Sinister Wisdom 71
Summer 2007

$6 US

Sinister Wisdom

Open Issue

71

Publisher: Sinister Wisdom, Inc.

Sinister Wisdom 71
Summer 2007

Submission Guidelines

Editor: Fran Day
Layout: Kim P. Fusch
Board of Directors: Judith K. Witherow, Rose Provenzano, Joan Nestle,
Susan Levinkind, Fran Day, Shaba Barnes
Coordinator: Susan Levinkind
Proofreaders: Fran Day and Sandy Tate
Web Design: Sue Lenaerts
Mailing Crew for #70: Linda Bacci, Fran Day, Roxanna Fiamma, Moire
Martin, Senecarol Rising, Jan Shade, Stacee Shade
Special thanks to: Lindsay Dyson, Barbara Ester, Roxanna N. Fiamma,
Moire Martin, Ruth Mountaingrove, Rose Provenzano, Jennie Ruby and
Irene Weiss
Front Cover Art: “Journey” by Verlena Johnson
Back Cover Art: “Baby Blue Butterfly” by Nancy Nau
SINISTER WISDOM, founded 1976
Former editors and publishers:
Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-1981)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-1983)
Michaele Uccella (1983-1984)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-1987)
Elana Dykewomon (1987-1994)
Caryatis Cardea (1991-1994)
Akiba Onada-Sikwoia (1995-1997)
Margo Mercedes Rivera-Weiss (1997-2000)
Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural, multi-class, female-born lesbian space.
We seek to open, consider and advance the exploration of community
issues. We recognize the power of language to reflect our diverse experiences and to enhance our ability to develop critical judgment, as lesbians
evaluating our community and our world.
Copyright© 2007 Sinister Wisdom, Inc.
All rights revert to individual authors and artists.
ISSN: 0196-1853. Printed in the U. S. on recycled paper.
Sinister Wisdom, Inc. PO Box 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703, USA
www.sinisterwisdom.org

Submissions: See page 128 for themes. Check our website atwww.sinisterwisdom.org for updates on forthcoming issues. Please read theguidelines below before sending material.
Material should be sent to the editor or guest editor of the issue. Everythingelse should be sent to Sinister Wisdom, POB 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703.
Writing and Art Guidelines: Please read carefully.
Material may be in any style or form, or combination of forms. Maximum: five poems, two short stories or essays, or one longer piece of up to2500 words. We prefer that you send your work by email in Word. If sent by
mail, material must be mailed flat (not folded) with your name and address oneach page. We prefer you type your work but short legible handwritten pieces
will be considered; tapes accepted from print-impaired women. All work must
be on white paper. Please proofread your work carefully; do not send changes
after the deadline. A self-addressed stamped business-sized envelope must be
enclosed. If you want acknowledgement of receipt, enclose a separate selfaddressed stamped postcard. GRAPHIC ARTISTS should send B&W photos or drawings (duplicates) of their work (no slides). Images sent electronically must have a resolution of 300dpi for photos and 600dpi for line drawings. TIFFs are preferred. Please do not send large files electronically – sendeach photo separately. Include a 3-5 sentence autobiographical sketch written
exactly as you want it printed.
We publish only Lesbians’ work. We are particularly interested in workthat reflects the diversity of our experiences: as Lesbians of color, ethnic Lesbians, Jewish, Arab, old, young, working class, poverty class, disabled, and fat
Lesbians. We welcome experimental work. We will not print anything that is
oppressive or demeaning to Lesbians or women, or that perpetuates stereotypes. Because many of our readers are in prison, we cannot include explicit
sex, obscenities, or art with frontal nudity. No sado-masochism.
Please contact us if you have a new theme you would like to see explored.
We are looking for guest editors for future issues.
Sinister Wisdom, Inc. is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization. We provide free subscriptions to women in prison and psychiatric institutions (20%of our mailing list), as well as reduced price subscriptions for Lesbians withlimited/fixed incomes.
Enclose an extra $10 to $50 on your renewal to help cover publishingcosts (larger donations accepted). * Give Sinister Wisdom for birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. * Please consider organizing a benefit or subscription drive for Sinister Wisdom in your area.

summer 2007

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A Journal by and for LesbiansContents
Fran Day ........................ Notes for a Magazine ...................................... 4
Joan E. Biren.................. Tee A. Corinne Prize ....................................... 5
Robin Reinach ............... Normal ........................................................... 6
Virginia Harris ............... Spirals and Butterflies ..................................... 8
Lenore Chinn ................ Affirmations .................................................... 9
Lisa Castro-Smyth.......... The Song You Know by Heart ...................... 10
Lisa Castro-Smyth.......... Teach Me the Old Names of Things ............. 11
Sandy Tate ..................... Interview with Annie Soper .......................... 12
Marva C. Edwards ......... Ever Wait ...................................................... 18
Marva C. Edwards ......... I Listen ......................................................... 19
Susan Hawthorne........... Patriarchal Grammar ..................................... 19
Verlena L. Johnson ......... Sister Outsider: In Memory of Audre Lorde...20
Jean Taylor ..................... International Lesbian Day: October 8 ........... 21
Saundra Tignor .............. Welcome Ye Comely Daughters of Africa ...... 25
Shaba Barnes .................. Combating Ageism: An Organization
or a Movement ......................................... 26
Patricia Kimura .............. Mother ......................................................... 33
Anita Cornwell .............. Quotes from Black Lesbian In White America..38
Lenn Keller .................... Welcome to the 21st Century: A Feminist
Butch is Not an Oxymoron....................... 39
Morgan Gwenwald ........ “Hello There, Remember Love” .................... 46
Francesca Roccaforte ...... Dancing the Tarantella .................................. 49
Cheryl Moore ................ A Winter Poem ............................................. 50
Cheryl Moore ................ Writing Desire .............................................. 51
SDiane Adamz-Bogus .... Colossus of the Pacific: “La Mujer Y La Osa”..52
Virginia Harris ............... Random V .................................................... 59
Alix Greenwood ............. The Pit ......................................................... 60
Matu Feliciano ............... You Moved Your Heart in My Direction ....... 63
Joan Annsfire ................. Before Moving On ........................................ 64
Virginia Harris ............... Scrap Attack IV ............................................ 65
Mona Oikawa ................ Manitoba Winter .......................................... 66
Mona Oikawa ................ Cooper St. .................................................... 66
Octavia Butler ................ Writing Science Fiction ................................. 68
Morningstar Vancil ........ My Immigration Story .................................. 69
Lola Lai Jong ................. Excerpt from “Dedicated to the Children” .... 70

2sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Lola Lai Jong ................. Faith ............................................................. 71
Kathleen Allen ............... For Bobbi ..................................................... 72
Jean Weisinger ............... Photography: An Act of Love ........................ 73
Sasha Churchill .............. Untitled ........................................................ 74
Batya Weinbaum ............ Reflections on Lesbian Feminism
as Inspiration ............................................ 75
Chrystos ........................ While There’s Still ......................................... 82
Merle Woo .................... Yellow Woman Speaks .................................. 84
Lovel Waiters ................. Daisies .......................................................... 86
Virginia Harris ............... Star Box ........................................................ 88
Natasha Carthew ........... Through Bars ................................................ 89
alison ............................. Untitled ........................................................ 90
Win Weston ................... The Photo Shoot .......................................... 91
Stephanie Barnes ............ With an Orchid Tucked ................................ 94
P.E. MacDavid ............... Sgt. Dorothy ................................................. 94
jody jewdyke .................. An Interview with Lily Yuriko ....................... 95
Bea Lieberman ............... my body came back to me .......................... 101
Bea Lieberman ............... the books are stacked .................................. 102
Julie Enszer .................... Enter Mary Daly’s World: Amazing and Graceful
A Review of Amazon Grace by Mary Daly..103
Lori Lake ....................... Recent Nonfiction Resources Spotlighting
Older Lesbians ......................................... 107
Contributors’ Notes ............................................................................ 110
Books Received ................................................................................... 119
Ads ..................................................................................................... 120
Back Issues .......................................................................................... 126
Subscription Information .................................................................... 127
Upcoming Issues: Call for Material ..................................................... 128
ART
Verlena L. Johnson ......... Journey .......................................... Front Cover
Roxanna Fiamma ........... Photo of Gopher Snake ................................... 3
Virginia Harris ............... Spirals & Butterflies ........................................ 8
Lenore Chinn ................ Affirmations.................................................... 9Verlena L. Johnson ......... Spiral Woman ............................................... 10
Sandy Tate ..................... Photo of Annie Soper.................................... 12
Verlena L. Johnson ......... Sister Outsider: In Memory of Audre Lorde .. 20
Keli Enzweiler ................ Photo of Shaba Barnes .................................. 26
Tee Corinne ................... Photo of Anita Cornwell ............................... 38

summer 2007

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Lenn Keller .................... Self Portrait ................................................... 39
Francesca Roccaforte ...... Clouds .......................................................... 48
Virginia Harris ............... Random V .................................................... 59
Virginia Harris ............... Scrap Attack IV ............................................ 65
Mona Oikawa ................ Self Portrait ................................................... 67
Jean Weisinger ............... Photo of Octavia Butler ................................ 68
Diane Pfile ..................... Photo of Lola Lai Jong .................................. 71
Jean Weisinger ............... Self Portrait: The Power/Pain of Knowing ..... 73
Jean Weisinger ............... Photo of Chrystos ......................................... 83
Jean Weisinger ............... Photo of Merle Woo ..................................... 85
Virginia Harris ............... Star Box ........................................................ 88
jody jewdyke .................. Photo of Lily Yuriko ..................................... 95
Nancy Nau .................... Baby Blue Butterfly ......................... Back Cover

Gopher Snake.
Photo by Roxanna
Fiamma.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Notes for a Magazine
This Open Issue of Sinister Wisdom features many writers and artists
new to the pages of the journal; we enthusiastically welcome each of themto the SinisterWisdomhood! These new voices along with those of some ofour regular contributors combine to bring us another exciting, empowering
issue. Thank you to everyone who helps us celebrate Lesbian words, ideas
and images.
A special note of appreciation goes to Judith Witherow and Sue Lenaerts
for all the love, dedication and energy they devoted to guest editing Sinister
Wisdom 68/69 “Death, Grief and Surviving.” They also organized a series ofreadings held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Northampton, Massachusetts;
Shepherdstown, West Virginia; and Takoma Park, Maryland as well as a radio
show on WPFW Pacifica. #68/69 is an immensely profound, magnificent
issue! Judith and Sue have given a significant gift to our community and we
thank them for their hard work and devotion to Lesbian culture. Judith is anactive, supportive member of the Sinister Wisdom board of directors and Sue isdoing a beautiful job as our web designer; go to www.sinisterwisdom.org toview her work and to check on our latest updates. Be sure to read the News
Page which includes announcements of events, photos of recent readings, andcurrent information of interest to our community.
I was recently interviewed by Kit Kennedy for Betty’s List regarding
Sinister Wisdom’s 30 th Anniversary. To read the interview go towww.bettyslist.com and look for Conversations with Kit Kennedy (Archives).
*****
For those of you wondering how you can help Sinister Wisdom celebrate
her 30th Anniversary and beyond, there are many ways to get involved:~ Organize a 30th Anniversary Reading/Celebration in your area
~ Encourage your friends, libraries, and bookstores to subscribe~ Give Sinister Wisdom for birthdays, holidays, and special occasions~ Organize a benefit or subscription drive for Sinister Wisdom in your area
~ Become a sustaining subscriber by adding money to your subscription~ Put a notice in local papers and newsletters~ Help spread the word at events, online, etc
Fran Day
Sebastopol, California

summer 2007

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Tee A. Corinne Prize for Lesbian Media Artists
Moonforce Media has awarded the first Tee A. Corinne Prize for Lesbian Media Artists to Shani Heckman. The $1,000 grant will be used tosupport the production of a feature-length documentary video, America’s
Most Unwanted: Stories of Hope from Former Foster Kids. Heckman aims tochange our view of foster children as people who end up destitute and dependent. The documentary will focus on wards of the state who have become accomplished adults and show us their strategies for survival. Heckman
is a former foster child and orphan who says she is inspired to make this film
for her own personal exploration and survival, as well as to share stories ofhope with young people trying to succeed without parental support or societal encouragement. America’s Most Unwanted will also investigate the special challenges to gay youth in state care.
We want to thank all of you who helped make this inaugural grantpossible by brainstorming with us, by making financial contributions, andby publicizing the Prize. We hope you will support the second annual prize,
so we can continue to honor Tee’s legacy and make a difference for lesbianartists. Please pass on the news below. Grant applications for 2007 are dueon Tee’s birthday, November 3rd. Donations may be sent at any time to:
Moonforce Media, PO Box 13375, Silver Spring, MD 20911.
Contact Information: JEB (Joan E. Biren) http://www.jebmedia.com
E-mail: Moonforce.Media@starpower.net

Thank you to the following supporters for theirgenerous donations to Sinister Wisdom: Diana
Cerise, Corey Deckerman, Marianna deFrancis,
Emile D’Orsay, Roxanna N. Fiamma, Sheridan
Gold, Diana Grayer, Ruth Mountaingrove, Rose
Provenzano, Lauren Ravi, Margaret Reilly, andIrene Weiss.

6sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Robin Reinach

NormalSitting alone in the psychiatrist’s reception area, I felt quite grown up. It
was 1968; I was twelve, and the appointment had been my idea. Emma, byJane Austin, lay open in my lap; my legs swung back and forth, my navy knee
socks slouching. A white noise machine filled the room and enveloped me.
Turning a page, I glanced up to glimpse my reflection in a mirror. With a stabof shame, I remembered I wasn’t Emma Woodhouse, the classy British heroine, but a chubby and freckled, frizzy-red-haired girl from New York City.
There in the mirror was my soiled Lenox School uniform—navy tunic with ayellowish splotch—and my short-sleeved shirt with the Peter Pan collar.
Moments before, I’d felt graceful and smart like Emma. Reading had
helped me forget my physical self with its visceral sense of wrongness. Could apsychiatrist heal that wrongness? I turned away from the mirror with its imageof a girl I couldn’t bear to be.
“Robin?” A bespectacled man emerged from a short hallway. “I’m Dr.
Lasker.” He gestured me to follow him.
Nervously, I stumbled into the doctor’s book-lined office. Bumping into
the analytic couch, I thought, stupid, stupid and hated myself for clumsiness.
Flopping onto a leather easy chair, my sweaty thighs glued to the surface. I
dreaded the noise I knew would result when I peeled my skin off that seat.
Dr. Lasker’s office smelled of tobacco; beside him was an end table with apipe. But I was used to overflowing ashtrays and the stale, rank odor of smoke.
Cigarettes were plentiful in my parents’ home; in just two years I’d start smoking myself.
Over his glasses, Dr. Lasker looked at me, offering a half smile.
Was I supposed to start? I wondered, shrugging an apology.
“Anything you say will remain between us,” Dr. Lasker finally said. “Oursession is confidential. Do you understand?”“So you won’t tell my parents?”“Not unless I believe you’re in danger.”
I recognized the loophole through which the doctor could drop my secrets if he chose.
“I understand you’re in eighth grade?” he said next, after a few momentsof silence.
“Uh-huh.” This wasn’t how I’d imagined our session.
Another pause and then he asked, “How’s school going this year?”summer 2007

7

“There’s this teacher, Mrs. Bennett, who I like very much,” I blurted. I’dbeen preoccupied with Mrs. Bennett all year; the ruminating was painful.
“A teacher,” he said, reaching for his pipe.
“Yeah.” I looked to his face for encouragement. “I like her too much,” I
forced out fast, as he struck a match. “I’m in love with her,” I added in an
urgent whisper, shame spreading through my chest like a wet stain.
The doctor’s mouth puffed on his pipe. His face was neutral, but thequiet between us seemed a live presence that could suffocate me.
“She got pregnant,” I rushed to fill the empty space. “So did the twoteachers I loved before her.”
To my surprise, Dr. Lasker didn’t comment on the coincidence of threepregnant teachers in a row. Of course, he hadn’t seen their ripe fullness.
“I keep falling in love,” I forced myself to continue.
Who else could I tell about this? “Mrs. Walker, Mme Reme, Mrs. Bennett.
The first two left school and forgot about me.”“What do you mean?” The doctor’s tone was level. His unblinking eyes
seemed blind to my yearning. Between us, grew a cloud of smoke.
“Mrs. Walker went first, to Canada. I wrote 52 letters, but she neverwrote back—not even once.”
Who wrote that many times without getting a reply? It was weird and unrequited. The longing that welled up in my chest when I remembered Mrs.
Walker’s face was creepy too. I wasn’t supposed to feel that way about anyone.
“A lot of girls have crushes on their teachers,” the doctor told me. “It’snormal.”But even at twelve I knew the intensity was too much.
Why didn’t Dr. Lasker see that? “I wrote to Mme Reme too,” I pursued,
still hoping to make him understand. “She was my French teacher before
moving to Thailand. I even called her once long distance.”“Did the French teacher write back?” he asked evenly.
I nodded, but it hadn’t really helped.
“Well, that’s better, isn’t it?” He knocked his pipe against the ashtray andthen dumped the charred tobacco out.
“I guess.” How could I explain about the loneliness that nothing seemed toassuage?
“At your age, these crushes are normal,” Dr. Lasker pronounced, refilling
his pipe while I squirmed in my chair.
So he couldn’t help me. The rest of the session I answered his questions,pushing down the emptiness and turmoil inside.
“Is there anything else?” the doctor finally asked, smiling, setting his pipe
down.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Then the secret thing flew into my mind, but I realized our time wasending. No matter—the private act I did in the bathtub was impossible toshare. It was shameful as my longing, confusing as my crushes, yet deeply
compelling. I’d discovered a way to position myself beneath the faucet so therushing water enticed me to orgasm. At twelve, I’d never heard that word or
been told about masturbation, but I knew enough to hide the act.
“Don’t worry if there’s something you didn’t say,” Dr. Lasker reassured mewhen I was quiet. “Everyone keeps something back.”
I hugged my shoulders and coughed into the thinning pipe smoke.
“I don’t think you need therapy,” the doctor chuckled, rising to usher meout of his office, sending me back to a life full of feelings I had no idea how tohold.

Virginia Harris

Spirals and Butterflies

66 X 66 inches. All cotton. Batik and natural print. Air-lite polyester batting. The pattern is called
Lightning. Machine pieced, hand quilted. 1992.

This quilt pushed my sense of “order;” an order imposed by society,pushed my internalization of the ways things “should be.” These two prints
were not consciously chosen to push the limits of my “order,” they came
together more for their similarities, the differences in movements of thesetwo prints added excitement.
Art in the Embassies Program, Geneva, Switzerland and Malawi.

summer 2007

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Lenore Chinn

Affirmations

Affirmations, 36 x 48” acrylic on canvas, ©1996(Painting of Jean Weisinger)

Affirmations reflects an amalgamation of cultural experiences, perspectives and aesthetics. The ethnic and cultural artifacts in this cross-cultural
fusion of traditional and modern textural contrasts link identity and imagery. Created as a double portrait of African-American photographer Jean
Weisinger, this work celebrates, honors and acknowledges the strength andpower of women artists of color.
Rooted in human rights advocacy, my positive and provocative images
restore cultural difference to center stage. Employing an Asian aesthetic ofsparseness and clarity with clearly delineated crisp lines, subtle luminosityand negative space, Affirmations is the latest in a continuing series exploring
multicultural themes.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Lisa Castro-Smyth

The Song You Know by HeartThe song you know by heart
I want to write a poem
that could feed youmaíz for your hunger
meat and onion
con tortilla
warmthto hold you safe
my voice to call you home
my arms will be the song
you know by heart.

“Spiral Woman,” byVerlena L. Johnson

summer 2007

Lisa Castro-Smyth“Teach me the old names of things”“Teach me the old names of things”
I want to know how to speak my avó’s land.
Because pão
is not breadand queijo
not cheese.
I know these things
But do not know
how to name the birds, the clouds, and the danceof that mountainthat makes my mama cry when she is close to it
and cry when she is far away
O mar salgado
surrounds the islands,
different fromany other salty ocean near
any other place.
My tongue,
eager but clumsy,
hums but does not singas you play fado,
upon longing guitarra,
and I catch familiar lines:...meu Portugalminha rua....

lips grasp
for a musicthat I remember but do not understandexcept by watching my mother’s tears
except by feelingsaltwater inside my throat.

vila franca...

11

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Sandy Tate

Interview with Annie Soper
November 7, 2006

Photo of Annie Soper by Sandy Tate.

Sandy: Annie, you’ve done such of variety of things. I would like to findout about some of them. Recently, you mentioned that you had a moving
business. How did that come about?
Annie: Since I came to California I’ve done a lot of different jobs andI’ve always had a woodworking business, but I’ve never turned down any
other work, especially if I could help my friends out. As part of my construction business. I’d move to places where I could get work and fix houses
up and stay in the area. I was in my twenties and carefree. I moved from
Mendocino County to Sonoma County, and down to San Francisco, andfurther to Los Angeles, or up to Seattle. I had a truck and I helped manyfriends move. I gathered a lot of moving material and had women help me
pack friends up, and it just seemed natural to continue in that line of work.
Then the California Public Utilities Commission decided that they weregoing to regulate movers and it became illegal to advertise in the local paper.
I enjoyed going around the country and exploring places. I’ve moved people
to some really interesting places in the United States. I had no place that Isummer 200713

called home. I think it helped me settle down a lot too because I knew I
wasn’t going to be going to college and going to Europe, so the moving
business helped get the wanderlust out of my system. I was dyslexic (before
they discovered that word), and my mother was told by a fourth grade teacher
that I’d never learn to read, so I made up my mind that if I couldn’t learn toread I’d have to learn a trade.
Sandy: Fortunately, they were wrong and you read very well. You’revery generous. If anyone needs help you’re right there. Today, you’re goingto take a friend in a convalescent home out for ice cream. It seems to me
that you love doing for people. Where did you get that kind of ethic?
Annie: From both my mom and dad I got an incredible work ethic.
My mom had been an officer in the military and my dad was a lifer in thearmy. When they married my mom retired but didn’t like staying home andraising a family. I got the work ethic from my mom. She was a school teacher
for 27 years, and my dad had various jobs including running a service station near our small town in the Pine Barrons in southern New Jersey. I
always remember my parents going to work. My mom had done her part in
the military and been stationed in a number of places in Europe towards theend of World War II, and once she had a house and family she decided she
wasn’t going to move again. I can’t call myself a military brat because I went
to the same school from the time I started school until I graduated. It was
the same school my mom taught in, so I never got a note sent home about
the damage I was doing in class. I heard about it at lunch time. My sisterand I walked to school, while my mother went to school by herself, becausethat was her alone time and she valued it. At the time I didn’t get it, but now
I get the ‘alone time’ part. My mother also brought sick kids from her classes
homework at their homes. One of the kids didn’t believe he was going to die
because as long as the teacher brought him homework, he was going to live
to be going back to school. I think I got a lot of that from her.
Sandy: Do you consider yourself working class?
Annie: Very much so. If somebody’s on strike at a company I don’t
cross the line. I learned that from my mom who went without a phone fortwo months because employees of the local phone company were on strike.
And I respect that.
Sandy: So your mother was a positive influence in your life?
Annie: Yes. The first book that I remember her reading to me was
Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” Mom was a conservationist before I knew
what the word was and an environmentalist before the word was coined.
She had seen a lot of what had happened in Europe during the war and that

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

affected her profoundly. My Grandma-at-home helped raise me and wasanother positive influence. She came to live with us because my motherworked outside the home. My grandparents were deaf so I learned sign language to communicate.
Sandy: You are so open, honest and ‘out there’. I find it refreshing andunusual. Where did you get that from? Was it from your parents or did you
just evolve into that?
Annie: I think I evolved into it because I spent a number of decades
living as a hermit just really isolating.
Sandy: Was that deliberate?
Annie: Yes, I grew up in Jackson Township, New Jersey, the largest
township in the U.S. but went to a really small school, and I had the social
skills of someone who came from a small town without a lot of experience,and I left home the day after I graduated from high school at age 16. I cameout to California and worked in Fort Bragg for Louisiana Pacific as a choker,
which is a person who puts the cable around the log to take it out of theforest. I was so young I had no idea how dangerous the job was, or how
stupid I was for taking it and I stayed there for two years. When I learned
what the logging companies were doing to our landscape with their major
clear cutting in the seventies. I decided never to work for them again.
I also worked part time as an apprentice for a cabinet maker which I’dbeen doing since I was very young. Both my grandpa and my dad were
woodworkers. During my early school years I only had to attend school
about 3 hours a day and the rest of the time I liked being productive. I wastall for my age, 5’ 9” and had free time. From the time I was eleven years old
I got odd jobs around town. Everybody who hired me set an example of thework ethic that rubbed off on me. I got to be really creative and had on-thejob training.
I joined a wilderness guide group named ‘Rites of Passage’, and didsome fasting and soul searching out in the environment in Death Valley. It
was minimalist camping because they don’t believe in bringing a lot of supplies with you. It put me in a new direction and reoriented my compass sothat I wanted to travel and leave the least mark on the environment. Once I
started learning more and more about the environmental movement throughdifferent people like Judi Bari and Bonnie Raitt and other local women in
Mendocino, I started being responsible in the cabinet-making shop I wasworking in. I asked the owner if we could find out where the wood we’rebuying comes from. I was apprenticing with a master craftsman in his eighties who was open to asking that. Shortly after graduating my apprenticeshipI started my own company.

