not saying, "Youwill feel me in the kitchen while you wait for me to come home todinner." She is not saying, "You will feel me on your deathbed while
you yourself die alone." She is saying, "If they burn me, you willknow as mothers and daughters have always known, that somethingis very wrong." Now, the other thing Nadine Pagan is saying is this:"If they burn me, then I, in my spirit body, will come back to you
and you will feel me." And what this really means, I think, is, "Ma,in my death I will touch you in a way that you never let me touch
you while I was alive."
Barbara Macdonald is afraid, I think, that Nadine Pagan is dismissing her mother-an older womaru But Nadine isn't dismissing
Fay at all. She has taken great pains to carefully explain 'her politics,
her religious beliefs, and her actions to her mother. And in her own
way, Nadine Pagan has told her mother that she loves her. I he lieve101that Barbara Macdonald is really responding to Nadine Pagan'srage and her desire to lash out and hurt her mother. I think thatwhen Barbara asks such questions as, "is it lesbian" or "is it male,"she is asking, is it alright to show a daughter raging at her motherwithout forgiving her mother, and what about the mother anyway,
who's going to take care of her? In this letter home, Nadine Pagan
is still occupied with the problem of trying to get her mother to see
and understand her. She can't forgive her mother while she's in astate of rage for feeling invisible. She won't be able to forgive Fay
until the raging stops.
Now, in the evolution of daughter/mother relationships in lesbian
fiction and life, I would, as much as I am guessing Barbara Macdonald would, like to see some resolution to this anger, some healing
in the mother/daughter relationship, and nurturance between
Nadine and Fay. I know that literary images of older women areoftentimes prejudiced and false, and that these false images cancome to symbolize all older women. But I also know that manydaughter/mother relationships do not resolve; and that women like
Nadine are frequently angry at their mothers.
As a writer of fiction and plays, I can work toward the following:1) I can tell the truth as best I can2) I can inspire a kind of hope that is not false
3) I can engender healing by telling the truth and showing a newkind of possibility.
In concrete terms, this means that ultimately, I will write somestories that show me in relationship to my older women friends,
both lesbian and heterosexual, and work at integrating those stories
into the mythos I make of my own life. Right now, Nadine Pagan
and her mother Fay Morningstar are still talking to me quite a bit.
The urgency with which they speak, the clarity of their voices,makes me urgent. So it's their story that I have to tell now. I have totell it as closely to the truth as my courage allows. I do this knowing,as Judy Grahn puts it so well in her "Bowl Speech," that someone isvery apt to say, " .. . every witch must have a knife and thensomeone else will say hey i just cut myself on that image whilesomeone else will take it and bury it in their enemy's heart .. . "Butas Grahn goes on to say, " . .. that is what i mean 'Jy socially useful,that is what i mean by moving art."
Northampton, Mass.
May 7,1982
Sun Taurus / Full Moon in Scorpio

102

Dear Sinister Wisdom,
In April, 1981, I received a letter from Betsey Beaven, on Bloodroot stationery. She was writing in regard to anti-Biblical articles
I'd written in Womanspirit; she agreed with my critique of Christianity, but was upset by my definition of "anti-Semitism," & said thatmany women coming to Bloodroot restaurant were also upset by it.
Betsey's letter was open & friendly, & I tried to respond in kind. I
wrote her a 7 -page letter, elaborating my views, asking questions,& expecting an exchange of ideas & feelings; also, I told her she
could pin the letter up in Bloodroot for other women there to read.
Betsey never responded; instead, she gave my letter to Selma
Miriam, who used quotes from it in her SW 19 essay "Anti-Semitism
in the Lesbian Community." These quotes are used to show that I
am an uncaring woman, with "awful" & "dangerous" views.
I believe that a free & serious exchange of opinions & information
among women is the lifeblood of feminism; & I hope I am strong
enough to take criticism. I think, however, that constructive criticism among women needs to be (1) honest in methods & (2) issueoriented. I don't feel Selma Miriam's 3 page SWattack on me waseither.
First, Selma's excerpts from my letter were not honestly made.
She omits whole relevant paragraphs without showing any omission,or paraphrasing the omitted material. With this quoting method,
she seems to have me saying, "So what? I don't care about WW2,"
when in fact I said, & feel, just the opposite. She quotes prefatory
examples without including the point I was making, i.e., that it
doesn't make sense to call Semitic MusLims or their supporters "antiSemitic." She accuses me of not referring to problems of the relations between women & men of oppressed cultures; in fact, I
referred to this twice, in two separate paragraphs. She misuses
quotes from the WomanspiritexchangJe between Jane Litwoman &I. Finally, she condemns me for saying things that I have neverprinted, but that were part of a pers<imal exchange, by letter, between me & Betsey Beaven. It is Selma & SW that printed thesethings, not I. If I was speaking for myself, & for print, I would havequoted myself fairly.
When SW 19 came out, with Selma's essay, I wrote a long letter
to Adrienne & Michelle, asking why no one involved-Betsey, Michelle, Selma, Adrienne - had taken time to inform me my letter
was being excerpted; why no one seemed disturbed by Selma's
quoting methods or motives; why, considering the seriousness of103Selma's adjectives, SW didn't offer me a chance, in the same issue,
to defend myself.
Adrienne answered: "As to sending out an article like Selma
Miriam's to each person who has been criticized or challenged in it,
I doubt that any journal which publishes overviews or surveys does
this-let alone is it done for book reviews." I think this totally
misses the point. All the other quotes used by Selma, & journal &book review quotes used anywhere, are taken from printed
sources. This means (1) that the writer has agreed to their publication, & (2) that readers can, if they wish, go to the printed sourcesto check the accuracy & fairness of the quotes against their originalcontext. But these two points do not apply to the unauthorized useof personal correspondence, & I'm surprised that Adrienne, as apresswoman, seems not to know there is a difference. Also, I'm surprised that Adrienne, with her worldwide reputation for concern
about ethical & honorable communication among women, does notseem at all bothered by the way in which my letter was elicited &,in my opinion, dishonestly excerpted.
Second, Selma's cnticism of me depends on pejorative labels "dangerous," "awful," "anti-Semitic" - & questionably-made quotes.
She doesn't engage the issues. For instance, it is common today for
non-Jewish women to be called "anti-Semitic" for using the term
"Judeo-Christian." But many speakers & writers from Jewish backgrounds use this term; Merlin Stone refers freely to the "JudeoChristian Bible," the "Judeo-Christian beliefs," the "Judeo-Christian
myth of the Fall," the "Hebrew-Christian god Yahweh," etc. Why
are only non-Jewish women zapped for using this term? If we areusing it wrongly, surely this is due to ignorance, not malice. Why
don't Jewish women try to teach us how to use it? With information,
not trashing.
In the WS exchange with Jane Litwoman, I was called "insane"
for writing that the "only begotten Son of God" attribute of Jesus
was originally a Jewish postulate. Selma repeats this quote, indicating she also feels it is "anti-Semitic." In fact, the Jewish origin ofmany of Christ's attributes is a well-established fact among religious
historians who have studied the Qumran texts & other Dead Sea
scrolls. The Jewish Essene sects posited a Christlike "Teacher ofRighteousness" who was called "the Anointed" & referred to in oneof theiF ritual banquets as "begotten" by Yahweh; they were doing
this a hundred years or so before the reputed birth of Christ. Further information can be found in John Allegro, The Mystery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed, 1956, 1964.
104

