Sinister Wisdom 70

Sinister Wisdom

70

30th
Anniversary
Celebration
Spring 2007

$6US
US
$6

Publisher: Sinister Wisdom, Inc.

Sinister Wisdom 70
Spring 2007

Submission Guidelines

Editor: Fran Day
Layout and Design: Kim P. Fusch
Production Assistant: Jan Shade
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 #68/69: Linda Bacci, Fran Day, Roxanna Fiamma,
Casey Fisher, Susan Levinkind, Moire Martin, Stacee Shade, andSandy Tate.
Special thanks to: Roxanna Fiamma, Rose Provenzano, Chris Roerden,
Jan Shade and Jean Sirius.
Front Cover Art: “Sinister Wisdom” Photo by Tee A. Corinne (Fromthe cover of Sinister Wisdom #3, 1977.)
Back Cover Art: “Thirty Years of Sinister Wisdom” Photo by Roxanna N.
Fiamma.
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 152.
Check our website atwww.sinisterwisdom.org for updates on upcoming issues. Please read thesubmission guidelines below before sending material.
Submissions should be sent to the editor or guest editor of the issue. Everything else should be sent to Sinister Wisdom, POB 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703.
Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully.
Submission may be in any style or form, or combination of forms.
Maximum submission: five poems, two short stories or essays, or one
longer piece of up to 2500 words. We prefer that you send your work byemail in Word. If sent by mail, submissions must be mailed flat (not folded)
with your name and address on each page. We prefer you type your work
but short legible handwritten pieces will be considered; tapes acceptedfrom 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 self-addressed stamped
postcard. GRAPHIC ARTISTS should send B&W photos or drawings(duplicates) of their work (no slides). Images sent electronically must havea resolution of 300dpi for photos and 600 for line drawings. TIF’s and
PDF’s are preferred. 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 publishing costs (larger donations accepted). * Give Sinister Wisdom
for birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. * Please consider doing a benefit or subscription drive for Sinister Wisdom in your area.

Sinister Wisdom 70
Spring 2007

$6 US

Sinister Wisdom

30th Anniversary
Celebration

70

Publisher: Sinister Wisdom, Inc.

Sinister Wisdom 70
Spring 2007

Submission Guidelines

Editor: Fran Day
Layout and Design: Kim P. Fusch
Production Assistant: Jan Shade
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 #68/69: Linda Bacci, Fran Day, Roxanna Fiamma,
Casey Fisher, Susan Levinkind, Moire Martin, Stacee Shade, andSandy Tate.
Special thanks to: Roxanna Fiamma, Rose Provenzano, Chris Roerden,
Jan Shade and Jean Sirius.
Front Cover Art: “Sinister Wisdom” Photo by Tee A. Corinne (Fromthe cover of Sinister Wisdom #3, 1977.)
Back Cover Art: “Thirty Years of Sinister Wisdom” Photo by Roxanna N.
Fiamma.
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 152.
Check our website atwww.sinisterwisdom.org for updates on upcoming issues. Please read thesubmission guidelines below before sending material.
Submissions should be sent to the editor or guest editor of the issue. Everything else should be sent to Sinister Wisdom, POB 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703.
Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully.
Submission may be in any style or form, or combination of forms.
Maximum submission: five poems, two short stories or essays, or one
longer piece of up to 2500 words. We prefer that you send your work byemail in Word. If sent by mail, submissions must be mailed flat (not folded)
with your name and address on each page. We prefer you type your work
but short legible handwritten pieces will be considered; tapes acceptedfrom 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 self-addressed stamped
postcard. GRAPHIC ARTISTS should send B&W photos or drawings(duplicates) of their work (no slides). Images sent electronically must havea resolution of 300dpi for photos and 600 for line drawings. TIF’s and
PDF’s are preferred. 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 publishing costs (larger donations accepted). * Give Sinister Wisdom
for birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. * Please consider doing a benefit or subscription drive for Sinister Wisdom in your area.

spring 2007

1

A Journal by and for LesbiansContents
Notes for a Magazine .............................. Fran Day ................................ 4
Notes From Our Readers ........................................................................ 5
Thank You to Our Supporters ................................................................. 8
The Great Conference Caper andthe Beginning of Sinister Wisdom ........... Merril Mushroom ................ 10
Catherine Nicholson and Sinister Wisdom
Pat Meller and Chris Roerden 13
Our Words, Our Stories, Our Lives ........ Jae Haggard .......................... 16
Shared Anniversary: SW, MT, and Me .... Ida VSW Red ....................... 18
Anita Cornwell: Remembranceof Things Present ............................. Janet Mason ......................... 19
Remembering ......................................... Jean Taylor ........................... 23
Cosmology .............................................. Billie Dee ............................. 26
Lesbian Nation in Aotearoa/New Zealand.. Alison J. Laurie .................... 27
A Tribute to Tee Corinne (One of Many) ... Jean Sirius ............................ 34
Two Strong Lesbians ............................... Ruth Mountaingrove ............ 38
Tribute to Tee Corinne ............................ rainbow williams .................. 39
Some Lessons on the Trip So Far ............. Lauren Levey ........................ 40
Gloria, My Home ................................... Kit Quan .............................. 43
All Of Us Want To Claim You................. tatiana de la tierra ................. 46
One of a Kind ......................................... Denise M. Hise .................... 48
Remembering Out Loud ......................... Bea Loud .............................. 50
When I Learned I Was a Warrior ............ Marjorie Norris .................... 62
Liberation Trilogy ................................... Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien 63
for audre lorde ........................................ Chase Nascent ...................... 68
K. G. and Me: The Story of My Love
and Years with Kay Gardner ............. Robin Fre ............................. 70
Barbara Cameron Nation Shield ............. Chrystos ............................... 78
Barbara Cameron .................................... Kelly Cogswell...................... 79
Sister MotherTongue .............................. Ida VSW Red ....................... 81
Remembering 1000 Women: The Women’sMemorial Labyrinth in Germany ............ Renate Stendhal ................... 83
In Memory of Marnee Kennedy .............. Diann Bowoman .................. 88

2sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Martha Courtot ...................................... Lilith Rogers......................... 90
Hills ........................................................ Lilith Rogers......................... 91
Appearances Can Be Deceiving ............... Lilith Rogers......................... 93
Tribute to Tina Grigg .............................. Kirsten Hearn ...................... 96
Elizabeth Freeman................................... Cathy Cade .......................... 98
Remembering Elizabeth Freeman ............ Marge Nelson ..................... 100
Home ..................................................... Sandia Belgrade .................. 102
Sharon Silvas ........................................... Katherine ........................... 103
In the Presence of Greatness:
Barbara Deming ............................... Marilyn Murphy ................ 105
Remembering the First Lesbian in My Life.. Ona Marae ......................... 109
Dreaming of Lesbos ................................ tatiana de la tierra ............... 112
Pathway to Lesbianism ............................ tatiana de la tierra ............... 113
Colleen Regan ......................................... Kathe Kirkbride ................. 114
A Reverie: To Alexandra Grilikhes ........... Janet Mason ....................... 115
Impulse to Fly: A Memory of
Almitra David .................................. Janet Mason ....................... 117
The MotherLode Collective .................... Nyla Dartt .......................... 119
Book Reviews:
With Her Machete in Her Hand: Reading Chicana Lesbians
Written by Catrióna Rueda Esquibel; Reviewed by Patricia Cardozo, Xiaoxin
Zeng, and Esther Rothblum ................................................................ 125
Compañeras: Latina Lesbians: An Anthology / Lesbianas Latinoamericanas:
Expandido en Español
Compiled and Edited by Juanita Ramos; Reviewed by Tania Ramalho andVanessa Nemeth; Foreword by Juanita Ramos ..................................... 126
Review Essay: Once And Future Warriors .. Julie R. Enszer .................... 128
Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde written by Alexis de Veaux
Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan written by June Jordan
Where the Apple Falls written by Samiya BashirArmor and Flesh written by Mendi Lewis Obadike
Chinese Blackbird written by Sherry Quan Lee
Contributors’ Notes ............................................................................ 135
Books Received ................................................................................... 143
Ads ..................................................................................................... 144
Back Issues .......................................................................................... 150
Subscription Information .................................................................... 151
Upcoming Issues: Call for Submissions ............................................... 152

spring 2007

3

ART
Sinister Wisdom .......................... by Tee A. Corinne ............ Front Cover
Sinister Wisdom Bulk
Mailing Crew ........................ by Fran Day ...................................... 9
Anita Cornwell ............................ by Janet Mason ............................... 20
Tee A. Corinne ............................ by Jean Sirius .................................. 35
Tee A. Corinne ............................ by Jean Sirius .................................. 37
Gloria Anzaldúa ........................... by Annie Valva ................................ 43
Gloria Anzaldúa ........................... by Cathy Cade ................................ 47
Vickie Sears .................................. by Tee A. Corinne ........................... 54
Jeannette Howard Foster .............. by Tee A. Corinne ........................... 55
Margaret Sloan-Hunter ................ by Tee A. Corinne ........................... 56
Sarah Aldridge ............................. by Tee A. Corinne ........................... 57
Barbara Macdonald ...................... by Avery McGinn ........................... 58
Karen Anna.................................. by PGar .......................................... 58
Terri Jewell ................................... by Tee A. Corinne ........................... 59
Pat Parker .................................... by Tee A. Corinne ........................... 59
May Sarton .................................. by JEB ............................................ 60
Monique Wittig ........................... by JEB ............................................ 60
Valerie Taylor ............................... by Tee A. Corinne ........................... 61
June Arnold ................................. by Tee A. Corinne ........................... 61
Audre Lorde ................................. by JEB ............................................ 69
Kay Gardner ................................ by JEB ............................................ 75
Barbara Cameron ......................... by JEB ............................................ 78
Wiesbaden Labyrinth ................... by Ina Auerbach .............................. 82
Martha Courtot ........................... by Tee A. Corinne ........................... 90
Elizabeth Freeman........................ by Cathy Cade ................................ 98
Barbara Deming........................... by JEB .......................................... 106
Colleen Regan .............................. by Kathe Kirkbride ....................... 114
Thirty Years of Sinister Wisdom ... by Roxanna N. Fiamma .... Back Cover4sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Notes for a Magazine
Dedication, Invitations, Celebrations, and Appreciations
This 30th Anniversary issue of Sinister Wisdom is dedicated with love tothe thousands of Lesbians whose lives have been touched by the journal.
As I gathered and arranged the volumes for the photograph on the backcover, an amazing thing happened. I sensed a powerful gynergy flowing,
spiraling from the collection of journals on the table. I felt thirty profoundyears of courage, excitement, connections, resistance, awakenings, hopes,
validations, possibilities, laughter, tears, love, creativity, engagement, andstimulation. And yes, hard work, perseverance, angst, resilience and muchmore. Friends stopped by to admire the collection, to share memories, tocelebrate the legacy of the body of work, and to give wishes for the future ofSinister Wisdom. Let these celebrations continue in the homes, communities, hearts and minds of the Sinisterhood everywhere!
Appreciations: Thank you to all Lesbian Sisters, sung and unsung. Appreciations to writers, artists, readers, listeners, advisors, supporters, mailing crews, proofreaders, typists, binders, coordinators, donators, reviewers,
board members, bookstore Sisters, designers, layouters, organizers, dreamers, inciters, editors, guest editors, web designers, searchers, sparkers, spinsters, weavers, comrades, friends, lovers, and others. We invite each of you
reading or listening to this issue to join us in celebrating thirty inspiring
years of survival and to help us continue thriving for many more years.

“[Let us continue to] be strong of heart; to believe in the importance oflesbian words and images as more than evidence we exist, more than documentation, more than entertainment. To know that the culture we create from ourwidely various lives is unique, growing as we grow, enriching us and nourishing
future lesbians whose roots reach through ourselves back to the lesbians who havecome before. We have to believe that what we do now directly affects lesbians tocome. To know themselves fully, they must be able to touch, to read, to [feel] thegifts of our hearts.”
Common Lives / Lesbian Lives, #12 (Summer 1984, p. 4).
Fran Day
Sebastopol, California

spring 2007

5

Notes From Our Readers
Dear SW, You are doing such a great job – it’s wonderful to have Sinister
Wisdom coming out again on a regular basis. I’ve been contributing writing
and art to lesbian and feminist publications since 1978; at that time there
were a lot more of them. I’m thankful for those that have survived so long,such as sinister wisdom, maize, off our backs, and lesbian connection.
zana, Arizona
Dear SW, I feel great good will toward Sinister Wisdom and everyone
who has worked to help her manifest.
Rose, New Zealand
Dear SW, Thanks so much for entering me on the subscription list!
This kind of reading is so helpful, yet hard to come by in my present location (prison). Keep educating and breaking the spell of patriarchy and allother concepts we women harm ourselves with. Let’s rise and be healthy!
Trianice, North Carolina
I am very impressed with the journal, the depth and breadth of thepieces.Thank you and to all the women who made this possible and for thethirty years of commitment. Blessings of joy to all the hearts,
TziPi, North Carolina
Dear SW, Thank you for sending Sinister Wisdom to me. I am incarcerated and don’t have much except what you’ve given me. I appreciate you
very much. I’d like your continued support, please.
Urlean, California
Congratulations to everyone for reaching such a significant milestone(30th anniversary).
Jean, Australia
Dear SW, Please renew my subscription and know that if I wasn’t inprison, I would gladly pay for all of your liberating and awesomely inspiring
publications. I am so proud of who I am and what I am – your books makeme feel free. Please know that your kindness and loyalty to the “cause”
strengthens all of us as a whole. I am so grateful to all of you.
Carol, Texas

6sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Congratulations on your 30th year of publication! I could only afford
to keep my womyn’s publication going for two years in Utah. I know whata struggle you face. Thank you for keeping Sinister Wisdom going for solong. I hope womyn continue to understand the importance of this publication and respond generously. Thank you (and the staff/volunteers) for
your good work. Best of fortune to Sinister Wisdom.
Janice, Utah
Congratulations on 30 years of excellence. A poem of mine was in anissue many years ago and it stills feels like an honor.
Sandia, New Mexico
I want to thank you for your continuing work to chronicle the lives of
lesbians in a multitude of ways. Your work makes our history richer. Thankyou, also, for giving writers a place to share our memories and inspirations.
Ona, Colorado
Thank you so much for maintaining the lesbian institution of Sinister
Wisdom.
Julie, Maryland
Sinister Wisdom is a great journal and I personally love it! Thank you!
Amy Daroszeski, Co-Owner, Broad Vocabulary, LLC
i am a 21 year old pagan dyke who discovered the joys of feminism &the lesbian community in my teens... i would prowl about used book storesin search of back issues of sinister wisdom, inspired by these womon whocame before me. sinister wisdom has been a constant source of comfort &inspiration for me over the years. namaste! in sisterhood,chase
I so deeply appreciate all that you do and Sinister Wisdom is such animportant Lesbian space that preserves, encourages and expands Lesbian
culture.
Jae, New Mexico
Thank you for continuing a very valuable and useful journal.
Lorraine Ironplow (formerly of Mother Kali’s Bookstore), Oregon

spring 20077

I was reading the latest issue of lesbian connection and saw your ad and I
could not believe my eyes - it has been years since I’ve seen sinister wisdom I would eat up every issue that came out in the 80s and I thought you wentout of business. I am so happy to have found you again - you were a hugepart of my coming out. Thanks for hanging in there.
aliciai saved many back issues and appreciate so much Sinister Wisdom andall her editors!!!—many thanks,
HarvestDear Sisters of Sinister Wisdom, Much thanks for sending books to me
and other lesbians that are incarcerated. Y’all have certainly helped me getthrough and I’ve learned a lot about myself over the last few years especiallycoming out and living happily now as a lesbian with a beautiful lesbian
lover. I read the books several times over and enjoy the stories and poetry as
though it’s the first time reading and get more out of them each time. Thisin itself has saved me and allowed me to learn about myself as a woman,lover, friend and lesbian. Keep developing, evaluating, and searching for abetter future for lesbians.
Lisa, Texas
Dear Sinister Wisdom. I am a 24-year-old inmate and I really enjoy yourpublication. I just want you to know how inspirational these issues are to
youth like me who truly adore every aspect of women. I’ve been out since I
was fifteen and have been able to live comfortably because of strong lesbians
who have paved the way, like yourselves. Thank you!
Fonseca, California

8sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Thank You to Our Supporters
Thank you!
Sinister Wisdom would like to thank the following supporters for theirgenerous gifts throughout our 30th anniversary year.
There is still time to send contributions. Please make checks payable to Sinister Wisdom, Inc. Mail to Fran Day, POBox 1180, Sebastopol, CA 95473.
Your name will be listed in a future issue (unless you request to remain anonymous).
Sinister Wisdom, Inc. is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization.
All contributions are tax deductible.
Anonymous (6)Lea E. Arellano
Jenny Axley
Elliott batTzedek & Karen Escovitz
Bella Books
Denise Berro & Barbara Brydon
Blankenship Family
Bold Strokes Books
Bywater Books
Cathy Cade
Diana Cerise
Becky Banasiak CodeJan Couvillon
Jemma T. Crae
Corey Deckerman
Marianna deFrancis
Alix Dobkin
Barbara J. Dobson
Emile d’Orsay
Gail Dunlap
Janice Eberhardt
Nancy Estes
Roxanna Fiamma
Terry Fowler
Judy Freespirit
Anna Furtado & Earlene Meyer
Nancy Garden

Pat Gilmore
Sheridan Gold and Dianna Grayer
Sue Goldwomon
Jan Griesinger
Gabriella Heinsheimer
Cindy L. Hoffman
Tryna HopeIn Memory of Elena
jody jewdyke
Theodora Kramer
Patricia Jackson
Mary M. Leno
Alicia Lucksted
Luna Luvster
Joan Margaret
Vera Martin
Chris Mazzuca
Mara McDonald
Cheryl Moore
Marjorie Nelson
Michelle Nichols & Laura Stein
Marjorie Norris
Ollie
Ann P.
Rose Provenzano
Sudie Rakusin
Lauren Ravi

spring 2007

Margaret Reilly
Senecarol Rising & Moire Martin
Kim Rivers
Esther Rothblum
Lisa Rudman
Lucinda Sangree
Teya Schaffer
Mary Schlee
Carel Schneider
Carolyn Shafer

9

Linda Shear
Susan D. Smith
Tova Stabin
Judith Stein & Meri Lawrence
Bea Stone & Kim Larabee
Sandy Tate
Women in Black, Corner of Roland &41st, Baltimore
Judith Witherow & Sue Lenaerts
zana

Sinister Wisdom #65 Bulk Mailing Party, October 2005. Clockwise from upper right: Sandy Tate,
Luna, Carolyn De Tierra, Moire Martin, jody jewdyke, Lilith Rogers, and Jan Shade. Missing: Linda
Bacci, Roxanna Fiamma, Barbara Link, Fran Day and Stacee Shade.
Photo by Fran Day.

10sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

by Merril Mushroom

The Great Conference Caperand the Beginning of Sinister Wisdom
Thirty-two years ago, in the living room of my home in Knoxville,
Tennessee, Sinister Wisdom was given a push in its birthing process.
In the early years of the 70s, we dykes were riding high on the new wave
of feminism. After being vilified and criminalized throughout the 50s and60s because we were lesbians, my friends and I thought the 70s swept in likea breath of fresh air with women’s liberation — or so it seemed at first.
However, because we were dykes, the heterosexual leaders of the women’s
movement saw fit to exclude us. Being lesbian still was unacceptable tomost of mainstream society, and many of our straight sisters were afraid of
us — afraid that they’d be considered guilty of perversion themselves were
they to be associated with lesbians, afraid that any alliance with us would
sully their credibility as real feminists who were concerned with issues ofwomen’s equality, afraid of the threat we posed to their acceptance of theheteropatriarchy. Nevertheless, we had our own strong network of lesbian
feminists, loud, proud, assertive dykes. Some of us engaged with the straightfeminists, pushing for inclusion, even acceptance as a legitimate part of theirwomen’s liberation movement, but many of us chose to be separate, doing
our work the way we wanted to, as far removed from the heteropatriarchy as
was possible.
In 1972, I moved from New York City to Knoxville, Tennessee, where
Julia Penelope introduced me to the dykes of the Knoxville Lesbian Feminist
Alliance. The South at that time was a hotbed of lesbian-feminist activity,
and there was a great deal of networking among the many lesbian-feminist
communities in the Southern states. The Knoxville Lesbian Feminist Alliance (KLFA) had a collective house near the university and published amimeographed newsletter, “Mother Jones Gazette.” The Iowa City women’scollective came to Knoxville to do workshops for us on health care and self
exams. We had lesbian consciousness-raising groups, softball teams, a women’s
coffeehouse, lesbian writers’ group, and a lesbian prom.
Due to the efforts of several Knoxville lesbians who were politicallyplaced and so had to be highly closeted, yet were concerned about women’sissues, we lesbian-feminist activists were able to have a discreet but firm
hand in many of the straight women’s conferences that were happening.

spring 2007

11

Even though we would have been shunned as lesbians, we often did damage
control and prevented disruptions when the “John Birchers” — radical Christian right-wingers — would show up to picket against anything that smacked
at all of the Equal Rights Amendment. Meanwhile, a group of heterosexual
women community leaders got a grant to open a women’s center in Knoxville which lesbians were not allowed to attend. However, unbeknownst to
the straight women who were in charge, two of the women’s center’s employees were lesbians, and they secretly opened up the center to lesbian
meetings.
Since Knoxville was only four hours away from Atlanta, we Knoxvilledykes also participated in functions with the newly-formed Atlanta Lesbian
Feminist Alliance (ALFA), who also had a collective house and published anewsletter (“Atalanta”). Meanwhile, outside Atlanta in Athens, GA, Julia
Penelope was teaching at the University and helping to organize the lesbianfeminist movement there.
Around this time, the AAUW group in Athens received a grant to put ona women’s conference through the University. At first the dyke community
was excited about this, but then concerns began to arise: The conference seemed
to be developing in an exclusive fashion, geared toward educated, privileged,
white, straight women. The cost of admission was very expensive. There wasno child care offered, nor assistance with transportation or housing. Issues
conceming women on welfare, women in prisons, old women, single mothers, women with disabilities, and lesbian women were given no consideration
as topics for sessions. The workshop on women’s sexuality was slated to be
conducted by a MAN (a doctor . . .).
Julia and her cohorts diplomatically approached the university womenand requested that attention be given to these issues. The university women
were not receptive. The lesbian-feminists met, worked to find a solution tothis problem, tried to figure out a way to break this impasse. Finally, theydecided that the best way to fill in the gaps would be to hold an additional
conference themselves, an all-volunteer no-cost alternative conference thatwould address the issues which were being ignored by the university women.
Julia put out a call to arms, and members of KLFA, ALFA, and otherlesbian feminists around the Southeast rallied to the cause of our sisters inAthens. In record time, a space was located and donated — right across thestreet from the AAUW conference. Volunteers set up childcare, workshops,
and housing, did outreach and publicity, and raised a small amount of moneyfor financial assistance. Best of all, Gloria Steinem, who was the keynote
speaker brought in at great expense by the AAUW for their conference,

12

sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebrationagreed to speak at the alternative conference free of charge. The alternative
conference was a great success, and during the course of it, I met Ann.
Ann lived in North Carolina. She and her date had come to attend the
AAUW conference and decided to check out the alternative, since it was
nearby and the admission was free. (Several of the attendees from the AAUW
conference who were curious or interested came to see what we were doing,
and many of them offered to lend their badges for admission to the AAUW
conference to anyone who hadn’t paid the admission fee but who mightwant to attend any of the presentations.) Ann and I chatted, found eachother interesting, and exchanged addresses for future communication. Afterthe conference, we wrote letters back and forth, and then she came to visit
me in Tennessee. We developed an enjoyable, slightly romantic, long-distance relationship which involved lots of correspondence and occasional
visits.
During one of our visits, Ann said, “I have these two friends from Charlotte — Catherine and Harriet. They’re radical separatists, and they’ve beentalking about putting together a lesbian magazine, a politically radical literary magazine that would publish lesbian stories, poetry, articles, and visualart. Catherine and Harriet want it to focus on what they call “lesbian consciousness.” They have a great plan, but they’re wondering if lesbians would
support such a magazine. What would your writers’ group think about this?”“Why don’t we all meet together?” I suggested to Ann. “Maybe Catherineand Harriet would be willing to come here, and I’ll get the dyke writers over
and also other dykes who read, and we all can sit around and eat some foodand talk about their ideas. I think a magazine like that would be very exciting!”
So lesbians from Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina met together
in my living room one lovely weekend, and we talked and talked and talked
and ate food. We all were thrilled with the idea of such a magazine, and weheaped encouragement upon Catherine and Harriet. Catherine and Harriet
went back home to North Carolina, got to work, and in the summer of
1976, delighted lesbians took the first issue of Sinister Wisdom into our eager hands!
Postscript: I recently saw Catherine Nicholson at the Old Lesbians Organizing for Change Gathering in Durham, North Carolina. She is beautiful andwonderful and it was very exciting to see her again after all these years.

spring 2007

13

Pat Meller and Chris Roerden

Catherine Nicholson and Sinister Wisdom
On this, the 30th anniversary of the birth of Sinister Wisdom, we pay our
respects to its co-founder, Catherine S. Nicholson. Now 84, she recently moved
to a retirement community in Durham, North Carolina. Catherine was born
August 8, 1922, in Troy, N.C.—about 40 miles northeast of Charlotte. Her
father opened the first drug store in Troy and her mother started the firstlibrary in the county. Both parents were active in the community and were
avid readers. When she was four, her sister, eight years her senior, died, so
Catherine became an only child. Her father doted on her.
After graduating from high school at sixteen she attended a small women’scollege in eastern N.C., Flora McDonald College, and at age 19 she was
graduated with a Bachelor’s in English and History. Her first job was teaching at a country high school in Denton, about thirty miles from her birthplace. She was only slightly older than some of her students, a fact theyrecognized and attempted to capitalize on.
After two years of teaching, she enrolled at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned a Master’s degree in English. For the
next several years she taught in western N.C. at junior colleges. Then she
was hired by Salem College in Winston-Salem, the oldest women’s college
in the United States. There she met and roomed with a drama teacher.
Her roommate’s knowledge of drama so impressed Catherine that she
knew she wanted to study theater. Because her roommate had studied under Elvina Kraus and earned her degree in theater at Northwestern University, Catherine decided to take classes in performance techniques with thesame teacher. But Elvina Kraus did not teach in the summer, the only time
Catherine had available. She could not afford to further her education unless she also worked, which meant continuing to teach literature at various
women’s colleges. Although she earned her Master’s in Theater, she was disappointed that she could not completely realize her dream.
Eventually, however, she received a scholarship from Northwestern, andthat enabled her to become a full-time student. At last she was able to study
under Elvina Kraus, and she earned her Ph.D. in Theater.
In the early sixties Catherine was hired by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) and started the Theater Department there. At
the local women’s center she met a woman who was also teaching at UNCC,
Harriet Ellenberger. They became friends, sharing a great empathy for womenand anger over the many issues that unfairly discriminated against women.

14sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Catherine was angry at the UNCC officials because they weren’t giving artists their due, and Harriet, who was really an anarchist, was angry withgovernment at all levels. They were soul mates in their distrust of authority.
When they left the University, Harriet moved in with Catherine, andtheir deep personal and professional relationship continued for almost twenty
years. Both wanted to be writers, so each of them spent three hours writing
each day. Harriet took the nom de plume Harriet Desmoines—after her
hometown, Des Moines, Iowa.
Thirty years ago the second wave of feminism was growing and a number of publications were dealing with political issues. However, Catherineand Harriet wanted a forum in which women could express themselves andtheir dissatisfaction with their lives and relationships. The two women decided to publish a journal as a way to give voice to their concerns.
They called their journal Sinister Wisdom. Catherine had encounteredthose words in a novel written by a woman in the state of Washington. Until
then, she had not heard the word “sinister” used with “wisdom.” She saysthat when she came across the phrase she “went crazy.”
She contributed some of the articles for the initial issue, but Harriet
wrote most of them. They simply didn’t know anyone else to ask. The firstissue was printed July 4, 1976, at a small press near Charlotte, just across thestate line in South Carolina. In addition to writing the entire content of thefirst issue, Harriet and Catherine did everything, from preparing the layout
to locating printers and distributing all the copies.
After Catherine’s mother died, then her father, she inherited the family
home in Troy and some money. She used this inheritance to finance Sinister
Wisdom, firmly believing that she did the right thing and that her father
would have approved.
Following the publication of their first issue, its founders began traveling across the country, meeting women they had been in contact with in theSouth. In their travels they gathered material for their writing and solicitedarticles from others.
At first, the journal was not defined as a Lesbian journal; it was for all
women. And it tapped into a deep strain of dissatisfaction among women,
who kept being drawn to the publication and furnishing articles. When
Catherine and Harriet arrived in Lincoln, Nebraska, they stayed for about ayear, meeting several women writers in the area. They discovered that theyno longer had to search for authors or for volunteers to help with production. Among the more prolific writers they met was Julia Penelope Stanley,
who taught at the University of Nebraska.
When Adrienne Rich came to Lincoln she spoke openly of her support
for the journal. In Catherine’s words, Adrienne “was in love with Sinister
Wisdom.” Catherine and Harriet later moved to San Francisco, where they

spring 200715

met Susan Lee Star, who also wrote for the journal and became anotherstrong supporter.
In 1981, Catherine and Harriet moved to Shelburne Falls in western Massachusetts. Catherine was soon hired by Goddard College in Vermont, due inpart to her work with Sinister Wisdom. For a while she commuted to Goddard,
but eventually the women moved to Vermont and settled in Plainfield.
After publishing the journal for five years, they turned it over to Adrienne
Rich and her partner, Michelle Cliff. The biggest concern of its founders wasthat the journal continue to be published. They knew Adrienne had the namerecognition, requisite skills, and the resources to keep it going. They found it
easy to let go because Catherine, nearly sixty, and Harriet, were tired of all thework. Yet they continued doing some work with Sinister Wisdom after transferring it. They even received payment for their efforts. Though they nevermade any real money from the journal, any payment felt good.
Today, Catherine continues to maintain friendships with Harriet,
Adrienne, and Michelle, and she continues her lifelong passion of attending
theater productions. She has not “outed” herself to her retirement community. She says she’ll deal with it should it ever arise. On August 19, 2006, atthe 5th national gathering of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC),
Catherine Nicholson was honored for her role in co-founding and publishing Sinister Wisdom. She says she is surprised, delighted, and proud that
Sinister Wisdom is alive and well. “It was something that had to happen,” sheadds, and is happy she was there to “birth” this wonderful journal. Its archives are housed at Duke University.
Thank you, Catherine. Thank you for your determination, financial
generosity, and vision. You created a revolution that has lasted for thirty
years and is still going strong.
From Notes for a Magazine, Sinister Wisdom #1 (Summer 1976)
By Catherine Nicholson and Harriet Ellenberger
We call our space Sinister Wisdom because the root meaning of“sinister” is “from the left side.” The Law of the Fathers equates rightover-left, white-over-black, heterosexual-over-homosexual, and maleover-female with good-over-evil. Sinister Wisdom turns these patriarchal values upside down as a necessary prelude to creating our own.
The left, the genuine Left, means revolution. We choose “sinister”
because we mean, we intend, revolution. Revolution that destroys the
structures of oppression as we seize power over our lives.
And the left side connotes intuition, the bringing into light of
all that has lain dormant within us.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Jae Haggard