summer 2007

15

Sandy: When did you discover you were Lesbian? And when did youcome out?
Annie: I was in a relationship before I knew what the word was. I
realized that the way girls looked at boys and felt about teen idols of the day
was not how I felt. I wasn’t aware of the feelings I was feeling, but I foundout 20 years later, the two girls in school that I was attracted to were also
Lesbians. That Lesbian radar was working in ninth grade. I never had theslightest attraction to males. When I was 9 and my sister was 6, as we werelaying out in a field looking up and making pictures out of clouds while ourparents were fighting, we swore to each other we were never going to havechildren. And I never had that biological mother instinct to have children.
Sandy: So you’re a lifelong Lesbian.
Annie: Lifelong Lesbian. At 17 years I had my first Lesbian relationship in Mendocino, California, and we were partners until a motorcycle
accident separated us in 1982. But it wasn’t until 1979 when we were at the
Women’s March in Washington, that I connected the word Lesbian withwhat was actually happening in my life at the time and my loving women.
I’ve been one of the Lesbians that have been sending in my donations andreceiving Lesbian Connection since the first issue, which I’m very proud of.
Of late, I haven’t been to a lot of events because of my health, but I’ve loved
going to women’s festivals. When Lesbians talk about coming out, I don’t
really feel like I have a coming out date because I’ve always been out. I’ve
never been closeted. On every construction crew I’ve been the woman or the
Lesbian. Usually I’m accepted for who I am.
Sandy: What other ways have you earned money besides woodworking, logging and moving?
Annie: Before my brain injury I used to think that the name of my nextcompany would be “I Show Up,” just because I’ll show up. I’ve removed
deceased animals from under people’s homes, I’ve relocated animals who’vebeen trapped in houses, I’ve sealed up homes and barns that were invaded
by bats and built other homes on the outside that the bats much prefer. I’ve
washed dishes, apprenticed at a number of trades and graduated to Journeyman and Master Cabinet Maker, and never had a contractor’s license because I’ve always had enough work.
I recycle wood that people throw away and have collected so much that one
year I made 62 cutting boards. I won second place at the Sonoma County Fair
by entering some of my woodwork, and my self confidence in my skill level
went way up. I don’t have the fine motor skills that I once had but the joy that
I have in creating things leads to what people see as my being spiritual.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

I worked for the California Department of Forestry, earned a CDF certificate and was a firefighter for awhile and enjoyed fighting fires, but not
being part of medical assisting. In 1994 I became involved in working at
Pole Mountain Lookout and had found my niche, being an isolationist. My
mother joked, saying it was the only job she ever knew of where I worked
well with others. It was one of the first times where I wasn’t working for a
corporation or a nonprofit; I was working for my community 3 days on and
3 days off and loved it.
Sandy: You’re reliable, ethical, you do good work and you show up.
Annie: Yeah, and if I don’t know how to do it I’ll get somebody for you
that does and I’ll stay there and learn how myself. I’ve done that for a number of women, just showing up and being there with them while the guy
comes and repairs an appliance, just because they don’t feel comfortableknowing whether the guy is gonna overcharge them or replace a part withthe right one.
I’ve rebuilt vehicles as a hobby. I had a 1958 pickup truck. I prefervehicles that I work on pre 1965, pre fuel injection and pre-fanciness. I
think it’s important to educate ourselves about how things work. Anythingmechanical fascinates me.
Sandy: In a recent email you said, “I’m much more than a survivor; I
thrive.”Annie: I’ve never liked the term ‘survivor’. Rape survivor is part of mypast history as is cancer survivor. I just love life. Survivor seems like a limiting word to me, and thriving seems like I’m open to the universe instead oftrying to protect myself and just survive. Surviving seems like it takes anincredible amount of energy and thriving is opening my arms to the universe, being in the moment and growing and feeling that sunshine on you.
Take it all in. Just receive.
Sandy: You seem like a very spiritual person.
Annie: To be how I am out in the desert or the mountains or some place
where I find great solitude with the earth, under the redwoods or sitting at
the coast watching the sunset; all of those things are great spiritual moments
for me. I find great joy in the sun coming up every day even though when I
go to sleep I doubt it will. And it does!
Sandy: How does your brain injury affect your life?
Annie: I belong to a group called ABIS (Acquired Brain Injured Students), many of whom lost their occupations. I’ve been lucky in that I remember how to be a woodworker, although I don’t have the fine motor
dexterity anymore. But my biggest problem has been I can’t get hired be-summer 200717

cause of insurance that won’t cover my brain injury, even though I still haveskills. I can take on some small jobs and that’s been at times an education ofwhat my abilities are, and a real confidence builder. I was the first woman toreceive the Stanley Tools Gold Hammer of Merit for industrial arts woodworking in high school in New Jersey.
Sandy: Do you like music?
Annie: I love jazz, classical and women’s music. Because of my hearing
problem I prefer instrumental music. I lost the ability to read music or playa musical instrument. I’ve made musical instruments—guitars, drums anddulcimers. I also had the pleasure of making three small harps, and I dreamof one day making a full-size harp.
Sandy: You genuinely like people, don’t you?
Annie: I like to compliment people and also like to do favors for others. It instills a sense of pride and friendship. I want to laugh as much as I
can and smile at every person while making eye contact. I’d like to be remembered as a person who gave a friendly smile when someone needed it,
that’s good enough for me. My lifelong goal is to be the best friend I can be.
I try to live in the moment and be prepared.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Marva C. Edwards

Ever Wait
Ever wait
For morning
To enter a room/
A day?
Ever wait
For the sun to
Peek in your window?
Morning comes
Whispering thru the window
The birds begin their songs.
The quietness of life
At its first breath,Present finally.
After a long night of despair
Morning reminds meThat the light
Is always coming
At the end of
A dark night.
The light will come/And I have faith
And know that grace,
When the morning comes.

summer 2007

Marva C. Edwards

I Listen
I listen for your voice
Riding the wind
On quiet winter mornings.
Your voice is
A ray of sunlight moving thru
The starkness
Of yetAnother
Gray
Day.

Susan Hawthorne

Patriarchal Grammar
A way of knowing that all you know
is all there is to know
A way of speaking so that everyone
else knows to remain silent
A way of being that lets you walk through life
oblivious to the pain of others
A way of making asymmetric war
against the powerless
A way of using your body as a weapon
and then calling it love

19

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Verlena Johnson

Sister Outsider: In Memory of Audre Lorde

Sister Outsider: In Memory of Audre Lorde. Graphite 10” x 8,” 1992 by Verlena Johnson

In 1990 Audre Lorde came to Madison, Wisconsin when I was a student at UW-Madison. While she was visiting the university, she asked if
there was a Black lesbian organization in town. There was – BLISS (Black
Lesbians in Search of Self ). We held a dinner in her honor and she spenttime talking with us. I remember her being kind. “Sister Outsider” depicts
me gazing into a mirror and seeing Lorde gazing back.

summer 2007

21

Jean Taylor

International Lesbian Day: October 8
The first time I heard about a special day for lesbians was at the Lesbian
Conference in Melbourne in 1990 when a young dyke stood up at the closing plenary session and announced that lesbians at a conference in SouthAmerica had designated 8 October as International Lesbian Day (ILD).
Although years before the very radical Women’s Department of the Australian Union of Students had promoted 1983 as the ‘International Year of the
Lesbian,’ none of us in Melbourne had ever heard about such an exciting
concept as ILD before. So nearer the date, and on a roll from the highly
successful Lesbian Festival and Conference we’d just organised in January,some of us got together to celebrate our first ILD.
As the headline story by an unnamed member of the editorial collectivein the first issue of the local lesbian newspaper Labrys, 5 November 1990,
explained: “As lesbians we need to find each other. We need venues andevents where we can all meet and receive affirmation of our identity as lesbians and have our sexuality totally accepted. INTERNATIONAL LESBIANDAY (ILD) is such an event. It is public affirmation of our acceptance of
ourselves and each other as full, visible members of the wider community
and as lesbians.”
ILD was not only an opportunity to promote lesbian visibility and solidarity, it also provided a forum for discussion and an exchange of lesbian
information as well as the chance to entertain ourselves. As such, we wanted
a show of out lesbians on the streets, a public rally, entertainment, stalls,
dancing and whatever else we could come up with.
Can you imagine lesbians taking over the City Square in Melbourne
on a Saturday afternoon? Lesbians of all ages, shapes, sizes...about 200 or so
lesbian wimyn were there to publicly celebrate our visibility and to affirm
our contribution...It was exciting, fun, strengthening and gave me an overwhelming sense of belonging and pride.
The rally began with me speaking of our involvement as lesbians in thewimyns movement and how it is just being recognised and publicly affirmed.
Luan then spoke about the herstory of the city square and apologised to the
Koori wimyn for standing on their land as the city square is an ancientburial ground and belongs to the Aboriginal people.
NICE GIRLS DON’T SPIT then declared themselves as a lesbian band,
thanked the lesbian and homosexual contingent of the police force for their

22sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

support of us and then gave us a fantastic performance that included everyone. Their version of Pretty Woman changed to read Dirty Lesos... had
everyone laughing and dancing, an amazing sight in the city square.
We then went on a march resplendent with banners proclaiming ‘Lesbians are Lovely’ and ‘Lesbians Standing Strong.’ The general theme during
the march was that there is a lesbian in every family, your mother, sister,daughter, grandmother, child or unborn child, and that we have and willcontinue to exist throughout all time.
There were many other lesbian events happening round the actual dateitself. I was performing in a play with Amazon Theatre called ‘Spot the
Dyke.’ I was a member of a C-R group for lesbians over 40 talking about
ageism, and I was also one of the organisers of the forthcoming LesFest in
January 1991, amongst other lesbian things. So the closest we could get tothe day itself was 13 October, 1990, for the lesbian market day at the
Collingwood Town Hall, with market stalls, the Aboriginal trio of musicians, ‘Tiddas’, speakers, skits by ‘Voice of the Heart’ and readings by performance poets ‘Tongue and Groove’ during the afternoon. This was followed by a lesbian dance that evening with the bands Olive and Molly,
Sleight of Hand and Little Sister.
The ILD rally was held in the City Square the following Saturday, 20
October. There were not a great many of us but those of us who were there
felt empowered to be openly on the streets and in public spaces holding thebanners for everyone to see, including ‘Lesbians Are Everywhere,’ as wemarched round the city in like-minded and enthusiastic lesbian company.
The following year, 1991, even though many of us were busy rehearsing for the first Women’s Circus end of year show, Amazon Theatre weremaking a video of their latest play, Dykes of Our Restless Daze and some ofus were also organising the next National 10/40 Conference (for lesbians
and heterosexual feminists over 40), we went a bit more upmarket and celebrated ILD with a Lesbian dance at the San Remo Ballroom on the eveningof 4 October with two womyn’s bands, Franz Tram and Little Sister, providing the dance music.
The following day, 5 October, we held another rally in the City Squarewith speakers on a range of subjects including the need for safe sex and theuse of dental dams. I wrote a longish ‘Lesbian Poem for International Lesbian Day 1991’ especially for this auspicious occasion which ended withthese words:‘we’ll go on the marchthen we’ll go homesummer 200723

and we won’t forgetthat we were here
yesterday
and todayand here tomorrow because
we’re here to staythere’s no stopping us
now
as we rise up in our strong
and beautiful bodies
to claim our placeas lesbians
freely loving lesbians
every time
every place
everywherelesbians’This was followed by the usual march round the city streets chanting‘we’re here and we’re queer and we’re not going shopping’.
At the beginning of October 1992, I had not only fallen and broken mycoccyx during rehearsals for the Women’s Circus show, I was rehearsing
with Amazon Theatre for Undercover, a lesbian mystery, and my own onewomyn show, Matri-Spiral Descent. On top of all this, I was one of theorganisers of the Lesbian Festival 1992, and we had decided to open the
LesFest ‘92 with the third ILD rally and march at 12 noon in the City
Square on 10 October 1992. I introduced the speakers and performers andothers spoke on the open mike.
As I put it in the local lesbian magazine Lesbiana no 9 November 1992:‘I didn’t quite manage to go on the march, but I was at the ILD rallywith around 150 other lesbians, where we listened to speeches from Kateand Luan, songs from Elizabeth and an open mike for comments from thecrowd. I do enjoy being able to say the word lesbian over a PA in the City
Square. I came away feeling quite reaffirmed and encouraged by this mostpublic event on the lesbian calendar.’
I would like to be able to say that here in Melbourne we have celebrated
ILD in a similarly public and affirming way every year since then. But thishas not been the case at all. On the contrary. After three full-on years of ILD
activities there was no more energy and interest as well as money to fundany more of these events so there have been no regularly organised ILD

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

activities in Melbourne for a number of years now. However, when I think
about it, between rehearsing for the end-of-year Women’s Circus show, andeverything else going on in our community, was it any wonder? I was actually arriving in Perth, Western Australia, for the National Lesbian Conference and Festival, The Journey Home on 8 October 1993. In 1984 I wasagain in rehearsals with Amazon Theatre for a play about breast cancer,
Della, performing in yet another Women’s Circus show and organising a 25
anniversary celebration of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Melbourne.
And so on. It was so full-on during the 1990s that lesbians in Melbourne,
quite frankly, didn’t have the time nor the inclination to organise one morelesbian event, however significant and affirming it was.
However, ILD has since caught on interstate and several activities, mainly
lesbian dances, have continued to be organised in most capital cities on oraround 8 October for years now. For example, Lesbians Incorporated in
Sydney still traditionally presents their grants to lesbians at a function on 8
October to commemorate ILD. Even in Melbourne, there was an ILD dance
held on 8 October 2005 as part of the Lesbian Health Across the Lifespan
Conference sponsored and organised by the Lesbian Cancer Support Group.
More recently here in Oz there have been attempts to find out the origins of
ILD. What prompted lesbians to choose 8 October as a day of significanceto us? Are there other places round the world that know about ILD and dothey too celebrate on 8 October? A web site: http:/www.nrg.com.au/~wow/
ILD.html poses almost as many questions as it answers but does give atimeline of probable connections. If any or all of these questions can be
answered, we Downunder would be mighty interested to hear the answers
to this mystery that so captured our imaginations here sixteen years ago.
We might not be up to organising a big event nor waving banners nor
willing to find the time to celebrate this important day on our lesbian calendar these days in Melbourne, but I have, however, always written ILD downin my diary every year as a reminder. It still gives me a thrill to see thoseinitials written down, knowing what they stand for. And every now andthen on 8 October when my friends and I greet each other with those significant words: ‘Happy International Lesbian Day’ I feel connected all overagain to myself, my community and that international lesbian sisterhood
we hold so dear.
Editor’s Note: Please send information about International Lesbian Day
events in your area to fran@sonic.net.

summer 2007

25

Saundra Tignor

Welcome, Ye Comely Daughters of Africa
Welcome ye comely daughters of Africa, descendentsof conquering queens and proud princesses.
For it is here you can begin to quench yourthirst for empowerment, succor your scarred souls,
refortify your armory to continue the struggle
for liberation, and renew your spirits in theambiance of exchange and connection.
Come, feast your eyes upon rich, rainbow huesof ebony, mahogany, teak and golden ivory.
Your ears will be softly assaulted by the alto‘dvoices of your sisters rising and falling in thecadence of debate and discussion. Rejoice in thestrength of their softness and pleasure in theirperfumes.
For it is here in these halls and chambers you
may experience the force of collective sisterhood,view the leadership of transplanted dark-hued
feminism and lead or follow as is your need.

Written to welcome African-Heritaged women to conferences and gatherings.

26

sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Shaba Barnes

Combating Ageism
An Organization or a Movement

Photo of Shaba Barnes by Keli Enzweiler

I was feeling pleased with our successes, and proud of our accomplishments when I noticed a dropped stitch beginning to unravel. Another way
of saying it is, I found that the words of inclusiveness in much of OLOC’sprinted material exclude some of our most productive and concerned members of our Lesbian community.
As a member of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, the only organization of its kind in the world that I know of so far, I have always been
proud of its work and purpose. It is an organization founded for Lesbians
60 years old and older. The organization was created to help identify andsummer 200727

educate others around issues of ageism and other oppressions and to create
opportunities for Lesbians over a certain age to get together with their peers
and celebrate their lives. It seemed like a noble endeavor, it was somethingthat would improve the quality of life for everyone eventually. It was an
instrument put in place to serve Lesbians and feminists especially as they
got old.
In our process of meetings, discussing and educating others and ourselves we learned that many Lesbians are victims of internalized ageism;
some of them are within our ranks. Internalized ageism is the act of being
old and an ageist (discrimination against the old and often middle aged)
and not realizing it, denying it or feeling that those feelings are justified
based on the accepted norms. An example would be someone who refuses
to tell her age or subtracts a few years off her age; those individuals who areafraid of aging or see negative connotations for being as old as she is, andprefer the hype offered by our youth oriented society. This is false evidence
appearing real or FEAR; She is in denial by discounting the truth or importance of sharing her present age fully. One way that we in OLOC havelearned to combat this is by identifying ourselves with our name and age
when writing or speaking in public. By sharing our age we let others knowthat this is how old we are and we are proud to be this age. Ageism is entrenched in every facet of our society; it often requires hours of Consciousness Raising just to realize ageist remarks and ways to challenge them.
This pivotal point in Herstory that we are now approaching is the firstwave of Graying Americans reaching the retirement age; many are coming
out of the closet so fast that closeted is now a verb, as well as a noun. We areliving longer, healthier, more productive lives. The numbers are swellingwith Baby Boomers; many Lesbians and feminists are now approaching 60.
Some are newly retired, and some like the energizer, never missing a beatcontinue working in their chosen profession; some start a new career, travelor just look forward to enjoying the fruits of their labor. They are questioning the status quo and what has been built in the LGBT community. Baby
Boomers are not the only ones, but younger women-loving-women andfeminists are also saying, “Don’t exclude me. This is what society has done
for many years, now you, my sister, are telling me that I cannot belong
because I am not old enough.” How are we going to respond? What is fair,reasonable and right?
I receive emails regularly from Lesbians who are mostly in their 50s.
They usually begins with a request for more information on how can theyjoin. When they learn that OLOC is for Lesbians 60 and over, the tone of

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

the conversation sometimes turns into a confrontation. The conversations
are interesting and remind me when I was making a similar analogy under
the same circumstances to a Lesbian over 60. I remember in the mid 1980s
saying “ The issues and the politics are just as vital for me as for those over
60, that I feel 60; I am a victim of ageism.” I always remembered to respect
the viewpoint of the founders and since 60 was the age that was agreed
upon I was content to work within that structure or as implied, start anorganization to meet my needs.
It was during the planning for the First West Coast Conference in Southern California in 1987, I thought it was the best thing since Ice Cream.
Although I was only 51 or 52 years old, I took it upon myself to spread thenews, to find Old Lesbians. Since many were invisible to me, except for
those in my circle, I attended a luncheon by and for Lesbians in a swanky
hotel in Hollywood. Always the optimist, I thought, surely I would findsome Lesbians over 60 there or friends or partners of Lesbians that age.
Everyone at the luncheon was very friendly. I was given the microphone
to make my short announcement. I shared the name, purpose, dates, andlocation of the Conference and asked if everyone would do me the honor ofgiving me referrals of those who may qualify so we may invite them. I also
distributed flyers to share with Lesbians over 60 years old and their partners.
We were inviting them to celebrate our lives together. The audience wereLesbians who appeared to be in their 30s to early 50s. The response was surprising and disappointing. I heard many denials and a few giggles. “No, I do
not know any Lesbians over 60,” or “May I come? I would like to meet an Old
Lesbian with money,” and other remarks such as that. I was appalled. I could
not believe what I was hearing. But I was not giving up. I then began askingaround in my place of business. I asked people I came in daily contact with ifthey knew any Lesbians over 60. One person that I asked referred me to a
coworker whose partner was over 60 years old and retired. When I asked her
if she knew anyone who may be in that age group and Lesbian, she quickly
denied being Lesbian or of knowing any Lesbians. I was an out Lesbian and I
did not consider that someone may be threatened by me outing them. The
task that I thought was a piece of cake was crumbling.
Here we are now 19 years later and being accused by some of being
ageist and exclusive ourselves. What happened? What if we had noticed thedropped stitch sooner? What would we have done? Is it wrong to invite only
Lesbians 60 and over as members? Is it wrong to want to enjoy the companyof those whom we consider our peers? It is ironic that there are some of us
who experienced ageism years ago who are now demanding membership.

summer 2007

29

What does a member do that a supporter does not? Both the supporterand member are always encouraged to do the obvious: challenge, confront
ageism, and speak in favor of the old Lesbian making decisions for herself.
A supporter or Lesbian under 60 years of age is invited to attend the Gatherings if she comes with her partner who is 60 or over. Or, she may come as
a companion of or caregiver for a participant. At our last Gathering, we hadmany Local Lesbians in their 50s working alongside of older Lesbians asvolunteers. Your age qualifies you for membership.
Many changes have been made since those early days. I realize thatworking to change the negative attitudes directed against Old Lesbians hasgone from an organizational level to a movement. The thoughts of addressing ageism by young and old are spilling over everywhere. There are several
over 40 Lesbian Groups that I know of and a few over 50 groups. I am surethere are many more. I am referring to completely independent groups thatare not a part of OLOC, although OLOC does have some local groups
around the country. What I am witnessing today has surpassed my greatest
expectation. Lesbians in their 50s and younger are questioning our rights tolimit inclusiveness to OLOC to Lesbians 60 years old or older. This is becoming more frequent and the debates more challenging from Lesbians andwomen in all walks of life. Our continued response is we exist to fight ageism and to recognize the contributions, lives, needs, activities, and abilities
of Lesbians who are often ignored or treated as invisible in their own communities, or in the communities where they worked and dedicated muchtime and talent. Membership is now confined to Lesbians 60 years old andolder, or after your 59th birthday.
We, each of us collectively, have so much to share and give. If one way
does not work for us, we will try another. We have opportunities waiting.
We are sisters after all. Reach out and befriend an Old Lesbian in yourcommunity. Show that we care for each other and with the improved changes
we desire for others, we shall benefit ourselves as well. After all, you are theMothers and Daughters of civilization.
OLOC is an organization like other organizations, with a make up of
purpose, policies and a system of its own that the body of members support.
A Movement does not belong to any one group; it is strengthened by race
consciousness and it is usually a large group that is the most visible withinthat movement unless or until it is integrated into an even larger movement.
Within a movement, each person or small group of people participates as
her level of interest dictates. We become a part by an action that leads tosuccess for the movement. It could be letter writing, marching, attending