Selma also finds my views "dangerous" & "awful" because I referto the relation between the Biblical-Hebrew concept of themselves
as a Chosen People, & the American "Manifest Destiny" concept
which has been used as a political tool, a "divine mandate," for th e
oppression & rip-off of non-Western cultures. I am being pilloried
here for saying things that are common observations; they can befound in the works of Jews as well as non-Jews. Read The Indestructible Jews (1971) by Max r. Dimont; Dimont is a popular Zionist
historian & lecturer. He writes: "It was the Christians who withsword in hand converted the pagans of Europe, thus bringing them
their first knowledge of the Old Testament & its concept of manifest destiny" (p. 244, Signet Edition). Earlier in this book, Dimont
points out that the English Puritans "regarded themselves primarily
as Hebraists [who] took the OT as their model of government" & ,arriving in America, "transformed the Jewish concept of a religious
manifest destiny into a political manifest destiny, believing it was
God's will that Americans should rule the continent & the seasbeyond" (pp. 344-48) . Dimont's whole book is dedicated to showingthat Jews, & Judaism, have a manifest destiny to save human beings
from our natural evil - which he defines as our Id, or "unconscious,"or "jungle man" -& that the political establishment of America, &then Israel, are manifestations of this God-willed destiny (pp .
383-84).
Of course, Dimont agrees with this historical development; I
don 't, & I criticize the worldview from which it derives. Such criticism has been going on for a good two decades, as part of Americanle ft-liberal cultural reevaluation of the development of Western
consciousness. What I said has been said much more fully & eloquently in many books; one of the most widely-read being Ted Roszak's Where the Wasteland Ends; see in particular Chap. 4, "TheSin ofIdolatry."
The point here, & the issue, is that if some Jewish feminists reallywant to stop this exchange of ideas & information, this reevaluationof Western ontology, they are going to have to figure out a way toimpose total censorship on an entire culture. I doubt this will bepossible. They might try to enforce restrictions on the exchange of
opinions & data among women. I hope this is not possible.
When I wrote to SW, questioning the way in which my letter was
excerpted by Selma, & my name smeared with labels, Adrienne's
response was that I should try to get beyond my natural human "defensiveness for the sake of our own & our movement's growth"; she105

said "what is necessary is that we go on expanding our understanding, receiving criticism not as 'smear' but as part of the struggle weare in. " No. I do not accept dishonest quoting methods & loadedlabelling tactics as a constructive part of women's struggle, or any
other honest struggle. Rather, these are the tactics of the people
we are supposed to be fighting against: manipulative name-calling,coercive thought-control, attempts to ce nsor, via labels like"dangerous," what we think, read & even write in letters. Please do
not ask me to accept these tactics as part of a legitimate feminist"challenge," or anybody's political "growth." Using buzzwords likethese, in this situation, is to substitute Feminist Newspeak for serious dialog.
Adrienne also pOinted out to me that, in today's world, Jewish
people are at risk; she suggests I should make sure my work cannot"be used by those who without any great interest in logic or scholarship, simply hate Jews & wish us dead. " I agree, Jews are at risk inthe modern world. The re are a large number of lifeforms at risk
today, including : women, fe minists, gays, witches, Blacks, Hispanics,
Indians, the elderly, poor people, welfare mothers, head of household working mothers, working class people, disabled people ; animals, birds, trees, air, water, food , earth. A lot of us relate to severalof these categories simultaneously. Why are we all at risk? In my
opinion, we are at risk because of the rise of religious & economic
Fundamentalism, which is Fascistic by definition. If this is so, why,in 1981 , did Menachem Begin's government award one of Israel's
highest honors, the Jabotinsky Medal, to the Rev. Jerry Falwell?
Why, earlier in 1981 , was Falwell honored in New York by the National Jewish Fund? Why, on Ma rch 23, 1982, was Ronald Reagan
given an award, by the National Council of Christians & Jews, for
his great contribution to "humanitarianism"? Do feminists, lesbians,
welfare mothers, witches, etc., who are also at risk, have the rightto question the ontological assumptions & tactical alignments underlying this apparent collusion between some conservative Jews &precisely those men who we consider to be the major reactionary
leaders, indeed proto-FaSCists, of our day?
I find this all very strange. I thought we had a common enemy:
fascistic control over our bodies, minds & futures . This is what I am
fighting ; while organized conservative Jewish groups & the Israeli
government are rewarding & awarding the Fascists. And I amlabelled "dangerous" for questioning the religious principles underlying such alignments. What is going on here?

106

If we are asked, by some Jewish feminists , not to criticize the Old
Testament or anything connected with patriarchal Judaism, because this could bring harm to Jews, then this principle must fairly
apply to all other patriarchal religions, to which huge numbers of
oppressed people are attached. Catholicism may not be criticized,
because this might endanger Spanish Catholics, who are a persecuted minority in America. Tens of thousands of Blacks are deeply attached to different Protestant denominations; therefore, Protestant
Christianity may not be criticized. Islam would become taboo also;
it is a major third world religion. Taken to its conclusion, any stopsign placed in front of religious-cultural criticism means that femi-

nism ceases to exist as a viable tool for critiq.ueing women's fundamental/ontological oppression. Does anyone really believe it ispossible to get to the sources of women's global repression & exploitation without analyzing root institutionalized male assumptions
about the nature of god, the structure & meaning of reality, theorigin & purpose of human life on earth, etc. , etc.? The past decadeor so of feminist struggle should have shown us one thing: we as
women are involved in a religious war against our sex, in a confrontation of female experience with male-originated godheads &worldviews structured insidiously into all our legal & customary
institutions.
Feminism began, I thought, as a belief in the possibility of a transcultural bonding of women against the specific cultural assumptions& oppressions derived from institutionalized male misogyny. By
trying to redefine feminism, by fiat, as subordinate to the interestsof specific cultures, by trying to define the female sex as a subcategory of Judaism, or of any other specific male-dominated & maleadvantaging worldview, you are in my opinion denying the original
premise of feminism. Denying it out of existence. You are denying
the possibility of female transcultural bonding as a political strategy& last-best-hope global political force. Is this really what you want
to do? I can't believe that it is. I hope that it is not. Such a premise,such a possibility, is at present fragile & visionary, with real ragged
edges from bitter inter-woman experience. But I hope it is not dead& gone forever.
Barbara Mor
Albuquerque, N.M.
May 10, 1982