Our Words, Our Stories, Our Lives
Back in the 70s I joined the wave of 60s idealists homesteading andlearning ways to live our communitarian, ecological and humanitarian values. My lover and I bought on extended low payments 80 undeveloped
acres in north central Minnesota and began to live our dream, learning everything but everything from scratch. Oh, the stories we all have of thosedays. Laugh.
For most of our 10 years there I felt like I was living 2 dreams—life on
the land and life with my wondrous Lesbian partner. Yet, eventually theisolation caught up with me. I felt so alone, so yearning for other wimmin
who love wimmin and share similar dreams.
I went to Minneapolis for a visit and was introduced to more Lesbians
than I could imagine in one place. Found more Lesbian friends in months
than I had found in the previous 20 years.
More life-changing for me was the introduction to Lesbian Culture.
What—we not only are a widespread community but we are a People witha developing Culture? Wow, didn’t that shift my paradigms.
I found Chris, Margie, Holly, Tui, Sweet Honey, Alix and all our early
singers. I found books by out Lesbians, books with a Lesbian Feminist perspective on every question and issue. Oh, how my thirsty mind and heart
expanded.
And, I found Lesbian periodicals. What a voice they gave to give our
Lesbian world. Maize, Sinister Wisdom, LC (Lesbian Connection), Common
Lives, Hikane, Dykes Disabilities & Stuff and so many more. With delight I
joined the Lesbian Inciter collective for 4 years. With enthusiasm for us andour evolving culture, I co-founded a project called Radical Rose Recordings
to record our living Lesbian voices. I have been lucky enough to help foundor nourish several Lesbian Lands. Not only do we have a Lesbian Culture,
we also have a Landyke culture. Big smiles.
I am now the editor of Maize and have been part of her production
since 1988. I know what work and dedication it takes to publish a magazine. I know how difficult to find enough money and submissions andenergy to keep going. Not many of those early periodicals are still withus.
Yet, with the submissions of countless Sisters and the stewardship of anamazing and dedicated series of editors and volunteers, Sinister Wisdom lives

spring 2007

17

on. Goes on touching our lives and hearts. Continues inspiring our creativity and sparking our thoughts. Still tells our stories.
Articles, poems and illustrations express us and our lives. Our stories,
put together, express our culture, remind us that we are indeed a Lesbian
People. Sinister Wisdom goes on creating and recording our Journey andunfolding. Goes on inspiring us.
When I left the farm in Minnesota 25 years ago and found all the voicesof our extended Lesbian world, I knew that no matter where I would live I
would never feel isolated again. Rather, I feel an extended connection andalways feel a part of our larger Lesbian world.
I have lived 18 years on a land in New Mexico called Outland. A land
where we can be our biggest Lesbian selves. A land where we too try tocreate, record and preserve Lesbian voices and culture. I now offer Guest
Rooms here so more wimmin can have the opportunity to be among otherwimmin, to connect with the Earth, to heal, and to be our most real authentic selves. A place where each womon can find voice to express her
Lesbian self and add her voice to our whole. (NMWomensRetreat.com)
I believe we are in this life, each of us, to make a difference in some way.
We have LifeWork. Thanks to all those projects and voices that have inspired and kept me company these decades, I have found niches where I too
could make a difference. Can we ask more of ourselves or this life?
Thank you every one of you who has kept Sinster Wisdom so vibrant forso very long. You more than touch our lives. You inspire, create, record andpreserve our lives and culture. You make a difference.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Ida VSW Red

Shared Anniversary– SW, MT, & Me
Thirty years of Sinister Wisdom, of Mothertongue Feminist Theater Collective, and of my lesbian life – congratulations to us all for an era of grassroots
creativity and activism! Together we have helped build and define our lesbian
feminist culture, communities, values, politics, chosen families, and vital new
ways of life. So much more than “lifestyle” or “sexual orientation” can possibly
describe. No combination of labels – womon-loving womon, lesbian, separatist, dyke, gay, queer, radical feminist – begins to catch the full spirit of the times
or the effect of these thirty years on me. Consciousness raising, coming out,
falling in love with women, moving to California, and presenting the joys andchallenges of my process in the pages of Sinister Wisdom and on stage with
Mothertongue have been among the most exciting adventures of my life.
In Mothertongue (MT), I learned from Corky Wick and many others thepower of the collective, the ability of women – inexperienced or seasoned as
writers and actors – to create as equals. MT presents the concerns and interestsof the group in authentic voices that move, educate, validate, and activate thelistener. Laughing and crying, the audience become fans and members. The
process is liberating. Like the herstory of Sinister Wisdom, the list of Mothertongue
titles tracks the progress of the feminist movement.
From Sinister Wisdom I learned to appreciate the originality and freshness of
new writers and find support to join them. Several past editors are among my life
inspirations. Adrienne Rich for her powerful and touching poetry and for daring
to come out as a lesbian and a political being in her poems, risking (and maintaining) her mainstream success. And Elana Dykewomon for keeping the journal
going, encouraging lesbian artists, and beautifully writing our true lives. Being in
the editorial collective for the “Old Lesbians/Dykes” issue of SW (#53) was achallenge and honor I still cherish. Being published in Sinister Wisdom and in
lesbian anthologies edited by Margaret (Peg) Cruikshank are great thrills to me,affirming the oft-quoted and seldom owned credo that we are ALL artists.
Living happily in a group household with Jeanne Clark and others formany years expanded my concept of loving family and home and fed my dreamof being among artists. None of these revelations would have come to me if
Jennifer Ware had not given me the strength to follow my desire and come with
her to California thirty years ago. In many ways, Sinister Wisdom andMothertongue showed me how to become a lesbian feminist with a rich life
graced by supportive family, friends, and lovers to all of whom I send congratulations on this anniversary.

spring 2007

19

Janet Mason

Anita Cornwell: Remembrance of Things Present(This commentary was first aired on “This Way Out,” a worldwide
lesbian and gay radio syndicate based in Los Angeles.)I first met Anita Cornwell in the early eighties at a reading that she andBecky Birtha were giving at a now defunct lesbian and gay community center located on Camac Street, one of the back alleys of center city Philadelphia. Anita was reading from her book, Black Lesbian in White America,
published in 1983, the same year that I came out as a lesbian.
The room where Anita and Becky (whose first book of short stories For
Nights Like This One had just been published) read was small and cramped
and filled with lesbians. There was no place in the world I would have preferred to be. Many of the women in the room, Anita and Becky included,
would come to be important members of my community, intimate friends,
and fellow travelers in the life that still lay ahead of me. At the time theirfaces were still new to me, and these women I had yet to meet, like my list ofbooks I had yet to read, were an endless source of fascination for me.
Looking back on this reading, by these two women who were to become influential friends and alter my course as a lesbian writer, I’d like tosay that my world split open, that I was shaken to the core, my perspective
inalterably changed. But this reading was almost twenty years ago, and as
memory goes, there are many things that have slipped away from me. I do
know that this reading was an important part of my ongoing consciousness
raising, which in those days seemed to be a daily, if not hourly, event.
Since I can’t recall who I was with, I assume I went alone. But I didn’t
feel alone in the intimacy of that small room which resounded with theleveling honesty of both Anita and Becky’s work. When the authors had
finished reading I went up to the front of the room and sat down with them.
I remember that we talked for a while—and that what we talked about,perhaps, was substantial since less than a year later I ended up in the samewriting group with them. But all I recall of our conversation is that I wore
purple day-glo socks and the aspect of my personality that was reflected inthis was not lost on Anita.
Perhaps it was those purple socks that set the stage for a friendship.
I read both of their books and wrote a review of Black Lesbian in WhiteAmerica for Tell-A-Woman, the newsletter of the Women’s Switchboard, a20

sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Anita Cornwall. Photo by Janet Mason.

collective of which I had been a member, and also published a review in off
our backs, the lesbian feminist newspaper out of Washington D.C.
Anita’s book was fire under my heels. Shortly after reading and reviewing it, I attended a women’s liberation conference at Temple University. No
doubt many powerful things were said at this conference. But what I remember most was that one of the women on the panel, a white, heterosexual, upper middle class woman who had made a name for herself in thefeminist movement, answered a question from the audience by saying something to the extent that the women’s movement wanted to include Black
women but that “those women didn’t want to join us.” The audience was avery mixed group, Black and white women and other races, representing
members of the local community as well as students and the academics who
worked at the university. Hisses and objections to this obviously racist remark rifled through the audience, my own voice among the chorus.
After the speakers were done the room was still buzzing with lively dialogue and debate. I entered into a conversation with a conservatively dressedBlack woman, a few decades older than me, who had previously been talking to one of the few men in the room. Her mild amusement—perhaps at
my youth, or my idealism, or my red high top sneakers— turned to ner-

spring 200721

vousness as I mentioned the L-word in the title of Anita’s book. Then I
paraphrased Anita’s statement “You seem to be saying that I have to be led
either by white womyn or Black men. Why can’t I lead myself?”“That’s right!” the woman exclaimed, her vehemence and enthusiasm
undaunted by the fact that her male companion was still standing by herside.
Her consciousness changed on a dime.
And that is the power of the written word.
Anita came of age as a lesbian in the 1950s, and in her early writings—
published in The Ladder and The Negro Digest—she was among the first, if
not the first, to identify as a Black Lesbian in print. Born in the Deep South,“when integration was a term seen only in the dictionary,” Anita writes ofherself as a young woman hanging out in the Village where “She was looking for some of them, but they were home in the closet growing shoe trees.”
She writes of her involvement in the women’s movement when she wasoften one of the oldest women in the room as well as being one of the few
Black women: “We of the fifties (and the forties and on back to when) not
only had to operate from the closet but, worse yet, most of us seemed toexist in a vacuum.”
Anita’s writing reminds us of the things that were and are specific to her
generation, and at the same time she writes of truisms that we would do wellto heed today. “Just as there is no such thing as a little bit of pregnancy, dittowith oppression,” she writes. And she reminds us that “with all the freedomof expression allowed today, Hollywood’s exploitation of womyn is more
violent and vicious than even the most pessimistic Feminist would havebelieved possible just fifteen years ago.” And she stares truth in the facebaldly by questioning the obvious, “Out of over 50 million womyn in thiscountry, why are so many so content to be little more than charwomyn formen?”
Anita Cornwell writes in a voice that is incisive—as Becky Birtha writes
in the foreword of the book, Anita puts forth “...an acute political analysisof both racial and sexual oppressions...both radical and feminist...written
long before those words were in common use together.” She writes of hercollective struggles—joining her voice in a long interview in the mid-section of the book with that of Audre Lorde’s—and she writes of her individual struggles as a lesbian writer: “After staring at hundreds of blankpages....I learned to face myself. I learned that I not only existed but that I
had every right to my own existence!”
As strong as this voice is, it is my concern that it continues to be heard.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Books go out of print, and politics—though they are still as necessary as
ever— go out of fashion. History becomes yet another memory that slides
away. I would like this not to happen with Anita.
Anita writes in a voice that is above all else, unapologetically her own, avoice that is capable of reminding generations to come that they have every
right to their own existence. And that voice is absolutely necessary. When I
think of Anita it is always her voice that comes to mind.
Along with her writing voice, is her speaking voice coming to me acrossthe telephone wires. Our time together in the writing group was short lived
since Anita’s schedule—writing nights and sleeping days—has made it increasingly difficult for her to participate in an ongoing group. Every few
months—sometimes longer—there are gatherings where we get together.
At least on one occasion we offended the hostess of a party—a mutual friendof ours—by sitting in the corner all night and talking about writing. Moreoften there is Anita’s voice on the phone, an encouraging message left on mymachine, or a late afternoon conversation that always alters my perspective—reminding me among other things of the virtues of patience, necessary for hanging in there over the long haul— and leaves me carrying thewarmth of Anita’s voice with me for the rest of the day.
Over the course of nearly twenty years there are many things that afriendship can contain. One of these things for me is the memory of mymother who loved Anita’s work. (Like Anita I was raised by a feminist motherwho very much taught me to be my own person.) Another thing is thememory of a movement, the lesbian feminist milieu that I came out inwhich still shapes my relationship to myself and to the world. Then there ismutual respect, as Anita has always taken an interest in me and my work.
But the most important thing about myfriendship with Anita is the affection that one
woman can feel for another, deeply connected
through the years.

spring 2007

23

Jean Taylor

Remembering
Like most writers my age I have been writing articles and short stories
and whathaveyou about my experiences as a lesbian and feminist activist in
the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) for just about as long as theeditors at Sinister Wisdom have been publishing this lesbian magazine. And
what better way for us not only to have lived and politicised and loved ourway throughout these past three decades but also to have documented all of
our joys and fears and gains as lesbians in the world.
It hasn’t always been easy. But it seems to me, we have lived throughand benefited from and contributed to one of the most vibrantly exciting
and ultimately satisfying periods of herstory the world has ever seen. Thiswas brought home to me when I began to seriously document in a moredetailed and chronological way the details of our WLM events, activities,
publications and whatnot here in Victoria, Australia, from 1970 onwards.
Even though I had attended many of the events, chanted at the marches,read the publications, spoken up at the meetings and helped set up activist
collectives, I was astounded by the extent of our activities and the influence
we’d had and the numbers of landmark occasions that had happened. Someof which I’d never even heard of, let alone attended. Then again, from thisgreat distance in time I might just have forgotten about them, not such an
unlikely occurrence I’m discovering as I read through my journals to document the 70s, the 80s and the 90s in as much detail as possible.
As any lesbian feminist who was active during the 1970s will tell you,that particular decade would have to be one of the most wildly exciting of
all time. If we weren’t painting banners to take on the latest demos andmarch, we were rushing off to collective meetings, setting up refuges, editing the lesbian newsletter and speaking out at public forums. All on thesame day. The rest of the week we made love (Non-monogamously, of course),
attended our C-R Group meetings, debated the latest issue, anything fromup to what age boy children were allowed to attend gatherings, or not at all,as the case may be, to whether to have only vegetarian food at the next
gathering and risk criticism or whether including some meat would alienate
others, danced our feet off, helped organise a womyn’s festival, did thewomyn’s poetry program live-to-air, attended a womyn’s conference interstate, proofread, cut and pasted the monthly magazine, ran it off on thegestetner and mailed it out to subscribers and still had time to make sure we

24sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

did our turn on the roster of duties at our lesbian household. In other words,
if we didn’t do it, whatever it was, it didn’t get done.
Remember when we thought we were indispensable? When we imagined that the revolution started now and it would all be over in a matter ofmonths? When we didn’t make a move without checking it against someideologically sound measure in our heads? When we didn’t speak out because we were afraid of being ostracised by our Sisters? When we were exhausted, cranky and fed-up with all the endless arguments about every little
thing and woke the next morning tired out and kept going anyway? Whenthe feeling of Sisterhood wasn’t always as powerful as we would have liked
but as there was nothing else like it we supported the notion regardless.
No amount of documentation will properly capture our personal contributions, nor will it do justice to our collective achievements but if we
who were there don’t write about what we did then our stories will be lostand once again lesbians will either be ignored or our contributions distorted
beyond recognition.
This is why I have been writing a lot more nonfiction over these past
few years. I have often written articles for our local lesbian magazines, inparticular Lesbiana (1992 - 2004) and the national magazine Lesbian Network (1984 - ), doing reportbacks of gatherings, opinion pieces and theoccasional monthly column, such as the one in 1993 entitled: “What Are
Dykes Doing in the Year of Indigenous People?” But once I started to pull
together all the information from the Victorian Women’s Liberation andLesbian Feminist Archives and my own personal diaries and journals about
the WLM and realised how much we’d actually done at the grassroots levelof activism I became enthused about writing the kind of book that would
include every activist collective we’d ever set up, every action and fundraiser
we’d ever attended, every conference we’d ever organised and all the marvelously empowering fun times we’d had as well as some of the more
acrimoniously painful debates we engaged in to our detriment.
Of course once I got to the end of the 1970s the 1980s loomed in all its
quite different but equally crowded magnificence with events and issues
and demos all its own. So I began to document some of the more significant
groups, gatherings and publications of this momentous decade as well. Which
led into, you’ve guessed it, the 1990s with even more lesbian festivals, lesbian groups, lesbian activities than ever. A bit more research and I have thebare bones of another large book waiting to be written out in all its glorious
radical lesbian feminism. I’m not even going anywhere near the new millennium for the time being, except to document my own personal interactions

spring 200725

as I go along, but we all know how much we’re still doing, despite the rumourthat we’ve been in a post-feminist era for how long now?
More power to us, I say. This is not to ignore the burn-out, the trashing,
the lesbians who’ve dropped out because the lesbian community has sometimes been too critical or too damaging or not supportive enough. But whenall’s said and done, it seems to me we’ve done more than our fair share not
only to try and make the world a better place but also to ensure that lesbians
can be out and proud and able to take our own not insignificant and creative place in the scheme of things.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Billie Dee

Cosmology
We were young then, brash
and strong: we rode the curve of the earth— proud bellies, big breasts:
the knobs of our spines threw sparks
and the shadows we cast across the landdogs mistook for storms.
Each morning we unleashed our hair: longferal locks that flew in the solar wind.
The bellows of our chests would stir
the tops of monstrous trees
and song birds shelteredin the thickets of our thighs.
We were brave then — goddesses:
foolish with our love.

spring 2007

27

Alison J. Laurie

Lesbian Nation in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Background
Aotearoa/New Zealand has a long history of same-sex relationships.
Before colonisation, lesbianism seems to have been commonly accepted in
Maori societies.1 The colonisers brought Christianity and British law, introducing moral and legal restraints on homosexual behaviour. Male homosexual practices became criminalised with the passage of the 1858 English
Laws Act, but as lesbianism was not illegal in England it was not included.
Other restraints were available to control women’s behaviour. British ideologies of the family controlled women’s sexuality, denied nineteenth century women property rights and a legal identity, and restricted women’s
access to the essential requirements for leading lesbian lives, economic independence and the ability to pay for a ‘room of one’s own’, before the mid tolate twentieth century.
Despite obstacles, some women defied the prescriptions and lived as
lesbians.2 By the early years of the twentieth century, increased educationaland employment opportunities for women meant that more women could
live as lesbians. New Zealand’s participation in two world wars created further opportunities and encouraged urbanisation and, by the 1950s, small‘kamp’ communities existed in at least Auckland, Wellington andChristchurch. Homosexual women and men used the term ‘kamp’ here andin Australia, to refer to themselves and their communities.
New Zealand had no equivalent of US style lesbian bars. At least fromthe 1950s, a publicly visible kamp crowd met at hotel bars, or ‘pubs’, and incoffee bars. Options for ‘kamp ladies’ were limited, as from WW1 women
were prohibited from entering public bars, and restricted to the ‘ladies andescorts’ or ‘cats’’ bars provided by a few hotels, where women without a maleescort could be refused entrance, ostensibly to control prostitution. Further,
until 1967 New Zealand licensing laws prohibited the sale of alcohol after 6
pm, and all day Sunday. Coffee bars became important meeting places forthe kamp crowd in several cities.
Groups in the few pubs that tolerated homosexuals were very mixed,
including kamp ladies, kamp men, drag queens, prostitutes, criminals, bohemians, writers and theatre people. Maori urbanisation after WW2 meantthat many Maori homosexuals also came to the cities, and Maori and working-class kamp men and women were an important part of the publicly

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

visible kamp communities in these pubs. 3 Private parties were, however, themain way that everyone socialised, especially the older, more middle-classkamp men and women. During the 1930s the first Labour Government
built many state rental houses for families, thus freeing up private rental
housing in the cities. Lesbians living at home or in rooming houses now had
increased opportunities to rent flats or even houses. Home ownership increased after WW2, mainly as families obtained favourable state mortgages.
Some lesbians, employed for example by the Post Office, or retiring fromthe armed forces, could also obtain mortgages and purchase houses. Up anddown the country, kamp people began to meet in private houses, often witha keg of beer and the traditional Maori boil-up, with pork bones, watercress,
potatoes and other goodies cooked together in a large pot for all to enjoy.
American influences before WW2 were slight in our former Britishcolony. However, US forces stationed here during WW2 increased our awareness of American popular music, food, comic-books and films, and improved communications from the fifties brought rock n’ roll and other calls
to rebellion for the first waves of the baby boom kamps. As we came of age
in the 1960s, the introduction of television brought knowledge of the civilrights movement, the New Left, hippies, flower power, drugs, protest music, women’s liberation, anti-Vietnam war protests (New Zealand sent a small
force of military volunteers), and eventually gay liberation and lesbian feminism. The kamp communities as my generation knew them changed forever through these new influences.

Lesbian-feminism
When I came out at age 16 in the 1950s, my sources of information
about lesbianism were limited. I read The Well of Loneliness, which I thought
wonderful, despite Stephen’s foolishness in giving away her girlfriend to aman. I found a welcoming community of kamp men, who introduced me
to my first lover, but we could not find a community of kamp ‘ladies’. Aftermy parents found my lover naked in the wardrobe, I left home and, likemany other New Zealand kamps, sailed to Australia, where Sydney housed
a small group of visible kamp ladies in the back bar of the Rex Hotel inKings Cross. Despite street-fights, prostitution, criminal presence, and constant police harassment, I felt at home. I returned to New Zealand, and waspleased to find more young kamp women out and about, in the few sleazy
pubs where we could meet.
I found Donald Webster Cory’s book and learned of the existence ofOne magazine. At the time, we could not obtain US currency, but I ex-spring 200729

changed money on the street with a US marine and ordered a copy. From
One, I learned about the Daughters of Bilitus, sent for The Ladder, and readabout the British Minorities Research Group (MRG) and their publication
Arena 3. We could subscribe to this, as postal orders for British currency
were available. I relate this process to explain how isolated we were, andwhat determination we needed to obtain connections. We passed information around, others subscribed too, and though we didn’t start a lesbianorganisation, the idea had been introduced.
I left for London, became active in MRG, and enjoyed a lesbian life
where we still didn’t dare call ourselves lesbians. Following romance, I moved
to Copenhagen to live with a Danish woman, joined Forbund, the mixed
homosexual organization, and when Gay Liberation came to Denmark,became involved in the new politics that demanded society change, not theindividual. I found women’s liberation after a weekend retreat for lesbians
arranged by Redstockings, and was delighted to realize that all women might
now come out as lesbians.
I set out for the source of some of these new ideas, spending several
months traveling around the US with an escaped American headmistressfrom Massachusetts, collecting lesbian magazines, ideas and contacts, andworked on an issue of The Lesbian Tide in Los Angeles learning how small
lesbian groups could produce magazines. I returned to Denmark with asuitcase full of US lesbian magazines, and soon set off overland for New
Zealand in a Volkswagen van across Europe and South Asia with my Norwegian partner and the American headmistress, arriving in early 1973.
Women’s liberation had started in 1970, at Victoria University of
Wellington, their first newsletter also mentioning international influences.
As they explained, the group formed from a combination of personal grievances against the consequences of women’s set role in society, re-enforced byliterature on overseas women’s liberation.4
During the following two years, more women’s liberation groups started,a group of women started Broadsheet, the first feminist magazine, and thefirst United Women’s Convention was held, attended by over 1400 women.
Gay liberation began in 1972, when a group of lesbians and gay men at
Auckland University met to protest that Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Maorilesbian and feminist activist, had been refused a visa to the US because she
was homosexual. Though the American term ‘gay’ was understood at leastfrom the 1960s, it was not in wide use before Gay Liberation started, after
which it gradually replaced the local term ‘kamp’. Gay Liberation groups
formed throughout the country and National Gay Liberation Conferences

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were held annually from 1972. Gay Liberation said it wanted to ‘bring out
the lesbian and gay man in everybody’s head,’ and promoted visibility andradical social change. However, as conservative gay men began to join, many
lesbians became disenchanted by the sexism and misogyny. Meanwhile lesbians in women’s liberation groups found many heterosexual feminists were
homophobic and heterosexist. Repeating experiences elsewhere, lesbians
began to form our own organisations.
The first national lesbian organisation, Sisters for Homophile Equality(SHE), started in Christchurch when lesbians met to talk about their lives
and the new ideas of women’s and gay liberation. I attended some meetings,
returned to Wellington, and arranged a SHE meeting there. SHE Wellington
affiliated to SHE Christchurch, establishing New Zealand’s first national
lesbian organisation, soon with branches and individual contacts in manysmaller centres. Some women wanted to use the word ‘lesbian,’ in theorganisation’s name, but because most women were afraid to use the term
and newspapers refused to print it in advertisements, we settled for ‘homophile’. For example, when I attempted to place an advertisement for a
SHE meeting in the Christchurch Press; they agreed to print ‘homosexual
women’ but rejected the term ‘lesbian.’
SHE Wellington decided to start a national lesbian magazine. Lesbians
from Wellington Gay Liberation often helped to organise regular dances,and we called a special meeting to ask for half the money from the last dance
to establish our magazine. As no men turned up, we voted ourselves themoney, deducting it from the dance takings. In December we met to organise
New Zealand’s first lesbian magazine, which we called Circle following asuggestion by the late Viv Jones, a cartoonist and artist, who created thecartoon strip ‘Superdyke’ for the first issues. Viv suggested ‘Circle’ from ‘thewomen’s symbol, minus the cross at the bottom, as a circle can grow bigger
and bigger and include everyone.’
We produced the first issue over a weekend, at my flat. We wrote someitems, and clipped others from the US lesbian magazines carried overland in
the Volkswagen. On the first page we declared ‘It is our purpose to unite thelesbians of New Zealand as part of the ever-growing international movement of gay women.’5 I wrote the first editorial, proclaiming that ‘our prime
responsibility, time and energy must be directed towards improving the conditions of lesbians, and for all women.’6
We printed five hundred copies of the first issue, mailing copies to any
woman we thought might be lesbian, including the detective story writer
Dame Ngaio Marsh. (Her secretary returned the magazine with a letter
stating Miss Marsh was not interested). We sold Circle for 25 cents in streetsspring 200731

and pubs to everyone, including heterosexual men, as we thought they mightpass it on to women who could become lesbians. Membership of SHE itself
was free and restricted to lesbians, the Manifesto stating that SHE aimed ‘toprovide an atmosphere which fosters the feeling of gay pride and solidarity
amongst women.’
From the second issue, we subtitled the magazine ‘a lesbian-feminist
publication,’ though continued selling it in the street. We received magazines and newsletters from overseas groups on exchange and reprinted somearticles, providing stimulating ideas and the feeling of being part of a wider
lesbian movement. It never occurred to us that we should ask permission— we regarded the articles just as words to be shared and disseminated.
Our reprints in Circle included writings by the Furies, translations from
Danish lesbian magazines, and items from Australian gay and lesbian publications. This meant New Zealand lesbians reading Circle were introduced to the ideas of lesbian feminism and gay liberation theory fromseveral countries. We were influenced by these ideas, and developed themfurther, producing local theory, which contributed to the lesbian-feminist
debates of the period.
Wellington SHE members began Club 41, a venue where the new lesbian cultures met the older kamp cultures. SHE aimed to be broadbased,
and though some older lesbians participated, most who attended meetings
were young. Class and race backgrounds were diverse, which was both astrength and a point of tension. Lesbian Aid, a telephone contact was set up
and operated from the households of SHE lesbians until the late 1970s.
Through contacts given in Circle, lesbians found groups for support andinformation, which were invaluable for isolated lesbians and in building
social and political lesbian communities. Lesbian Feminist Circle published
for thirteen years, until 1986.
SHE lesbians participated in radical feminist and gay activities including
meetings, conferences, pickets and demonstrations, appeared on television,
wrote articles and pamphlets, provided speakers for schools and other groups,
and organised the first national lesbian conferences. I returned to Denmarkand then Norway for a few years, sending back articles on events there.
SHE made submissions on the Human Rights Bill, arguing for the
inclusion of discrimination on the grounds of ‘sexual orientation,’ andorganised lesbian-only sessions at the 1975 United Women’s Convention,
where their Lesbian Nation banner and tee-shirts were widely photographed, making public statements about lesbian pride, visibility and community development. SHE Christchurch established New Zealand’s first
Women’s Refuge in 1975. However, by 1977, it became difficult to hold32

sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

everyone together within one group. In Wellington, SHE continued intandem with Circle, though the wider group gradually fell away. Eventually SHE meetings ceased and Club 41 closed.7 It was the forerunner of anumber of collectively run Wellington lesbian clubs in various locations,which became important meeting places for lesbian political groups. The
tenacity of SHE in persisting with their projects and in keeping lesbian
interests foremost, despite opposition, influenced the character of later
lesbian communities as they developed. Despite a hostile social and political environment, lesbian groups and organisations formed across a wide
spectrum of issues during the 1970s, developing lesbian newsletters, events,
lesbian centres, activities, sports and social clubs. As well as working inseparate groups, lesbians initiated women’s centres, rape crisis, women’s
refuge, and were involved with women’s art, music, publishing andbookshops. Lesbian political groups were involved with law reform, human rights, abortion rights, women’s health, among other protest actions,and contributed to peace and anti-racism activism.8
Some SHE lesbians worked in lesbian separatist groups with lesbians
who came out through the women’s movement, especially after conflicts
between lesbians and straight feminists at the United Women’s Conventions. The Wellington Lesbian Network organised political and social events,
establishing the first Lesbian Centre in New Zealand in 1979, whichsurvived until 1982. It was a focus for lesbian visibility and influential in
defining lesbian-only space and events. When the Centre unsuccessfully
attempted to place an advertisement on the city buses, they mounted a public campaign and organised Lesbian Liberation Week, including New
Zealand’s first Lesbian March.
Seventies lesbian feminists had set the stage for many later developments, by promoting lesbian visibility and working against heterosexism,
sexism, racism and classism, and by affirming that they did not want to beaccommodated by and assimilated within mainstream society.
The seventies for me were a watershed between the old and the new,
between the hidden life we were told we must lead, and our move forward
into an intense period of liberation. It was a time when change was in theair, when we believed that everything was possible and that we would remake the world.
I was personally inspired by a generation of radical American lesbian
feminists, whose writing, music and messages profoundly influenced thedevelopment of lesbian communities in many countries during the 1970s.