30

sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

meetings and taking action on many other levels. Ageism and aging, anorganization in the early 1990s grew into a movement in the 21st century,with the growth of collective consciousness. We are in the midst of a movement that needs the support of everyone to confront Ageism and its many
negative relatives of ism’s from our individual point of reference.
It occurred to me one day to view this age thing differently. Instead ofunder 60 versus 60 and over, I decided to explore by decades. I remember
being 51 and told that I was not old enough. I had 9 years to go. I respected
the decision made by vote and stayed around to support them with needs that
I could fulfill. My experiences were making me look at my age. I was nolonger as popular. I received less and less invitations. The job market was lessplentiful. When I ventured into a Lesbian Night Club, I found myself ignored
more and more. It was like I became invisible. During my 60s, I did have
many changes in my life. There was retirement and searching for a place tolive in a Lesbian Community, relocating, and relocating again. I cannot leaveout the health issues, becoming a full time caregiver, challenging financial loss
and finally, getting the hang of the aging process and what I could expect frommy changing body. I created new goals, restructured my environment and mylife; I presently celebrate the temporary. I am in my 71st year now. I am feeling more positive, more directed and confident. I am constantly learning of
the vast communities of Lesbians, and their rapid growth. During each decade some issues were greater than during another decade. There was so muchgoing on that I find it beneficial for me to deal with the present issues that areoften broken down into decades, and into smaller more workable groups.
This is less creating more. When we create smaller groups, we create many
more working groups; more small working groups with same ideas and goals
generate stronger results and greater productivity. This type of growth is indicative of our strength, the feminine power that we all have and express inunique ways. This power will be defined as we recognize and respect eachother more, as we unite to correct our basic needs.
I had been active in the Civil Rights Movement and in NOW. 1986
was my first experience as an activist for Old Lesbians and I had a lot tolearn. Learning and sharing the works of prominent women in the movement validated all that I experienced as a Lesbian under 60, active in a
Lesbian over 60 activity. I was fortunate enough to have a mentor who wasadmired by many, and she gave me the confidence I needed to continue myinvolvement in this cause.
Organizations are not so flexible. As an organization we can create policy,
procedures and an endless array of documents. As a movement, OLOC issummer 200731

proud that we have a vested interest in being on the cutting edge, in taking
on the task of confronting Ageism.
A movement is an idea that is embraced during a certain period in
history. You cannot sit at home doing nothing and share your belief in the
movement to be a part of it. You can sit at home making phone calls andflyers, writing brochures and announcements, sharing with others the mosteffective moves in supporting the movement. It is a series of combined
actions, many combining or overlapping another. No dues are collected
unless you become part of an action plan that needs to raise funds.
But no one can set up guidelines for how a movement will be playedout. I remember when Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were barely
on speaking terms. Their passion was deep in their demands for equality, yettheir actions and beliefs were almost opposite. Eventually, they were able torise above those differences for the good of the people. This synergistic effect was good for everyone. The women’s movement that was very much apart of this consciousness grew out of the efforts of this work.
What I am witnessing today are those among us, who like many of us in
the 60s and 70s, will not be silent; Lesbians, and women who speak to theconcerns in their hearts and minds. With the coming wave of more old
Lesbians/women than ever on the face of the planet earth, it will take amovement to meet those needs. From the four corners of the earth, Women
loving Women and feminists are recognizing their strength and controlling
their destinies.
Each woman still has much to give, whether we/she realizes it or not.
For time immemorial we give of ourselves, it is our nature to give to suchbasics as raising grandchildren, working full time, being caregivers, and volunteering; our contributions to the arts are phenomenal. We are giving on
physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental levels as laywomen and professionals. We give from that root mother within us, that Divine Femininethat calls us to nurture and support others. It is time to open our hearts tooffer, to share, to understand and reciprocate with recognition of the needsof the old, hopes, and desires; we ask you for your support, your voice andgifts of your own in our quest to erase ageism in the LGBT Community andsociety at large. Acting positively on the most insignificant opportunity canmake great differences in the quality of life for others near and far. Listenwell to each other with the openness that’s deserved. Let’s discard the value
judgments, by allowing acceptance and grace to flow throughout our various struggles; expect respect and openness that encourages healthy growthamong us all.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

For this no organization is needed. What is needed is that collective
thought, that collective push that propels us to unite our energy into a forcefulsynergy and stand as so many women have done in the past, together andon purpose. We could offer our support to a community project, write letters to our elected representatives, and there are all sorts of groups and organizations to join. Monitor and respond to ageist propaganda in our healthcare,
media, in our political arena, in our social life, in our home at every opportunity. There is much to do and each of us has an important part to play. I
recommend that we continue to address our own ageist behavior and the
behavior of those around us; use the opportunity when you come together
with friends and associates to have discussions on finding ways to challenge
ageism.
OLOC makes their own greeting cards because there are so many ageist cards or lack of favorable cards for older people in the stores. Learn more
about OLOC by purchasing our Newsletter or visiting our website:www.oloc.org. If you are an artist, share a poster, a card, artwork designedwith OLOC in mind. Support our sacred space and time with each other.
Become part of the movement by becoming active on a project of your own
creation. There are many organizations and materials to help you if you
need it. Speak up in your classes about the need for others to support thiseffort. Question leaders in your community; ask how they will help to improve the quality of life for the LGBT community. Never allow anyone tocrush your dreams. Be mindful when you hear someone say, “She does notlook her age at all.” Sure she does, she is who she is and that is her age.
Ageism is not our only oppression. We still have a menu of others. Racism,
Sexism, Classism and the other entire range of isms is still alive and hanging
around. We just found a new ism in our old age.
Combating Ageism. Is it an Organization or a Movement? There iswork for each of us, in one or both. One may be better suited to our situation than the other. We have a choice. Which one do you choose?

Shaba Barnes, Co-Director
National Old Lesbians Organizing for Change
age 71
Shaba may be contacted at smokeyb2196@msn.com or www.oloc.org.

summer 2007

Patricia Kimura
Mother
You have come to bring us succor, soup
You say to me“Tell me that you had to do it this way”
The soup you bringbeans, soy beans, natto
The food my father ate
the food you hated
and learned to eat
Foul, slimy
food now made into soup.
Familiar, warm, I drink it in.
I wrap my arms around your neckand whisper“I had to do it this way”
I kiss your cheekAnd now I begin
I.

AbandonMy mother, hours old,
was found beneath a set of palms
in the heat and blistering dustYour mother whispered the lie“Shikata ganai, it cannot be helped...”shaking her head to parry devils“The baby has died.”
Beneath the palms, along the roadside
You lay still
Never uttering a soundA natal pact, made inside, to hide from ghosts, obake,to end a curse
meant foryour mother.
I wonder if
The ocean wind traveled lightly over grass and sandto clear the dust from your newborn face

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

I do not know how long you waited
wrapped in an old white rice sackIf curious bees touched your ears
If you could hear the waves, laughing, fearlesspounding warnings on the beachI do not know
You never say
Your eyes only lighten
with the story of
rescue.

II.

RescueYour scentdense, clotted, mixed with brine
travels the clearing trades
A scent
unfamiliar to me
I want to taste the salt of it
Pull it inI lift my head
Licking the warm sea air
She lets me lead
Our wagon is empty
No heavy tins of water and fresh made tofu
or stacks of burnt cut caneor piles of cloth and rolls of thread
She lets me lead
I pull us closer
I stop and shake at these blinders
Searching to find you
Fear and curiosity struggle and mix
A few more steps

summer 2007

The smell of devils
still surrounds you
I snuffle closer
My breath warns them away
I whisper in your ear“Never trust secrets, never trust lies
Always keep secrets, always keep lies.
These are wards against devils”

III.

ReturnReeds of wavering white incense
dance and swirl
becoming large single puffs
as you clap
once, twice, three times
Your glasses slip as you lower your head
and fall asleep~
Through whispered words,
hands lifted you up
Was the air hot, dry?
Trade winds rough against your skin?
A woman’s voice, not your mother’s,
loud,
a rehearsed incantation“Ah so sad, I have lost my baby
But look, Charlie, here she is, this is my baby.”
Did he look at you
his hooves stammering in the heat?
Did he tell you not to speak?
“Not yet, not yet.”

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Did you know what to say?
Told secrets in the womb
When to recite the words
This woman’s hands, not your mother’s,pinched at your feet“Now” he whispered “now”“Mama
Come find me.”IV.

Beginning

You say “It will rain soon.”Your eyes peering through the jalousies
past the flat and pointed roofs
that shape our neighborhood
to the curving flanks of the Waianae Rangethat rim this dry Waipahu plain
The mountains harbor clouds that turnand curl in a particular way
I cannot readBut you say“Let’s get the laundry off the line.”~Your voice, what did it sound like?
Did you keep your part of the bargain?
Did you cast the right words to spell the curse
meant for your mother?
You remembered the horse, your friend long after
your motherdisappeared“Ah Charlie” you would say and clap your hands in delightyour hair white
as you would tell the story

summer 2007

I could feel his soft brown skinunder your tiny hands
The moist snuffles on your thick black hairas your fingers wrote silent messages on his cheeks
Did you know your mother would be waiting for you?
Standing by the road
Waiting for you to be delivered again
I do not know
You never say~
The smell of rain drifts in,as thick wet red dust slides
from the mango leaves.
We carry in the laundry.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Anita Cornwell

Quotes from Black Lesbian in White America

Photo of Anita Cornwell by Tee Corinne. Tee A. Corinne Papers, Special Collections andUniversity Archives, University of Oregon Libraries.

“...if there’s ever to be a true revolution for the liberation of womyn,
Lesbians will have to make it.” p. 119“We sisters must save ourselves. The Sisterhood is Powerful. So Powerto the Sisterhood!” p. 114“...if we want a new, egalitarian society, we are going to have to join
together with womyn of all races and build it ourselves, plank by plank andbrick by brick.” p. 29
Quotes reprinted by permission from the author from Black Lesbian in White America (Naiad Press, 1983).

summer 2007

39

Lenn Keller

Welcome To the 21st Century:
A Feminist Butch is Not An Oxymoron

Self-Portrait by Lenn Keller

Coming into your gender identity is a complex process that can forsome happen over night, take years, a lifetime, or maybe never happen. But,
looking back over my life, I can see why it was particularly difficult for me
to claim being butch when I first came out as a lesbian. It was in the beginning of my career as a young dyke back in the mid-seventies, that I quickly
learned that butches and femmes were personae non-grata in the lesbian
feminist community.
The year that I “came out of the closet,” the gay liberation and women’s
movements were then about five years old. I was a bohemian, black, single
mom with a three year old daughter trying my best to be straight, and failing miserably at it. I was living in a building right off Lake Michigan on thenorthside of Chicago that was full of hippies and other assorted weirdos. I
worked at an educational publishing company, and hung out with jazzmusicians and artists. I had become involved with an eastern religion, andwas just ending a year of celibacy, and going through the classic angst andconfusion that preceded coming out back in those days.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

I had been a tomboy all my life – feeling more masculine than a lot ofboys I knew and having secret crushes on girls. I hoped my impending
queerness was something I’d grow out of, wake up one day and be a nice,normal straight lady. Talk about fantasies. I thought because I enjoyed hanging
out with guys, that there was hope for me. Being a pervert, on top of being
a failed (i.e. non feminine) female, was something I just couldn’t quite face.
From time to time, I made half hearted attempts at complying withcompulsory heterosexuality. I took myself through excruciating gyrations inan effort to adequately perform my assigned gender role.
I’d do ludicrous things like pretend to like a guy who hung out with aguy who was hanging out with the girl that I wanted to be near.
A few years prior, when I was a teenage runaway, black political activist
in NYC, I tried hanging with the “cultural crowd,” sporting the geles, bubbas
and lappas with the best of the sistahs. But being a lifelong tomboy, I lapsed
into wearing my geles with my t-shirts and Levis, and that didn’t go over too
big. So, I gave up on that scene and adopted my bohemian, eastern hippy“unisex” look.
By the time I was 21, I was just plain exhausted by the whole trying to
be straight thing, and bursting at the seams. I was having recurring erotic
dreams about women almost every night. The sexuality in the dreams wastame, yet powerful. Beautiful women would be kissing my forehead, and I
would often wake up pretty heated up. The next morning I’d be thinking,“Okay, girlfriend, I believe you’ve got something to deal with here.”
Inching up on dealing with my sexuality, I engaged in covert conversations with my “straight” girl friends, where I’d try to be nonchalant, talkabout Anais Nin, and ask them their views on bisexuality, hoping they’d say
they thought it was cool. Despite the fact I lived in the city, I didn’t know asingle lesbian. I was completely isolated, and desperate for knowledge. Finally one day, I was walking downtown on State Street, when I saw two
extremely gorgeous young black women gazing into each other’s eyes andholding hands. A voice screamed in my head, “Yes! This is it. This is beautiful. This is right. This is who I am!” In that moment, I made the decision tocome out.
Not long after that, I was browsing in Kroch’s & Brentano’s bookstore,
when I came across a copy of Sappho Was A Right On Woman. After paging
through it a few minutes, I knew I had to have it, so I took it up to thecounter and endured the embarrassment of having the clerk think I was alesbian. I couldn’t get home fast enough to dig into it. I’m sure I stayed up
half the night reading. At first, I kept it hidden in my dresser drawer, so that

summer 200741

my friends wouldn’t see it if they dropped by. And soon, emboldened bywhat I was reading, I simply didn’t care.
That book became my bible — it validated and affirmed me in waysthat I had been desperately needing all of my life, and confirmed so muchthat I had thought about and wrestled with in my isolation. I dispensed
with my bohemian, hippy unisex look, and proudly donned my flannel
shirt, Levis and Frye boots, so the dykes about town, wherever they were
could easily spot me. Everyone at work was shocked.
Things started happening real fast after that. I was tight with this cool
black sistah who also worked at the publishing company. She was always
going on about a girl cousin of hers that she said I should meet because shethought we had a lot in common. I didn’t get it, but finally, the cousin who
had been living in Colorado or somewhere, returned home. One day afterwork, my friend dropped by my apartment with her cousin, and I could not
believe my eyes. Here was this foxy, chocolate brown sister with a big, wild
Afro, and huge magnetic eyes. She was fine. She was very feminine and had
a bohemian style. She wore bright red lipstick and had on a sexy dress. She
was irreverent, brainy, witty, eccentric, sexy and flamboyant. I was immediately smitten.
I had a brief conversation with the cousin, during which I did my best
to impress her with my knowledge about an esoteric jazz musician that wascoming to town. I could tell she liked me, and she invited me to come overfor lunch the following week. I accepted without hesitation. She lived about
ten minutes from where I worked, so it was convenient for me to visit her
during my lunch hour. The first time we had lunch, she made delicious
grilled cheese sandwiches. We took them up to her bedroom to eat, and I
was so turned on I could barely contain myself. I still wasn’t sure if she wasa lesbian, but sitting on her bed, we talked about everything, and I discovered that she too was a feminist. When she went downstairs to get us something to drink, I noticed a book laying on her bed. It was Our Bodies, Ourselves, 1st Edition. I picked it up, and it was open to the chapter on lesbians.
Green light — taking this for a sign, I decided to make my move.
For reasons unknown to me, I felt completely confident in pursuingher. It didn’t matter that I’d never been with a woman before. A couple days
later, after a little nervous procrastination, I mailed her a sexy cryptic note
asking for a real date. She wrote back a witty reply accepting. Sparks began
to fly, and soon we were going out to the movies, for picnics and concerts.
She took me out bar hopping, and gave me a tour of the bars in the city –what a mind blower that was to see all the different kinds of dykes and42sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

scenes. She was a book junkie like myself and turned me on to lots of books
including, Jill Johnston’s Lesbian Nation, Emma Goldman’s Living My Life,and the Red Stockings Manifesto. She was seductive and impossibly flirtatious. Being with her was incredibly exciting and inspired in me feelings
that I had been trying to suppress since sixth grade, when I used to do dumbthings like, run up to girls I had crushes on and punch them in the arm, orsmack them on the butt. But, this time, I didn’t have to suppress what I
wanted to do, because I knew with every fiber of my being that all she
wanted was for me to touch her.
It was weird too, because though we would have never said it, I was
definitely masculine and she feminine. None of us dykes knew what to dowith that kind of reality then, because our concepts of femininity and masculinity were associated with heterosexuality, and with traits that we had
rejected, and considered undesirable. The ideal dyke back then was a perfect
blending of the two energies. So, those of us who were considerably left or
right of center, did the best we could to meet the prescribed standards of“politically correct” feminist dyke appearance and behavior. Despite what
we would’ve said about it then, the yin/yang energy between us was unmistakable. And on a certain level we were forced to acknowledge it, but we justcouldn’t take the butch/femme thing seriously. To us it was a joke. Theresimply was no permission for us within the context of our “community” toclaim those identities, and as a result, we were unable to express our true
natures or deepest erotic yearnings.
A few of the typical things we heard about butch/femme was that it wascounter-revolutionary and backwards — that all the butches and femmes
were old timey lesbians who didn’t know any better, and that butch/femme
was nothing more than a ridiculous imitation of heterosexist gender roles.
What P.C. feminist dyke in her right mind would want to perpetuate that?
Besides, much of what I’d heard about what a butch was supposed to be wasalso negative — they looked too much like men, were macho, controlling,
domineering, were sexist, gruff, uncommunicative, emotionally inaccessible,
into car mechanics, motorcycles, and football, and couldn’t cook etc. Not
being able to relate that, I concluded I couldn’t possibly be a butch. What afemme was supposed to be wasn’t sounding all that great either. Femmes
were supposed to be passive, sexually submissive, manipulative sell outs,
who were not to be trusted. They wore lipstick, long hair, heels, nails anddresses only to gain special favor with sexist men and the butches who acted
like those men.
It didn’t occur to me and most of my peers who had been informed bythat kind of thinking, that a feminist dyke could actually enjoy or be em-

summer 200743

powered by appropriating and performing codes of femininity and masculinity for personal expression and to signal desire for another woman. Nor
did it occur to us that the terms, “femininity” and “masculinity” could possibly be neutral energies – neither good or bad, and unattached to biologicalsex. But, in our zealous haste to dispense with anything that even remotely
resembled “the heterosexual model,” we were unable to see the butch/femme
dynamic’s core erotic drive and separate it from the patriarchal social construction of heterosexuality. We were also unable to consider the possibility
that the butch/femme dynamic could be an authentic, universal, erotic dynamic expressed between two lesbians or bisexual women, based on theexchange of and attraction to complementary sexual desires.
But, from time to time, I did get these little inklings that somethingwasn’t quite right. Take for example the time my first girlfriend and I wereon a lesbian and gay speaker’s bureau gig at a local high school, and a teenage boy in the class asked me if I was the guy, and she the girl. Of course,
being there to educate folk in the most P.C. fashion possible, I said, no, that
we weren’t into playing roles, which was true, and that we were both womenand in an equal relationship. But, I did feel a little busted, because I knewthat what I was saying wasn’t the complete story. What else could I say? I
didn’t know how to talk about who we were, and the not knowing haunted
me for years.
And then there was the time that another girlfriend, a feminine whitedyke, went with me to a card party in San Francisco. Everyone was gatheredin the kitchen, and much to our surprise, was filled with butch and femme,
mostly interracial couples our own age, in their twenties and thirties. Mostof the butches were seated at the two tables, slamming down cards, cursing
and laughing, and the femmes were either getting them food and drinks, or
sitting on the side lines talking to each other or just watching. Though weourselves were an interracial and for all practical purposes, butch/femme
couple, we took in the scene, and gave each other one of those meaningful
looks that said, “What the hell is this?” I knew a few of the folks there fromaround town, and one of the butches who was seated at the table greeted
me. She looked me and my girlfriend up and down, and then asked me,“So, Keller, what’s your story?” What she meant was, did I identify as abutch. Surveying the room again, I looked at her, smiled and said in a somewhat superior tone, “No, I’m not into that. We’re not into roles.” She kindof laughed and rolled her eyes, and looked at me like “Yeah, whatever. You’ll
figure it out.”
It took me almost two decades to figure out that butches and femmes
were a valid minority within a minority, and that what I had seen in the44sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

kitchen that day was a version of butch/femme that didn’t work for me, andthat I could be a butch in a butch/femme relationship that was radically
conscious and feminist.
In the meanwhile, I was sexually active, having a number of intense anddeeply intimate relationships with women who were all more feminine thanmyself, and almost all of whom were strong lesbian feminists. Still, I spent
many confused and agonizing years suppressing my true gender identity
and sexuality. Only in retrospect have I been able to see how much damage
was done, and how much was sacrificed in those relationships by not being
able to fully acknowledge and claim the true nature of who we each were
and what we really desired with each other.
During the “sex positive” environment of the 80s, the heavily prescriptive 70s standards started loosening their hold. And those of us who had
been suppressing identities not previously sanctioned in the dyke community began tentatively to express them. The “lipstick” lesbian phenomenon
showed up, which I saw more as a career move, than an expression of authentic femme gender identity. I saw myself and other butches starting togravitate more toward the women who were being emboldened by the whole“lipstick lesbian” thing and expressing their “femininity” in ways that few ofthem would have previously dared. Stuff was shaking on other fronts too,
which also added fuel to our awakening. Lesbian feminist writers, cultural
workers and activists from all over the country, like Joan Nestle, Leslie
Feinberg, Jewelle Gomez, Amber Hollibaugh, Joanne Loulan, Margaret Sloan
Hunter and many others who were challenging a lot of the assumptions thatmany of us had so readily accepted in the previous decade about gender
identity.
By the mid nineties, clubs and other cultural events in the Bay Area had
started to spring up, where butches and femmes of all generations could beseen out parading in full regalia. Butches sporting short cropped hair cuts,
suits, ties, and femmes in dresses, makeup and heels. Not that these presentations and performances were mandatory or required to be butch/femme,
but it sure was fun and liberating to finally be able to camp it up and toblatantly signal our desires.
So, ever the late bloomer, in the late nineties, out I came again -– thistime as a proud butch. I attended the Femme Conference in ’98, and thatwas incredibly inspiring. The discussions that ensued from that event really
lit me up, and things were definitely starting to come together for me. Embracing butch/femme has been since then a continuing process of becoming
conscious of the ways that as lesbians and bisexual women, we’ve all inter-summer 2007

45

nalized sexism, misogyny, and homophobia. What a wonderful thing it’s
been to discover, that I am still a lesbian feminist, albeit a reformed one, andthis time, giving myself full permission to relate to the people I want, and in
the ways that I want.
Being so much more my authentic self today, owning my butchness is
exhilarating and empowering. Claiming my butchness, honoring and acknowledging it, I feel more attractive than I’ve ever felt in my whole life. I
love being butch for a femme who appreciates it, wants it — gets it. Thankfully, I finally did figure it out that I am butch, and that to be a butch and afeminist is not an oxymoron — that I can be in a butch/femme relationshipthat is not sexist, misogynist or homophobic. I fully accept myself now as
the femme loving butch that I’ve always been. It’s great to be alive in the 21st
century.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Morgan Gwenwald“Hello There, Remember, Love”
I met her on the campus of a small liberal arts college in the far south.
It was my first wild year away from home and I took great advantage of thatsafe and contained environment. I had a girlfriend or two, off and on.
There was the woman I knew from high school, also enrolled there, and theMichigan hitchhiker crashing on campus, and the budding poet, and a worldof possibilities strolling across the campus green every day. If pressed I would
have admitted that I went to the first women’s conference held on that campus to cruise rather than for any feminist activity. I wasn’t even all that out,
but then actions speak louder than words don’t they?
That was the year it all started to shift. And Ivy was a big part of it.
Kate and I rolled out of bed, late on Saturday morning, fortified ourselves with coffee and strolled to the conference. There was a large gathering of women in the main conference hall. An animated woman stoodlecturing on the stage. There seemed to be a lot of off-campus women in
the group. I have no idea what the topic of the workshop was, and probably
didn’t know then either.
I saw her standing on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall.
She was thin, sinewy, with roughly cut hair. A faded black t-shirt framed herangular face. I melted at the statement she made. A lesbian James Dean, amiraculous apparition in the early 70s. The energy around her sparked as she
stood non-apologetically, a finger hooked in her jeans pocket.
In the go-around she said she worked in a nursery, in a nearby county.
Perfect.
There was some silly getting to know you (and yourself ) exercise. It
necessitated partnering up. No one claimed her. I didn’t know then, howthreatening a butch woman could be to a group of middle-class women. I
casually approached her and asked if she needed a partner. She smiled andsaid yes. I suggested we go outside, to enjoy the sunshine and get a little
fresh air. I grabbed a copy of the exercise handout as we left the room.
We sprawled out on the grass with the list of questions we were supposed to share spread between us. After the second or third CR type question, I asked her if she didn’t think it was pretty lame, and did she want to
get lunch?
She did. So I snuck her into the campus cafeteria, something I had
become expert at with the hitchhiker. I filled up a glass with local freshsummer 2007

47

orange juice. She told me her uncle owned a small orange grove and described how the sucker branches had to be cut off the orange trees. By theend of lunch she had offered to show me her tomato garden and we were off
in her VW Beetle.
I met her dad, who had settled in Florida years back after driving horses
into the state. Her great aunt was also there in the rough hewn, unpainted
shack. She pumped us some water in her kitchen, as she said pointedly tous, “you’re witches, aren’t you? You don’t need no dirty men,” and it wasn’t
a put down. And they both had accents that reminded me of cockney, theirroots went that deep. Her mother had died some years back after being
institutionalized for most of Ivy’s life. She showed me her garden, I admiredit, and her family.
When she returned me to campus I gathered up a sleeping bag and wesnuck up on the roof of the music building. We spent the night talking andmaking love. In the morning when the workmen showed up to work on theroofing, using the handy ladder we had found the night before, they laughedat us. Caught. They were casual about it, then I realized they thought she
was a guy. Of course.
On her next trip she brought me Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and a bagof pistachios. She told me about her experiences as a teacher in the Peace
Corps, in the Returned Volunteers, and cutting cane in the Venceremos
Brigade. I was entranced, I was touched. I knew about Cuba, having grown
up in Miami, but she showed me another side. And besides being a Marxist
she was a feminist. A relative had turned her in when she got back fromCuba, and she couldn’t teach any more.
So she was learning landscaping. And kept a small revolver in her car.
She said it was her way out, if things didn’t get better. An old college friend
had sent her the money for the conference.
Later that year we headed off to May Day in DC together, but didn’t get
further than Atlanta, totally stoned and crashing at a friend of hers, who wasmarried with a kid. The husband clamped earphones on my head andblew my mind with Firestone Theater, the voices and sounds moving throughmy brain, across that vast space, my head. We made love naked on her
friend’s fur coat spread on the floor.
Ivy made it easy. She was loving, she was a teacher, she knew a lot. She
was a walking example of the best of what we tried to do in those days. And
it came from her experience. Me, it came from my mind and my heart. I
could never claim the roads she had known, but I sang in the chorus, andbecame a feminist as well.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

I moved back to Tallahassee and embraced the feminist community, atleast many of the women in it. I lived in a women’s group house near
campus, helped found a women’s bookstore, taught photography in thewomen’s center, organized events and joined a collective. Along the way I
had the most amazing non-monogamous time possible. But that would be
another story.
Within the next year, Ivy moved out of my life. I am sad to admit we
had an angry parting, and it was my fault. She thought I should leavecollege and do real political work. I wanted to keep hiding out in thatprivileged place, suspended in time, dreaming of better worlds. I was notwilling to take the kinds of risks she did, I couldn’t keep up with her.