107

Dear Sinister Wisdom,
While I have been looking forward to reading Selma Miriam's"Anti-Semitism in the Lesbian Community: A Collage of Mostly
Bad News by One Jewish Dyke" (SW 19), my responses to the article itself were mixed. I want to share them with you as part of themuch -needed dialogue about anti-Semitism.
I greatly appreciate the courage it takes to write about an issue
that has certainly not been sufficiently explored within the lesbianfeminist community-and I think it extremely positive that Selma
has done so. I know that she wrote it at a time when there was evenless visible, public support for confronting anti-Semitism than there
is now.
As a Jewish lesbian, I find much in Selma's article that speaks to
my experiences. Like her, I become increasingly angered each yearby the pervasiveness of Christmas. Like her, I share political values
that emerged in part from my having grown up in an Eastern European Jewish family imbued with strong union and leftist sympathies.
Selma's lengthy discussions of the positions taken by the editorsof Sisters United and of the writing by Barbara Mor seem to me especially valuable. I feel likewise about her briefer comments about
the anti-Semitic remarks made almost in passing by editors of somecollections of lesbian writing. Certainly the points Selma raises inthis article will contribute to further exploration of anti-Semitism
in writing. Her discussion was also signficant to me as one recent
catalyst for my thinking about issues of Jewish identity and antiSemitism, a process which has intensified for me over the past
couple of years. And I do hear very clearly her pain, and her anger.
However, I wanted something more from this article. I think it
would have been crucial for Selma to explain why, for instance, considering the minority status of women of color in the lesbian writing
community (as among women writers generally) half of the examples involve women of color-sometimes as authors/editors, sometimes as critics who did not confront a text's anti-Semitism. While
she refers only briefly to most of these examples and she cites such
positive ones as "'The Possibility of Life Between Us': A Dialogue
Between Black and Jewish Women" (Conditions: Seven) , negative
examples involving women of color seem to me disproportionate.
My initial sense of this was heightened by the fact that the firstextended example is from the work of Nigerian novelist Buchi
Emecheta; the following section cites anti-Semitism in the writing/editing of several women of color; and the one after that108

focuses on connections between Afro-American women and Christianity. The result, then, is that in three of the first five sections,nearly three of the first four pages of the article, race is a prevailingissue. This theme reappears at the article's end, where the lengthy
quote from Sarah Hoagland's comments concludes with the focus
on the tension between Jewish and Black women. The essay's final
paragraph immediately follows this quote, and devotes nearly halfof its content to women of color (or, more accurately, to Black
women) ; in part, it offers some positive comments about books by
Emecheta and Botswanian novelist Bessie Head that seemed to me
intended to provide "balance" for Selma's earlier criticism of writing by Black women.
Certainly, those of us who are white women must be free toobject to anti-Semitism in the work or actions of women of color.
But I am bothered by the way in which women of color are interwoven into an essay that appears to be on a far more general topic.
The danger, as I see it, is that Selma's article can be read to imply
that non-Jewish women of color have a disproportionate responsibility for anti-Semitism. A similar distorting effect might occur if, in
an article on racism, a non-Jewish woman of color took half of her
few examples from the writings of white Jewish women; returnedin several places in the article to these examples or to the especiallypainful tensions between these two groups of women; and then did
not address the implications of the unstated thesis created by theseselections.
Because I believe that Selma and I share a belief in the absolutely
crucial nature of attempts of Jewish women of different racial/ethnic backgrounds and non-Jewish women of color to work together,
I am concerned that her article might inadvertently undermine thiseffort. My comments are very much directed to the effect of her
article, not to its intent. It seems to me likely that the selection pro0

·Citing Emeche ta's "discussion of pre-Christian Nigerian values and cus toms" inseveral of her novels (p. 59), Selma describes Christianity in terms of Bl ack people
solely as "des tructive . .. to African people" (p. 53n), or as part of the racist romanticism of some white Christian feminists who see "Black people as th e truest Christ figures" (p. 53). H er closing comments, her "reassuring" sense that "all Blacks aren't
natural Christians" (p. 59), skirts any acknow ledgment of the possibility of deep spiritual beliefs within a Christian framework, as well as the multitudinous practical,
social, political , and economic function s of th e Black church, begun in slavery times,that have contributed to th e survival of Afro-Americans up to the present. I thinkthat part of th e problem stems from the fact that all of the perceptions Selma mentions about Christianity and Afro-Americans come from white sources.

109cess that I am questioning emerged out of the very anti-racist concerns that Selma exhibits in her comments about the negative Fundamentalist assumptions about Jews and Blacks in Sisters United,
about the racism and the Christian chauvinism in the writing by the
MCC minister. Perhaps, like me, she has been reading in the last
few years a great many books by non-Jewish women of color andtherefore thought first when pulling together the essay of this writing. It also seems possible to me that the examples picked emergedin some way from the frequent expectation that members of one oppressed group have of members of another such group, and the subsequently greater disappointment and hurt when an expected/
longed for ally expresses prejudice or fails to discern it. I regretthat the examples were not looked at more closely in terms of theirsource and the message they impart-about women of color generally, but especially about Black women, who (save for a 'single brief
mention of a Latina) supply all of the references to women of color.
The more I thought about the article and the difficulties thatmust have been involved in writing it, the more likely it seemed tome that they were tied up with the risk for Selma as a white woman
in doing what has rarely been done in white lesbian-feminist writing-offering principled criticism of the work of women of color. In
criticizing some writing by women of color for anti-Semitism,
Selma was working essentially without models for how to do so in a
way that details the criticism; acknowledges the complex, often
painful relationships between Jewish women and non:Jewish
women of color; and expresses an appreciation of writing by
women of color at the same time that she is critical of some of thiswriting. This is not easy to do, and I respect Selma's willingness torisk it. Yet I would like to have seen a few clear statements from
Selma that acknowledged the difficulties of what she was undertaking and the complex intersection of feelings/politics/history that affected her writing of the article. Then I could have read it with aclear understanding of why references to women of color run like a
sub-theme through it.
While I am in basic agreement with Selma in terms of the examples of anti-Semitic writing she uses, her citation from Emecheta's
novel, In the Ditch, raises questions for me about the issue of antiSemitism in fiction-as opposed, for example, to anti-Semitism incritical, historical, biographical, or theoretical works. While exploring the issues involved is certainly outside the province of her arti cle, Selma gives no indication that she reads a novel differently
110from how she reads these other kinds of writing. As a result of thebriefness and generalness of her comments on In the Ditch, I cameaway without knowing the precise nature and extent of her criticism. While Adah, the central character, clearly has anti-Semitic responses to the Manager (i.e. , "Even if the man was not a Jew he behaved like one"), Selma does not provide enough information forme to understand how anti-Semitism functions within the novel.
Nor am I sure whether she is implying that the existence of Adah's
statements in themselves make the book anti-Semitic.
Some questions need, I think, to be considered. (1 ) Does a separation exist between the consciousness of the author and that of thecharacter? For instance, Emecheta writes: "He's a Jew, probably,
she thought, though she did not really know any Jews or anything
about them . .. " (p. 52; my italics). While it neither exonerates
Adah's anti-Semitism nor makes it more palatable, the latter part ofthis sentence does indicate the author's awareness that Adah 's response is the result of ignorance, of lack of contact, of limited experience, and unquestioned stereotypes ; in other words, Emecheta
seems to be doing something quite different from identifying withor approving her character's prejudice. (2) What happens after acharacter's anti-Semitism is revealed? Does she change? A few
lines below where Selma stops quoting from In the Ditch, Emecheta
writes that "in less than a month . . . the Manager was no longer a'Jew' to her-or, if he was Jewish, so much better for the Jews," because of his generosity and thoughtfulness toward Adah. Her antiSemitism remains: Adah sees the Manager as the "exceptional Jew,"
the one who is "different from " the others. While her perceptionthat all Jews are not the same contains the potentialfor her to go on
to rethink seriously her initial anti -Semitism, she does not do so in
the remainder of the novel. For me, this is crucial information that
Selma doesn't provide. In this connection I think back to Jo Sinclair's Wasteland, whose main character is a white, Jewish, heterosexual man whose initial perceptions reflect his racism, his selfhatred as a Jew, and his homophobia. It would be easy to quote him
in ways that illustrate these attitudes, but, to do so without further
comment would distort a novel in which his attitudes change significantly (and positively) ; his character is contrasted to that of his
sister - an anti-racist, strongly Jewish-identified lesbian; and theperspective of the author (a white, Jewish lesbian) is clearly inaccord with the sister's. While the two novels are very different, ineach more information needs to be -given in order adequately to111