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33

ENDNOTES
1. Maori are the indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand. For comment on same-sex relations pre-colonisation, see for example the Report of the Royal Commission on Social Policy 1988, 2.2.38, and N. Te
Awekotuku ‘He Reka AnM –same-sex lust and loving in the ancient
Maori world.’ In A. Laurie and L. Evans. 2005. eds. Outlines, lesbian
and gay histories of Aotearoa. Wellington. LAGANZ pp.6-9.
2. See for example J. Glamuzina ‘An astounding masquerade,’ pp.63-84
and Aorewa McLeod ‘ New Zealand’s lost lesbian writers and artists’ pp
49-62. In A. Laurie. 2001. ed. Lesbian studies in Aoteroa/New Zealand.
New York. Harrington Park Press.; also Jenny Coleman ‘Convenient
fictions: the case of Amy Bock’ pp 24- 31 and J. Glamuzina ‘Containmentof lesbians and lesbianism in the early and mid-twentieth century’ pp 32 36. In A. Laurie and L. Evans. 2005. eds. Outlines, lesbian and gay histories of Aotearoa. Wellington. LAGANZ .
3. See N. Te Awekotuku, Shirley Tamihana, J. Glamuzina and A.Laurie1993 ‘Lesbian organising’. In Anne Else 1993 ed. Women Together, ahistory of women’s organizations in New Zealand. Wellington. Daphne
Brasell Associates Press, pp. 545-556.
4. Womens’ Liberation Front, Vol 1, No.1, 26 June 1970.
5. Circle, December 1973, inside cover.
6. Circle, December 1973, p.1.
7. For a published account of SHE, see Linda Evans ‘She 1973-1977.’ In
Anne Else 1993 ed. Women Together, a history of women’s organizations in
New Zealand. Wellington. Daphne Brasell Associates Press, pp.559-560.
8. For more information see J. Glamuzina, Julie. 1993. Outfront: Lesbian
Political Activity in Aotearoa 1962-1985. Hamilton: Lesbian Press.

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Jean Sirius

A Tribute to Tee Corinne (One of Many)
Tee Corinne chose fame over fortune. She used to say she “could havepainted pretty pictures, and sold them, and made a living.” Instead, shejoined the lesbian front of the sexual revolution (the one in the 60s and70s), and made images that couldn’t be published in the New York Times.
Beautiful stuff. Groundbreaking stuff. When she published the Cunt
Coloring Book in 1975, there were darn few straight women who even knew
what a vulva looked like. Lesbians knew, depending on the extent of theirsexual experience, but the coloring book was, in lovingly line-drawn detail,the entire contents of the candy store.
For a book that never made any bestseller lists, it’s managed to remain newsworthy. In the 1980s, it was a projectile in the National Endowment for the Artsfunding wars, and in 1999 the “Traditional Values” Coalition sent a copy toevery member of congress, calling it filth and pornography, in an effort to discredit James Hormel during the hearings on his appointment as ambassador to
Luxembourg. (A copy of the coloring book is in the James Hormel Gay andLesbian Reading Center at the San Francisco Public Library.)
Twenty-nine years ago, Tee’s solarized photograph of two women making love appeared as the cover of Sinister Wisdom #3. As a poster, it became
an instant classic, and Tee became a star. The Sinister Wisdom poster was(along with Sara Steele’s watercolor flowers) the standard in lesbian décor
for decades.
In the 1980s, Tee decided there was money to be made in literary erotica,
and began writing it. She was surprised when people told her you couldn’t
make money writing, and blithe when those same people resented that she
just sat down and did. After a decade, it came to her attention that kids
coming up thought of her more as a writer than an artist, so she stopped.
After her writing career, she turned to teaching, and discovered a whole
new way to be famous and appreciated for what she did. She taught drawing, painting, and memoir writing. She wasn’t always out to her classes,
being in rural Oregon, which is progressive in some ways (think: “physician-assisted suicide”) and positively regressive in others (bumpersticker:“marriage=man+woman”). When her partner, Beverly Anne Brown, wasdiagnosed with cancer, Tee had to explain in class why she was such a wreck.
Her students, who already understood that she was more special than they
could imagine, took it in stride.

spring 2007

Tee A. Corinne
Photo by Jean Sirius © 2006, taken on May 9, 2006.
At Poppyseed, reading fan mail, with her beloved Georgie Anna.

35

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

After Bev died, in October 2005, Tee and I often talked on the phone
about grief (I’m a local expert), and how terrible it was making her feel. I
encouraged her to seek medical attention, but the amount of attention she
could afford consisted of recommendations for “metamucil, anti-depressants, therapy.” A month later, her liver gave notice. She called to say she
had three weeks to live. I offered to come up to Oregon and help.
Four months later, I was all used up, and had helped her complete two
major projects. Her book “Lesbian Art Images: Variations on Queerly Appealing Themes” will be published by Haworth Press in 2007. A CD, “Scars,
Stoma, Ostomy Bag, Portacath,” was made, a collection of altered photographs, taken during Bev’s illness. It can be ordered from http://
teeacorinneart.com. Also, with Tee’s blessing, I spent some time with mycamera, documenting her journey.
Tee made a difference in the world. She made a lot of differences. Even
better: what she taught, what she wrote, what she published, are all out inthe world, still changing things, opening hearts, altering opinions, lighting
the place up.
It’s hard when people die. Hard work for the subject, and grueling emotional and spiritual work for everyone around her. If, however, I got to choose
my death, I think I’d want one like hers. Tee had six months in which to get
her affairs in order, finish what she thought was important, find out how
very many people loved and cared about her. She received attention, care,flowers, gifts, donations, and enough praise to float a battleship.
I hope it’s buoying her up on the River Styx. I hope she and Bev arehaving wonderful, stimulating conversations again.
Postscript:
Tee willed her archives to the Special Collections at the Libraries of the
University of Oregon. Donations will help with the work of cataloguingthem. Make checks payable to UO Foundation/Libraries, with “In memoryof Tee Corinne” in the memo line, and mail to the Library Development
Office, 1299 University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1299. Alternately,
the Tee A. Corinne Prize for Lesbian Media Artists, established by JEB (Joan
E. Biren), would benefit from (tax-deductible) donations to expand the prize.
Send check to Moonforce Media, PO Box 13375, Silver Spring, MD 20911,
with “Tee Corinne prize” in the memo line.
A note about the images: For Tee’s first digital picture, she borrowed mycamera and lined me up with a mural of Gertrude and Alice. She said shespring 200737

took more pictures of me (film and digital) than of anyone in her life besides Bev. While she was dying, I returned the favor.

Photo of Tee Corinne taken by Jean Sirius © 2006 on June 19, 2006.
Sketching.Tee continued making art as long as she had the strength.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Ruth Mountaingrove

Two Strong Lesbians
My life was changed meeting Jean Mountaingrove at Pendle Hill, a
Quaker retreat center outside of Philadelphia where I met her at a conference for Single Parents. I fell in love with her and moved to Oregon to thecommune Mountain Grove where she was living. My life was changed by
the creating with her of the feminist spirituality quarterly WomanSpirit. And
by all the traveling we did up and down the west coast and across the country to St. Louis, New York state, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Indiana,
Colorado, and back to Wolf Creek in Oregon.
Meeting all those women changed my life, but in particular Jean
Mountaingrove who so impressed me at the Single Parents conference withher organizing ability. Later I learned that she had been a co-organizer ofSingle Parents which was attended by one hundred people, two of themmen.
It was her organizing ability that changed my life and the many women
who came in contact with her. It was her vision that created WomanSpirit,
Rootworks, and the wonderful five day festivals for women on women’s
lands and the Siskyu National forest celebration. Her energy was phenomenal.
Our photography workshops Ovulars held in the summers at Rootworks,
our celebrating the Goddess with other lesbians, and The Blatant Image, amagazine for feminist photographers, all originated from her.
Probably the next most influential lesbian in my life was Tee Corrine
who contributed drawings and photographs to WomanSpirit and was a prime
mover in the photography Ovulars, bringing women photographers fromall over the United States to Rootworks, our woman’s land, to spend a weektalking about their work, taking more photographs, trying more formats
than 35mm and working in the darkroom.
In addition Tee was vital to the publishing of The Blatant Image I and
II. When Tee was editor of several lesbian short story collections she persuaded me to try my hand at writing short stories. She published two ofmine: “The Chemistry Between Us” and “Almost A Love Story.” When she
did the CD for Purdue University she included some of my work. She kept
me up to date on requests from Sinister Wisdom and other magazines. I am
grateful to her for all these reasons.

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39

rainbow williams

A Tribute to Tee Corinne
I have been thinking of Tee Corinne, with much appreciation for what
she has done for all Lesbian Artists. Tee had family in southwest Florida, anaunt I believe, and came down to visit occasionally. On one of these visits(maybe 1980), she brought her slide show of Lesbian Art and Artists. Sarahand I were newly lovers, and both lesbian artists, so we were thrilled toattend that showing in Tampa. The inspiration was to be long lasting. I was
producing a monthly newsletter in Orlando and news of the visit and meeting some of our Lesbian Artists and Musicians was reported. That helped
connect us to Great American Lesbian Art Show, a national event, held inmany venues across the land, whatever living room, or public space we could
get. GALA was the name. Four years later, I had moved to Pagoda by theSea, a lesbian neighborhood in St Augustine, FL of what had been twelve
fishing cottages on Vilano Beach. We had a garage that was turned into atheater for feminist performances for acts such as Alix Dobkin, Holly Near,and many others. I repainted the walls a coat of white and claimed it the
Lesbian Museum of Modern Art. I invited Tee to exhibit and she sent a flat
photo box full of her sepia and black and white print series called Famous
Lesbians: perfect for our 20 by 20 theater, which was done in black andwhite. A few small sales happened, but that didn’t daunt Tee. She said tokeep the unsold ones and display them when possible. Sudie Rakusin had ashow there, and Beth Karbe displayed her photos, and Carmen and Joa
their fun-iture. I had a show with Sarah Carawan. Myriam’s sculpture graced
the space. My point is this: Tee and her ready generosity started us off. I next
saw her at a Lesbian Art opening in San Francisco, 1989 the year of theearthquake. I introduced myself and she remembered the project and me.
From time to time, Tee would send out a call for entries and I would think:“She’s stirring the pot, keepin’ the caldron bubbling!” and smile to myself.
This piece was first published in mamaraga, Gainesville FL monthly.
Reprinted with permission.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Lauren Levey

Some Lessons from the Trip So Far
Although by 1938 it was clear to anyone watching that German Jews
were in grave danger, and despite vocal Nazi sympathizers in the US, NewYork seemed like a reasonably safe place to call home for Fanny Silverman.
An early supporter of women’s suffrage, she was finally coming into her
own; her children were grown and she was an energetic widow of 57, now
focusing her energy on the Zionist dream, a Jewish state in its historic homeland. According to family legend, while walking down one of Manhattan’s
avenues, Fanny came across a soapbox set up by the American Nazi Party,
with a speaker and a megaphone spewing hate, together with a swastika flagand literature. Not unusual in that time and place, but for some reason on
this day Fanny just lost it. She said some loud things and knocked oversome stuff, the flag crashed down and hateful flyers fluttered and scattered.
Then the Nazi men attacked her with a baseball bat to the head. She survived the attack, refusing medical attention, as she didn’t trust either 1938
medicine or Jew-hating doctors, and went home to Brooklyn, where shesuddenly collapsed and died two weeks later from brain hemorrhage.
Fanny was my grandmother, but I wasn’t born until 1947, so I never
knew her; but I was taught about her idealism, her righteous anger, her courage, and the deadly cost of all that. The storytelling always ended with thesame mixed lesson: You look like Fanny, you act like Fanny, watch out you’ll
die like Fanny. Said harshly but with love and fear and admiration and hope.
My parents had a well thought out, complex understanding of oppression as it related to Jews. (And by extension, to other groups whose oppression they understood to be like that of Jews in some way; but they were by
far at their best about Jews). They shared that understanding with me, in
hopes that it would make me strong enough to survive it and even thrive in
its presence. My own judgement during the 1950s and early 1960s was thatthey had chips on their shoulders, wounded forever by the Holocaust andits cultural shadows. In my world at that time, the fresh horror of the Holocaust had temporarily rendered expression of Jew hating distasteful andunfashionable; being young, I assumed it was gone forever, that the world
would always be as it currently was. Still, Fanny’s story stayed with me,
together with the challenge it presented — how to confront oppression without getting killed.
In 1964, the growing suspicion that I might be a lesbian led me toapply only to women’s colleges with socially liberal to experimental reputa-

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41

tions; and in 1965 I found myself at Bennington. It was a happy choice.
Not only was I not the only lesbian in the world, but it was 1965 and there
was a new culture. This is what that culture looked like:
Martin Luther King, Jr., had impressed us with the dramatic effectiveness of nonviolent civil disobedience against social injustice. Students united
against the Vietnam war were effective in forcing prestigious universities to
bar ROTC military training and recruitment from campuses and to divest
themselves of war industry holdings. Bennington student Andrea Dworkindemonstrated against conditions at the Women’s House of Detention in
New York, drawing media attention; it was eventually closed.
A Bennington student needed an abortion without parental knowledge.
We passed the hat, over and over. We raised the $1200 needed for an MD in
nearby South Shaftsbury, Vermont, to do the procedure safely, albeit illegally. That’s twelve hundred 1966 dollars at a tiny women’s college.
It came to our attention that women students at Bennington had acurfew, while the 8 or so male students (in drama and dance) had none. We
made a concerted plan to flout curfew, while expressing outrage at the injustice. After minimal discussions, in which no administrator wanted to justify
the gender disparity, the curfew was discontinued.
Our success was intoxicating. It was obvious that sisterhood is powerful,
before it became a slogan. How could we have been so successful? We weren’t
all born strong, and some of us had been victims of abuse — sexual, medical,
psychotherapeutic, beatings. Some of us had fears and addictions and strange
habits. Overwhelmingly we weren’t in therapy; more about this later.
I think the key was our culture, as women, many of us lesbians, others
wanting to be lesbians, living together without men. Most specifically, I think
it was about the quality of our conversation. The content was important too,
we talked about justice, liberty, and civil disobedience; about how a just andfree world should be organized, or whether it should be organized at all (someone usually took an anarchist position). But even more, it was about the way
we talked. We tried to speak in our own words, as they came to us, but toconsciously avoid the words of “experts” whom we saw as enforcers for oppressive institutions. We did not speak solely from the “I”, or avoid being
judgmental, or buffer the truth to avoid hurt feelings, or label goals or values
or behaviors “healthy” or not. Not typically, anyway. Conversations were notsafe places, although sustained verbal humiliation for holding an indefensible
position would usually be stopped by someone in the group; we embraced
intellectual conflict, some ideas won, some lost, we all grew.
We generally recognized that the institution of psychotherapy had been
supporting the political/social status quo by pathologizing, incarcerating,and torturing nonconforming women with electric shock, often without

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

their consent (not that consent can vitiate torture). Such women were amongus. On the other hand, I remember a lesbian couple, having just come out
to themselves, going off hand in hand to the campus shrink, who gave themeach a single Miltown, which they enjoyed with other chemical enhancement as I recall; but they didn’t continue ongoing therapy.
We recognized that biological determinism is always an argument to preserve
the power of those in power; “be a man” would have been met with eye roll and snort.
We negotiated and developed an oppression analysis that informed ourdaily lives; it was intellectual, secular, ethical, and justice centered. It could
not have been derailed by accusations of “victim mentality” — we knew
there was real oppression, and we felt we could change it, all of us together.
We admired confrontation politics, it was heroic, it had theatrical flair, it
attracted mates, and we’d seen it work quickly. Seeking safety was barely in thediscussion, and neither was tolerance or assimilation; the dominant culture
needed to become like ours. We knew that risk taking did not require years oftherapy — only community support. We were our own cultural heroes.
Sometime during college it occurred to me that Fanny’s fatal error wasthat she lacked adequate community support at the moment of her challenge to the Nazi soap box; she should have had a gang with her, and media
would have helped too.
I’ve been giving some thought over the last few years to what might beprerequisites for a new feminist community. I keep coming back to feminist
consciousness raising groups for women — highly structured and controlled
discussions that lead us to more accurate generalizations about the meanings and workings of patriarchy. I have faith that accurate shared understanding leads naturally to concerted action for change because I’ve seen it
happen. The format of CR tends to break through the empty catch phrases
and taboos embedded in women’s current conversational norms. These norms
have been taught in therapy groups and 12-step groups in service to a goalthat is not in the interests of women’s empowerment as a group. These norms
are designed to create a “safe space” (for whom, one wonders, the therapist?
the patriarchy?), avoiding confrontation, avoiding generalization, by making every statement strictly personal, preventing the growth that comes whenintellectual conflict gets honestly explored and resolved, preventing connection between ideas and between women as peers.
I’ve run a few CR groups over the last few years, in my living room andother real spaces. I’m thinking about trying to do it online. If you’re interested in participating with me in an online CR group (or a live one in my
Hudson Valley living room, for that matter), email me at
WomenFirst@aol.com; I’m also interested in your suggestions to help makeit translate well in the virtual world.