“Clouds,” by Francesca Roccaforte.

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49

Francesca Roccaforte

Dancing the Tarantella
Dancing the tarantella on the black sweltering street in the city of
San Francisco
Pridefully strolling, the paesanas pound the ground like the beat ofgoat hooves
ascending the craggy hills of our motherland, Italia
Olive skinned fac’ia bella, redheaded daughters, garlic breathed,spicy tomato-sauced,
sesame-seeded, lovely fem’mina
Sorellas of Napoli, Sicilia, Calabria and Toscana
Link arms and do the tarantella
Rejoicing in the melodic sounds of our homeland
June, 1992

This poem was inspired by a march of several members of BASIL (BayArea Sicilian Italian Lesbians), a group of women who meet once monthly
to celebrate their culture via food, exchange of family stories, and lesbian
pride. This year Giovanna, the co-founder and Mama of BASIL, Lynn,
Annette, Teresa, Denise, Mary, Vincenza, Rosemary, Tina, Lucille, and myself marched through the streets of San Francisco singing, dancing, throwing pasta at the throngs of onlookers and merrymakers.
The crowds just loved us as we held our BASIL banner, sweat dripping
down our faces from the heat of the day. Denise and Tina started dancing thetarantella and a few of us started clapping and laughing as I was shooting
video and still film of this precious moment. We all got into this high energy
and it was just a blast! Most of us were wearing black, the national color of
Italians and I was wearing a tee shirt that said “Italian Girls Best in the World,
Little Italy, NYC”. I was wearing a tassel of red, white and green I broughtfrom Little Italy. At first, I was wearing the tassel around my waist like a
Middle Eastern dancer. Then I took it off and had it on a string and started
waving at the crowds, giving them a mock blessing from the High Priestess ofSouthern Italian America! It was all great fun with Italian humor.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Cheryl J. Moore

A Winter Poem
This morning the sun rises cold out of the ocean,Lighting the shore streets and houses
Bound in new snow and a white breeze.
Random traffic animates the scene
As I watch for ocean spray.
Winter has been a bare sorrow,
Reading a few books, writing solitude.
No one comes to my room
So I scan the ocean for natural effectThat changes with my moods.
I am bereft in my element.
I cannot write of her
Or reason with clarity.
I wake, I breathe, I go to sleep.
I say yes to aloneness and without meaning
And her absence is an emptiness
That pervades my soul.
I pray only to bear the pain
As days beat on me.
The ocean does not matter,
But marks the ceaseless hour,
And light slowly passes
As I sit here and there.
She was my peace and joy,Now a cry I cannot makeAnd the loss is a part of me,
Immeasurable separation.

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51

Cheryl J. Moore

Writing Desire
I want to write again – I am going crazy with it. All my letters and journals
don’t relieve the desire. Writing is an urgency; a loud voice. Perhaps it is alonging for words. I love words, especially ones new to me. What does mitigate
mean? I am dying with the pressure I feel – the urge to create. I have nurtured
and developed this urgency by writing poetry for over twenty-five years. Perhaps my neural pathways are engraved or embedded with the urge to write.
When I do not write I am lost and self-conscious. Then I feel that something is wrong with me, and I cannot shake the feeling. Not writing causes a
fallacy of thought, and I strongly believe the illusion that something is very
wrong. I become uneasy with living and myself, and this affects every area ofmy thinking. In my own way I am like Kafka, who didn’t feel well. It’s pretty
bad. I seem to be losing my sanity when I don’t write, because writing balances
a force of energy within that insists on itself one way or a miserable other. Theenergy is constant, waking and sleeping.
I have dreamed about writing; the motion of language, and other dreams
are little stories that seem to have structure and meaning. Writing does give mylife undeniable meaning. I look at my days as being a narrative that will have a
purposeful ending. The narrative quality develops after many years of imaginative writing. It becomes a philosophy within. That is the wonderful thing
about writing poetry.
I have to be careful not to explain the thought to myself or to analyze it.
Too many poets explain their philosophy and the explanation is dead on arrivaland virtually unreadable. It’s said that poets cannot write prose, perhaps because
the poet analyzes her ineffable philosophy.
I also do not want to know how many poems I’ve written, because an
artificial period is made that, for me, stops the flow of poetry. Some things are
best left unknown.
When I am able to write, it is like driving across California’s Mojave Desert
in spring. All is well in a profusion of Joshua trees and sagebrush. I write theroad’s way to Boron and past Edwards Air Force Base that once was a happy
place. A poem is the beauty of the floral and spectacular desert. I miss the
Mojave Desert and I am always trying to express my grief. I’m writing my loveof Edwards, nearly fifty years ago.
My heart never left the desert. I suppose I’ll not see it again, but now I canwrite as I wanted to out west. Edwards and the Mojave were the end of mychildhood, and poetry, my difficult maturity twenty-one years later.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

SDiane Adamz-Bogus

Colossus of the Pacific: “La Mujer Y La Osa”
I.
(1)
Eurekan trails snake Southward down California’s stocking footTracing the guises and symbols of La Mujer, sculpting her masks
and phenomenon,
Flowing—blazing—below nacreous, yellow-blue-red cumulus skies,
full and striated
Above the spoken rise of Mount Shasta to the spiritual crests of San
Bernadino.
La Mujer sweeps down and over sainted cities: Santa Rosa, San
Rafael, San Francisco,
San Jose...Santa Cruz where rosaries are prayed in archetypicalmission of remembrance....
Where statues of Fremont and Sutter, and busts of Naglee and Muirpose in her stead
Weathered molecules of her blood and flesh squeezed into the ironfabric of history.
They are proof of La Mujer as creator and creation, the flagrant signsof her sapiens veil over reality.
Her stories chronicle the City of Angels where she once fed grapes todinosaurs beside Jurassic palms.
(2)
Her hair, veins on the map from Sacramento to San Diego, Pelican toImperial Beach...
Her face, a hallowed full moon, a bosom-born sunset, incandescent,illusionary.
She is sole eveangel of exiles and artists, of children, the unsaved,
and the incarnate.
She inhabits culverts, rivers, aqueducts, undulates in shallows, indeeper fathoms where goddess myths are born.
There young whales remember the song of coral-clay sung alike tokrill and moray.
Our Lady of Connection, Inspirator of every bridge’s span whose
steps measure and link
Blazing, dry Blythe (where last fall her feet) and the Pacific tides
where oft she bathes.
Like Egypt’s Nut, or the smile at Half Moon Bay she arches over the
distances and joins the entire state.
Immense is she, our Western Lady, palpable essence of this land,
both Alta and Baja California, and Sister to Miss Liberty.

summer 2007

53

(3)
Her winds unbalance gliding pelicans that follow gulping her balm
Low, they cruise her breezes, sweetly calling her name (as do small
fish they catch).
Pipers, terns, gulls and starlings, centurions twittering in code to theknowing tortoises below.
All keep her hallowed secrets in their winged spirals of flight, aformation: helix and versa vice.
Otters search beneath the whispering waves for messages dropped
in the fog:
A briny wisp, a tasty scrap, flotsam and jetsam of the electric eel....
In seasons, she disrobes, re-dresses behind a cloud, a ritual changeof habit
Then uncustomary crow at seaside, makes his own her omniscienteyes.
Proud as mountains eagles, transcontinental as doves, crow cries
news of change“All. All. All.” from treetops, he alerts. “Es ella. Es ella. It’s she thatcomes!”She passes, as comet, as shooting star, a stranger on the pier—sometimes as hurricane.
II.
(4)
Her gusts rattle wailing branches, grapefruit thuds heavy against
the earth.
Clothed now as goddess, She rotates the zodiac and advances theEquinox,
And who but her stellar companion awakens, falling West, growling their playful test:“Who awakens, Polaris?” Says La Osa “Who but that Golden
Being—One that I have not forgot,
One I have not long seen.” La Osa yawns wide and large, showing
teeth for every county.
Says La Mujer—her ever reply—“Who hears the windblown mantraof the name some do not speak?
“Who knows the amigas’ journey and knows the Song of the Land
(which can never weep...)“Who wakes again to sing again, “ ¡Yo soy!” La Osa now joins in.
Bound as one are they (as we) La Osa trundles constant at the
Lady’s side, both communal as a tribe,
Grizzled belly swaying, great mouth huffing, they stamp monumental covering cities in a stride.

54

sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue(5)
Mighty steps like the Sasquatch, their footprints never fade, they churl
the living rivers,
And hollow out the bays
Rarely claimed, unclearly seen, this awesome pair—but Earth quakes
where they step,
the Lady and the Bear.
In miscreant seasons the Lady brings early summer/fall; La Osa inhabits
winter/spring, avalanches, she stalls while melting mountain snow andtossing stony hail. So the Lady dances in the hard sloppy rains
and both delight in raising the grapes at Napa.
Before them cavort white impatiens like Mexicans Zapata freed
Grasshoppers race like quick geckos under the rough tumbleweed.
Hummingbirds from the North, eager, too, zip to the lowlands South
Scouting the route for the Lady’s swallow entourage
They ride inviolable currents—sacred lines between then and now—thepaths
Where the La Mujer y La Osa do walk—from ancient times to these days
modern.
(6)
Tall Lilies of the Nile, slender lavender, and squat sage, strain upward—avision quest...
But the Redwoods, posted like sentries, greet La Mujer, eye to eye from
Mendocino to Monterey.
Natal palms splay, offer La Osa fatted dates, shade from temperamental
sun and rain.
La Osa’s breath makes faint hosts of golden poppies, and frightens thefrisky quail.
Her pungent breath meanders beneath the mottled wings of a dog-faced
butterfly(Whom La Mujer prefers to the Monarch, rare firefly or the lucky ladybug).
At Santa Cruz, and at Santa Monica—on one leg stands a sand piper,
alert, vigilant.
And, so too, listening are the Central Valley vacas: heifers and indolent
bulls, flicking tender ears
As anxious as expectant mothers... searching the pasture’s air, nostrils
moist, tails fanning
The message received is sent by smell to valley campesiños, who kneel
and kiss the furrowed soil,
clawed by La Osa.
(7)
It is La Osa who has partitioned the almond groves, excavated aqueducts, worked

summer 200755

the strawberry fields. She who has shaken the limes and oranges fromthe grower’s trees
She has given strength to the bending migrant, crouched among thelettuce heads, or pulling
tomatoes from the vine.
It is she who has rippled the Mojave into O so neat sand dunes, wrestled
the Joshua Tree into form.
Oh so big, Osa rears, dwarfing imagination, her growl a landside soundInside cavernous jaws that hold the jabber of the city—morning ‘til thesun goes down.
Garbage trucks grunting, crashing bottles in the Tenderloin, roaring
gangs in L.A.,
Raucous crowds at Grauman’s Theatre like the exodus to Burning Man.
Her grizzly’s bellow blows Sesnas quietly into port, and harmonizes withjumbo jets.
Commuter trains screech the rails, barrel over bumping tracks, La Osa’s
favorite accompaniment(so the schedule rarely fails —except when the Cal Bears clash)(8)
La Osa yawns a grizzly’s gargantuan yawn, rears like the Kodiak,And bears down like a Polar on our iced over streams of thought.
We know her common likeness; we keep her near but far, on a tshirt here, a mascot there,
in the window of a store
See there in the forest, Smokey warding off a blaze, while Pooh andYogi (in her place)pursue our banality.
“¡ Yo soy!’ says she like the Metatron, “I am!” again says she,
Hailing us as would a trapper’s horn, to look around and see.
Auto horns, possessed by demons of rush and speed, grind incongested streams
It is La Osa who blocks the freeway, protecting us with delay,
patrols the roads and bridges,
splitting the grid-locked spaces.
Above the smog and stoppage, wreathed by the highest clouds theLady, lays rainbows
Florescent cable end to end, of the great middle coast between
Arizona and Oregon.
III.
(9)
The embarcadero winds out before her, so too the Great Highway,
She touches cottage spots, B&Bs, big hotels and little lone cafes....

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

A cosmic roll call of diners within who’re deceased but never gone:
John Muir, Jack London, Herb Caen and César Chavez, it grows everlong
Billy De Frank, Harvey Milk, Julia Morgan, Mary Austin and Madam
Winchester
Some who chat are transplanted seekers like sojourning, Ida Wells....
They eat the whole enchilada, drink Napa’s fruit of the vine
Remembering blues festivals, black-tie politics, parades and uncivilwars.
The gold rush is old news, slavery and annexation, too
Even the victory of the Union Pacific, that linked a divided nation
here to there
Is a social history that they tell but none speak of La Mujer or La Osa,
the bear.
(10)
But La Mujer is kind, towering over petty gossip, reconstructions and lies
Over battles, turning points, squabbles and the false vote of “ayes!”
She forgives us as rain rebirths the burned forest, saying, “I am-Yo soy-Iam.”
As she passes, “All. All. All!” comes again the message from the crow
Whose flight she follows with omnipresent eyes, radical falling bird
Over the heads and into the lives of the people down below:
Pushing tomorrow’s generation a girl-woman in frills and a bow;
Huddled in doorways bundles of shame their homes from night to night
Crowded masses at the bus stop trying to coerce the day
As do the fast moving financiers, abogados and hurried store front jefes(11)
At the freeway edge, rags and tatters mendicants lift cardboard pleas
For money, for food, for work, for transformational grace
Mothers behind grocery carts filled with food and toddlers, blessthemselves
Men on bikes, long ago caballeros, ride toward casual destinies
Lost farmers call out, “Oranges!” “Strawberries!” “Fresh Cherries!”
Flea market traders spread velvetine art, flags, oils and rugs at her feet
Who has no product, incense or rings, offers stoplight window wash
and a dirty hand
At Venice Beach the stage-less act, the musical sing, trumpet, drum,
the tireless dance
La Mujer succors the faith of the lost, leaves wrapped food atop thecorner standStrengthens the social worker who shelters the fleeing mother, crying,summer 200757

“I am. Yo soy. I am.”
(12)Here, then a graspable legend leaning against street realities
La Mujer y La Osa—hidden in plain sight—assert their Will to be
When can the silence be broken, the plain-glorious truth be reprised?
Right now in California, everywhere the titans find our eyes.
See fixed there, a Lady with a Bear upon the state’s seal
See them gigantes magnificos, spear in hand, o’er looking Sutter’s
Mill
No Minerva Roman goddess or Amazon of the Greeks
Nor Indian fighter, explorer nor conquistador or gold-seeking leech
But like Nzinga of Africa, Parvati or Kali, she is Founder Spirit in...
California and La Osa, there on the flag, is her constellar friend.
IV.
(13)
Forced to exist as concoction, as myth from afar
As symbol and as archetype instead of a once-living woman—This Golden Queen and her North Star—O Muse, O Essence abiding in this land once and evermore
You rule the destiny of this place in the smallest pod or seedYour breath upon the feathered bird or in the ocean spray bears
The true spirit, true idea, truth and memory, do speak eternally
Yet who but La Osa and the mindful, ever speak your name?
Califia, I do, once. Califia, twice. Califia, and thrice again.
Namesake of California, Miss Liberty’s sistertwin (embodied foreverin the waters and wind).
(14)
The days of her arrival shift like sun from under the clouds
Gnarly kelp and grassy seaweed float evidence that she is there
Lounging upon the waves as upon her shoulders does her hair
Which peeks from beneath her helmet, in shadow like a fin.
She evens out the coast line, stops the waves at the rocks
She inspires the sea cows singing atop the jutting mountShe aligns the fine horizon with her wand-like warrior’s spear.
Endless coast she stretches it from here to there to here
The ocean rises, rushes, falls, swirls and claps for all the sound of
her name
Califia, once. Califia, twice. Califia, yet and trice again.
(15)
Dog-walkers, skate-boarders, walkers, cyclists, joggers, surfers— the
scene

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Children with pails and balls laugh aloud, run about and scream
Strolling sweethearts clasp hands, pause to wonder looking to the sea
As she confers upon them the right to love in their timeless hug and kiss.
Such gifts she brings to elders and teens, to those in the middle stretch
Any who come upon the beach to find treasure within reach:
The powdered sand dollar, magical shells, smoothed stones and glass
Mystic driftwood, her own art, and healing in the very air
Though not gold nuggets nor Spanish doubloons, nor fated jewels to wear
To each soul blue, black, white, or brown like whale kind under the sea
She sings in the great conch shell, “Yo soy—Califia—I am everywhere!”(16)
Rearing, the invincible La Osa, suddenly hugs the wind,
Drinks from the Pacific enormity, turns back to the stars (tracks
fading from the sand)...
Back to Ursa Major, bright above the earth where she takes our
newly collected dreams
Of peace, and health and of being ourselves.
“Yo soy,” sings La Osa the mantra, “Yo soy; All be well.”With smiling heart, the Lady watches her go and waving, she wades
way out to see...
La Osa’s first step onto the Lady’s rainbow, the next out of reality.
In the wake, of the Lady and the Bear prone surfers stroke in theirfoamless hem
They rise and squat o’er the pregnant swells to get one moment alone
Inside the spiraling vortex, of La Mujer’s ancestral, spiritual home.
Where, in the hallowed vacuum, they hear, her eternal song: “I am.
Yo soy. I am!”
(17)
The arching funnel, a paradise, a cathedral for our long beached prayers
A cornucopia where she has caught each prayer—all along the way.
Out and out beyond the bays, she ripples the restive sea
A Force to call Most Anything in this coliseum
The ceaseless waves are promises that she intends to keep.
One by one sent to the shore, old ones to the deep.
Laughing dolphins skitter aft, sailboats trail her breeze
Bold swimmers seek her out as it’s their only Fate....
They follow Califia’s colossal wading steps,
Outward and onward, and over the miniature Golden Gate.

summer 2007

59

Virginia Harris

Random V

44.5 inches X 56 inches. Machine pieced and quilted, hand beading. Warm and Natural batting. 1996

The blocks in this quilt were cut at “random”. Each group of blocks
has eight different fabrics and eight different shapes. No block has morethan one of each of the fabrics. The quilt changed shape when the blocks
were arranged randomly.
This series offers many opportunities to explore the meaning ofrandom. Sometimes it is very ordered, sometimes the exact opposite. Thisquilt has both — the “order” of the colors, the “dis-order” of the piecing.

60

sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Alix Greenwood

The Pit(1)
Shall I go backTo the point of no return?
To that hallway
Where, silently, still,
Choice and consequence roar?
To that moment when,
In electric glare,She goes into their room,
And he into mine?
Ssh, he says, ssh, ssh,
Don’t wake your mother.
And I am quiet.
My world opens beneath me.
I fall in.
Countless baffling terrors are born Down escalators, somersaults The awful darkness below;
The big chandelier at the local theatre Any great object that looms above.
As I fall in,Belief, sensation, memory,
Flinch back and flee,
Far away and further,Far from the pit where I lie.
They struggle on, lost, rootless.
They know:
That speech is not allowed;
That ill will can hide behind any face;That horror can break the surface at any time,
And they must be always braced for it;
That life’s promise is empty;
That they are missing something,summer 2007

They don’t know what,
But always, uncertain, must pretend,
And not be found out:That, somehow, comprehension slipped
From their hands
Into others, a secret key;That knowledge and its authority
Do not belong to themAnd, self-doubting, over and over,
They defer and submit.
So: shall I make that journey back?
Trace the clues of grief and loss?
Will I still be there,
Small, unprotected,
In a bed, in a darkened room?
Will I, grown-up now,
Switch on the light,
Tear back his concealments,
Declare: he knew, he did, he took;
And gather me up,
Take me in my arms,
And rescue me away?
Or, fearful, will I fall again,
Into the past,
Where I wait for the door to open,
And the worst to come?
(2)
I want to sink into life
Like honey melting through toast,
Moist and sweet,
Like rain plumping the earth,
Like twilight settling in the air;Fill all the atoms of my being,
Like crickets singing the song of the night.
There is no pit to fall into.
My cells are not terrible expanses
Where I might tumble endlessly in horror.
The universe is neither abyss nor precipice.

61

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

I’ll fall as mist falls,
As darkness, as sleep,
Into the places I left:
Blood and bones, liver, gut, knees, toes,
Sickness, fear, exhaustion.
I’ll fall, over and over,
Into my days as I live them,Each ravage, each constraint;
And dance like fish
Through every current of joy.
I won’t abandon myself again.
I’ll meet myself
In the great fields of life
Where my fullness will be tested.
I’ll not be silent
In the face of wrong,
Or harsh when I can be kind,
Nor sacrifice myself on anybody’s altar.
When I fall, I’ll fall
Guiltless and necessary;
As the dew, as the storm,
As equinox light.

summer 2007

63

Matu Feliciano

You Moved Your Heart in My Direction
I can love a woman of integrity
One who reaches deep into my soul
She does wanna know who I am
An unselfish woman
Her passion running as deep as her soul
They are one
She is not afraid to look you in the eyes
Searching them for her equal
She is a woman that is respected
She is loved for her kindness
And words of wisdom
She loves because that’s all there is
In a world that teaches treachery, deceit, and gossip
When she speaks it is never to destroy your reputation, she has
your back
When she looks you in your eyes, they are not blank, empty, and hollow
Her motive is not just to get you in bed
Only to screw your mind
This woman is not a power monger
She is not the counterpart to the males she complains about
I see you
I know that when there is one like you
There are more like you
This Poem is for you
You light my heart
You refresh my being
You with an honest heart
With your eyes that lust of life
With your lips
With your touch
With your sense of justice
You have touched my mind
You have given unselfishly
I will give to you
It is the way of our hearts
This Poem is for you

64sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Joan Annsfire

Before Moving On
We pass in awkward silence,
beams buckle under the tense weight of our footsteps
pieces of plaster shake loose
and rattle around the failing structurethat has been our home,
its walls now too precarious to provide shelter.
Alone at the kitchen table, I replay your stories,
tales of street confrontations, police and picket signs
the 70s recreated but in this version we win,
we include everyone and finally get it right.
We would have jobs, but survive on our activism,time together to build a new world,
simple plans madewhen time seemed infinite
and words were all we needed
to set our dreams in motion,these days we are always learning.
We talk at each otherlike two drunks at a bar
our words fall like raindrops on a druma hollow monologue of sound and rhythm,
each of us mesmerized by her own voice.
You gather your things, I bide my time,
stay away on the day you move out
come back to unfilled spaces,
my life, a marker for objects no longer there.
I move forward slowly,
push down days like oars push back water
the wake behind me closes and disappears;

summer 2007

treacherous current pulls me
toward a waterfall crashing down a canyon,
I have nothing left to hold on to.
Each day I grow stronger,
circle around you in elliptical motiona spiral where each rotation takes me backyet yields a bit more distance,
there is still so much I need to remember.
The love never ran out
but like a stream of spilled mercury
shattered into millions of tiny silver beads;
we continue as the same substance in a new form;boundless and irretrievable.