assess and convey the author's handling of anti -Semitism, Jewish
identity, racism, and other issues.
While my comments here focus on Selma's discussion of In the
Ditch, the questions raised by her criticism have barely begun to be
explored vis-a-vis fiction in relation not only to anti-Semitism, but
to other oppressions. Can women-Jewish or not-write responsibly about characters who are anti-Semitic? If so, how? (Can white
women write only about positive Third World characters? about
non-racist white characters? about racist white characters whoeither struggle with their racism or are clearly the villains of thestory?) Can we develop a literary theory and practice that opposes
the perpetuation of anti-Semitism (and other oppressions) throughliterature; recognizes such issues in fiction as point of view and theseparation between author and character; and supports the writingof fiction that provides accurate-unidealized and unsimplified-reflections of our lives? If so, how?
I do not raise even these few questions about fiction because I
think Selma (or anyone else) could have resolved them in a single
article, but because I regret that she did not at least acknowledge
their complexity. For instance, Selma uses several examples inwhich the writers or editors involved are themselves Jewish: what
are the implications not just of this situation, butof her failure to acknowledge that she is not only citing non-Jewish women for theiranti-Semitism, for their failures to explore or confront antiSemitism? What about the differences of opinion among Jewish
women in some circumstances as to what constitutes anti-Semitism
in writing, particularly in "creative writing"? Is this always a question of different levels of awareness ("more conscious/more Jewishidentified" vs. "less conscious/less Jewish-identified")? How does individual consciousness interact with a woman's political and/or literary perspectives? What do different opinions in this area meanand how do those of us who are Jewish choose to view/respond tothem? Are the differences that exist necessarily as deep as theymight appear? For example, Selma characterizes Sister United as
not "in any way specifically anti -Semitic" (p. 54) ; I consider the
publication clearly and specifically anti-Semitic, in its assumptionthat Jews will be "elevated" by marriage with Christians. Do Selma
and I fundamentally disagree-or are we simply using the word:'specifically" in a different way, since she does feel strongly about
the danger to her/me/us in their belief system? These questions,and the lack of quick answers, illustrate the many issues that re112

quire greater exploration among Jewish lesbians.
Finally, my need for strategies for political action makes me question why an article which promises to be quite encompassing isfocussed mainly on writing. While I continue to see literature as atremendously valuable area for exploration, I think we get onto extremely shaky ground when an article almost entirely about antiSemitism in writing is entitled «Anti-Semitism in the Lesbian Community" (my italics). Among other problems, presenting one aspect
as if it were the whole effectively deletes the concerns of those
Jewish lesbians of all classes and backgrounds who do not see writing and publishing as a central focus of their lives.
I know that in writing this response I have been able to do no
more than touch on many of the issues I've raised. I know too that I
have not even mentioned other issues that we badly need to incorporate into any discussion of anti-Semitism : class, cultural differences, ethnicity within the Jewish community ; the extent of systemic and institutional anti-Semitism in the here and now; the current political context for lesbian-feminist writing, for the lesbianfeminist community-the world "out there," outside that community, from the Klan and the Nazis to the white Christian men in the
White House who think prayer in the schools is a good idea. But I
have finally had to make the very decision that Selma herself musthave made at some point: to explore some small part of the issue ofanti-Semitism ; to be as clear as I can at the time that I write ; and tohope that my comments-and my questions-prove of some use.
Elly Bulkin
Brooklyn, N.Y .
May 31 , 1982

Dear Sinister Wisdom,
As a Jewish lesbian feminist , I must respond to Selma Miriam's"Anti -Semitism in the Lesbian Community," in Sinister Wisdom 19.
I cannot say I liked the article; no Jewish lesbian likes to be reminded that her sisters in the women's movement ignore and trivialize
her/our experiences and pain. I can only say that I needed to read
Selma's words, needed to hear them said, and that I too long to hear
non-Jews bear witness to their truth.

113

Too often during the past several years, I have heard non-Jewish
lesbian feminists dismiss anti-Semitism-even those who claim to
deplore it. Anti-Semitism, like racism, will disappear with patriarchy, they claim. As a result, they will ask: "Must we deal with it?""Must we deal with it now?" "Why be divisive; why magnify our differences? Aren't we all oppressed as women and as lesbians?" Yet,as both Jewish women and women of color have observed, thewomen's culture which would ignore our differences would serve
only to establish a world in which anti-Semitism and racism would
persist, submerging us in a homogeneous culture as patriarchy has
always done.
In recent writings by Jewish lesbians, I have been struck over andover again by our connection of visible Jewishness with "danger."
Asserting one's identity as a Jew, or simply having others identify
one as a Jew, has meant rejection, persecution, and death for us forso many centuries that I find myself both angry and frightened as I
identify myself here-frightened, because I fear even my sisters
will reject me ; angry, because among my sisteres there should be
no fear.
It is precisely because we identify ourselves as lesbian feministsthat we commit ourselves to fight against racism and anti-Semitism,using all the resources we can muster as individuals and as a movement. Speaking of her book, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black
Women's Studies (co-edited with Gloria T . Hull and Patricia Bell
Scott for The Feminist Press), Barbara Smith said in the May 1982
issue of Off Our Backs: "We begin by talking about Black feminism
and the racism within the women's movement, which implies thatthe women's movement is a valid place to be putting in someenergy to get it right about issues of race and class and difference .
. . feminism does give this clear, no-nonsense perspective on the
problems, issues, and realities that affect our lives." That racism
and anti-Semitism can be tolerated and even perpetuated within
the movement is intolerable. As Gloria Z. Greenfield has put it in"Shedding" (in Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, edited by
Evelyn Torton Beck for Persephone Press): "That anti-Semitism
sometimes wears a feminist cloak is irrelevant. The fact that thefeminist movement accepts anti-Semitism-in any form-is very
relevant .... Until the feminist movement confronts antiSemitism - inside and outside, individually and collectively - themovement will continue to reflect the growing anti-Semitism of
mainstream society."114

Perpetuating negative stereotypes, ignoring the experiences ofwomen who are "different," trivializing the Holocaust or the enslavement of Blacks or the eradication of Native American peoples
and cultures-these are not harmless acts. When 1 witness them,whether in the words of my sisters in the movement or of the patriarchs, 1 smell the ovens. The real danger, for all of us, lies in silence, and in compliance. 1 thank Selma Miriam for her courage.
Susan J. Wolfe
Vermillion, S.D.
May 1982

Selma Miriam responds:
Barbara Mor's letter to SW is not surprising to me. I know she isthinking that she despises patriarchy, Jewish and Christian, as 1 do,and that beyond that anti-Semitism is an anachronistic, semanticallyincorrect term to her. When Betsey wrote, she made it clear that
Bloodroot was a public space, and perhaps that's why Barbara Mor
ended her letter to Betsey saying, "I hope you can pin this letter up
for other women to read." And so we concluded that she wanted
the letter to be shared publicly.
1 think the best answer to Barbara Mor is Nice Jewish Girls: A
Lesbian Anthology, edited by Evelyn Torton Beck. While 1 doubtthat the book will change Barbara's mind, perhaps it will be usefulto other women, both of Christian and Jewish origin, who haven 't
thought about what it is to be Jewish at all.
1 am sorry to have raised Elly's expectations and then failed tosatisfy them in my article. Since 1 was attempting to address only a
few examples of writing within the Lesbian community and myreactions to them, 1 had wanted to title the article with whatbecame the subtitle instead: "A Collage of Mostly Bad News as Perceived by One Jewish Dyke." The editors of Sinister Wisdom felt
this title negated the importance of the issues raised and therefore
the broader title-not as accurate, 1 think, as the original.
115