spring 2007

43

Kit QuanGloria, My Home

Gloria Anzaldúa (1942 – 2004)
Activist, Writer, Mentor, Cultural Theorist, Teacher
Photo by Annie Valva

I met Gloria in 1978. I was a sixteen-year-old runaway working at Old
Wives Tales Bookstore on Valencia at 16th Street in San Francisco. She wasattending a Feminist Writers’ Guild meeting in the back of the store andcame up to the counter to thank me for keeping the store open. I thought
she was from another planet. She stood out. She noticed me when I wasinvisible to most people. I took her Feminist Journal Writing class at San
Francisco State the year she had her hysterectomy and she almost died. She
told me that when she read my papers, she could tell that I had what it took
to be a writer. She was that voice for me for twenty-five years countering myfeelings of not feeling literate, not being able to read and write. When I
finally wrote something for Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras, shethought I would finally take myself seriously. But my blocks persisted andshe had to tell me the same things in different ways year after year.
Except for the few years that she lived in New York, I would visit her
regularly and we developed a friendship around food, books, reading and44sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

writing. When she was writing Borderlands, I would go to her apartment inOakland on weekends with my girlfriend and bring fresh organic vegetables.
She would cook Tex-Mex chicken wings, her corn and summer squash stew.
When she moved to Santa Cruz to Walti Street, I would visit and stay overnight eating and reading while she wrote. We were both night owls, staying
up all night. When she bought her house, the visits continued, became longer
and I would bring her her favorite foods: potstickers, braised green beans,and chicken chow mein. And when I could, fresh handmade tortillas from
the Mission. She loved different Asian vegetarian meats, my braised tofu,
Chinese greens and mock duck. Her most recent favorite dessert was homemade Vietnamese yogurt. She said she was eating one spoonful a day tomake it last until my next visit. We celebrated our birthdays and holidays
together when she didn’t go home to south Texas.
She knew more about me and my history than anyone else in my life.
She stuck with me through all my relationships from the time I was in highschool, through job changes, identity changes, my changing relationship toreading and writing. She challenged me, had the hard job of telling me
things that were hard to hear-things that sometimes had me in tears, but she
knew what I needed. She said the only difference between me and her otherwriting comadres was that I didn’t believe in myself, that I needed to put myintellectual life first and not let the fact that I wasn’t an academic or hadn’t
read as much as other people get in my way. She taught me how to critique
her writings, she welcomed my brutal honesty when I thought something
didn’t work in a piece. She gave me entry into a world that I thought was off
limits to me — words and writing. She was generous with her house andbooks and gave me my library of books on writing. Year after year, she nurtured the writer in me and when I said, what if I never write my story, shesaid that it wouldn’t change how she felt, she would love me just the same.
With her writings and ideas and who she was, she taught me to feel andsee everything; to connect with nature and animals; to trust my imaginary
world, and to build bridges wherever I can; to see different truths, not justone, and to accept my shadow side. She never felt threatened by others evenwhen they were unfair to her in some way. She struggled mostly with herself: her own shadow side, her dysfunctional patterns, her self-sabotage. She
would say to me, You are born alone and you die alone. I used to tell herthat I would go when she would go because she was the only family I had.
She was my home.
The night that Randy told me of Gloria’s death, I felt like my world had
ended. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I had lived in fear of such

spring 200745

news but Gloria always told me that she was going to stick around for twenty
more years. She struggled with diabetes and all its complications daily, she
had to feed it her energy until there was less and less for her writing, but she
was so well read on the disease and all the latest scientific developments andworked so hard at managing her blood sugars, that I believed that we still
had more time, at least enough for me to get my shit together to finallywork and live with her like we had talked about for years.
I last spoke to her on the eighth around two in the morning. I usuallycall her in the middle of the night every two weeks or so, or just whenever I
thought of her or whenever I was at an airport, or something in my life wastroubling me. When her answering machine comes on, I always say, “Gloria,
it’s me, are you there, are you up, are you working?” I would give her a little
time to get to the phone and she always picked up unless she was on a dayschedule sleeping at night, which was rare, only if she had a gig or the occasional day appointment. She would go for days without sleeping. It was ourroutine to ask each other how much sleep we had gotten — three hours,
four hours, almost never a full night of sleep.
Nothing could have prepared me for this day but when I think of all thethings that she gave me, the most important thing was the connection tomyself, my relationship to words, language, and images no matter how painful
or difficult it is. She knew eventually I would have to make language myhome, a place of nepantla, which was her home too. The last thing I eversaid to her was, “I’m coming down. I’ll be there soon.” Now, instead ofgoing to her house, I will find her at the Guadalupe tree on West Cliff Drive
where we will still read, write, and eat together next to the ocean.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

tatiana de la tierra

All of Us Want to Claim You:
Poema para Gloria Anzaldúa
All of us want to claim you
la colombiana in Queens
la boricua in Buffalo
la argentina en Buenos Aires
las chicanas, las tejanaslas scholars, las activistas
all of us say
you named it, nuestra nepantla
the in between
el aquì que viene desde el alláel más allá that is going nowhere
not now not evercomo tus tierras indígenas
once indígena always indígena
all of us know
you lived it, nuestro dolor
backbreaking labor of survival
blade en tu lengua
sangre en tu centro
batalla wounding but never stopping you
visionary bruja
always dreaming yourself
into another world
all of us loved you
we want you to know thislistenque te queremos then and now
hear it in Nahuatl en Español en Pocho en Inglés
hear it en la canción del viento
en el silencio de tu desierto
en las rancheras que te cantamos
in the crackling of the candles that we burn for youspring 2007

ay Gloria, ya que no estas with usagradecemos tus palabras
frutas de la tierra that you picked with your fingers
so that we could be fed

22 de junio de 2004, ocean drive, miami beach, florida
First published in La Voz de Esperanza July-Aug. 2004: 15.

Photo of Gloria Anzaldúa by Cathy Cade: Gloria speaking and drawing about her
book Borderlands at the International Book Faire in Montreal, 1998.

47

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Denise M. Hise

One of a Kind
“And I’m going to make you think!” are the first words I remember hersaying after introducing herself to our graduate molecular genetics class.
She assumed what became for me one of her signature poses: a tall, slenderwoman, piano fingers supporting her weight as she leaned into us over thefront row of desks, throwing down the gauntlet. I knew immediately thiswas someone to whom I should pay attention, that there would be morethan science to learn here, so I did.
During the semester, she engaged us not only with textbook material— in fact many of us were hard-pressed to find anything she said in the
textbook — but with personal experiences as a research scientist, as a student, as a woman in a male-dominated profession. She shared her love of
science and her myriad topics of interest, conveying her love of learning andof life. She incited my curiosity so I was reading every research paper I could
get my hands on to understand what all the excitement was about and embarking on serpentine web-surfing expeditions. I read far beyond what was
required and learned more than I ever would have in a more traditional classstructure. Yes, she had me thinking and I soon came to appreciate her gift asa teacher. She was a vibrant presence and more often than not, my 45minute drive home passed unnoticed, my mind off playing with the intriguing new ideas she’d presented. I’d return to myself somewhere beyond
my intended exit, slightly dazed and laughing that I’d done it again.
Although at first I tried repeatedly to tell myself I was imagining it, I
felt some undercurrent of connection with her that I described to myself asshared experience. When she told us stories, I felt them as much as heard
them; nuances in her voice seemed to tell me more than her words. Havinggrown up in an environment where such vigilance was required, this was
not a new experience for me and I trusted my gut. But something else wasgoing on too: personal growth. Our encounters always taught me something about myself, gave me pause and brought new realizations to my pathof self discovery.
The following semester she was teaching an ethics course and after she
described the contents, I finagled my way into it. The first evening she said,“This class will change you.” I couldn’t wait to see how. She assigned a list of
topics about which we would write a paper a week. Again I read as much as
I could, hoping to gain her favor, but writing those papers over the six weeksof that course turned out to be the most fun I’ve ever had. She’d captured

spring 200749

my imagination and stimulated my mind, offering a too long-absent avenue
for expression. I couldn’t wait for spare minutes of the day when I could
allow my imagination free reign. I carried pen and post-its with me everywhere I went to write down the ideas whizzing around my brain, threatening to blow the top of my head off. I had never been so high for so long; theglaze over my eyes and the perpetual grin on my lips belied my physicalpresence.
Afterward, there was no doubt the class had changed me. I looked at
the world differently. I understood that social change was a process, one inwhich I could participate. Where I came from, I guess we had enough problems of our own: there was no suggestion of looking outside the home formore. So although I had compassion to spare, I felt powerless, unsure of
how to proceed and didn’t believe anything I could do would really make adifference. But because of things I read as a result of that class, I realized two
important things: that I too was intelligent enough to live a life that could
make a difference and that social change happened one person at a time.
While we have the potential for moral goodness and are theoretically capable of a sort of moral evolution, it happens very slowly, if at all, unless
individuals let themselves be heard and counted. As each of us ‘gets it,’ as
we understand what is equality, what is justice, what is good, we have a
responsibility to pass along that knowledge, whether that means taking up apen or a picket sign, telling our children or our congressional delegates,
volunteering at a women’s shelter or donating all our millions to world healthorganizations. Most of us accept without question what is, but once we’reenlightened to injustice, we can’t pretend we don’t know, and eventuallywrongs can be righted, equality can be attained, social justice can beachieved...if we each let our voice be heard, somehow.
In the short time I knew her, Dr. B. metamorphosed from a scientist,
teacher and Dean of the graduate school to an internationally-renowned ethicist, ordained minister and parish priest. She is undoubtedly the most accomplished woman I’ve known, the best teacher I’ll ever have and the most extraordinary role model for success one could imagine. She’s always one stepahead of the game, preparing for her next big move while giving her all at thelast one. She takes risks, is game for anything and follows her heart — doing
what makes her happy, what gives her energy. The bottom line is she puts a lot
in so gets a lot out. I was cognizant enough early on to express gratitude that
she had crossed my path and now, years later, I feel the debt of that gratitude
ever so profoundly. She played an important part in my life process and her
influence continues to enrich my life beyond measure. I think the world of
her and know that wherever I go in life, I take her with me.

50sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Bea Loud

Remembering Out Loud
In the 1940s, when I was a child, some people probably thought myfamily was poor. We were not Catholic so there was no legitimate reason
why the number of children in our house increased every 18 months until
there were 6: boy, girl, girl, boy, girl, boy. I don’t know if this perception ofpoverty persisted or if the fact that Dad went from being a farm hand topainting for the State of New York changed the perception, as it changed
the reality. I know I grew up with the notion of scarcity...not poverty. I grew
up hungry for affection, not just plain hungry.
What seemed to matter was how we played our cards. We kids grew up
playing cards, and watched the adults around us play. They played Pinochle,
Canasta, and Rummy. We kids started out with Slap Jack and War, graduating from games of speed and luck to games of strategy like Crazy Eights andHearts. What mattered in games, and in life, was how you played yourcards. Some of my neighbors and friends had far fewer cards than I. The
main thing for lower-working-class folk, like us, was to make damn sure
you did not go backward into the poverty class.
My main feeling about them, the poor, was fear. Fear of becoming
them. I wonder, did they feel envious of us, desirous of our privilege? Did
they think, “Why do they hate us?” There were brief times in my life when
I was down to my last cards, days without food, or a job. I’ve felt despair.
But I had experienced more, and believed the spring would not run dry.
The well at our extended-family home did go dry, every summer, without fail, beginning around the same time as the cicadas began their songs.
Mom and we kids hauled water from Springaard’s spring about two miles
away. We used it for drinking, cooking and to fill the wringer washing machine. We kids each had a couple of changes of clothes to put into thatwasher, and it was possible for us to take a weekly bath; each of us, in descending age order, into the same tub of water. I was grateful to be in the
middle of the line-up. The position of my little sister, next to last, must havebeen harder. It was important to be clean and to be polite. We did not want
to be known as poor-white-trash.
When I was 34 and she was 31, I met a woman who was the same age as
my younger sister. They had first names in common. Neither my new friend,
nor I, went by our given names, so I shall call her Out Loud, which is aname she used much later when we became two of the five Loud sisters. Tospring 200751

my initial horror, Out called herself poor-white-trash. She had grown up
with that label, and had been treated accordingly. Now she claimed it forherself to try to keep the rest of us from erasing her by denying her reality.
The first evening we met was at a feminist book discussion group on
the East side of town...the college area. She grew up on the South side. I wasa transplant from the rural Northeast. We were both having a very hardtime discussing class and feminism in the academic/theoretical way that was
expected of us. So, we left and continued our more reality based discussions
over beers, and did so for years to come.
I had a minimum wage factory job at the time and lived in a collective
household with six other people, so I was doing ok. Out did not have a job
and I did not know how she lived except that the girlfriends who she, likemany of us, changed on a regular basis usually provided a roof over her
head. She provided them the things that money couldn’t buy. She was ahandsome, sexy Irish woman, jet black short cropped hair, brown eyes always clouded with smoke. Her everyday attire was a black t-shirt and incolder weather a black leather jacket, with crisp clean jeans worn at the hipand held up with a two inch wide leather belt. That belt had several interchangeable buckles. One, I re-member, said: “No one ever raped a .38.” She
carried a .38, usually in her car. Her hips were barely definable and she
wished that her breasts were too...but they were pendulous. She tried not to,but she hated this about her body.
We shared some physical traits and many values, but I was scared ofpoverty and scared of guns. For us both it was a matter of pride to resist thepatriarchy’s occupation of our minds and bodies in as many ways as we
could. We supported each other in this. Advertisers, religions, politicians,
fathers and brothers, even sisters, all were intent upon twisting us to fit theirideas of the submissive feminine. Her body paid a terrible price from its
earlier occupations. Her menses and her depressions kept her confined to adarkened room for days on end. All her medical assistance came from a free
medical clinic with good intentions and poor funding.
Out medicated herself with alcohol, tobacco, pot, uppers from the streets.
She often put on a brave face and would resolve to feel good by doing good.
In these times she’d usually organize something: start a Lesbian Action Core,
raise money for the lesbian mothers defense fund (though she was never amother), organize a Take Back the Night march and rally, or raise money soother women could have a temporary safe harbor in a battered women’s
shelter or so lesbians could find a home on near-by womyn’s land. She had
a hard time stepping foot on that land that she so faithfully and vigorously
supported, because she was afraid of snakes in the grass.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Out was a very clever woman. In 1975 she figured out a way for herself,
me and a couple of her other friends to attend the local college and have it
all paid for...books, tuition and a small living stipend. This, in some circles
is known as a scholarship. I actually completed a degree because of that
vocational rehabilitation. She though, was queen of the incompletes andnever did get a degree. It didn’t matter, because it was just a way to make aliving, for a while. Definitely the easiest job I ever had. We learned what we
wanted and thumbed our noses at the rest. We took the drugs that theypassed out, though we didn’t always swallow them. We both did a requiredbi-monthly head-shrinking session and spent the rest of the month trying
to expand our awareness to include other options.
Besides that job as a student I never knew her to have a job. She told me
her earliest job, as a child, was as a numbers-runner in her neighborhood.
And now, in the early 70s, she was some sort of a modern day Lesbian
Robin Hood. I did not want to know the details even when she would offer
to bring me in. I was scared of getting caught. My working class cautions
were deeply ingrained.
Though we often lived in different parts of the country we remained
best of friends/sisters for the next 15 years. She was living in the desert
southwest where she believed it was easier to detect snakes in the sand, andwhere there was very little grass. I was still in the Midwest that last September when she visited. She told me she was taking Prozac but she was still
depressed. For some time now, she had been in a committed stable
relationship...no more earning toaster ovens for either of us. We joked about
having done our parts for the cause.*
Out helped form my thinking about class privilege and poverty. As I
think about poverty in the 21st century I see barefoot children scouring the
garbage dumps in Mexico looking for anything that will help them survive
one more day. I picture tens of thousands of homeless grief-ridden womenand children in camps, refugees displaced by their occupiers in Sudan, in
Palestine, in Iraq. I picture being forced to make a shelter, if not a homeamidst hundreds of vacant-eyed strangers, who know that not only are theyhungry and homeless but also that they are feared and despised by those
who now must provide for their minimal and temporary existence.
I am safely separated from their suffering. I am protected, for now, by
my willingness to go along with privilege. I cannot smell the stench, hear
the exploding missiles, feel the brutality that occupies all their senses. I do
know that to live to be 50 would be a very long time for most of them, andfor most of the 37 million Americans who are officially poor. They will