Virginia Harris

Scrap Attack IV
33 inches X 37 inches.
All cotton. Paper
pieced, machine
quilted. Warm andNaturalÆ batting.
Original design.
2005

The combinationof Cherrywood™
fabric scraps and leftover paper piecing blocks
yielded this quilt. By
number 4, I was ready to get
on to other things.

65

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Mona Oikawa

Manitoba WinterWishful desire for a woman’s breath returns.
Weekly rendezvous, 10 p.m., beyond the perimeter.
Yearning fulfilled forestalled until light disappears.
The cold clear Manitoba night cannot come too soon.
Lust cuts across the flatline of past retreats.
Somewhere in a prairie town where an ever crimson sky outlasts
wavering sun.

Mona Oikawa

Cooper Street
Dawn in Ottawa
Heart breaks at first light.
Sleep has not come by your side.
Emptiness
Your words cut like a knife, wound my heart.
AchingSpeech falters.
Words caught in my throat.
My healing heart, my healing words
Need comfort halfway, need healing words, need healing comfort
halfway.

summer 2007

“Self-Portrait,” by Mona Oikawa

67

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Octavia Butler

Writing Science Fiction

Octavia Butler (1947 – 2006)
Photo by Jean Weisinger

I’m a 53-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writerand who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I’m also comfortablyasocial — a hermit in the middle of Seattle — a pessimist if I’m not careful,a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.
I’ve had eleven novels published so far: Patternmaster, Mind of My Mind,
Survivor, Kindred, Wild Seed, Clay’s Ark, Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago, Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents as well as a collection of myshorter work, entitled Bloodchild. I’ve also had short stories published inanthologies and magazines. One, “Speech Sounds,” won a Hugo Award asbest short story of 1984. Another, “Bloodchild,” won both the 1985 Hugo
and the 1984 Nebula awards as best novelette. My most recent novel Parable of the Talents won the 1999 Nebula for Best Novel.

summer 2007

69

Morningstar Vancil

My Immigration Story
Morningstar Vancil identifies as Two-Spirit, Butch and an ally to allLGBT people. She was born in Cavite, the Philippines and her family ancestry is Asian (Filipino), Native American and Negritos (African).
In 1983, she held the rank of an Airborne Commander in the Philippine
Marines. After the assassination of Benito Aquino in 1983 and the start of the
popular uprising now called People Power, she realized that her position, as ade-activated officer, was tenuous. She and her family decided that she would
have to flee her home country to resist the Marcos administrations’ policy of
civil disturbance and use of the military to quell citizen dissent.
As she prepared to leave the Philippines, it became obvious that she could
not be “herself” and successfully complete the application and interview process at the American Embassy. Her travel agent gave her words of advice thatproved useful. She was told to “wear a dress” and to “try to pass” as feminine
because her normal dress and carriage would brand her as “gay.” She was also
told that if she seemed “gay” she would not be allowed to emigrate.
Following this advice, Ms. Vancil was subjected to a number of interviews, including one during which she was repeatedly asked if she was “gay.”
Her own morals would not allow her to lie but her interviewer’s biases allowed
for some subterfuge. Her answer: “Well, I’m a Mormon. What do you think?”satisfied the interviewer and this subject, at least for a while, was dropped.
Although she and her family believed that she held dual citizenship,
due to an American father and a Kansas adoption that was completed when
she was twelve years old, the paperwork that was accepted by the American
Embassy was not accepted once she arrived in the U.S. As a result, her only
recourse to avoid being forcibly deported was to apply for “political asylum.” Her claim that she would be re-activated by the Philippines Marinesand forced to bear arms against her country-people by a military dictator
was honored and she was granted asylum in 1984.
Once in the U.S, she continued to be subjected to oppression. Her
status as an émigré was used by her family to discourage her from exhibiting
any “lesbian” inclinations. One of the requirements of her emigration had
been that a sponsor, in her case her step-father, took financial and legal
responsibility for her for a period of years. This gave her parents inordinate
power over her behavior and, coupled with her adopted religion, she embarked on a strenuous program of denial. By claiming that she would bedeported if she acted out any of her sexual desires, her family and the society
at large effectively placed her back in the closet.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Lola Lai Jong

Excerpt from
“Dedicated to the Children”
We Are the Children of War
Our Hearts
Bear the Scars
Of the Cruelty
Done to Our Parents
And to the Generations
Before Them
We Were the Balm
Our Innocence
Soothed and Healed
The Places
Where the Flesh
Of Their Minds
Was Scraped Raw
Bleeding
We
Sometimes Disbelieved
Their Seldom Whispered Stories
Lost in Troubled Silence
Their Words Quickly Vaporizing
Even as Memory and Pain
Could Not
Can We Children of War
Soothe and Heal
The Scars In Our Hearts?
Can We Children of War
Break the Silences?
Do We Children of War
Dare To Reach for The Balm
Of Our Own Innocence?
Do We Children of War
Know We Deserve to?
©2001

summer 2007

Lola Lai Jong

Faith
On the first day of January
1989
Sun fills the room
In my home
Midwest Chicago
Lake Michigan Shore
My friend, Donna
Has invited me to her home
To celebrate Kwanzaa
Today, the custom of Kwanzaa
Celebrates

Imani Faith
I call my parents to wish them“Happy New Year”
And ask my ma how to
Say “faith” in Cantonese“Sheun yun” she replies

Photo of Lola Lai Jong by Diane Pfile.

Later, my ma calls me back, saying“I looked up the word in
The Chinese-English dictionary”
Quickly, I jot down what she tells me“Sheun sum—believe from the heart
Sheun lai—believe (depend on) you
Jung sup—honor
Sheun jung sup—believe in honor
Sheun say yeuk—give one’s faith
Sheun yun—believe in people”

Imani Sheun yun Faith
©1989

71

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Kathleen Allen

For Bobbi
women have been loving womensince flint first struck stone
there in the brilliant burst of lightyou stood alone
lanky like a new ponysolid as Ali
I watched you dance a thousand times
in my mind so free
your arm across my shoulder
your hand tucked in mine
let the music begin at once
let the stars control the tide
I feel your warmth against me
as we move as one
don’t ever let the music stop
no never, not till we are done
first one stepthen anotheryour lips coming so close to minethat if asked to speak
I could only stutter
round the dance floor of my mind we go
we take our time with each otherfor we to know
know that I always loved you and perhaps
always will
but just don’t ever let the music stop
don’t ever let us stand stillsummer 2007

73

Jean Weisinger

Photography: An Act of Love

Self-Portrait: The Power/Pain of Knowing ©1991

I take photographs not only to document these times and the lives of
those who cross my path, but also to express myself. Photography is a passion born within me, a necessity that is not governed by monetary payment.
It has become part of the progress toward freedom and love. Photographingis an act of love and a gift to share.
My work is a way I give back to my sisters and to the universe. Sometimes
when I’m photographing women, especially women of African descent, I feellike I’m under a spell – I feel like a spirit walking among the women, unseen,
and this enables me to capture the true spirits of their hearts.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Sasha Churchill

Untitled
It was all an illusion
When I came to the conclusion
I might be loved
From my beginning
The year 1983
The world has too much
For a young girl to see
So as we add a new millennium
It brings upon me the heartache
And responsibility
Of an adult life
To live alone
For lust lies in our peers
Disappointment has been proven by our parents
And education is overrated
In a society built on conformity and capitalism
Lust or love?
Poverty over greed?
Friend or foe?
As I travel down the repetitive path of the unknown
I await love
But in the end greed exceeds me
For I have not evolved from human instinct
Then my friends have become my enemies
Tragedy unaware to the blessed.

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75

Batya Weinbaum

Reflections On Lesbian Feminism as Inspiration
While selling Femspecs and wearable art at the Oakland National Women’sStudies Association meetings, I had the opportunity to meet Fran Day. We did a
trade, and appreciated each other’s work. Later she contacted me and kindly
invited me to write for this issue. I responded and said I was editing a novel inwhich women take over the Old City of Jerusalem to put an end to the males’
cycles of on-going aggression and war. Would she consider an excerpt?
She suggested perhaps that such a novel excerpt would fare better in the
Utopian issue, and sent me those guidelines as well. My hope is to publish an
excerpt in each. Consider this the first one. Yes, the novel is utopian (hadn’t
thought about that—I was just writing what came). But while revising, I had
been musing to myself, perhaps this novel which is a spoof on Zionism is outdated. The legends that propel it come from another era, the era of the spontaneous combustion that created the women’s lands. The in jokes will be missed.
Those who weren’t around at the inception of lesbian feminism won’t get it. A
dying breed, we are, literally.
Now I am again enjoying a respite on HOWL, the women’s land with which
I have had the most affinity over the years, having lived in Vermont when it wasformed. I have come here before to reinforce my roots in these values and to write.
Perhaps some of the earlier drafts of this were created here as well, or in the studioover the Daily Bread Restaurant and Bakery in Richmond that has since been
converted in to an expensive yuppie Italian restaurant. I came here this time theweek of the outbreak of the 2006 Israel/Lebanon war. While this novel is set in adifferent historical period, it does seem to be that men, who consider lack of aggression a weakness, dominate the situation. Hence if one considers that aggression canbeget only more aggression, perhaps leaving the solution of the Middle East to men
is perhaps a recipe for the world coming to an end.
So come with me if you will, into what was conceived as a lesbian feminist
solution to the situation. Amongst the readership of Sinister Wisdom might beenough women to appreciate the spirit in which it was created.
Mirages and Nightmares: in the mad hotel
Outside, rockets previously used to launch large-scale attacks on settlements in the Galilee were discompassionately thrown into the sea. The soldiers were so desperate for women’s energy that they were behaving irrationally. Meanwhile, Sasha watched Haya sleep beside her. Haya’s obsession, her

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hairbrush, was lying next to Sasha on the oriental cover draping the nightstand.
Sasha realized the Middle East was perched precariously upon a powder keg of
history, which most people, including herself, knew very little about. We could
shout from abroad, Sasha thought as she rolled over, or come temporarily to
do support work to ameliorate the situation. Sasha watched Haya breathing,
not wanting to disturb, not wanting to tell her that nuclear capabilities had
been found out...in this waking dream, beneath this waking dream, moved asea of images possessing a reality all its own...
SASHA’S MAGNUM OPUS
1.
They made love again, when Haya woke up on their piles of carpets
that felt like tapestries on which birds shimmered—turquoise peacocks lifting golden feathers with green feet, carrying roses in their beaks. This timeit had started innocently, still half in jest, half in sleep, with an unconscious
toe curling over another one—hooking unhooking. Then on the way to thebath haughtily Haya resumed their arguing. She pointed out that the Zionists burnt houses in Arab countries so they could say migrations for Jews to
Israel in the 50s was from anti-Semitism. Sasha, stepping into the water,
rubbing herself with magnolia oil, threw her hair back, dropping a royalblue towel, saying, “Nonsense, that is senseless. How would anybody know?”“It came out in their memoirs,” Haya persisted when Sasha got out again
dripping wet. As Haya did so, Sasha wrapped their two bodies both close
this time in a thick purple towel fresh from the shelf. “Let’s not talk about
politics now,” Sasha persisted herself, and open-mouthed, she kissed her.
2.
Haya consented. They were still in their luxurious bed in their apartment in the center of the renovated women’s quarters. Haya had thought atfirst as a pre-women’s liberation anti-Zionist that the two of them had better stay away from such a hotly-contested location. But Sasha had felt very
differently. Haya was now thankful to Sasha since they had moved in to
their prime spot when women from all over had been doing so, over Haya’s
own protestation. This placed them both in the thick of things, closer to thepivotal action of the historic take over. Even in times of revolution, in termsof real estate, the slogan remains...location location location.
Sasha asked her lover, “Do you want your hairbrush?” Asleep, relaxed,satisfaction rising from within, she lay back between the deep blue satin sheets.
When she spoke, Sasha found her lover’s voice as much of a teaser as her finely

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groping finger. Haya started thinking out loud, combing down her long brown
hair, remembering all the details of the initial women’s revolt that had seized
the old city of Jerusalem, the goddess almost giving it to them. “We need tohave some kind of initiation ceremony so all the women coming in from allover the world don’t go back to men,” Haya reflected now. “The retreat to therecently-shed masculine might seem more attractive, safer, when things get
really rough. Some women might repress their memories of recent oppression; they might have positive reunification fantasies.”“Don’t bother me with all this, you nudnik. I’m sleeping.” Sasha knew
it was better not to engage the mighty and lofty strategist Haya in realistic
conversation when she got into one of her long politically-inspired moods,
still largely speculation.
“You’re not sleeping,” Haya said rightly. “You just don’t want to help
me make my strategy at five a.m.”“Make it three and that’s right,” Sasha feigned snoring, shoving her full
naked back to Haya. Inwardly, silently, Sasha pictured their souls intertwining,
hovering outside the gates of the city, dancing between olive tree and moon overthe nearest mountain. Inside she wanted to nurture that inner starseed galactic
feeling where Haya’s fingers had most recently been exploring her.
“No, seriously Sasha.” Sasha felt Haya’s again probing finger, sketchingalong the curve of her broad hip from just below the knee and up to her
waist. Soon Sasha felt Haya caressing her, the probing finger sliding downwards from the hip towards her center and soon waves emanated from adivinely sparked fingertip. As Sasha turned over on her back to receive, she
could see moonlight running through the back of Haya’s hand. “Is yourname Weitzwoman or not?” Haya taunted, ruthlessly pulling all the bedcovers
off to embrace her. Sasha pulled the shed covers back up over the both ofthem, and buried herself under, relishing the feel of satin across her body as
Haya went down to give her more intense, increased pleasure.
“Let’s get Nan Bergdaughter to consult with us—“ Haya prodded.
“The one who changed her name when she got tenure? Nan? She’s asell-out,” answered Sasha bitterly. “Into western philosophy, even though
she changed her name. What can she do?” This was Sasha’s response to
Haya’s idea of the morning. Nan had been dealing with the Middle East
categorically, abstractly as machine-professors do, not from a feeling place,not on a heartbeat. Sasha knew gyrating around a machine led to such athing as a scud missile too.
Sasha could tell that Haya had been brushing her hair for too long, asbrushing her hair expanded her mind like this. The soothing quality of thestroking allowed her to close her eyes and imagine all the rest. Her fantasies

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continued. “Well, let’s develop meals of meatless food, and have everybody
dress in the garments of the goddess.” This was before the intellectuals insisted on the ban on national decorative costume. “And take them into sitesof the ancient temples,” Haya continued, “and re-celebrate feasts from before the Romans. All these women have come for the call to get away frommale oppression. We need a religion to make them strong. Not just to getaway from something, but to bind them into something positive.”
Being an American, “No,” Sasha said. “You don’t consciously develop a
religion to cohere a sense of nationalism.” She knew her statement would
provoke a fight.
As always, Haya laughed at Sasha’s political naivetè, though she enjoyedher obvious giving herself over to unlimited pleasures in bed. But then, eversince Sasha had been showing up from the States doing journalism, hadn’t
she seemed young and naïve? The others had said of her, who was she trying
to deceive? Haya drew Sasha close, and again they made love.
Haya began to imagine new capitals they would create with flags andnational women’s emblems—military uniforms, and other paraphernalia.
As the two women sallied forth over Jerusalem practically naked like Lady
Godiva galloping on, they would re-invent women’s tradition gradually, as
European countries had re-invested theirs at the growth of fascism. Left toher own reverie, sensing Sasha settling into dreaming, Haya went on trying
to calculate how to mobilize other women to come from the outside. Eachof her lover’s vertebrae she touched, she would imagine another way to stabilize their victory. They would reprint Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Women’s
Bible, deleting the anti-Semitic references...reconnect with the daughters of
Allah; Manah, allotted fate, Goddess of Destiny; Al-Uzza, the most mighty;
Venus, the morning star, and Al-Lat. According to the latter’s rules, there
would be no bloodshed. All animals and plant life would be honored. Isn’t
this what feminist vegetarianism was about? Together in a spirit of internationalism they had traced the Arab roots. There would be no trees felled,
like at the early fight of the American women’s music festivals when treecutters protested about damage done to the woods. And they needed mottoes. Haya’s dream-mind raced as she lovingly traced her sleeping lover’s
spine, thinking to herself, and a national day, processions and marches. Haya
too was now sleeping, slipping into dream, dreaming of sports, moon maidens from the Greek games and sunbearers building fires for everyone. They
needed rituals, gatherings, costumes.
3.
Haya had a definite way of empowering other women to act with her
dream-like active imagination. When the sun traversed through its zodia-

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79

cal orb and finished a year, the women revived the cult of Isis along its
original premises. They re-initiated women into priesthood, and embroidered a range of animals on the garments in various colors. Soon all the
inhabitants of the Old City were wearing the initiate’s Olympian robes.
They shook tambourines, and sang at least three times a day. Women had
one month a year when they had their Army of Love service. During thistime, they had to surround the city if need be, or participate in international diplomacy to negotiate with the Arab male or Jewish male statesoutside the city’s gates. This gave women a month of complete vulnerability away from girlfriends and family yearly, to be subliminally impressed with the national cult-like importance of Jerusalem as a women’scity. This cult was historically important; internationally, the goddess ofservice in the Army of Love brought it home to them. No machines. No
machine world. Theirs was a city of heart. The third day each month wascelebrated with a show of rites—a sacred meal. This was given out free,humbling everyone in appreciation. Women served the food in front of
the mural painted at the old Western Wall remnant. They revived holiday
after holiday, every fertility day they could unearth.
4.
When Haya and Sasha needed more inspiration than their own
imaginations, to concoct those rites, they snuck out to visit a musicology professor in the Barbara Streisand Building at Hebrew University.
She was one of those women opposed to the women who had takenover the Old City, undermining and underscoring success at assimilation. Obviously not having had the deep imaginative pleasure of sex
with a woman partner, as all the women living together within the wallsof the Old City did, this machine-professor had said that what they
were doing was inauthentic, a blatant distortion of scholarly research.
She was unaware of the dream mind that opened between and amongst
the other women. She could only scoff, “ripe with inaccuracies!” anddraw herself up in a huff. To this, Sasha and Haya answered, hypnotizedin the professor’s office, they didn’t really mind if their vision was inaccurate about women’s history as long as the vision worked to galvanize
others. They were pragmatists. Practicalists, the media dubbed them.
The machine-professor’s voice sifted around the two of them like a coilwhen she talked. For example, once the two women had gone to ask the
professor for precise descriptions of the thousand instruments the Queenof Sheba had brought with her from Egypt when she came to marry Solomonin the Bible. “No, no, no,” the professor had said, enveloping them and80sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

absorbing them with her speaking, accusing the women of looking for a lostparadise in order to restore something that had never existed. Sasha andHaya held onto each other and nodded their heads in agreement, while theprofessor lauded forth. She insisted: the only point had been the harp wasgood, and Solomon had been bad, doing a lot of no-no’s, not that there wassomething special and significant about women’s ancient instruments thatwreaked destruction and brought his house down. But didn’t they destroy
his kingdom with music? The women persisted. Sasha and Haya thought
having such an instrument might do them some good. The machine-professor shut her gold-bound leather book. She looked up. “You have a certain
bias, quite frankly,” the expert musicologist condemned them.
“No,” said Haya righteously, getting up to brush down her long brown
hair. “We have an eager quest to know. Which is usually considered good. I
went to Oxford. I know.” Haya stood still, enraptured in the scholar’s office,cape pulled tightly shut at the neck, her long hair billowing out around her.
“And,” she went on “it is necessary to defend our kingdom.”“Your kingdom,” the professor declared, “is our Jerusalem. Now please,leave me. I have to prepare my Purim costume. I am going as Queen Esther.
And by the way,” she scoffed as they exited, “don’t you mean queendom?
Historical, my foot.”
The thought of this fastidious scholar with silver hair dancing or evenwalking through the streets in an Esther costume seemed absurd to Sasha.
But she had grown up in a country where only kids wore costumes, so she
didn’t point this out. She knew things were different in Israel. After all,maybe it was Sasha’s own Americanism that couldn’t quite fathom this professor appearing as Esther properly. To her Purim meant simply dressed as
blond queens, as little girls—no drunken brawls, dancing in the streets,
adults going wild at public parties. They left the apoplectic professor alone
in her office smoking cigarettes. “Blasphemous, blasphemous, everything
they are saying and doing is utterly blasphemous. They should learn to evaluate sources more accurately. I will blast them in print,” the professor was
muttering under her breath when they left, “kill them with book reviews ifthey ever publish anything like this.” As they left they heard her swear to use
every weapon she could to stop their work.....What they really liked about
her was her moustache.
5.
On the way back laughing, enjoying each other like this, Haya andSasha took advantage of their time out and took a bus to the country. They
lay together under the olive trees on the ground after Haya had spread her

summer 200781

cape down, and appreciated the air. They tiptoed around kibbutzim withconcerts in the dining halls on concert grands. Hand in hand with Sasha,
Haya rattled on about how the old Zionists had brought everything withthem from Europe, not expecting to like anything that was here. Listening
to a Brahms piano concert, Sasha thought Haya’s view on Zionists was harsh
as usual. But she blinked, and blinked again holding onto Haya thinking
she saw some Palestinian being beaten beneath them. Silently she decided it
was one of her mirages, one of her nightmares, depending on whether it was
day or night she was in. The bus came. They got back on.
6.
On the bus ride, Haya jealously began to probe Sasha about her involvement with the folksinger. But Sasha clammed up, saying she didn’t
want to talk. Of course the issue brought up Leah saying, “I won’t tell you
about my politics, you will laugh at me, like you did on the beach.” Sasha
remembered that moonlit night, the lap of the waves on the shore at Tel
Aviv, the folksinger saying the Palestinians were taking jobs from everyone.
The night of their first date. As the bus passed the Milk and Honey Café,
one of their old haunts, memories of winter nights there with the folksinger
came back. Sasha turned away from Haya’s incessant verbal probing.
“She is up for national folk hero, you know,” Haya interrupted Sasha’s
inner memory.
“So everything is political with you, that’s the only reason you want toknow?”“We need—““—official holidays, ceremonies, symbols, heroes, I know, but does thismean we have to rat on our lovers?”“Look,” Haya insisted, in her German/Egyptian accent. “She is up forfolk hero because of the song she does ‘Let’s Liberate Women’s Sexuality.’
But I said that because I knew you, maybe we could find out more about
where she was coming from politically. We don’t want to set a bad precedent
with this award.”
Sasha crushed herself to the bus window counting the blocks ‘til they
got off, remembering in that relationship how politics had become an obstacle, something that had come between she and Leah back then.

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Chrystos

While There’s Still
While There’s Stillan edge to the parking lot
you can hear the orange gold
songs of autumn birds
bursting into dawn in an uneven
ragged line of untrimmed trees
You could
lean out
over the railingwhich keeps you from it& despite everythingbreathe in the beauty

for Merle Woo

Reprinted from Fire Power by Chrystos (Press Gang Publishers, 1995)
with permission from the author.

summer 2007

Photo of Chrystos by Jean Weisinger.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Merle Woo

Yellow Woman Speaks
Shadow becomes real; follower becomes leader;mouse becomes sorcerer—
In a red sky, a darker beast lies waiting,her teeth, once hidden, now unsheathed swords.
Yellow woman, a revolutionary, speaks:“They have mutilated our genitals, but I will restore them;
I will render our shames and praise them,
Our beauties, our mothers:
Those young Chinese whores on displays in barracoons;the domestics in soiled aprons;
the miners, loggers, railroad workers
holed up in Truckee in winters.
I will create armies of their descendants.
And I will expose the lies and ridicule
the impotence of those who have called us
chinkyellow-livered
slanted cunts
exoticin order to abuse and exploit us.
And I will destroy them.”
Abrasive teacher, incisive comedienne,
Painted Lady, dark domestic—
Sweep minds’ attics; burnish our senses;
keep house, make love, wreak vengeance.