As I tried to say repeatedly, I am upset and disappointed by theomission of notice of anti-Semitism in the small community of lesbian feminist writers who seem to care about the development of alesbian morality and a politics which is not destructive to women's
backgrounds and histories. It was this lack of notice which prompted me to write the piece. I was criticizing Peg Cruikshank for notdoing something in public about her line in Lesbian Path after I
called it to her attention. I was criticizing Adrienne Rich for her
praise of In the Ditch without notice of its anti-Semitic passage. I
was criticizing the white MCC minister who otherwise seemed tohave an excellent understanding of how Christianity is oppressive
to women. I was wondering why Kin of Ata, which depicts the rapeof a black woman who forgives the rapist and then goes back to theworld and dies to save the souls of people, is considered of such spiritual value to many lesbian feminists.
Elly makes much of my criticism of Emecheta, to my surprise,
since it was Adrienne Rich with whom I was angry. Emecheta is
not, to my knowledge, a lesbian attempting to construct an ethicallesbian value system. However, if she were, should I not criticize
her or other women of color if they write or speak anti-Semitically?
Should I not expect that we all make such criticisms? It seems tome if we don't, then we are acting in a racist fashion indeed. Ellyquestions whether a writer can depict a character with an ugly trait
such as racism or anti-Semitism without holding those views herself,
and keep our respect. Of course she can, if she makes clear her
opinion of the character's thoughts or actions by depicting othercharacters with opposite views or in some other commentary-sortof way. Emecheta often commented on Adah's beliefs and emotions; she surely was capable of clarifying her own position on Jews
if it were in disagreement with Adah's. I'm not saying her view ofJews was entirely negative, only stereotypical and ugly.
I also think Elly is mistaken in her assumptions of what I tried tobalance in my article. I did not refer to Bessie Head's writings nor
to Emecheta's later works as balance ; they really do mean a lot tome, a point I will elaborate on later. The balance to me was provided by the dialogue in Conditions VII and by Sarah Hoagland's
speech. These were evidences to me of attempts within my community to transcend the divisiveness created by patriarchial thinking. While I recognize that other Jewish women were upset with
Judy Simmons' poem, I myself was not. I found her anger, her needto assess her oppression and Jewish oppression understandable.
116Since the result of others' concern was the "conversation" in Conditions VII, it was to me, positive rather than negative.
There is much in my piece that I am not satisfied with. I feel I am
clumsy when I write (I do very little of it). So I felt inadequate to
the job of commentary on my reac tions to articles I read-justneeded to record them, as a collage, and ask for evaluation by thecommunity. The part on Sisters United was originally written notbecause I was so angry with the women who do Sisters United, but
because I was upse t when I thought that Spinsters, Ink-lesbian
publishers whom I greatly admired-had advertised in Sisters
United. When SWurged me to check this out direc tly and I learned
that the ad had gone in without the publishe r's knowl edge (free), I
would have droppe d the whole section on Sisters United. But I was
sent the then current issue of it by the publishe r and urged by SW
to keep the section. In that issue, received after th e article waswritten, there were both specifically anti-Semitic and specificallyracist passages which did seem to warrant wider notice. There fore,
those quotes replaced the criticism of the publisher which, to myrelief, wasn't correct.
My final point is about Christianity, on which I do not think Ellyand I will be able to agree. I do be lieve that the purveyors of Christianity have destroye d the history and cultures of th e peoples ofAfrica and North and South Ame rica -whe rever values were transmitted via an oral tradition. They have almost totally stampe d out adiversity of heritages and it is only with diffi culty that we can lea rn
scraps about what has been lost. That is where Bessie Head's Collector of Treasures and Emeche ta's Nigerian nove ls are especiallyprecious (as are the recent attempts to collect Native Americanmaterials by Turtle Grandmother,l Audre Lorde's African references and glossary in The Black Unicorn, and Luisah Teish'scolumn "In the House of the Mother" which appears every few
months in Plexus).
Whether or not Christianity is presently a comfort to women of
any color, it is my enemy. I may understand or forgive women for
their continued association with the church but particularly spiritual, "holy" depictions such as the play in Womanspirit are revolting
to me. They are, to me, inherently anti-Semitic. It is difficult to
explain that reading about women's experience within Christianity(such as in Lesbian Path, or for a more rece nt example, Alezia
Kunz's Shangrila and Linda) is inte res ting and valuable. It is whenJesus as a fe mal e is supposed to turn me on, or the mix of gospel
117

songs and African chants are presented as the real Christianity thatlesbianism can bring to the church, just as Jesus tried to bring thegood news to the Jews, that I am outraged. Sorry, but I can't believethat the Christian belief system has in any way contributed to thesurvival of Afro-Americans, though of course I believe that whatever bonding ethnic and oppressed groups could make have contributed to their respective survivals.
Finally, Elly is disturbed that I am writing, as she says, disproportionately about women of color. I had thought, if there was anyemphasis made, it was that I reserved my severest criticism (andmost space) for Barbara Mor. I was writing about the articles which
struck me most, from the periodicals I read most often. As far as I
know, the women I was criticizing, with the exception of the writers
in Top Ranking, are white. I don't know why they make so much of
black Christianity. Their doing so offends me, and that's what I wastrying to say.
I do think that besides the broader issues of racism and antiSemitism, there are particular questions about how minority
women see and treat each other. Of course there is much more to
be written about, apropos women of color and white Jewish
women. I was writing about what hurt me most, to the community I
respect most. Writing a full year ago, before I'd even heard of Nice
Jewish GirlSl, before I'd seen Irena Klepfisz's article in Womanews3or the issues of Big Mama Rag and off our backs on anti-Semitism, I
was trying to raise the beginnings of questions.
1. For an example, order Cogewea the Half-Blood by Hum-Ishu-Ma, University of
Nebraska Press, reprinted 1981 from the 1927 edition, from Turtle GrandmotherBooks (P.O. Box 33964, Detroit, MI 48232) to further evaluate the adoption of
Christianity as part of the necessity of physical survival while one's values and wayof life are wiped out.
2. Evelyn Torton Beck, ed., Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, Persephone
Press, 1982.
3. Irena Klepfisz, "Anti-Semitism in the Lesbian Feminist Movement: Womanews(New York City) , Dec/Jan. 81/82.