spring 200753

never forget that they are despised, dispensable, disposable...trash. And I
think of my dear poverty-class butch-dyke outlaw sister. I think how so very
not safe it is to be any one of those identities.
I knew that the taking of Prozac was an act of desperation for her. As
was her final act of walking into a supermarket deli on the eve of the day
when my people eat turkeys and celebrate the benevolent pilgrim’s occupation of this beautiful land and The People whose home it was. I am left towonder why she chose this time, this place to pull that .38 out of her blackleather jacket pocket, put it to her head and end her suffering. In her pockets no identity. Simply a scrap of paper with these parting words: “I amhomeless”.
I am left to wonder. I am left to grieve. I am left to resist the occupations, to create, to use my survival skills and my privilege to continue to slap
jacks and share my memories.
*Just google Ellen Degeneres and toaster oven to decipher this reference.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Photo by Tee A. Corinne

Vickie Sears (1941 - 1999)

feminist • teacher • author • storyteller •Vickie Sears spent much of her childhood in the foster care system, including seven years in a Seattle orphanage. She received
an MSW from the University of Washington, and worked as afeminist therapist, writer and disability advocate. As a young
adult, Vickie explored many of the world’s religions before returning to Cherokee spiritual practices. She started writing when she
was six years old and was the author of Simple Songs (Firebrand,1990) a book of short stories, which she dedicated “To all thechildren who have ever lived in an orphanage or foster home andhad a dream.” Her stories and poems also appeared in The Things
That Divide Us, Hear the Silence, Gathering Ground, Spider
Woman’s Granddaughters and A Gathering of Spirit: North American Indian Women’s Issue (Sinister Wisdom: #22/23.)

spring 200755

Photo by Tee A. Corinne

Jeanette Howard Foster (1895 - 1981)

writer • historian • librarian“Towering indeed must be my debt to the lesbian literature historian Jeannette Howard Foster, an independent scholar of immense,
unsung erudition who spent most of her professional life as alibrarian at the Kinsey Institute....I first encountered her classic
bibliography Sex Variant Women in Literature – issued privately at
her own expense in 1956, at a time when no reputable publisher
would touch the subject of female homosexuality – when I was anundergraduate...in the early 1970s.....Foster’s richly learned study,
a true labor of love, was hidden away in a special noncirculating,“Triple X-rated” stack behind the front desk {at the library}. Many
were the otherwise moribund evenings I spent perusing it: my first– and still most treasured – introduction to the literature of lesbianism.”
Terry Castle, The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology
from Ariosto to Stonewall, Columbia University Press, 2003, p. xix.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Photo by Tee A. Corinne

Margaret Sloan-Hunter (1947 – 2004)

activist •organizer • lecturer • writer
Margaret joined Chicago CORE at the age of fourteen, organized tenant unions and rent strikes and campaigned against
lead poisoning. One of the early editors of Ms. Magazine, she
toured extensively giving more than a thousand lectures on
sexism and racism. Her articles, essays and poems were
published in numerous publications.

spring 200757

Photo by Tee A. Corinne

Sarah Aldridge (1912 – 2006)

author • publisher • lawyer
Sarah Aldridge was central to the creation of Naiad Press in 1972
and A&M Books in 1995; both were created to make sure Lesbian and feminist writers had places to publish their work.
Aldridge’s partner of 57 years, Muriel Crawford (1914 – 2006)
said, “She used to tell me it was all about having a chance to tellour stories....She was a strong-willed, principled person — firstand foremost a feminist spirit. She really believed that womenneeded to band together to help each other.”

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Photo by Avery McGinn

Barbara Macdonald (1913 — 2000)

activist • writer

Photo by PGar

Karen Anna (1943 – 2000)

photographer •teacher •community builder

spring 2007

Photos by Tee A. Corinne

Terri Jewell (1954 – 1995)

activist • writer

Pat Parker (1944 – 1989)

activist • poet

59

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Photos by JEB

May Sarton (1912 – 1995)

writer©2006 JEB (Joan E. Biren)

Monique Wittig (1935 – 2003)

novelist • poet •social theorist©2006 JEB (Joan E. Biren)spring 200761

Photos by Tee A. Corinne

Valerie Taylor (1913 – 1997)

novelist • poet • feminist •social activist

June Arnold (1926 – 1982)

writer • co-founder ofDaughters, Inc.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Marjorie Norris

When I Learned I Was a Warrior

I learned by trial and error,
Punching at windmills, me
My own Donna Quixote, but
Then the movement came,
And I began to understandThe colonized mind
That my sisters and I
Had to overcome, the power
That lived in our throats andChests and guts, the survivor
That made us aware, and kept
Us looking around. My
Children made me look
At life in a new way,
And I wanted them to be
Warriors too, I taught
Them to be brave
But to share theirHearts, what was under
The breastplate, toHonor the feelings of
Others, as I had theirs.
I learned through women’sMusic, and at the feminist
Bookstore, I learned throughVietnam and Taking Back
The night. I learned about
The chains that society
Held, and I vowed to burst
Through them.
And I did, slow, then fast,
All with the help of women

To my Sisters Everywherespring 2007

63

Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien

Liberation Trilogy
Conception
In 1970 the peace and Vietnam antiwar movement gains some strength.
Many women become fully engaged in the organizing of large actions, demonstrations and conferences. About 1971 or 1972 we realize that this creating, organizing, manifesting is done by women. We also are expected tomake the coffee, do the cooking, the cleaning and provide sex.
One day in about 1971, I am driving my red javelin along the streets ofAmherst, Massachusetts. There’s a woman hitch-hiking and there’s the rulethat women stop for women. She gets in and moves the conversation into
women’s issues. She lets me know that there’s a women’s consciousness raising (CR) group that meets in a farm house down the road.
This is how it starts this culture klatch of the daughters of the mothersof coffee klatches. This is where the daughters talk about the coil and thecollateral damages it does to a woman’s uterus. This is where there’s talkabout the fact that in Massachusetts it is illegal to have an abortion under
any circumstances. It is illegal to show pictures of, display, discuss contraceptives of any kind under any circumstances.
This is where my involvement with the women’s liberation movement
starts, meetings in farm houses and university dorm rooms of Amherst,
Northampton. We are moved to make changes without being fully prepared for what we are about to do. We have no current role models. We lookfor contemporary women authors and find few. Information about ourherstory is hard to find, certainly this knowledge isn’t taught in any schoolsor universities.
Most everything is male owned and operated including women. These
are the days when there’s still the rule of thumb and lawful for husbands tobeat wives. (A man may not beat his woman with a stick wider than his
thumb.) These are the days when it isn’t possible for husbands to rape wives.
(The rule is that wives may not refuse their husbands.)
In the wider world, it isn’t possible for women to be raped without ourconsent. The prevalent belief of the time is that if a woman lives through arape, she hasn’t done enough to fight off the attack. This is somewhat similar to the trial of a witch who’s bound and thrown into water, often withrocks on her person. If she drowns, she isn’t a witch; if she floats, she is awitch.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

In the seventies it isn’t that we hate men so much as we are inspired byissues which all share the common ground of making choice available towomen: birth control, abortion, work, sports, child care, health, sexuality,
economic value. It isn’t so much that we loathe male directed limitations;it’s that we are dedicated to the power, strength and worth of women.
The women who do want to write about women’s liberation find it isdifficult to get published by publishing houses run by men, by newspapers
run by men, by magazines run by men. Even if we do get published, it isdifficult to find a market with bookstores run by men, distributors run bymen, marketers run by men.
We have undaunted fervor and committed intention. We are on fire;
we are fire. Women on the east and west coasts open women’s bookstores,
invest in women’s presses; newspapers and magazines sprout everywhere.
We incite a movement and invent the means with which to spread the word.
Women musicians write their own songs, press their own records, booktheir own shows. We are empowered in the peace movement and dedicatedto the women’s liberation movement.
Women’s consciousness raising groups are transformed into a plethoraof flourishing women’s centers, cafes, restaurants as well as women’s collectives of political, film, educational, health, sexuality focuses. Women’s studies courses and then departments are birthed by the tireless, often payless,work of students and faculty. Conferences interweave the communities as
we are moved to change everything.
Many of us are so very young, in our late teens and early twenties. We
are fully engaged in a struggle that is older and bigger than we are. Somehow we rise to the occasion, full of dreams, dedication, determination. The
shy become present, the quiet become vocal.

Emergence
In 1971 I live in Hadley which is the field between Amherst andNorthampton. I have three women roommates who are close friends of mine.
I’m full of hope in the Spring when we make plans to live together in the
Fall. In the Summer there’s a slight change in my life; I come out as a lesbian. This potentially idyllic pastoral household becomes a macabre soap
opera.
Merry slams the oven door shut: I don’t understand your being a lesbian. The coming out rush is subsiding; I’m tired and cranky: just exactly
what is it, you don’t understand. I couldn’t possibly guess her answer: I don’t
understand how you could be in love with other women. I’m confused: whyspring 2007

65

do you say “other” women? Now she’s cranky: how could you possibly be inlove with any other woman besides me; it makes me jealous. I have no map;
I’m getting lost: does this mean you want to be my lover? She isn’t helpful:
I’m not a lesbian; and I’m angry at you for being one because you’ll fall inlove with another woman. No map, not even a compass will tell me where I
am.
I’m in love with Lily; this is true for years. She’s an old friend who’s
responsible for bringing me out as a poet. In our early days, we spend longnights creating art by candlelight. I write many abstract poems about universal love, cosmic agape; these poems are really about my loving Lily. We
don’t say this to each other; we can’t know that then. Our love is “platonic”
except she has this funny habit. Sometimes when she sits next to me, sherubs her body against mine and purrs. I feel a strange heat rise. I say “strange”
because I don’t know then why it’s there. Now that I’m out; the purringceases.
Before we enter The Great Silence, she tells me my mother is drinking
a lot of wine since my letter telling her I’m a lesbian. This is troubling news
since my mother is an anti-alcohol fanatic. This is a portent of years of bitter
haggling over my being a lesbian. Then my mother stops; the drinking, notthe haranguing. It’s painful enough to drive me to drink. I don’t stop for along time.
Into this situation I bring a wild lover who’s bisexual. The common
view at this time is that bisexuals are really people who haven’t made up
their minds one way or the other because there are only two ways to be,straight or gay. Then lesbians don’t exist (women aren’t viewed as sexual
beings) neither do bisexuals. Diane is a lone amazonic voice that says she
has the capacity to love doubly. She has an inner duality of perspective; shethinks everyone, gay and straight, has a point. This equivocation makes me
furious since there are lots of points aimed at me because I’m a lesbian.
In the midst of this drama, Merry’s sister Kate goes off to a fundamentalist religious group and returns in an altered state of reality. The girl now
lives in the Twilight Zone. She doesn’t speak; she just smiles, mumbles androcks. Then one night she slams her fork onto her plate and says: I don’tknow what you’re talking about with this word lesbian; whatever it is, Jesus
will forgive us. Now I’m rocking and mumbling; I’m not smiling: yeah but
I might not forgive.
At the table Diane conciliates: if we talk it out, I’m sure we’ll come to anunderstanding and resolve this problem. I’m not in the mood: I’m a lesbianand I’m tired of getting shit for it; I don’t understand why I’m getting shit

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for it; I just want to be left in peace to be a lesbian, and not have to explain
it over and over. The only problem is that the straight people at this tableneed to change their attitudes about lesbians.
After everyone leaves the table, I sit there for a long time. I go to theheart of the matter. I’m a lesbian because I choose to be a lesbian. I’m alesbian because I love women, because of the love I feel for women.

Deliverance
Pride month is a time of reflection on, celebration of my being a lesbian. This is a 35 year old choice. There are those now who buy the scientific theory that being gay has to do with genes. Perhaps. What I don’t like
about this theory is that I can hear right underneath it, I am gay and I can’t
help it because of my genes. Frankly it’s actually an aspect of me that I don’t
want to change, help, justify.
Before gay liberation, gayness is considered a sickness to be cured. The
American Psychiatric Association underscores this by listing homosexuality
as a sickness. Gay people are subjected to electroshock, aversion therapy andvarious other forms of torture to achieve the cure. Although APA changes
the status and removes us from the list, the damage is already done. If I
accept the genes theory, then it’s guaranteed they will want to mess aroundwith my DNA (to prevent homosexuality).
Whatever the latest theories are, I believe that my being a lesbian is achoice. Choosing is not easy. It’s difficult to represent a choice because thenit’s considered as something that can be changed. Well-meaning people see
this as an opportunity for heaven credits by healing the sick. Or, they thinkthat if they find the right way, they can get me to change. The trick is that
I’d have to be willing to change and in this instance, I am not willing.
It’s hard to explain why I make such a choice. It has exposed me toshattering losses. I lose most all of my friends when I come out, my family isacutely frantic about it all and they lose me. In the early seventies whensomebody beats up a dyke because she’s a dyke, the pervasive view is that
this is just another risk of being gay such as losing a job, child custody, or
housing. I’m outside society. I can’t say that I don’t care about that, that my
feelings aren’t hurt by that, that no damage occurs by standing strong against
the mainstream.
When people ask why I’m a lesbian, I don’t have a better answer now
than 35 years ago. People still don’t understand any better now than then.
The stunning reality of this misunderstanding is that when I say I love womenand that I’m in love with women and that there’s an incomparable depth of

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understanding with women, even now, people’s eyes glaze over because we
still don’t believe that women deserve that depth of love.
In the seventies I have the youthful chutzpah not to care about social
inclusion; I take pride in being an outlaw. I challenge all comers: macho
men who don’t understand how I could possibly enjoy sex without a penis,
with reticent queers who don’t understand how I could possibly enjoy life
without approval, with political activists who don’t understand how I could
possibly indulge being in love, bar dykes who aren’t conscious of the necessity for visibility.
In the bars I have to fight for my place because I’m neither butch nor
femme; I stand and fight to make my place as an androgynous bar dyke;
yeah I go to the university, what’s it to you. Among the university activists I
have to be gay and proud when sometimes I’m just plain scared of the risks
we take but of course there’s no admitting that fear.
A “baby dyke” friend recently recommends reading Stone Butch Blues. I
go skipping into reading the book. At the end of chapter one, I’m crying.
End of chapter 7, I’m crying harder, deeper. I cry tears that I could havecried decades ago. With the crying the wall’s mortar melts, bricks break andfall; I am exposed. A wall comes down that has separated me from life. Yes,
I am proud; yes, I am equal; yes, I make this choice. Strangely these assertions are the bricks of the wall. When it comes down, I’m surrendered to asimple truth. Being a Lesbian is the complex will of the spirit, the simple
logic of the heart: I am a woman, I love myself; I love women. I’m a lesbian
because I am content to be a lesbian.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Chase Nascent

for audre lorde
no one had noticed yetthat the struggle of womenwasn’t just the struggle of a white upper classthat the struggles of a white woman
were different
from the struggles of the blacks
that poetry was a methodfor deconstructing social mythsa chance to let all our words flow out
from our aching finger tips
no one had noticed yet[as my ex referred to herself
all those years back]that you were a triple threat:gay
femaleblack
and the lesbians were made invisible
in the women’s liberation movement
and the women were made invisible
in the gay liberation movement
and the gays were made invisible
in the black liberation movement
and you were left
so awareof the areas in need of improvement
and soyou fought with the words
mightier than a sword
and into each speech
and poem
and book
it was obvious your heart was pouredspring 2007

the knowledge you’ve given me
and all others
to explore known prejudicesand unearth all the others
to work
to give birth
to a new sense of equality
and how that word relates to every
part of humanity
and i have your strength now
tattooed into my skin
your words that resonate
all throughout
and all withina reminder of how far we’ve comeand how far we have yet to goa reminder of how much that
if we remain carelesswe could lose
your wisdom forever etched on me:“your silence will not protect you.”