Reprinted with permission from the poet from Yellow Woman Speaks:
Selected Poems: Expanded Edition by Merle Woo. Radical Women Publications, 2003.

summer 2007

Photo of Merle Woo by Jean Weisinger

85

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Lovel Waiters

Daisies
I know I saw her. Not only did I see her, I smelled her. Her perfume
mixed with her honey brown skin and her pores allowed her own scent toblend with the scent of lilacs, cinnamon and daisies which permeated the
air and lingered for quite a while. No, it wasn’t a very well known scent, but
it was her scent.
Like I said I know I saw her, maybe out of the corner of my eye, acrossthe way in the midst of strangers. But then again, perhaps she was a very
good figment of my imagination one of my better and most memorable
fantasies, Yeah, like most women whether they readily admit it or not, I
have fantasies, good ones. But, somehow I don’t think this was a fantasy.
Excuse me for rambling, but I was sitting at a window seat in a very wellknown restaurant in Hillcrest dining alone. I had wanted to be in a room
full of people, full of laughter accompanied by the sound of sparkling water
being poured into empty glasses, restaurant silverware clanging against plates
by hungry people - who anxiously sipped the house soup or crunched on
crisp green salad, topped with the dressing of choice. Yes, this was my kindof restaurant - a restaurant which is busy and filled with noise. In fact thenosier and busier a restaurant is the better I like it. Why? Most people likegood food, a certain ambiance and like it or not we don’t mind a goodrestaurant or movie line and waiting for a good table and good food. If I go
to a restaurant and it’s quiet then I think this must either a. not be a goodplace, or b. it’s late and I am the last person to eat, but that is another story.
So, I’m sitting at the window, enjoy a rather large wine glass of Merlot
when I got this scent that just floated through the air and entered my nostrils suddenly. The scent of Daisies - a scent worn by a woman that I was
passionately in love with “Barbara.” Oh Barbara, what a woman. She could
touch every single nerve I have. If I was having a bad day or a good day,
Barbara was capable of finding and touching the right nerve and having a
profound effect on my emotions. Many times Barbara could cause me toeither be very happy to very pissed in a matter of minutes - before her I was
pretty easy going. No drama, no madness — just took each day as it came.
But I met Barbara in a cooking class. We struck up a very lively conversation
almost adversarial because I like onions in my food and she thinks onions
not only leave a bad taste in the mouth but if you are “swapping spit” a term
she loved to use to annoy me, in her words “why taste onions if you didn’t
order any with your food?”summer 2007

87

When Barbara and I were together, almost every night Barbara took
long baths, she hated showers - she believed bath tubs were invented for thepleasure of relaxing and soaking the skin in all kinds of oils and scented
soaps and soak she did. I used to sit on the toilet seat or stand in the bathroom door way and just wait for the chance to wash that woman’s back knowing and waiting for her to turn around and pull me in the tub withher. My clothes got soaked many a night behind Barbara’s baths. After our
wonderful baths, I relished the thought of toweling Barbara off and she me- she then took particular delight and pleasure in dabbing herself in all theright places with her “secret sensuous” toilet water and sprays. She spritzed
and sprayed and dabbed and I watched and waited. As I recall she used a
different scent depending on the occasion. When she finished bathing she
added another scent before we went out to dinner or a movie.
I had not seen that woman in over two years, why would that scent bein the air? Tonight, in this restaurant?
In the midst of me trying to focus around the room for this vision ofBarbara, the waitress who was waiting on my section came over and asked“Is everything ok? Are you ready to order or you need more time?”
Instead of looking at my menu and replying, I decided to do a very silly
thing, I stood up and leaned into her and started to “sniff ” her. Why? She
wasn’t Barbara, she didn’t even resemble Barbara, but I had to start sniffing
somewhere, so I might as well start with her. Well needless to say, my waitress was not pleased at my gesture and promptly screamed at me to moveaway from her immediately, which I did with embarrassment, while everyone around me turned to witness this occurrence.
In an effort to correct my behavior, I told the waitress, “I’m sorry I
didn’t hear you, I was night dreaming and thought I was outside, in the
middle of a field of daisies, see they were higher than any daisies I have everseen and I leaned over to get a better whiff. Sorry, I meant no harm, yes I am
ready to order.”Instead of taking my order - she left in a hurry!
I sat down, composed myself and decided it was best for me to leave via
a side exit quickly. As I rose from my seat another glass of merlot was placedon my table. I glanced up ready to say “No, I didn’t order another glass ofwine,” when I heard a sexy voice say, “Don’t leave. I thought you would
never notice the daisy fragrance I’m wearing, glad you like it. Here’s anotherglass of Merlot, this time it’s on me. I may be a waitress for a few hours hereat night and I have a day job but I still have time for interesting women likeyou. Are you now ready to order?”88sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Virginia HarrisStar Box

66 inches X 81 inches. Cotton and silk. Machine pieced and quilted. Warm and Natural™ batting.
Pattern is unfolded origami star box. 1998

The color scheme for this quilt resulted from random placement ofcolors in another quilt. Every other block was rotated 90° in order to get
more interest where the blocks intersect.

summer 2007

Natasha Carthew

Through Bars
Through bars
she sits silent
silent sitting
watching cracks of possibility
crumble past
fast through an open window
in limbo
sitting silent
a bed
a tablea tiny spoon
through bars
the stars are muted
silenced by a watchful eye
she is no use to thisa terrible year
the sit and watch and wait
she sits silent
dreaming
through bars.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

alisonUntitled
she is a tired woman eyes tired, feet tired
legs longing for stillness, shoulders to no longer be encumbered
she lifts, reaches, pulls opens and closes doors and other objects
she bends kneels stands waits
her tired mind thinking of home as her back aches
she waits and waits under fluorescent lights for the food she has neverseen grow as she thinks of returning, being all to herself in water she
is so tired she thinks only of a bathand she waits
hat drawn, strings tied she waits for the large raptor that she willleap onto and fly she waits fingertips dripping, eyelids drooping,face sagging she waits in the office the store and for the bus
she staggers down the street, skirts trailing through puddles of newly
collected rain
she crawls across cities and highways, over bridges and mountains, thennext to the ocean and into the waves
she lays on the floor of the ocean,tastes, fills, then rises up
round and glowing

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91

Win Weston

The Photo ShootI walked through the women’s craft fair. Tables were filled with paintings, ceramics, knitted scarves, soaps, flower-covered books of poetry, cattoys filled with homegrown catnip, and lots more. My senses were overloaded by the sight of all the goods, and, of course, the attractive women
everywhere. The scent of food and the sounds of women musicians followed me as I drifted through the room.
Noticing some friends at the OLOC information table (Old Lesbians
Organizing for Change) I wandered over to greet them. The table had
pamphlets with information about OLOC - its mission statement, copiesof the newsletter The Reporter, a poster with photos of some of the members, and a book of women’s stories from the Herstory Project. And they
were selling greeting cards. I picked up a card. On it was the image of Jo,
with her hair dyed lavender. She was lying on a carpet of bright green grass,unclad but adorned with a few strategically placed yellow, orange and crimson leaves.
I was delighted to see the card, for I had taken the original photograph.
Flipping the card over I saw my name with the photo credit. As I looked at
the card I remembered how the OLOC card project had begun.
OLOC is a national organization of lesbians age 60 and older committed to confronting ageism and making our presence a visible force in thewomen’s movement. We were having a brainstorming meeting at a neighborhood coffee shop when someone suggested we do a calendar of old lesbians, like the British women calendar girls had done. We threw ideas backand forth about what we might do for each month. One suggestion was tohave a naked woman surrounded by fall leaves, for October, of course. The
calendar idea was later traded for greeting cards because of the longer shelflife. A professional photographer donated her skills and we were off andrunning.
Old lesbians must have been hungry for respectful depictions of themselves. The project did so well that the costs involved were quickly covered,and a second series of cards was begun. This time the photos were in color.
The images were great and were well received. But there was no photo of
Lady October rolling in the leaves, so I called Jo and asked if she would be
willing to pose. She readily agreed. The challenge was finding a secluded
place in the city to do the photo shoot. I told Jo that I had a friend in the92sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

suburbs with a big yard surrounded by many trees and bushes. “It will be
perfect. I’ll ask her if we can use her yard.” Roz was excited and said she’dbe happy to let us use the yard. I remembered later that I hadn’t told her
exactly what kind of photos I was planning to take.
So we were all set to go, but then the October weather was uncooperative, with cold and rainy days. Soon all the leaves would be gone, or the airtemperatures would be too cold. The first day after the rain stopped I called
Jo. The sun was not shining, but at least the day was brighter and the leaves
were at peak color. We decided to do it. When I called Roz to tell her wewere on our way, she said: “Oh no! I have an appointment. I won’t be
here!” She then continued: “But the house will be open. The plumber iscoming.” She assured me that we could use the yard, even though shewouldn’t be home, but did say: “I’m so disappointed. I did want to be here
when you came.”
Vinnie and I picked up Jo and headed for the “burbs.” The plumber’s
truck was parked in Roz’s driveway. “What’s this?” Jo asked, pointing at thetruck. “Roz is having some work done in the bathroom. That’s on theother side of the house. It won’t be a problem.” I blithely said. We went tothe back yard. Yes, it was as big as I remembered, but not quite as secluded.
Through a break in the brush we saw a recycle truck and heard it rumblingand screeching to a stop. A guy in an orange vest jumped down and threw
stuff into the truck. At the far end of the yard in the other direction was awood pile, with a neighbor’s house just behind it with large windows facing
directly into Roz’s yard.
I waited until the truck left and then said: “OK. Let’s go!” Under an
oak tree we found a patch of green grass. The ground was covered withbrightly colored leaves. Jo had dyed her hair lavender for the occasion. She
opened the raincoat she was wearing and dropped it onto the ground. Until
that moment I hadn’t realized that she was wearing no other clothing. Jo
found her spot on the ground. I climbed onto a bench and focused thecamera. “Vinnie,” throw some leaves on Jo.” She gathered up a handful ofleaves and scattered them. Jo looked great in the viewfinder. I snapped aphoto. Then another, just to make sure. Jo took other poses, and I snapped
more photos: Jo reclining on the bench; Jo peeking out from the v of theapple tree. I shot almost all of a roll of film.
I was ready to leave. I wanted to get out of there before someone camealong or one of the neighbors called the police. Jo spotted an old ladder andwanted to climb up into the tree. “No! No! I don’t think that’s a good
idea!” I found myself saying. I was wondering how I would explain to thesummer 200793

rescue squad and the police what the seventy-six year-old naked woman was
doing up in the tree. “The ladder is wobbly,” I said, kicking at it and hurting my foot. “Let’s go take some pictures by the wood pile,” I pleaded. It
took a bit of effort to talk Jo out of climbing the tree. We walked to thewoodpile. I looked up at the window of the neighbor’s house and thought
if anyone was in there, they would have a great view. As we started backtoward Roz’s house I turned around to look - and froze. Was that a movement I saw through the glass?
Then, looking at Roz’s house, I was sure a curtain moved. Wasn’t thatthe kitchen? The kitchen sink is under the window. That was when I
remembered the plumber. I was getting paranoid. Much to my relief Jo
had put on her raincoat and we could leave.
When I called Roz later that night she said: “Oh, hi! I’m really sorry I
missed the photo shoot.” Good, I thought. Nothing horrible has happened. “The neighbors didn’t say anything, did they?” “No, that old guy
across the way was outside, but he hasn’t spoken to me in thirty-seven years.”
She abruptly stopped speaking. There was a long silence. “What debauchery have you perpetrated in my back yard?” she asked icily. “Nothing. I just
took some pictures of Jo.”
“And?”“I just took some pictures of Jo on the grass.”“And?”“I just took some pictures of Jo on the grass with no clothes on.”“No clothes on? Nothing? Nude?”“Yea.”
There was another long silence. “Well, they never spoke to me anyway,” she said.

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Stephanie Barnes

With an Orchid Tucked
unobtrusive
behind her left ear
she sits thoughtful, staring
across the serene blue surface
I approach, she smiles
More so she gives me a lopsided grin
reaches up a solid arm, slips slender fingers
to embrace my wrist
as we walk away from sunset
I draw from her strength, taste
undertones of vanilla on her lips.

P. E. MacDavid

Sgt. Dorothy
She yawns and lays her book down for a bit
She focuses on breakfast of cold eggs and coffee
Cold pancakes and warm juice, she decides to let sit
Her comrades eat quickly and anything they see
She goes to her smelly room to read her book
Windows cracked and so dirty you can’t see out
Blackened floor with mouse droppings, you’ll even look
To see a dry, cracked mattress, rusted frame, mildew grout
No latch on the door and with fighting down the hall
She learns to ignore it as she thumbs the next page
A glance and a sigh as the roaches climb the wall
Alone and forgotten in this boarding house stage
Be hopeful, sweet Dorothy, this is not your plight
We veterans, still warriors, for you, my voice will fightsummer 2007

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jody jewdyke

An Interview with Lily Yuriko
November 2006

Photo of Lily Yuriko by jody jewdyke.

Jody: Please tell us about yourself.
Lily: People often ask me if I was born a Lesbian. I don’t think I was,but I never had a strong interest in boys and I was a tomboy. My mom
would dress me in dresses but I always wanted pants. At age seven until
eleven or twelve, I adored a friend of my sister’s and she adored me, andwhen she got a boyfriend, I was crushed. She was eight years older than me.
I never owned a doll when I was a kid. No dolls in the house. Mostly
played with boys growing up. I loved boxing with my older brother because
I used to beat him up with my great left hook. (Laughs)
I come from a large family, with a very painful background. There wereeight boys and four girls. Before the war, my mother gave birth to her firstsix children in Steveston, outside of Vancouver, B.C., Canada. There, thefamily lived in their own house and ran a hardware store that catered tomostly Japanese Canadian fishermen. She was pregnant with her seventhchild when they were forcibly removed from their home and community.

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They were sent 500 miles inland to Greenwood, a ghost mining town, where
they were interned along with 1200 other Japanese Canadians. The last six
children were born in the internment town. I was the last of them, born in
1948, at the Red Cross Outpost Hospital. My mother must have had plentyof angst and frustration during those times.
I was always a feisty kid and frustrated by the racism of growing up in awhite dominated community. My outlet for frustration and anger at theinjustice of being raised in an internment town, was sports. I think it’s how
I survived. I was fortunate that I was very good at sports, to the point that
I would embarrass my brothers. Greenwood was a small town, only two
miles long. One brother would beg me not to run. He was afraid I would
embarrass him and all the boys by winning. In a race for boys only, I ran
alongside the track and came in third.
I was born political. These early traumatic experiences shaped me andI will never be at peace if there are women or children being violated or
hungry. I can’t live with injustices in any way.
I’m 58 and sometimes when I think I want a break from politics, I
realize I can’t. Won’t ever. I will always be active in some way maybe notalways publicly, but with friends and allies who struggle with racism, classism,
ableism, sexism, etc.
Jody: Can you say more about your work in the Lesbian community
with Lesbians around these issues?
Lily: I would say I came out at 25 but not really out in the white way
and I’ll explain that. I’m 58 now, so it was very difficult coming from aJapanese Canadian community to be out, to come out, especially in my era.
Racism was so intense then. First off the early Lesbian clubs I went to weredingy places, usually in basements where you often needed a password to
get in. In those days, there were only two Asian women I remember at thenightclub. One was me, and the other was bisexual. And we were friends so
I couldn’t date her. I remember feeling really out of place and all the white
women were dancing with each other and looked like they were having agreat time and I just felt invisible. It reminded me of high school, where all
the Japanese boys and the white boys would not dance with us. The upsideof it was I got to dance with all the girls. (Laughter) So it’s thanks to the boysof Greenwood that I’m a Lesbian.
I think it was in the early 80s I went to an “Unlearning Racism” workshop. That really changed a lot for me. I met two Japanese Canadian Lesbians there. Both of them were 20 yrs younger than me. And both of them Isummer 2007

97

had seen in the Japanese Canadian community. I knew them from the “Powell
St. Festival”, which is a Japanese Canadian celebration that happens the firstweek of August in Vancouver and has been going for over 20 years. So I waselated when I met them. And so were they to meet me because they didn’tknow there was somebody in the Lesbian community who was an older
Japanese Canadian Lesbian. And we became friends after that, and still are
the best of friends to this day.
I’m of two minds of the “Unlearning Racism” workshop. One I liked it
because I met other women of colour who validated how I felt and we empowered each other. The difficult part was seeing some of my white friendson the other side who after taking the workshop didn’t become white allies.
I chose not to continue a friendship with them. That was very painful.
Jody: Sounds very hard. So your life really changed with that workshop and sounds like there is a difference in who you choose as your friends
from before and after the workshop.
Lily: Yes. Before I had several white friends and I did experience mostly
covert racism with them, but at that time didn’t have the analysis or theconfidence to call them on it. What “Unlearning Racism” did for me washelp give me language about racism in a way that I thought might make,might help my white friends understand it. Might get it. And appreciate
how racism affected me. I felt empowered from the workshop. And was very
hopeful that my friends would learn from this workshop and be more supportive about racist issues. However, I was very disappointed that it didn’t
work out that way. Whenever different situations arose, they dismissed them.
And so I decided I can’t do this, can’t live like this anymore. I don’t want tobe teaching unlearning racism 101 to white women who mostly have theprivilege and access to resources to learn it themselves. And by the way, thelibrary costs nothing. That was a hard time, hard decisions. It meant I had
to let go of maybe some of my friends at the time. Even after I made thatdecision, I did contact them and try to talk about it and they were unable tomove past their guilt and defensiveness.
Jody: How awful for you. Can you tell us more about some of thegreat organizing you did with Lesbians of Colour in the 80s and 90s?
Lily: I can’t remember exactly when it was, sometime in the 80s, several
friends and I started a Lesbian of Colour group in Vancouver. This groupcame together because we felt there was no place for us in the white, mostly

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middle class feminist groups at the time. I remember being really intimidated going to these groups, because I felt I didn’t know enough about politics, and that I didn’t place any value on my life experience and wisdom of
dealing with social and political injustices. Whenever I brought up race andracism, they weren’t interested in hearing about or talking about it. And theissue of being a separatist was not an easy choice for me. Because as a Lesbian of Colour, I felt we had to join forces with the men to combat racism.
I didn’t have the luxury or privilege that white Lesbians did. I still have aproblem with it. It’s a difficult dilemma for me. I feel that the Japanese
Canadian community is very conservative and traditionally patriarchal, likemost of our communities of origin are. And I hate it. I do. I hate it. But
because of the racism we face, I feel torn in my alliances. And often white
Lesbians have asked me, if you had the choice of fighting racism or homophobia, which one would you choose? And this makes me very angry
because I shouldn’t have to choose. If there were more white feminists who
were allies, I wouldn’t have to make this choice. I’m frustrated because I feel
I have struggled or thought I had a united front with my white “sisters”, andI do my best to support them in their issues. And sadly I didn’t feel a lot of
support from white Lesbians in “my” issue of racism.
Jody: How frustrating. Of course racism concerns us all and it is the
responsibility of those of us with white skin privilege to do ongoing antiracism work, and keep learning how to be strong allies. Sounds like thedifficulty with separatism you mentioned had more to do with racism fromthose particular Lesbians, rather than separatism itself, since some of yourwork and experiences have been separatist, such as the Lesbian of Colour
groups and events you have organised and participated in.
Lily: Yes, I hadn’t thought about it that way. I want to say more aboutthe Lesbian of Colour group we formed. We were together for about two
years and I learnt a lot. The group included a mix of grass roots, working
class dykes and middle class academics. From that experience, I realizedthat I am quite resistant to formal institutional education like university or
academia because I felt it excluded a lot of people who didn’t have the privilege to have this type of education. And that as feminists, if we want toinclude everybody then we should talk in a language everybody understands.
Another all Lesbian of Colour experience was playing with the firstLesbian of Colour softball team in the Mabel league (the Mabel league is a
Vancouver Lesbian Softball league). One of the highlights in my athletic lifesummer 200799

was going to the Amsterdam Gay Games with this team. It was so exciting!
I didn’t think I could be that excited about being a Lesbian. (Laughs) I was
crying as I was waving my way into the stadium, which is unusual for me.
The team stayed together about ten or so years. In my softball career, and I
played for forty years, this team was like family to me. A functional one.
(Laughing). When we were together, we used to laugh. We were one of the
only teams in the league that didn’t go out for a beer after the game. We
went out for Asian food or something to eat. And what was neat was we
could do our signals in Japanese or Chinese and the other team couldn’t
understand us. Sometimes, other teams would ask “Why do you need a
Women of Colour team?” I would say “Well I know I can get to play, andalso, why is it that you always mistake me for Paulina, who is Chinese, bald
and I have hair and I’m twenty years older than her?” But they didn’t get it.
I was very sad when our team disbanded. It was great while it lasted.
Later, in 1989, I went to Santa Cruz to the Asian Pacific Lesbian Conference and it was one of the most empowering Lesbian events I’ve everbeen to. It brought tears to my eyes to see so many Lesbians that looked likeme. And I met two Japanese American lesbians there and we’re still friends
today. Out of that, two or three of us came back so inspired that we started
that ALOV-Asian Lesbians of Vancouver. That group lasted maybe sevenyears. Those were very exciting times. We put on all sorts of different events,
plays and readings by and for Women of Colour. After that I started reallyfeeling deeply inside that if there are any Lesbian or feminist events, that weshould be part of or included in them. Not ‘invited’. Which unfortunately,
a lot of white activist organizers used to say. “We should have invited you.”As if to say Lesbians of Colour are an afterthought, if at all, and not the ‘real’
Lesbians.
Jody: Can you say more about that?
Lily: I became even more aware of racism. Whenever there are Lesbian
events I would question why hardly any Lesbians of Colour would attend.
To this day, I still see Lesbian events with all white keynote speakers, workshop presenters and performers. And it really pisses me off. It’s important
to me to speak out and say something about this and I do. However, if I
criticize a Lesbian event, I feel I should also come up with some suggestions.
At different times, I have talked with white Lesbian organizers about myconcerns and offered to help to organize. I’ve also offered them contacts
who are Lesbians of Colour and who are First Nations, who are eloquent100

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speakers, dynamic workshop presenters and powerful performers. There
are so many talented Lesbians in our communities and I think it’s long
overdue that our vast diversity is better reflected.
I would like to see more Lesbians who at any level, especially grassroots,
come together as a united front to fight all the social and political injustices
going on not only in this country but in the world. There is still lots of work
to be done. And I’m going to run for Prime Minister next year, or maybe
against that son of a Bush. Kidding. (Laughter)
Another thing that bothers me in the Lesbian community has to dowith counseling. I have never found any counselors that have cultural awareness and sensitivity to my struggles as a Lesbian of Colour. All my counselors have been white, mostly middle class, and I felt after years of therapy
with some of them that they should have paid me for teaching them about
racism. (Laughter) Lots of my Lesbian of Colour friends speak to this inthat they are frustrated that they can’t find a “safe” and comfortable place
where their issues of racism are understood.
Jody: I know there is so much more to say, but we are running out of
space. Thank you so much for taking the time for this interview. Is there
anything you would like to add?
Lily: Since we took so long to finish this interview, I am now 59. (Weboth laugh) I just celebrated my birthday this past weekend and I am grateful that I have lots of loving, supportive Lesbian friends. And despite all thetrials and tribulations in my life, I have no regrets. It’s all made me who I
am today.
Jody: And such a great Dyke you are! Thank you.
Lily: I am honoured to have this interview with you. It’s the first time
I’ve ever been interviewed for a Lesbian publication and that is especiallythrilling. Arigato Gozaimasu.
Jody: You’re welcome. Shalom.

summer 2007

Bea Lieberman

my body came back to me
my body came backto me
in a dreambehind the locked door
and opened window
like flowers after frost
i breaththe young bulb
count its countless color

my body remembers
soft soil
after icy groundthe promise of sun
after shade

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Bea Lieberman

the books are stacked
the books are stacked
upon the shelfand you
among thempressed dry
between the pages.
pictures and lettersof lovetucked tightly
into drawers
safely stuffed
into the dustof dayssummer 2007

103

Julie Enszer

Enter Mary Daly’s World, Amazing and Graceful
A Review of Amazon Grace by Mary Daly
In many ways, Mary Daly’s life and work as a professor, scholar, andactivist, mirror cultural changes over the past thirty-five years. Women like
Daly, committed to resisting patriarchy and crafting an ethical alternative,
can respond to patriarchy in the same ways over time and achieve different
results. Daly’s new book, Amazon Grace, documents some of this phenomenon as Daly experiences it, but most significantly Amazon Grace brings
Daly’s work into the contemporary political milieu. Daly exhorts women
who, like her, want to end patriarchy to re-invest and “Re-Call” the “Courage to Sin Big.”
In 1969, Mary Daly was fresh from completing her dual PhDs in philosophy and theology at
the University of Fribourg
in Switzerland and flushwith the success of her
first book, The Church
and the Second Sex. She
was teaching at the thenall-male school Boston
College. The Boston College administration madeplans during the academic(or as Daly would say“academented”) year not
to renew her teaching
contract and thereby deny
her tenure, but this was
1969 and Daly was a darling of the students shetaught. The action of theadministration prompted
student protests and, ultimately, Daly was
granted tenure in thesummer of 1969. Thirty