118

Dear Barbara Mor,We will be publishing in full your letter of May 10. Our delay inbeing in touch with you is partly a result of my worsening arthritis. I
shall shortly be having surgery, and we have held up the magazine
production schedule by a month. I wanted after all the exchanges
between you and SW to write you my most recent thoughts. Thisletter will appear in SW #21 along with yours and a reply from
Selma Miriam to her critics.
It is true that in the full text of your letter to Betsey Beaven
you make statements which Selma's article does not quote: among
them, repeated references to the incorrectness of using the term
"anti-Semitic" since both Jews and Arabs are Semites; also an acknowledgment that "Jewish women have the same double-burdenof allegiance that Black women have, and American IndianHispanic women-a loyalty not only to their sex, but to their ethnic
group, which has been under persecution for so long." You say thatas an anthropologist you do not believe there is such a thing as aninferior race or group ; or that there is any such thing as a superior
race. From there you go on to attack the "old Hebraic idea of themselves as a Chosen People." And from here, in your letters both published and unpublished, I feel that once having made some rhetorical gestures, you are losing me.
You lose me when you ignore the critique by Jewish feminists (ongoing for at least a decade) of Judaism's patriarchal attitudes. You
lose me in exhaustive paragraphs about the incorrectness of theterm "anti-Semitism" -a term that nevertheless has a history, a context, and an actual usage. You lose me when you fail to appreciate
the double-edgedness of "criticism" of Jewish culture by non-Jews,
like the double-edgedness of "criticism" of people of color by white
people-the fact that rhetorical gestures are not enough, there
needs to be a felt, pervasive, principled sensitivity. You lose me
when you write that Jews "seem to be saying" (seem to whom?) :"Anyone who criticizes anything Jewish, past, present or future, is aNazi." You lose me because I don 't hear, in your words, any recognition of the real existence of Jewish feminist lesbians in our complicated lives, any breadth of sympathy which can move beyond
your objections to the Bible or to Begin's policies, to our struggles
with escalating world-wide anti-Semitism, our position as womenand lesbians within the various Jewish communities, the grief andfury of the Middle Eastern wars, the use of "trans-cultural womanbonding" as a denial of our Jewishness, the intersections of racism
119and anti-Semitism everywhere. It's as though you have no imagination-and only imagination, I think, can help us as we attempt to"critique patriarchy" in cultures not our own, e specially cultures
we have been programmed to distrust, despise or hate.
I think there are ways in which the question of "anti-Semitism" asa term, or the need for cross-cultural feminist criticism, could bevalidly raised. What alienates me in your critique and your responseto criticism, is that you do not seem ever to stop and imagine thoseon whom you are pouring out pages of words, long quotations, evidence of research. We have become abstractions for you in yoursearch for patriarchal evil-we and the rest of Jewish women in history. You do not care, beyond the mention of it, that there is a very
old Jewish secular tradition, that many, perhaps most Jewish femi nists were raised in that tradition, that there is a very old Jewish tradition of protest and dissent, a tradition in which Jews have taken
extreme risks and died, not just for our own people but for others
suffering exploitation and persecution. You do not credit the effortsof the Peace Now movement in Israel, the strong anti-militarist position of many Jewish feminists. You show no respect for the risingof Jewish feminist consciousness, for the right of a group coming
into new and needed self-awareness to name what feels threatening
to us. There is a great deal of footwork in your writings, Barbara:
you move from Israeli policy to Old Testament homophobia to yourright to criticize Eldridge Cleaver as a misogynist to the proper
meaning of "Semite"; a great deal of footwork but an absence ofheartwork, and it is finally, I think, heartwork which makes possible
cross-cultural criticism from a feminist perspective. It is simply notenough to say that all men are life-haters, along with some rhetorical phrases about the double burden of Jewish women.
There are many observations that you make in your letters withwhich I, for one, could agree. But the problem is that you insist
upon intellectual agreement, in the name of trans-cultural womanbonding, without the necessary process-work having been done.
Fact can be "true," i.e., verifiable, and still be emotionally wrong
and ill-used, used for false ends. More and more Jewish feminists
are engaging in the process of defining our relationship to a whole
range of Jewish issues, coming as we do from a diversity of Jewish.
backgrounds and their sometimes conflicting perspectives. This is
our process, and you cannot presume to tell us how it should be conducted, or how we should get on with it. Overall, I think, it is that
tone, of knowing better than the outsider group how it should be120

defining and conducting itself, that has always felt oppressive:
what middle-class people have done 't o poor people, whites topeople of color, the middle-aged to the old, non-Jews to Jews, men,as we know well, to women. It is that tone, wherever it comes from,that loses me, that has made it so difficult to write to you until I
could identify and name for myself what underlies your many andarticulate words.
Sincerely,
Adrienne Rich
July 28, 1982

Dear Adrienne and Michelle,It's heartening to realize how fast Jewish consciousness is developing, even when this growth makes us-or in this case, me-selfcritical. And so when I read in SW 20 my review of Michiyo Cornell's and Elise Young's poetry-a review written only six months
ago-I felt shame and surprise at what now seem to me glaring
errors.
First, Elise's poem" A Litany of Jewish Exorcism," which is a
deeply Jewish poem, concludes with a coven of lesbians purging
the synagogue and smashing the "shrunken idols." In January thisvision seemed to me extravagant and simplistic (as if lesbian unity
were perfect), but it did not seem harmful. In June, more aware of
the depth of Jewhating in our culture-and I wish I could exempt
lesbian culture but I can't-the idea of any group entering a synagogue to destroy anything Jewish strikes me as frightening anddangerous. My guess is that today Elise wouldn't write the poem
this way either. We have seen too much Jewhating pass under theguise of feminist critique of patriarchal religion. We have seen too
much Jewhating, period.
Second, I conclude the review with a reference- "Ever since thecamps, Japanese lesbians and Jewish lesbians had better know
there are too many people after our lives for us to give them overeasy." Today the shorthand "the camps" seems to me facile, as if
the concentration camps into which Japanese-Americans weregathered and the extermination camps where the Jews of Nazioccupied Europe were gathered and killed were the same. I don't
mean to rank oppression, but I also don't want to wash over the specifiCity of these two experiences with a catch-phrase. The better
121

analogy between Japanese and Jewish experience exists; it is between the Hiroshima bomb and the death camps.
Let me say too that secure as I am now in what I'm saying, I knowthat if Jewish women continue to do our work, then six months fromnow I will feel equally amazed at what I said and thought today, atwhat I hadn't yet seen, at the rapidity of change in our awareness.
With love and appreciation for the labor and commitment whichmakes this forum Sinister Wisdom available ,Melanie Kaye
North Windham, Maine
July 16, 1982

Announcements
A Real Professional Women's Theatre Company of Portland, Oregon, is soliciting
plays and other original material for their upcoming theatrical season. Submit yourwork to: A Real Professional Women's Theatre Company, c/o Nancy S.
Vander burgh, 555 N.E. Fargo # I , Portland, OR 9721 2. Please include information
on royalties, etc.
"By and About Southern Women," 1983 Southeas t Women's Studies Association
Conference, April 8-10, Greensboro, N.C. Send workshop and paper proposals by
February 1 to Jeanette Stokes, P.O. Box 1365, Greensboro, NC 27402.
Cat's Eye : Magazine of Poetry edited by Melissa Cannon and Alice Savage. Ordercopies from : Cat's Eye, 1005 Clearview Drive, Nashville, TN 37205. Single copies$2.50; sub 3/$6.00.
Cleis Press seeks Editor for Anthology on Physicall y Challenged Women. The
editors of Cleis Press have been interested in publishing such a book since th e oob
special issue and the Conference for Disabled Lesbians (M ichigan, 1981 ), but feelthe project must be directed by physically challenged/disabled women. Womeninterested in working on this project should contact Felice Newman at Cleis Press(P.O. Box 8281 , Minneapolis, MN 55408, 812-825-8872) as soon as possible. Cleis
Press is able to provide a significant amount of assistance to th e editor(s}, who would
be paid in royalties after publication. The book will be published both in print andon tape.
Common Ground : Western N.Y. Women's Newsjournal. 11 issues/yr. $11 reg. sub.; .
$15 household or supporting; $6 low income; $25 institutional. Free to women in
prisons and mental hospitals.
Jewish Women: Wanted narratives, inte~views, oral histories, fiction, poetry, drama,
essays, translations. For anthology- edited by Melanie Kaye and Irena Klepfisz-to
depict the lives, history, creativity, resistance, and survival of Jewish women.