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years later, at the now dual-sex Boston College, a male student, promptedby the extreme right-wing Center for Individual Rights (CIR) in Washington, DC, challenged Daly’s teaching methods. Daly’s pedagogy, tested andrefined through her thirty-three years of teaching, was to teach a single-sex
theology classes for women and to tutor male students individually. As aresult of the ruckus that the student created, Boston College administration
forced Daly into retirement. Of the experience, Daly writes, to the chorusof “Yuk-Ducks” that populate this book during recitations of the effects of
patriarchy in our world, “I could not understand immediately all that was
happening. I Sensed that it had something in common with gang rape” (p.
75.) This time, there were no student protests.
Daly’s experience with Boston College is only briefly re-counted in
Amazon Grace, although it repeatedly made national news. Daly does not
focus on her personal story; she has much more at stake in this book: piercing analysis of the current administration, her new ideas, a clarion call towomyn to resist phallocracy, and her crafting of new worlds for resistance.
To enter the world of Mary Daly requires thoughtfulness, close attention,
and a profound commitment to engage in her mind-bending work. The
rewards are ample. Daly has many important roles: philosopher, theologian,
Radical Elemental Feminist, political analyst, polemicist and mystic. Amazon Grace is an extension of all of these roles for Daly and a further expression of the philosophy and theology that have unfolded in her books overthe lifetime of her work.
If you have not wandered through the Wicked Webs of the HoppingHag, as Daly describes her books and herself respectively, a brief backgroundon Daly’s work is in order. Mary Daly began her scholarly work with scathing critiques of the Catholic church and its anti-feminist practices. Daly
followed her debut with Beyond God the Father in 1973. Both of her firstbooks are recognized as canonical feminist texts for the critique that they
offer of Christianity and Catholicism. Daly’s subsequent books articulated anew, ground-breaking feminist ideology/theology. Beginning with Gyn/Ecology in 1978, Daly wove a web of feminist ethics and theology that extended
through Pure Lust in 1984 and Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of
the English Language, conjured in cahoots with Jane Caputi, in 1987. In
1992, Daly published her autobiography, Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage, and most recently in 1998 she published Quintessence: Realizing theArchaic Future.
Amazon Grace extends the work that Daly did in Quintessence, and it
extends all of Daly’s work to define a Radical Feminist theology. Amazon

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Grace further explores time/space travel, and it articulates and engages Daly’s
feminist utopia which we can access to gain perspective on the patriarchal,necrophilic world in which we find ourselves.
In Amazon Grace as in Daly’s other books, Daly uses a variety of strategies to re-weave and re-call women to their natural state of liberation andempowerment. Daly resurrects feminist foresisters, most significantly Matilda
Joslyn Gage, a theologian from the late 1800s, to engage in dialogue andtruth seeking. Daly’s accounts of her discussions with Gage and what she
draws from Gage are delightful. More delightful are the ways that Dalyimbues life and meaning to animal familiars in the book. Her cat, Cottie,
figures strongly into the book as a source of intelligence and insight for
Daly. Similarly, the wolf Fenrir, Anowa’s familiar, is an important characterin the book.
Daly also re-visits the “Lost and Found Continent” in the simultaneous
leaping ahead/looking back to the “Lost and Found Continent” which is
positioned as both in the past and in the future. The “Lost and Found Continent” is the place where women not only live but also thrive outside of thephallocracy. Here Daly gathers Gynergy for her struggles in the current land,
and here she engages in some of the most inspiring story telling and parable
recitation. The women that Daly conjures in the “Lost and Found Continent” are delightful and reassuring. I can’t be the only reader who wishes
that Daly would write her next book about living in the land of the “Lostand Found Continent” exclusively with Annie and Anowa and the other
women of the land re-counted more fully.
Daly continues the deconstruction and reconstruction of language inAmazon Grace a signature of her earlier work. She liberates language fromthe constraints of patriarchy and the necrophilic society in which we live, atleast part-time. In her language project, Daly reveals that the sweetest wordis liberty/freedom, something which she seems to have found in her forced
retirement. At the end of the book, Daly reminds us that “we can stop it
Now.” That is we can end the necrophilic society now and move to theutopia of the Biophilic. Daly tells us by “Moving into an Expanding Hereand Now, when/where we participate in the interconnectedness of all
Biophilic be-ing. This is the unifying Living Presence which is at the core of
the Integrity of the universe and is the Source of our power to Realize a True
Future” (p. 226.)
For dedicated Daly devotees, Amazon Grace is a book to own and cherish. Amazon Grace is, in Daly’s words, a “brief play time, re-creating ourGynergy to Survive and Overcome phallocracy’s latest and perhaps ultimate

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assault upon all Life” (p. 213.) For wimmin coming to Mary Daly’s work forthe first time, Amazon Grace will open your mind and your heart to Daly’s
ways of thinking and writing and make her philosophy relevant to life today. Amazon Grace also will whet your appetite for more Daly. I recommend
you pick up Gyn/Ecology next and read forward. After you are done catching
up with the world of Daly, let us Hop and Leap to the where/when that we
can Sin Big, live outside of patriarchy, and embrace our Biophilic be-ings.
Daly, Mary. Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big. New
York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.

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Compiled by Lori L. Lake

Recent Nonfiction Resources Spotlighting Older
Lesbians
Gay Old Girls ed. and interviews by Zsa Zsa Gershick, Alyson Books,
1998.
This collection of nine life stories can be seen as part of the larger project
instituted by Joan Nestle and others to gather an oral history of lesbian lifein America in the 20th century. Although some of the memories here stretch
back to the 1920s, most date from the repressive postwar years and describe
the difficulties of finding community - let alone lovers - when there were nosafe, established meeting places for gay people. Many of the women interviewed ended up marrying men as a cover or to make their lives easier, whilesome married before they realized they were lesbian. Some stories end happily while there are others where women never found lasting love, or grew
so discouraged that they stopped trying. The interviews offer an essential
glimpse of a bleak past and spur on the struggle for civil rights.

Lesbian Epiphanies: Women Coming Out in Later Life, by Karol L.
Jensen, Haworth Press, 1999.
Exploring identity development and gender orientation, this book contains firsthand information about the experiences and difficulties of women
who discover and reveal their newfound lesbian sexuality in later life. Extensive quotes from interviews of 42 lesbians and bisexuals who entered into
heterosexual marriages and came out later. The book clearly illuminates how
women came to realize their same-gender attractions and the barriers they
faced, including negative attitudes toward lesbian women and the lack ofstrong role models.
This insightful book knocks down the sociological and psychologicalbarriers that keep women from realizing or acknowledging their real sexual
orientation and is also particularly helpful to guide therapists and counselors working with women who are dealing with these issues.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Lesbians at Midlife: The Creative Transition – An Anthology ed. by
Barbara Sang, et al. Spinsters Ink, 1991.
While focusing mainly on the life transformation experienced by lesbians in their 40s and 50s, this thoughtful collection of 38 works ranging
from research studies and practical advice to personal memoirs and poems
will hold great appeal for lesbians of all ages. In Margaret Cruikshank’s memoir piece, she describes how, at 48, she is finally comfortable with herself
physically, psychologically, and spiritually, and how lesbianism has become
just one element of a broadened sense of identity. Judith Bradford and Caitlin
Ryan explore national survey data in a study of the health concerns of middleaged lesbians. Marny Hall with Ann Gregory interviews nine lesbian couples
to learn how these women juggle their professional and personal lives. The
editors are psychotherapists, and the stories and memoirs they share give awonderful glimpse into the lives of women in transition at midlife.

Lives of LesbianElders: Looking
Back, Looking Forward by Merilee D.
Clunisetal.
HaworthPress,
2005.
This book illuminates the hopes,
fears, issues, and concerns of lesbian
women as they growolder. Based on interviews with 62 lesbians ranging in age
from 55 to 95, thisvery special bookprovides an historicalaccount of the sharedexperiences of a lesbian community sooften invisible or ig-

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109

nored in contemporary society, giving voice to their thoughts and feelings
on a wide range of issues, including coming out, identity and the meaningof life, the role of family and personal relationships, work and retirement,
adversity, and individual sources of strength and resilience. The bookchronicles stories of courage, resilience, resourcefulness, pride, and independence, helps restore lesbian history that has been forgotten, distorted, ordisregarded and provides the information necessary to meet the future needsof aging lesbians.

Midlife Lesbian Relationships: Friends, Lovers, Children, and Parents,
ed. by Marcy R. Adelman, Ph.D. Haworth Press, 2000.
The book explores the rich world of lesbian relationships at midlife andprovides insight into the challenges and solutions of middle age for lesbians,
discussing friendships, dating and courtship, couple relationships and the
key ingredients that strengthen and deepen them, parenting young children
and the influence of lesbian midlife maturation on confidence and satisfaction in mothering, substance abuse and the road to recovery, the evolutionof the bonds between these women and their biological families, what many
lesbians in middle age go through when their parents pass away, including
the easing of internalized homophobia.

Whistling Women: A Study of the Lives of Older Lesbians by Cheryl
Claassen. Haworth Press, 2005.
Gain first-hand knowledge of how today’s lesbians aged 60 and oversurvived the 20th century in this unique, candid collection of the life experiences of 44 lesbians between 62 and 82 years of age. This book explores
memories and details about a diversity of perspectives—from growing up
during the Depression and World War II, to retirement and old age at theheight of the gay liberation movement. Also presents recollections of lesbian/mixed bars—some famous—starting in the 1930s, memories of thenotorious Greenwich Village, the early development of lesbian social groups,
and lesbian friendships with gay men. Whistling Girls identifies many of theorganizations that cater specifically to older lesbians, such as OLOC (Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change) and SOL (Slightly Older Lesbians).

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Contributors’ Notes
SDiane Adamz-Bogus, long time contributor and friend to Sinister
Wisdom, lives in San Jose, California. She is a professor of American literature, performance poet, and actor and author of fourteen books, among
them The Chant of the Women of Magdalena and Dykehands and Sutras Erotic
and Lyric. You can write her at P.O. Box 1268, San Jose, CA 95108 or
SdianeAdamzbogus@Yahoo.com.
alison: i am a lesbian in my late twenties, living in portland, oregon. igrew up in west virginia, worked in a nursing home for years, and now in a
women’s shelter. i have done grass roots women’s empowerment work, traveled around by foot, i write brief prose and poems, have never taken a college english class and don’t know any rules. i am working class/self educated. working with women is what inspires me and gets me up in themorning.
Kathleen Allen is an inmate at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
in Westchester County, New York, and a student in the Mercy College
masters program in English literature. She is a writing tutor for the inmate
students in the undergraduate program at Bedford Hills, sponsored byMarymount Manhattan College. Her poetry has been published in the Hiram
Poetry Review.
Joan Annsfire lives in Berkeley California. Her work has appeared invarious literary journals including The SoMa Literary Review, The Harrington
Lesbian Literary Quarterly, 13th Moon, Bridges, the Evergreen Chronicles, aswell and a number of issues of Sinister Wisdom. Her anthology credits include “The Other side of the Postcard” edited by devorah major and two
upcoming anthologies, “Identity Envy,” edited by Jim Tushinski and Jim
Van Buskirk and “Love Gone Wrong,” edited by Marie Napierkowski.
Shaba A. Barnes has been a community activist most of her adult life.
After moving to the West Coast in 1969 from New York City, Shaba joined
the National Organization for Women and quickly became the secretary of
the Los Angeles Chapter. She also joined the Feminist Theatre which was
active doing guerrilla theatre or street theatre as well as performances atUniversities in California. Shaba has been active in theater, acting, and pro-summer 2007

111

ducing. She was instrumental in achieving Domestic Partner Rights for all
members via the Lesbian and Gay Association at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Los Angeles. She is a CO-Director for Old Lesbians Organizing for
Change (OLOC), the only organization of its kind dedicated to combating
Ageism; OLOC was founded by and for Lesbians over 60 years old. Shabapresently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her partner of 38 years.
She enjoys poetry readings as she continues to seek avenues of expression by
sharing insights on the spiritual and the power of being an Old Lesbian. She
is still available to teach workshops and classes with a spiritual theme.
Stephanie Barnes is from Savannah, Georgia by way of a few militarybases. She has been writing since she was nine and has most recently been
published in Antithesis Common. Currently, she is working on self-publishing her first chapbook, as well as pursuing entrance into a MFA program.
Natasha Carthew is a young lesbian writer from Cornwall in the UK.
She has been published in numerous National magazines, has won awards
for poetry and has had three books of poetry published; her latest book
Flash Reckless having been published by the internationally acclaimed lesbian/feminist publisher Onlywomen Press (www.onlywomenpress.com).
Natasha lives in the country with her girlfriend of ten years, where she
is currently working on a new body of country poetry.
Lisabeth Amarante Castro-Smyth is a femme dyke of Azorian and
Irish descent, born and raised in Califas. She has been singing fado for several years and writing for much longer. She loves cumbia, teatro callejero,and the ocean. Growing up, her mother instilled in her a great love of books,
and her dad taught her to never ever cross a picket line.
Lenore Chinn began painting when she was growing up in San
Francisco’s Richmond district, focusing on portraiture to explore the superrealistic depiction of a wide spectrum of people of color, lesbians and samesex couples. Employing a coded iconography rooted in a lesbian/gay cultural perspective, these images fuse an Asian aesthetic of sparseness and clarity with visual narratives that counteract the “magic-truth rituals” of racial
and gender construction. Chinn’s inclusion in Harmony Hammond’s “Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History,” the first study of American
lesbian visual artists, vastly expanded her national visibility. Her portraits
documenting the historical evolution of San Francisco’s queer community

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

challenge the social conventions that currently constitute the racialized order of things. The artist has been a founding member of Lesbians in the
Visual Arts and Queer Cultural Center and is affiliated with the Asian American Women Artists Association. For more information visit:
http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Chinn/ChinIndex.html
Chrystos, writer and Native Rights activist, won the Audre Lorde International Poetry competition in 1994 and the Sappho Award of Distinction from the Astraea National Action Foundation in 1995.
Sasha Churchill is a 23-year-old lesbian currently in prison.
Tee A. Corinne (1943 – 2006): A regular contributor to Sinister Wisdom, Tee Corinne’s artwork has been identified with the journal since hercover and poster for issue #3 in 1977. This beloved photograph was selected
for the cover of Sinister Wisdom’s 30th Anniversary Celebration Issue. Tee wasthe author of one novel, three collections of short stories, and several poetry
chapbooks. Her most recent book of art, Intimacies: Photos by Tee A. Corinne,
published by Last Gasp of San Francisco, was a Lambda Literary Award
finalist. A gifted and versatile artist, Tee worked with photography, line drawing, paint, sculpture, ceramics and printing, and she also published erotic
fiction and poetry and reviews. Favorite cover artist for lesbian publisher
Naiad, Corinne’s work is found on bookshelves across the Lesbian Nation.
Anita Cornwell has been a professional writer for more than twenty
years. Her second book, a novel for young adults, was published by New
Seed Press in 1989/1990. Her first book, a collection of essays, was published in 1983 by Naiad Press. Her work has also appeared in such diverse
publications as Essence Magazine, Elegant Teen, New Directions for Women,
Motheroot Journal, Negro Digest, and Phylon, the Atlanta University Reviewof Race and Culture. She has also had work in eight anthologies, including
Revolutionary Tales (Dell, 1995); The Romantic Naiad (1993); We Are Everywhere (Routledge, 1997); and Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader (NewYork University Press, 2000). She has also self-published two chapbooks ofprose poems, written several one-act plays, three full-length dramas, and is amember of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. Born in South Carolina
and educated in Pennsylvania, Cornwell is as graduate of Temple University
where she majored in journalism and the social sciences. Before devoting
full-time to writing, she worked as a caseworker for the Pennsylvania Statesummer 2007

113

Department of Public Welfare, for the City of Philadelphia, and for thefederal government.
Marva C. Edwards has been a lover of books since she was eight years
old. She started writing poems in her diary at the age of twelve. Poems were
the place she trusted to share herself. She now lives in San Francisco, California and has been working as a Community Activist and organizer for
many years. Her day job has been as a Social Worker in the community
mental health field for thirty plus years. Her volunteer work has included
working as a Board Member for the Nia Collective, a community organization for the empowerment of Lesbians of African Descent but her first loveand passion has always been words. And songs that find her.
Julie R. Enszer is a writer and lesbian activist based in University Park,
Maryland. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.
Matu Feliciano, born in the South Bronx, is an activist living in the
Bay Area. Passion is not just a fruit, it’s what gives life its SALSON! We are
the Chuchifrito connection to NewyorkRican dialog! Boricua visciones.
Mancha de Platano, is my other pen name. It means “the stain of the plantain” referring to the color of my skin. How it changes as the plantain grows
sweeter, it gets darker. As in the darker the berry the sweeter the juice. I was
called by this beautiful description when I was living on the Isla of Puerto
Rico in 2003. So, I have taken this name with my writings.
Roxanna N. Fiamma: I was born in Denver, Colorado in 1943; Italian
American (Olive Race), grew up working class. I came out as a Lesbian in
the late 60s and as a Separatist in the mid 70s. I taught Physical Educationin Denver until I retired in 1993. I live in northern California where I enjoy
life with my Dear Companion Dog, Phaedra and Land-Mate, Fran.
Alix Greenwood: I am an english lesbian, white, middle-class, 44 years
old; I came out at 25. I work as an organic gardener.
Morgan Gwenwald has been documenting the women’s/lgbt community for most of her life, compiling thousands of images of events, actions
and people along with a pioneering portfolio of lesbian erotic imagery. Sinceleaving New York City and moving upstate she has returned to her exploration of fine art photography, finding joy in those deep and complex creative
experiences.

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

Virginia Harris: For many years my creative life was separate from my“real” life. I majored in chemistry in college and went on to get a master’s
degree. For 12 or 13 years I worked in nuclear chemistry research and thenon a dare changed careers to personnel (now called human resources). Chemistry and personnel were battle grounds that afforded little to no recognition for a job well done. I longed for passion and definition in my life. I
found them in creativity — photography, writing and finally quilting andfabric art. Through art quilting I pushed away the substitutions I have lived
by and this has given me the recognition I never got in the “real world”.
One of my pieces was chosen for the permanent collection at the Renwick
Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. In 2004 I received a Sister of Fire Award from the Women of Color Resource Center.
Let’s hear it for passion!
Susan Hawthorne is a novelist, poet, theorist, aerialist, academic, activist and publisher. Her books include The Falling Woman (novel, 1992;
reprinted 2003); Bird (poetry, 1999); and Wild Politics (non-fiction, 2002).
Her books have won awards and been listed among the year’s best books onseveral occasions. Her latest book The Butterfly Effect (poetry, 2005) is acollection of poems about lesbian culture. Her poem “Strange Tractors” fromThe Butterfly Effect is included in the anthology Best Australian Poems 2006.
In 1996, she was the Winner of a Hall of Fame Award, in The Rainbow
Awards for her contribution to the Gay and Lesbian Community. Susan is
also a member of the Coalition of Activist Lesbians and over the past four
years she has written articles for numerous publications including for the
Journal of Hate Studies on the torture of lesbians internationally. She is a
Research Associate and supervisor of PhDs in Creative Writing at Victoria
University, Melbourne. She is also a performer who combines aerials andtext and in 2005, she was invited to perform Eye of a Needle at the 10th
International Women’s Health Meeting in Delhi, India. She is the co-founder,
with Renate Klein, of Spinifex Press. She is currently working on a newnovel and another collection of poems.
jody jewdyke: proudly obvious big Jewish Dyke Separatist, 36, currently living and working in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. For now, I share myhome with a wild and wonderful fat orange cat named Matza. Am passionate about Lesbian cultures and communities and am so appreciative for all
the great Dykes then and now, near and far who help make our Lesbian
dreams come true.

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Verlena L. Johnson: I earned a Master’s Degree in Afro-American Studies (Art History, 1996) from the University of Wisconsin — Madison and a
Master’s of Fine Arts Degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Sculpture, 2001). Over the past fifteen years, I have sought to express
my personal thoughts and feelings in my art, as well as explore larger societal phenomena, such as oppression, race, gender and sexual identity. The
style, subject-matter, and medium have varied, but the common threads
that run through my work are questions about what it means to be an African American (Biracial) lesbian woman, particularly in a society that does
not honor or value blackness, womaness or queerness. I define myself broadly
as an artist and express myself in whichever media best lends itself to myideas and mood. I have rejected many of the binary constructs that seem topermeate every aspect of the “art world,” such as “fine art” versus “craft;”painter versus sculptor; artist versus art historian. See more of my artwork at
http://www.verlenasroom.com
Lenn Keller is a black feminist butch. She is a photographer and filmmaker, and has been photographing for over two decades. Her work in photography includes many different genres, including documentary, editorial,fashion, landscape, portraiture and promotional work for artists, musicians,
writers etc. She is a cultural activist, and her eclectic spirituality along witha life long predilection to look beyond the surface of things informs herwork. She is currently working on numerous projects including a portrait
series of “gender queer” people. To view her work go to her website:www.lennkeller.com.
Patricia Kimura was born and raised in Hawai’i. She now lives in rural
Western Massachusetts where she writes poems about the history and livesof ordinary people, particularly the people of Hawai’i. She has previously
had work published in Sinister Wisdom and Runes.
Lola Lai Jong: A 57-year-old Chicago-based Scorpio tungjee* mothercarpenter networker wordsmith. * Cantonese word which could mean female same sex love.
Lori L. Lake, author of lesbian fiction and freelance reviewer for Midwest Book Review, Golden Crown Literary Society’s The Crown, The Independent Gay Writer, and Just About Write.

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Bea Lieberman: I am... mother, teacher of children, folksinger, lifelong poet, lover of high mountains,...member of Mothertongue Feminist
Theatre Collective, a link in a long line of dedicated idealists and great
skeptics.
P. E. MacDavid: I have been writing poetry since the early 80s. I havebeen stricken with Multiple Sclerosis and disabled a few years ago. I’ve
served in the military and have advanced to management in administration.
This has taught me the inner discipline and persistence to continue pursuing my passion for writing. I have been engaged in a full time status increating poems that I find is such a need in my community. I’ve taken several self-learning work-studies (because of the inability to go to classes). I’m
still looking forward to an MFA. I’ve had a few poems published in literary
magazines/journals. This includes: Love’s Chance Magazine, Jersey Gaze, andSinister Wisdom and in exhibition at the Northwest Culture Council.
Cheryl J. Moore: I began writing poetry in 1980 after being hospitalized for anxiety and I believe poetry saved my life. My manuscript is called“Waterpaths” and I have written three lesbian short stories, the second ofwhich was published in Sinister Wisdom #49. Other publications include
Common Lives/Lesbian Lives, Sojourner, The River, and Sensations Magazine.
I haven’t written enough yet about my black and lesbian consciousness. “A
Winter Poem” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005.
Nancy Nau grew up in Southern California, where she earned two
Master’s degrees, both in Fine Arts, taught for a living and raised three children. Then Nau moved to Minnesota where she worked in pastoral care,penned two poetry books, and three children’s books and where she is earning her doctorate in education and the arts (ABD – all but the dissertation).
Now that Nau is living in northern California, she states that she “...recollects in tranquility...” and at last, has enough time to paint, write, and submit her work to publishers.
Mona Oikawa is a Toronto-based writer, teacher, and researcher. She is
Assistant Professor of Social Science in the Atkinson Faculty at York University and Coordinator of the Certificate in Anti-Racist Research and Practice, and the Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity Program. Her book Cartographiesof Violence: Women, Memory and the Subject(s) of the “Internment” is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press.