122Submissions from and about Arabic. Ashkenazi. and Sephardic Jews from all nations
encouraged. We want this anthology to represent th e true range of who we are.
Send manuscripts with SASE to: Anthology. c/o I. Kl epfisz. P.O. Box 128. New
Lebanon. NY 12125. Deadline: April 1. 1983.
Left Bank Books sponsors a Books for Prisoners project. Through donations and a
postage grant we are able to send free miscellaneous books to inmates everywher e(provided institution allows them in). We offer special order books at cost. usually
35-40% off. Prisoners and others interes te d should write: Books for Prisoners. Box"A.· 92 Pike St.. Seattle. WA 98101. Donations of books and money from those on
the outside always appreciated. This is a volunteer. non-profit projec t.
Lesbian Contradictions : A Journal of Irreverent F eminism. A new lesbian feminist
quarterly for women only. to begin publication fall 1982. Commentary. analysis.
reviews. humor. by and for feminists who agree to disagree. In the (inest tradition of
constructive fe minist controversy-a tradition we will have to invent as we go along.
To get your 1st issue free. send nam e and address to: LC. 1007 N. 47. Seattle. WA
98103 ; or. LC. 2770 -22d St.. San Francisco. CA 94110.
Lesbian Incest Survivors: wanted to fill out questionnaires on th eir expe riences forbook by Lesbian Incest Survivors. All responses confidential. For info/ques tionnaire.
write: Susan Marie. P.O. Box 304. Oakland. CA 94668.
Living Breath Health Cooperative : a lesbian-feminist. inter-cultural healthorganization with centers in Massachusetts and Puerto Vallarta. Mexico. Retreats.
seminars (academic credit). and treatments based on wholistic therapies. For more
info. and brochure. call/write: (4 13) 625-9587/P.O. Box 26. Shelburne Falls. MA
01370.
Signs : Journal of Women in Culture and Society is soliciting manuscripts for a special
Lesbian Issue scheduled for publication in Spring 1984. Unpublished scholarship on
all aspects oflesbian experience will be considered. as well as new English
translations of material published in other languages. The editors are especiallyinterested in research on the following topics: international lesbianism;
lesbian-feminist th eory; lesbians of color; lesbian mothers ; the relationship ofsexuality. identity. and political consciousness in various historical and culturalcontexts; lesbians and work; relations between lesbians and gay men; lesbians andth e law. Inquiries regarding submissions are welcomed by the Lesbian Issue
planning committee. The original manuscript. two copies. and an abstract of no morethan 150 words should be sent to Signs. Center for Research on Women. Serra
House. Stanford University. Stanford. CA 94305. Deadlin e February 1. 1983.
Trivia. a new feminist journal of ideas. will be forthcoming in Fall of 1982. P .O. Box606. North Amherst. MA 01059.
Word Weavers. publisher of Lesbian vision. seeks manuscripts of any length for
publication. Fiction or non-fiction reflecting our Lesbian reality. Send to Word
Weavers. P.O. Box 8742. Minneapolis. MN 55408.
Working Class Lesbians please send oral herstory (interviews and tapes) . personal
narratives. journal excerpts. poetry. analyses. or short fiction for consideration inanthology of Canadian working-class lesbians. Submissions from Canadian-raised. aswell as Canadian-born lesbians welcome. Please forward your ideas. suggestions.
work outlines. and completed work to: Cy-Thea Sand. P.O. Box 24953. Station C.
Vancouver. B.C. V5T 4G3.

123

The Invisible Lesbian/Feminist PrinterThis is a letter about invisibilit y- th e invisibility of lesbian/fe minist-ow ned
printshops and the women who work there. It is about how they will survive these
economic and political times- or not survive. In particul ar , this is a letter about the
Iowa C ity Women's Press and the struggles for surviva l th at we are going throughtoday.
By way of background : the Iowa City Women's Press was fo rmed in 1972 by acollecti ve of eig ht women. Our main reasons for forming the press were (1) to help
women gain more control over their printe d words and (2) to help women ga in more
control over their lives throug h access to skills. We hoped to accomplish this second
aim by learning and teaching printing skill s and by publishing skill s manuals. The
first goal came directly out of the Iowa C ity experi ences of A in 't I a W oman?
newspaper (published between 1970 and 1974), in which th e male printers refu sed
to print an iss ue that contained medical self-help photographs, saying th at theywould not print "pornography."
We started as a small , volunteer-run printshop in a converted garage, and we havegrown into a business that employs 4-5 women full -time, with associated binderyand typesetting businesses employing another 3-4 women. For the pas t two years,
we have chosen to concentrate more and more on printing books for lesbian/feminist
publishe rs and self-publishing women, and on printing periodicals such as Common
LiveslLesbian Lives and Sinister Wisdom. We continue to produce our two skills
manuals, Greasy Thumb and A gainst th e Grain, which are now in th eir fifth
printing. Over th e next year, we plan to reorganize the publishing arm of th e Press
and hope to bring out several new titl es.
Two of the problems we have faced continuall y in th e years of our ex istence are (1 )trying to compete as an undercapitalized business in a highl y capitalized industry
and (2) credibility. Because we do not have th e money th e acquire the highly
technologized printing equipment that is now the standard in the printing industry(particularly in the book-printing industry, where 140 books per minute can be
printed and bound on equipment th at cos ts into the millions of dollars), we must relyon old and ineffici ent equipment. The credibility problem occurs when wom en are
unahl e to re cognize the dilemm a we are in ; when th ey see our mistakes as the resultof care lessness, instead of th e material problem th ey ar e; when th ey see our high erbook prices as the result of mismanageme nt instead of th e struggl e to be an
economica ll y viable shop.
It has been our exp erience th at, given the opportunity, wom en stri ve forexcellence; and we feel the quality of work we have produced is a tes tim onial to thisfact.
In spite of these dilemmas, we continue to receive support from wom en who
understand the importance of the continuing survi val of women-owned printshops.
As economic times get harder, th e support is even more needed and , at the sametime, more difficult to get. These goals and problems are common to all
lesbian-owned printshops. We feel it is tim e for women to consider seriously theramifications of not supporting these shops. In recent tim es, lesbians and feminists
who want to produce books, periodicals, Qr pamphlets, have easily found cheap mal e
printers to do it. Do we really think that in five or te n years this will be so? We havefound it hard to get women publishers to understand that th e lahor of producing a124