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Robin Reinach is a New Yorker, with an MFA from Columbia University. Her work appears regularly in literary journals, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Francesca Roccaforte is a San Francisco Bay Area award winning poet
/writer, photographer, and documentary filmmaker. Her work has been
published in “Hey Paesan”, “Curaggia”, “Milvia Street Journal,” “Voices of
Italian America” and SF Women Against Rape Poetry Chap Book. You canview more of her work at www.rocknfranny.com
Sandy Tate is a working class, Jewish Dyke Separatist. She opened Feminist Horizons, the first Lesbian Feminist gift store in the U.S., in 1977 in
Los Angeles. As a member of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC),
she continues to pierce the veil of ageism that renders old women invisible.
Jean Taylor was born in 1944 and is a radical lesbian feminist writerand political activist based in Melbourne, Australia where she also does tai
chi and is an active member of the Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives collective. In between her political and writing commitments, she also knits, exhibits art work and enjoys the company of her
grandchildren.
Saundra Tignor, age 69, hails from Los Angeles. Born in Washington, D. C. she migrated to California in 1961 to live freely and fully as alesbian. She has been involved with a number of organizations: Uptown
Gay and Lesbian Alliance, United Lesbians of African Heritage (Co-founder),Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against
Defamation and Old Lesbians Organizing for Change.
Morningstar Vancil: I am Filipino by birth but Two Spirit by soul.
Lovel Waiters is a Lesbian poet and writer of fiction, nonfiction anderotic material. She lives and writes in San Diego, California.
Batya Weinbaum is the founding editor and editor in chief of Femspec,a feminist speculative journal. She has written psychoanalytic theory about
women’s liberation and socialism, work place relations, and oral history withwomen in Israel as well as Jungian explorations of islands of women andAmazons, and contemporary science fiction. She has published poetry, fic-

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sinister wisdom #71 — Open Issue

tion and theory widely as well as numerous reviews, and is working on aplay now as well as painting from goddess archetypes and finishing the novel
excerpted here.
Jean Weisinger is a self-taught African American photographer basedin Oakland, California. She has traveled to Africa, Cuba, India, Mexico,
Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe and throughout the UnitedStates. She has exhibited in one person and selected group exhibitions in
the United States, Cuba, Africa and India. Her photographs have been
published in numerous films, books, and a wide range of publications aswell as posters, post cards and calendars. Her photographs are in collections
throughout the world.
Win Weston is a spinner of tales and a teller of stories. She is a life-longresident of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has performed at: Vulva Riot,
Amazon Book Store Cooperative, Patrick’s Cabaret, Celebrate Yourself!, andOLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change) National Gathering held in
Minneapolis. Her short stories have been read on these radio stations: WTIP,
Grand Marais, MN, KFAI, Minneapolis, MN. In addition to writing she isan artist and photographer. She is also a sustaining member of Spiderwimmin,a womyn’s ritual group celebrating the year’s quarter days.
Merle Woo, born to a Chinese Korean family, is a socialist feminist,
lesbian and unionist. She fights as a teacher, activist and poet for these causes.
Her essays, stories and poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies
including This Bridge Called My Back by Radical Women of Color, Plexus,
Asian American Journey, Breaking Silence, and The Freedom Socialist. A selection of her poems, entitled Yellow Woman Speaks, was published by Radical
Women Publications (rwseattle@mindspring.com).

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Books Received
Heavier Than Air: Stories. By Nona Caspers. University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.
Conversations with Audre Lorde. Joan
Wylie Hall (Editor). University Press ofMississippi, 2004.
The Butterfly Effect. By Susan
Hawthorne. Spinifex, 2005.
“Lesbians in East Asia: Diversity, Identities, and Resistance.” Diana Khor andSaori Kamano (Guest Editors). Journal of
Lesbian Studies. Volume 10, Numbers 3/4). Harrington Park Press, 2006.
Sweet Creek. Lee Lynch. Bold Strokes
Books, 2006.
OutRageous. Sheila Ortiz-Taylor. Spinsters Ink, 2006.
“Lesbian Communities: Festivals, RVs,
and the Internet.” Esther Rothblum andPenny Sablove (Editors). Journal of LesbianStudies. Volume 9, Numbers 1/2, 2005.
Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly.
(Volume 7, Number 2, 2006). Judith P.
Stelboum. (Editor).
Tee Corinne is the representative artist
for this issue which includes her essay “Picturing Cancer in Our Lives” and sixteen ofher photographs.

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17

24

HAD05

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HAD07summer 2007

123

Women’s Review
of BooksE S S AY

PHOTOGRAPHY

Pulp and Circumstance

THE DOUBLE VISION
OF KAREN DAVISThe Solitude of Self: Thinking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton
By Vivian Gornick
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, 133 pp., $17.00, hardcover

Reviewed by Linda Gordon

O

ccasionally a marvelous writer turns her
attention
to a andsubject
Above: First and Last Pictureof My Mother
Me. who suits her
perfectly. This is the case with Vivian
Left: Karen Davis, self-portrait.
Gornick’s exquisite meditation on the
In alternating issues, Women's Review will feature the art of a photographer and a cartoonist. This
month we’re showing photographs by Karen Davis, with commentary by Ellen Feldman.

The duality of Karen Davis’s gaze is brought together in her images.
Ever the realist, Davis’s work is grounded in the documentary
tradition; she is a restless explorer of far-reaching subjects. Along withthe direct gaze of the realist, we have the vision of one who soaks up
emotional depths and seeks out layers of irony.
The portfolio reproduced here focuses on intimate family portraits.
In the diptych “First and Last Picture of My Mother and Me,”combinations of youth and age proliferate. The young mother and daughter arepreserved in an image cracked and worn with age. Cut to: cracked hands of theaging mother and daughter—a metonymic shorthand for lives lived—
cushioned in folds of cloth soft as baby’s skin. One can’t miss the irony—and
poignancy—of juxtaposing these images of intergenerational touching, one oflife ahead, the other of life behind.

Finding Afghanistan

A Passion for Equality

nineteenth-century feminist Elizabeth
Cady Stanton. Gornick almost seems to beremembering a friend, a soulmate, or even a lover.
She has given us not only an appreciation of
Stanton’s passion for justice but also the story of her
In “The McCann Family,”own
Davis’sword-imagepiece
on her to
deeppowerfulintellectualand politicalattraction
childhood, she arranges dolls that
her sister
Cheryllong
ago inStanton,which
is so playedstrong withthat itvergesonathefamily portrait. In photographerotic.
and text,
the child-dolls
seem withto beelectricity.
the main
The book
virtually sparks
players, but the subject that gradually
emergesperhapsnot asunnaturally,
Stanton
was,ininboth,my view
as wellin Gornick’s,
is the parents’ dominating presence.
Davis, likeher sister,ofhasa stand-in
the leading
intellectual
thecreatednineteenth-century
family through which the painful
truths ofthe family
dynamics
expressed.
women’srightsmovement
and aaredrasticallyunderWhen you scratch the surfaceof
Karen
Davis’
photographs,
layersrecognized politicalthinker.
This elegant
little ofbookmeaning are exposed. They teasememory, the passage
time,isand(only loose
130 small-dimension
pages),ofwhich
not ahidden associations.
biography but rather a highly subjective rumina—
Ellen
Feldmantion, reveals as much about Stanton’s thought asanything yet published.
Ellen Feldman is a photographer andGornick
writer witha Ph.D.thein “passion
cinema studies
from Newthat
identifies
for equality”
York University. She is principal course
developer
at Stanton
Avid Technology,
Inc. how Stanton’s
she shareswithand shows

The McCann Family

20 Women’s Review of Books Vol. 23, No. 1, January/February 2006

passion produced her radical democratic thought,
which evolved throughout a sixty-year career that
The McCann
Familylastedfrom the1840s until her death in 1902.
When we thought
were small,my younger
CherylStanton’s
prefiguredthat ofsister
contemporary
had a set For
of fourmechanicaldolls.
called infeminists.
example,like Our
BodiesShe
Ourselvesthem
the McCann
Therethewasa boy experts
doll,
the
1970s,
StantonFamily.
challenged
medicalgirlherdoll,maninsisted
and woman
doll.
They
were
a of
of
daya andthat shedidso notoutthinly disguised
versionof of
thescientific
Davis family.
feminine
instinctbut out
reason.
Cheryl tells
was an“Tom
McCann,”theof boydoll,six
Gornick
anecdote
about one
Stanton’s
because Iwho
think
she
liked
thea ideaof being theThechildren,
was
born
with
bent collarbone.
spunky andadventurous
I washand“MaryAnn
doctor’s
bandageturned child.
the baby’s
blue
from
McCann,”the girlStantondoll. invented
Cheryl had
Motherthat
lackof circulation.
a bandage
McCanntell Tom,“Mary Annis wonderful,”andlikewent
acrossthe baby’s
shouldersand back“Why can’t you
be likeMaryAnn?”
suspenders,which
didyourthe sister,job. The
doctorsaid(If I had owned the dolls,
McCannwould becondescendinglythat aTommother’s instinct
hadthe talented
starthanand aMothertelltoeveryproved
betterman’swould
reason,which
one, “MaryAnn “Thereis average.”)
Stantonreplied,was no instinct about it. I
firsthard
Tom thinking
could standwithout
didAt
some
beforeI sawhelp.
howLater
I could
he losthis balance
the time.
Cherylimpeding
diaggeta pressure
on theallshoulder
without
nosed
Tom withas polio.
She After
fitted this,him Stantonwiththecirculation
you did.”
crutches andacidly,
bracesshe
just“trusted
like hers.
(Cherylwasnorrecollected
neithermenborn withspina bifida.)
thoughttoMotherbooks
absolutely...
but Tom
continued
use myMcCann disliked
havinga isdisabled
child. aHe‘mother’s
instinct’ if‘reason’too dignified
term
wasa chipper
kid but
he always felt bad about
toapply
to woman’s
thoughts.”
Mother’s
attitude.
Father usuallysided with toThis kindof thinking
was fundamental
Mother. “Listen
your Mother.”day ofStanton’s
feministto
politics.
To her, theOne
rhetoric
Father McCann’sleg, which
had been auniquenessloose, fell
genderdifference
and women’soff. Cheryl taped
thein
legpoliticalback onpowerlessness.
as a prosthesis.She
imprisoned
women
Tom felt that after
he becamean amputee,
Fatheremphasized
insteadwomen’sfundamental
was a lot more
aboutWith
his son.
humanity
and understanding
similarity to men.
stunning
chutzpah, Stanton distributed leaflets attacking
unequal, oppressive marriage laws and promoting

divorce—at a wedding. She refused to condemn
Free Love. She opposed tight corseting andadvocated fresh air for women and children. Yet she
was a movement activist, not an isolated
intellectual: she understood that activists need attimes to choose their battles. When a few feminists
rejected the long skirts of the day, which collected
dirt and hobbled them for the sake of modesty, andinstead adopted a costume made by Amelia
Bloomer—a shorter skirt over harem pants tight at
the ankles—they were subjected to relentless abuse.
After three years of it, Stanton advocated giving up
the campaign. “We put the dress on for greater
freedom, but what is physical freedom comparedwith mental bondage?”Gornick titled her book after a famous lecture
Stanton gave late in her life, “The Solitudeof Self.” It is an existential declaration ofhuman freedom and responsibility and a rejectionof all kinds of deterministic thinking, whether
religious or biological. Thus Gornick offers afundamentally romantic take on Stanton.
Ultimately the individual stands alone in her
suffering and her moral obligation to speak thetruth—personal truth, apprehended subjectively,
not socially constructed. Gornick emphasizes
Stanton’s abstract radical individualism over her
strategic thinking. (She does not explore the tension
between Stanton’s passions for equality and for
freedom, or Stanton’s willingness to settle for afranchise for educated women only.) Stanton’sprophetic stance emerged more strongly as she
aged, quite in contrast to the pattern, often assumed
to be universal, of becoming more patient andgradualist with age. In her youth she had been
infuriated by the view of several abolitionist leadersthat women’s worst problem was other women’s
acquiescence in their own subordination. But at theend of her life, she herself articulated that very
thought. She became increasingly isolated
politically, as the women’s rights movement grew
more conservative, more exclusively focused on
suffrage, and more engaged in mainstream politics.
The problem with this individualist existential
position is the problem of the Marxist concept offalse consciousness, which assumes that anyone
who stubbornly refuses to accept the feminist
viewpoint has been either fooled or blinded byideology, unable to identify her own self-interest.
Stanton did not investigate the possibility thatconservative women had material interests in, andmight even benefit from, the existing gendersystem.

published for soldiers during World War II. The new paperbacks cost as little asa quarter and were readily available in drugstores and newsstands all over
America. While many of the lesbian pulps were quick knock-offs intended to

A Bedtantalizeof Red andFlowers:
In Search of My Afghanistan
intrigue male readers, the earliest books, in particular, wereintelligent and thoughtful,
writtenBy Nelofer
Pazirato illuminate rather than sensationalize.
Two of my favorites from the era, Women’s Barracks (1950) and The Girls in
NewFree
Press,
2005, 408
pp., $15.00, in
paperback
3-BYork:(1959),
bothof which
are highlighted
Lesbian Pulp Fiction, exuberantly
served up a smorgasbord of new options for women, as the characters leave
home and explore work, careers, living arrangements, and an impressive rangeof both heterosexual and lesbian relationships. While their covers were
designedReviewed
to appeal toby
prurient
interest,
I suspect that sales of these two books,
JasminDarznik
to both women and men, were also driven by the sheer thrill of discovering
new options and seeing them validated in print. Both books were ultimately
empowering: even a reader who made the most traditional of marriages could
come away feeling she’d had a choice and had made the best one for herself.
And lesbian readers? All in all, the lesbians in these books come out prettyn 1978, five-year-old Nelofer Pazira waswell—better, perhaps, than their heterosexual counterparts. When you weighmarched to a prison in Kabul to visit her
their lives, hopes, and romantic successes against the straight women’s, a little
father, a prominent physician and one ofcloseting and some familial or work disapproval don’t seem so bad compared
thousands to be imprisoned by the Communist
to out-of-wedlock pregnancy, date rape, being jilted by married men, or, ingovernment that year. Flustered and confused,
Women’s Barracks, the painfully frequent deaths of boyfriends, fiancés, andshe reached him only to be greeted with a stern
shiny new husbands in the war.
rebuke. “You mustn’t cry,” her father warned her
Tereska Torres based her World War II novel Women’s Barracks—publishedfrom behind the bars of his dank cell.
under the tag line, “The Frank Autobiography of a French Girl Soldier”—on her
Organizing her family’s escape from Afghanistan
years in the London-based Women’s Division of the Free French Army. The
ten years later, Pazira still finds herself bound bybook sold two million copies in the US between 1950 and 1955, and another two
the same injunction. “Boys my age are sent to themillion in translation and in later American editions. It continued to sell infront line and return dead and injured. Girls carry
reprint editions. By way of comparison, Khaled Hosseini’s contemporary bestthe burden of an entire household.” It is part of theseller, The Kite Runner, sold about as many copies as Women’s Barracks—yet inparticular burden of the Afghani woman in exile,
1955, the population of the US was only 55 to sixty percent of what it is today.
Pazira suggests, to make a final reckoning of her
Neither book has single-handedly changed the world—but both have opened
country’s fate.
Boys my age are sent
doors in a lot of people’s minds.
By Carol Seajay
A Bed of Red Flowers is a memoir of young
Stanton was ... the leading
to the front line and return
woman’s life in Afghanistan during the seventies
alerie Taylor’s The Girls in 3-B is a veritable guide to moving to a big
and eighties, as well as Pazira’s attempt, years laterdead
injured.
intellectual of thecity and setting up a life there. 3-B
was soandpopularthat its themes werein exile, to understand her country’s bloody
echoed in a comic strip, “The Girls in Apartment 3-G,” that ran in dailyarly in 1966, when we were both fifteen, my girlfriend and I found a
Girls carry the burden of an
disintegration. Pazira was born to a privileged
nineteenth-century women’s
newspapers for forty years, although without the book’s lesbian content.
lesbian pulp paperback, We, Too, Must Love, on the bookshelf offamily that suffered steady dispossession in war-torn
entirehousehold.
Reading—or rereading—these tales is
all the richer
when one remembers theanother Senior Girl Scout. We “borrowed” it, devoured it, andrights movement and a
Afghanistan, fled to Pakistan in 1989, and ultimately
realities of the times when they were first published: classified ads werereturned it before its absence would be noticed. I was thrilled byfound sanctuary in the West. Now a journalist based
drastically under-recognized
segregated into “Help Wanted/Male” and “Help Wanted/Female.” Women’s
what I read: that we could support ourselves and make our lives
in Canada, Pazira starred in the widely acclaimed
professional career options were pretty much limited to teacher, librarian, or
together, and that there were many other women like us. My sweetie,
For many years her father and mother quarrel
2000 film Kandahar. Released just months before
political thinker.
nurse, and working class women didn’t fare so well either. Women could be (andon the other hand, was terrified by what she found in the same pages.
over whether to leave the country. Then in 1989, the9/11, the film was inspired by Pazira’s life. It tells thewere) fired for wearing pants to work, and the idea of equal pay for equal work
But she was the one who found the courage to go to the newsstand down thethreat of her brother’s conscription finally sends thestory of an Afghani woman’s return to Afghanistan
wasn’t yet a gleam in anyone’s eye. Sexual relationships between women were
block from her Catholic girls’ school and special order every book referenced infamily into exile. The passages describing theduring the Taliban’s rule. Less an intimate
generally considered immoral, criminal, or a symptom of underlying mental
We, Too, Must Love that wasn’t yet out of print, and then every additional bookPazira’s flight to Pakistan make up some of therumination than a journalistic history of her country,
ornick judiciously complicates her radicalreferenced in those. (Blessings on the newsstand boys who
illness. They could land a woman in jail or a psychiatric institution, with or
sold us the books
most harrowing parts of the book. Exile forces
A Bed of Red Flowers is driven by the author’s passion
individualist interpretation by examiningwith a minimum of grief.)
without electric shock treatments. The pulps remind us of how much courage it
Nelofer and her family to reconsider theirnarrate the history of a country that, she suggests,
Stanton’s connectedness to her feminist Katherine V. Forrest’s anthology, Lesbian Pulp Fiction:toThetook in the fifties and prefeminist sixties to pursue a life with women, and how
Sexually Intrepid
understanding of the class and religious tensions
and the West still do not know.
comrades and personal friends—usually the sameWorld of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950–1965, brought backAmerica
utterly thrilling it could be to discover these secret, underground worlds. They
these memories andunderlying the war. For their journey across the
Pazira’s mother and father belonged to an
people—and the pleasure she took in sisterhood.more as I read through the selection of excerpts from twenty-two
remind us, too, of how subversive women’s dreams and lesbian lives were in theclassics fromdesert to Pakistan, this modern Afghani family
elite that embraced many aspects of a
Gornick knows about this because of her ownthe heyday of the pulp novel. Forrest cheerfully prefacesurbanized
face of the postwar wave of conformity that swept America in the fifties.
each excerpt with theposes as tribe of devout provincials. For the first
Western lifestyle in the late sixties and seventies.
feminist illumination, that “moment of joy, when aoriginal publication’s lurid cover and sensational jacket
Many of the pulps that followed Women’s Barracks and 3-B focused
copy, providing antime in her life Nelofer dons a burqa, the traditional
Her father was a respected physician in Kabul andsufficiently large number of people are galvanizedentertaining introduction to these books for the generations
specifically on lesbian experience: Vin Packer (Marijane Meaker)’s Spring Fire
who started
Muslim cover of Afghani women. Back in Kabul
her mother a teacher of Persian literature. Nelofer
by a social explanation of how their lives havereading after the pulps disappeared, as well as for those who(reprinted 2004 by Cleis Press) is the tale of a motherless, tomboyish college girlnever understoodshe only occasionally saw women in burqas, andherself enjoyed a modern education, one of only
taken shape and are gathered together... for thewhat all the fuss was about.
“done wrong” by an older sorority sister. Ann Bannon’s beloved Beebo Brinker
neither she nor any of the women of her family
five percent of Afghani women with the same
pleasure of elaborating the insight.” She illustrates The best reason to read the old pulps is that they’re fun.
series (all currently in print from Cleis) follows the adventures of a group of
But there are otherwore them in their daily lives.
privilege. The year after her father was first imprisStanton’s experience with excerpts from herreasons: readers in their twenties and thirties will recognize
girls as they make their way to Greenwich Village.
their own lives andThus disguised, Nelofer and her family
oned, in 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan,correspondence, much fuller in those days withoutdreams in the “differently gendered” Beebo Brinker, heroine
Other pulps have extensive publishing histories as well; several were amongof Ann Bannon’s
encounter a people and a culture they barely
launching a brutal, decades-long war with
telephones and with rapid postal service than itmuch loved and frequently reprinted tales. Those who appreciate
the top five bestsellers the year they were published. Kensington Press recently
edgy episodes
recognize. They spend a few nights in the home ofAmerican-backed guerillas, the mujahidin. With themight be now. I wish, however, that Gornick hadcan revel in the day when a single kiss could make a woman
reprinted all six of Paula Christian’s novels, which were republished previously
both an outcast andsome poor villagers, where Nelofer prefers to go
war, the Pazira family’s privileged life was steadily
made more of Stanton’s lifelong partnership withan outlaw. And historians will note the guidebook-like qualities
in the late seventies and early eighties in spiffy leatherette-covered collector’sof many of thehungry rather than share food that has passed
dismantled.
Susan B. Anthony—one of the great personal/books and the way they disseminated new ideas throughout
editions. Naiad Press republished Ann Bannon’s five Beebo Brinker novels andthe culture.
through so many unwashed hands. It is at thisAs a teenager, Nelofer identifies strongly with thepolitical partnerships in history. (I would place it in An estimated 2,000 lesbian-themed novels were publishedthree of Valerie Taylor’s novels in mass-market priced Volute Press editions in
as part of thepoint that Nelofer realizes that, with her limited
whom she idolizes as a nationalist force
the same category as that of Franklin and Eleanorgreat pulp paperback boom inspired by the success ofmujahidin,
the early eighties.
the “pocket books”
experience, she is unqualified to judge the village
resisting the Soviet invaders. After school she andRoosevelt.) The Stanton/Anthony partnership was
women whose lives differ so much from hers.
her friends regularly line up to throw rocks at thethe more powerful because of their differences: theNaseema, the family’s guide and host, is one ofSoviet tanks, and at one point she even acquires a
strategic, practical, spinster Anthony and the18 Women’s Review of Books Vol. 23,
No. 1, January/February 2006
many women left orphaned and widowed by the
gun and joins an underground resistance movement.
iconoclastic, theoretical, eloquent Stanton,

I

“

“

”

E

V

G

”

war. Barely older than Nelofer, she has made it her
life’s purpose to avenge her parents’ murder by
Russian soldiers. She regularly crosses the desert ina burqa and delivers fleeing families across theborder to the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
Early in her stay in Pakistan, Nelofer cracks open
a window to take a peek at the neighborhood. The
sound of gunshots causes her to retreat in terror.
Women, her hosts explain to her, are not allowed to
be seen without “proper cover,” even from thewindows of their homes. It is a jarring introduction
to freedom in the new country, and to her new
identity as a Muslim woman.
Here and in many passages, Pazira is careful tosuggest that the problems of Afghani women
cannot be attributed merely to the Taliban. At
one point, she meets an Afghani woman in a
refugee camp who begs to be paid with a burqa
for her appearance in Kandahar. Outside
Afghanistan, burqas have become extremely
hard to come by, and the young woman issure that it is just the accessory she needs tocreate erotic allure on her wedding night.
Pazira refuses, but is left unsettled by theexchange and its implications for the futureof women in Afghanistan.
The making of the film Kandahar makes up
a lengthy and interesting section of thememoir. Parts of the movie were shot in a
refugee camp on the Iran-Pakistan border. The Iranian director Mohsen
Makhmalbaf, known for his brilliant
and canny realism, chose the actors from thepoor refugee families. At every turn, the crew meetsthe reluctance of fathers and husbands to allow theirwomen to be “shown.” Actresses are hired only to disappear the next day, snatched back to their homes byenraged fathers. Pazira becomes the object of scrutiny
and suspicion as again and again, she is enjoined toleave the film crew, drape herself in a burqa, and settle down to be a proper Muslim woman.
Pazira frequently evades private details about
her life, so the memoir, though often highly
dramatic, lacks the intimate episodes andreflections that would have made it a true personal
history. Her quest to find her friend Dyana is meant
to drive the book’s second half, but Pazira’s
description of the friendship suffers from herevasiveness. Dyana finally is no more than ashadow-self for Pazira, a way of keeping alive her
connection to her lost country.

Pazira concentrates the final section of thebook on a series of interviews she conductedwith former Soviet soldiers in January 2004.
Islam, the Taliban, and even the American-led war
and occupation of Afghanistan, are given scanttreatment as she focuses on what she believes is thetrue point of departure for modern Afghan history:
the Soviet invasion of 1979. As she forces our gazefrom both her life and present-day Afghanistan, herpassion and conviction are unbridled. For all thegaps and evasions of her telling, hers is aremarkable journey. From a Kabul prison cell as agirl of five, Nelofer Pazira’s journey ends at Lenin’s
tomb; she has become a woman, a journalist, and an
exile for whom the search for Afghanistan is her
life’s calling.
Jasmin Darznik is a lawyer and doctoral candidate at
Princeton University. She is writing a dissertation on
narratives of Middle Eastern women in exile.

housewife and mother, able to write only because

28 Women’s Review of Books Vol. 23, No. 1, January/February 2006
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