book goes hand in hand with the labor of writing and publishing a book.
Lesbian/feminist publishers would find it inconceivable to publish a book written bya man; yet virtually all choose to have their books produced by men.
What does this boil down to? What do we hope to get out of making these problems
public?
We are not asking women to pay twice as much to have th eir books printed by us.
Nor can we produce the Madison A venue four-color slick covers that seem
necessary to sell books these days. What we hope is th at women will put the ir
political concern for fr eedom of the press before considerations of ease and small
economic gains. We're not talking about getting rich from printing ; nor are wetalking about publishers not making a living from th eir efforts. What we are saying isthat there should be enough to go around for everybod y, and th at how we use it is ofreal political significance.
What we are specifically asking is:
1. If you are a publisher of books or periodicals, consider having women-owned
printshops do your printing. It is beyond our capabilities at this point to efficientl yproduce large runs of 300-page books. Where we can be competitive is in th e area ofsmaller books and periodicals, such as 100-200 pages and 2000-5000 copies.
2. If you are involved in any women's organizations, ask where th e letterhead, fl yers,brochures, or posters are being printed. If th ere isn't a woman printer in your area
who is capable of doing what you need, contact us for names of other women
printers nearby.
3. When you go into a women's bookstore, be aware of what books and periodicals
are printed by women (look for this information on the copyright page); and knowthat th e money you pay for that book goes directly back to women, all th e way downth e line .
We are also asking women to think about and give us feedback on the following :1. Would you consider paying $.50 more for a book produced by women? This is away for all of us to capitalize our own institutions.
2. As a bookseller, would you consider displaying women-produced books
separately and explain and educa te cus tomers about the differ ences in prices?
3. As a publisher, even if you can't feasibly print all of your books with a feminist
printer, perhaps you can print one or two books a year, especially those books thatare of most importance to our lesbian culture, in a les bian/fem inist shop.
This is a critical time for the Iowa City Women's Press. We ar e worried about our
future, both in terms of our own jobs and the con tinuing existence of the press.
Right now the Iowa City Women's Press is the only lesb ian/ fe minist press in the
country in which a book can be typeset, printed an d bound by women. Its loss wou ld
be a significant one. The loss of any lesbian/feminist press at any stage of its
development is significant. The survival of our cultural institutions-our insistenceon our public selves- is an important guarantee for the survival of our individual
freedom.

Barb and Joan for the Iowa City Women 's Press Collective

125

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ERRATABe th Karbe was incorrectly iden tified as the photographer for th e cover of SW20.
She in fact photographed th e t.hree pai~tings by Sudie Rak usin inside th e issue.
Victoria Ramstetter's poem, "Lesbian Epic," was printed in SW 15 with two typos:
on p. 56, line 8 should read, "The water," and on p. 58, line 15 should have a period
after "squelching. "126

Notes on Contributors
Janet Aalfs has lived in Northampton, Mass., long enough for it to feel like home.
She is a me mber of Cal ypso Borealis, a lesbian writing group , and a black belt inkarate. She trains and teaches karate and self-defense to women and girls throughValley Women's Martial Arts, Inc.
Lois Anne Addison is a white lesbian who e ncourages irrever ence and disrespect
for authority. She lives in Durham, N.C., with her lover Joy, two big Bouvier dogs,
Pokey and Puddle, Tar Kitty, and assorted wild birds who co me to visit in th e garden.
Red Jordan Arobateau : "Red is a lesbian, born again christian, mong rel, & witness
on the sea of life:
Lynn Crawford has lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a graphic artist, graduate
student in social work, conga drummer, editor, and cat-keeper.
Pamela Culbreth is a lesbian writer, working on her first novel, an d presently living
in New York State with her lover, Ann, two dogs, and a cat. They all pl an to movesomeplace warm. as soon as they can figure out wher e.
Sylvia Foley says: "Until recentl y, I was living the life of a lesbian-feminist- extruder mechanic-w riter. H owever, I cracked two ribs at work and conseq uently had troubl ecarrying around all those labels, so I dropped th e extruder-mechanic segment. (Iwas hav ing a toug h time fe igning reverence for plas ti c bags and men, anyway.)"
laura ragin justice: "i am a writer, a senior at wes leyan university, involved withth eatre (as opposed to being a 'theatre person'); particularl y concern ed with writing
and directing drama which r epresents positive images of women of color. "Irena Klepfisz is the author of a book of poetry, periods of stress, distributed by
Crossing Press. "Bashert" is included in her new collection, Kee per of Accounts,
recently published by Persephone Press. Her essays on anti-Semitism inside andoutside th e lesbian/fe minist movement appear in Nice j ewish Girls: A Lesbian
A nthology. She is a memher of Di Vilde C haves, a Jewish lesbian/feminist coll ective.
Marian Roth lives in Provincetown , Mass. In addition to her work as an artist, sheteaches both photog raphy and political science, and is producing a hook of her
photographs, tentatively called Connections.
Mab Segrest lives in Durham, N.C., and is a memher of th e collec tive that edits
Feminary: A Feministjournalfor the South. "March Blizzard " is in her book of
poems, Liv ing in a House I Do Not Own, published by Night Her on Press.
Wendy Simpson li ves in Sunderland, Mass. She is currentl y working on a hooktrac ing her battl e with cancer, and devouring infor mation on nutrition and di sease,
the hody- mind rela tionship, etc. She hopes to r ealize her dr eam of a fe minist press inthe Valley.
Ann Allen Shockley is an academic Iihrarian and writer in Nashvill e, Tenn. Herlates t book is a novel, Say j esus and Come to Me.
Mary Lou Tomes is thirty-one years old. She lives and works in New York Ci ty.
Anmarie Wagstaff is a lesbian living "on th e boundary" in D avis, Calif.-making
troubl e, teaching, and going to graduate sc hool.
Elise Young is a Jewish lesbian writer/teacher of writing, a contributor to L esbian
Poetry: A n A nthology (Perse phone Press), and currentl y writing a book called
Talking Pieces. She lives in Western Massachusetts.

127

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SINISTER WISDOM
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Sinister Wisdom will b e produ cing an issu e on North American
Indian women. Th e editor will be Mohawk writer Be th Brant(D egonwadonti), who will have sole responsibility for thi s proj ec t.
She has writte n:"W e a re looking for all form s of expression: short stories, g raphics, essays, poe try, le tte rs to and from wom e n, photog raphs, excerpts from diaries, reviews of books, translations , oral hi stories
and narrations, legends , and myths, just to na me a few exampl es.
"The compilation of our words and pic tures into a single issu ewill re fl ect our many dive rsiti es, suc h as: our diffe ring lifestyles;
our age spectrum; how w e fee l about issues of health ; traditional
images of Indian wom e n; our class divisions (urban Indians vs. rese rvation Indians) ; our varied and multipl e bloods-Indian/B lack , Indi an/Asian, Indian/Latina ; th e ble nding of th e spiritual with ourphysical daily lives; our concern for our childre n, our grandchildre n, our Elde rs ; how our activism is re fl ected in our communiti es;
th e fun and strength we get from our traditions (Pow Wows,
Midwinters, dances, e tc.) .
"All Indian women are e ncourage d to participa te in this projec t.
Th e numbe r of e ducational degrees, or lack of th e m, is immate rial.
We a re looking for words and pictures from th e heart ; from our expe ri e nce as Indian wome n.
"Please type manuscripts double-spaced, and send with astamped and se lf-addressed e nvelope. Send all work by January 15,
1983, to: Be th Brant, 18890 Reed , Melvindale, MI 48122. "COl1tributors, Please R ead: Pl ease se nd a ll work For considera ti on and all b usin ess
co rresponde nce to: Siniste r Wisdom , P.O. Box 660, Amh e rst, MA 01004. Pl easese nd SASE for re turn of wo rk we canno t publish, and a stamped postcard iFyo u wish
you r work ac kn ow ledg ed on a rri va l. Please doubl e-space a ll manuscripts. Artists:
pl e ase se nd xe rox or ph otos of graphic work, not originals.
Subscribers, Pleas e No te : If you move, pl e ase notify us as soon as possible. Th e post
office will not forward your magazin e. It will be re turned to us, at our exp e nse, andwe will have to bill you for th e additi onal postage and han dling in re mailing.

SW21

3.50 '