Audre Lorde(1934 – 1992)
Photo © 2006 JEB (Joan E. Biren)

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Robin FreK. G. and Me, Fre:
The story of my love and years with Kay Gardner
The seventies when Sinister Wisdom lesbian journal began, I and lesbians across the land were starting a grand adventure, a time of great discovery.
I quit college, left my New Jersey-shore home and came out as a feminist
lesbian witch. I embraced a new sexuality, a new reality then, one that felt
both familiar and significant. I believed then, as I still believe now, in lesbian
culture: I have lived it for thirty plus years; it is my ground, my politics andmy inspiration. The oldest of three sisters, I recognize and embrace a larger
sisterhood, a connection that feels deeper and older than blood.
“Everything that ever was will be,
Everything that will be has always been.
Changing, changing yet ever the same
Changing, changing, come round again.”
I loved and lived with Kay Gardner for many years from 1978–2000.
We were both practicing witches, honoring the Sabbaths and magic in all
we did. We enjoyed bonfires on rocks by the sea. She came into my life as alesbian “star;” her first album “Mooncircles” having been released a year
before. We met at a witch’s Sabbath in the Catskills Mountains where acircle of lesbians lived.
Afterwards we all gathered at Lesbian Central - Whiteport— within aroom filled with womyn. Kay, the lesbian “star” seemed unreal. Offstageand earthbound, her presence still was intimidating. I watched her be kind,sign tapes, but generally stay apart. When it got late she asked where she wasto sleep. I piped up, “My bed!”
A silence fell over the room. I escorted the “star” up the stairs to my
attic loft. She said she remembered hanging feathers and glint of crystals; I
remember the curve of her back and the strength of her shoulders. I foundout later she was a swimmer. We cuddled that night and talked in the morning, but she had places to go. Years passed while we both closed doors on
former relationships.
At a feminist demonstration against the misogynist film “Snuff,” myCatskill lesbian community made a connection with some dykes in Maine
who invited us to visit. My friend, the greenelf Greenwind, went with me tospring 200771

spend the summer of 1978 by the sea. Kay knew those dykes too, for they
supported her music and I “ran” into her again. In fact, she knew them very
well. Her recording company—Wise Womyn Inc.—moved into their basement in Stonington. Greenwind and I were hired to paint their house; andthe inevitable happened. Kay came over to visit. We three had a lovely time
sitting in front of the massive stone fireplace.
She invited me to dinner at her new house. Though warned by myhosts that she was a flighty bird, sure she would fly on me, I went boldly on.
Now, I am a working-class girl from New Jersey who had never seen a piano,
much less a grand one. The little piece she was working on was “Rhapsody.”
As I listened to her make music, I fell in love with this gentle, strong womyn
and her soothing music.
Summer’s end took her to Boston while I returned to the Catskills. To
visit, we had to hitch hike the Massachusetts Turnpike; Kay’s car had been
demolished by a friend just before she left Maine. Fall moved on, and mydog, Hecate and I moved into her life.
Kay founded the New England Woman’s Symphony. Womyn’s classicalmusic was offered and loved by womyn who never had a clue that it everexisted. That was one of Kay’s many gifts. She saw potential, in people, ingroups and especially in womyn. She was a natural teacher. She saw thepotential in me to cook a chicken for the famous conductor Antonia Brico.
Many times she saw more potential in me than I had. The night ended withmy first migraine and a burnt chicken.
The symphony folded after a year. Kay and I moved back into her fourfloor 100-year-old house in Maine. There was an equally old tree off thefront porch, and a back porch with a view of ocean and islands to take away
the breath. The house needed work, but its potential was extraordinary, andits structure sound; it was built on a giant granite shelf.
Kay made her income touring; she was gone for weeks at a time. I needed
something to do, to contribute. Having experience with womyn in grouphomes, I decided to open “Sea Gnomes Home,” turning our house into alesbian retreat. Our womyn’s guest house brought in income during thesummer when Kay had little work. I ran the house, made enough to pay thetaxes, and imported my beloved lesbian community to coastal Maine.
1981: my first thousand dollars in the bank from summer’s income, I
bought two tickets to Ireland. Counting on camping we carried all we needed
but we realized why Eire is so green. It rains at least once during the day; too
wet to be in a tent. This found us staying at inexpensive bed and breakfasts
which dot the country. We found wonderful people who gave us rides, who

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took us home and fed us Irish staples: porridge and blood pudding sausage,
fresh eggs and clotted cream. We were on the trail of Grace O’ Malley, theIrish pirate queen who snubbed her nose at Queen Elizabeth and ruled theEuropean coast for decades. Kay had in mind an opera, but Eire had something else in mind.
One day on a western coast, I witnessed a visit from Kay’s muse. On aledge, in the mist of thick fog the sky cleared, and as the fog dissolved I saw
an old castle. It was ancient magic within the fog. Now every time I hear
Kay’s “Castle in the Mist” on “Rainbow Path” I see that castle. Ireland isinherently magic in itself. We steeped ourselves in lore of stone circles, magic
groves, and wise ancient oaks. I looked for elves but found none within
noble oaks.
Kay and I made a commitment in our first year together to recommit toeach other every seven years. Our seventh year was at hand: 1986. We wanted
a ceremony this time, and since we were witches we wanted a Wiccan
handfasting ceremony with ritual that we created, that meant something
special to us.
We invited sister witches for our ceremony in the woods. We wore wildrose and daisy garlands around our heads and jumped over the broomstickin the traditional Pagan bonding ritual. Ritual deepens commitment, just as
the company of friends makes promises more intimate and binding.
We promised each other we’d ride out the changes, and support andlove each other in any adventures that would come. Mostly, we committed
to love for another seven years. It was a quiet seven years, and oodles of fun.
I went with Kay everywhere she drove, crisscrossing the country, playing forand teaching lesbians across America, sometimes I even went with her when
she flew. While she performed and taught I actively discovered my identity
within her celebrity: my quilts sold well.
Kay and I re-committed again seven years later in 1983 with champagne and flowers. Things were changing. Kay’s years of empirical research,workshops, and teaching became an incredible book, “Sounding the Inner
Landscape,” and even more incredible album, “A Rainbow Path.” All thewhile her own body was giving her grief. I was becoming well known for myfabric art and quilts. Our souls were joyous, but our bodies weren’t.
I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1988 at age of 38, in theprime of my life. I was devastated. My life as I knew it gone. Plans, dreams,
trips—all disappeared before my eyes. I laid for over a year on the couch,while Kay researched MS.
Our life-lines, once parallel, now diverged. My deteriorating ability tostand, walk, or control my body was hard for me but horrible for others. It

spring 200773

became impossible for me to run Gnomes’ Home. I moved into a subsidized apartment and began taking college courses. I had begun taking college courses at home, being wheeled in on my dreaded wheelchair, but now
I was a real scholar! My goal became a Bachelor’s degree, in anything. Kay
became ordained as a Priestess of Isis. She started a school to train otherpriestesses. She brought the practice of feminine-divine to Bangor, Maine.
In 1999, our twentieth year together, Kay invited me into our woods
and gently announced that we would never make it to our twenty-first year.
Though I had sensed this coming for years, I was floored. I nodded to her,focused on breathing with pine trees, but never really reacted, or was I inshock?
“We” were dead, I felt dead. Life went on. I knew we were soul mates,
and we also knew there no such thing as forever. I cried, crying all the time.
I placed her picture on a nearby shelf shrouded in black cloth, focused on
the death part of losing my love, life. Who I had been was essentially dead.
I finished up that school year with a cloud around me, ended that semester with an unacceptable, to me, C. The haven of song - womyn withwings, started and directed by Kay, became a hard option. Wings had bravedme through many a crisis but was no longer comfortable for me to be incircle with her. I had gotten gratefully through school. By myself I loaded
up my van and moved all my things out of Kay’s house, a house I had cared
for and grown to love. I said goodbye to the town in which I had worked
and was still a part.
My love I tucked deep inside. I had grown and changed so much in theyears I lived with Kay. I went to Florida and camped at the Pagoda, a lesbiancolony. Close to the ocean I sat, as close to sea as I could and asked theendless surf, “Why now?” Though focused inward on my pain, I would sing
this song, look up, and the ocean and palms became alive to me.
Now is the only moment be in the moment,
Breathe in the moment, love in this moment,
Be here now, in this moment.
At a distance of a thousand miles, I called Kay. She told me she loved
another. I was numb but heard it was true in her voice, for I heard that soft
sweet love in her voice. There were no tears. I had cried out all I had. I was
ready to face whatever. I turned my face towards home but wondered where
my home was? For twenty years Kay had been home. Back in my apartment
in Orono I focused on graduating; I decided 2000 would be my final year. I

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had switched majors from psychology to anthropology as a senior in one,freshman in the other. In the back of my mind I pictured myself moving
back to my always-remembered, always-beloved Catskill Mountain lesbiancommunity. Full circle, I had built a life there before, I would again.
On a blustery day in March, I had received word of a death in theCatskill lesbian community; Sarah. I knew I had to go to give my final
blessings and comfort my tribe. After the funeral, I stayed on in Woodstock,
sleeping on Rainbow’s couch, digging a garden in the rocky soil outside herdoor. Hands in dirt grounded me. Already, I saw my new native friend
walking in beauty. I closely listened to the stream running across the backyard; streams have always given me good council. Before I went back to
Maine, I applied for Section 8 housing in Woodstock.
A year later when I was told an apartment in Woodstock was waiting,time went into fast motion. Women came to pack up my stuff, men came toload. My life in a swirl, I never even told Kay I was leaving.
We never spoke again. Six days after I moved in to Woodstock, Sofia
called. Kay was dead, actually physically dead. Suddenly my love, my lifemate was gone of a heart attack at age 62. What a shock! What a tragedy.
Even though I was no longer her spouse, I loved her deeply.
I drove back of course, hardly aware of the long drive. I still had the key
to my old apartment, now empty and lifeless. Days filled with reunions ofold friends and family who showed up en mass for the funeral. Kay, loved byso many, was honored and testimonies abounded. She had touched so many
lives. Voices sang softly:
My spirit lives on in the mountain,
My spirit reaches towards the sky,
My spirit lives on in the mountains,
I am not gone I am all around.
2006, now, I still see myself at Kay’s funeral. I am the sobbing ex-lover
aboard the three-wheel electric scooter. I am sobbing, crying for my loss,
crying for the silencing of her music, her words of deep wisdom. I cry witha sudden desperate loneliness; I always believed we would love again. Thiscrying was deja vu, of course. I had done this, the grieving, the cloth overher picture, the pounding of my chest and sleepless nights. Finding myself
in Acadia Mental Hospital, I sobbed for six days.
I miss her, I still cry, but with relief for her. Her body had been a distraction, a trial. Isis has given her wings; now she is truly flying.

spring 200775

The voices continue stronger:
Oh mighty Isis! Spread your wings beneath us,
Lift us safely to the sky.
Oh mighty Isis! Wrap your wings around us,
And take us safely home again.

Photo of Kay Gardner (1941 – 2002) © 2006 JEB (Joan E. Biren)

Kay Gardner, born February 8, 1941, musician, composer, lesbian, andpioneer in Women’s and healing music. Since 1970, she made this her lifeand her career. A friend, a lover, a mentor and mother she sailed through mylife for 25 years.
She married early and had two daughters. She began composing musicat age four. She started entertaining in coffee houses in the late 60s playing
folk songs with her guitar. She studied music at the University of Michigan;
received her bachelors degree from SUNY Stonybrook. Here she connectedwith Alix Dobkin, came out as Lesbian Feminist, and co-founded the openly
lesbian band, “Lavender Jane Loves Women.” Her first solo album“Mooncircles”startled the lesbian community by having one side withoutwords. Kay promoted, produced, and marketed Women’s Music as Urana
records, Even Keel and Wise Women Enterprises.

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In the late seventies, Kay pursued her lifetime dream of conducting asymphony orchestra, where women musicians played pieces by women composers. Kay encouraged the inclusion of classical music within the women’smusic festival circuit. In the eighties, she focused on the ancient art of healing with music. She wrote Sounding the Inner Landscape—Music as Medicine. Then she created “A Rainbow Path,” seven compositions, each focusing on a different chakra.
Kay’s body of work includes musical compositions, recordings(www.ladyslipper.org), articles, and a book. She collaborated with various
artists; received numerous awards including an honorary doctorate fromthe University of Maine at Orono. Kay lived in Stonington, Maine for twenty
years. She became an important part of that coastal town by donating hertime, her energy, and her expertise. She conducted and led the community
band for the Fourth of July parade for many years.
She started the Bud Carter scholarship fund, named after a musician
who died too early. She believed everyone had music inside waiting for achance to be set free. All that music needed was some support and encouragement. Kay co-founded a weekly radio show on WERU focusing on
women’s music: “Women’s Windows.” In the early nineties, Kay co-founded“Woman with Wings,” a sacred singing circle of women’s voices. When she
became the Unitarian Universalist’s music director, Wiccan rituals became
part of the Sunday services. The congregation continues to honor Kay.
Kay Gardner was a gifted, innovative thinker, a revolutionary in a purely
womanly way. An important part of the second wave of feminism, she provided music that fueled a generation of new thinkers. She was a composer,
partner, mother, grandmother, priestess, teacher, visionary, and an exciting
performer. She saw herself planting seeds of music and healing throughout
the land. She is missed and mourned by all who knew her.
The songs throughout this essay were written by the members of the all
womyn ensemble “Women with Wings.” Their CD was produced by Kay
and released as “Hand to Hand Heart to Heart.”
And a lone voice begins:
A womyn in the tribe has died.
A womyn in the tribe has died;
Each womyn comforts each womyn
Comforts each womyn each,
A womyn in the tribe has died.
A womyn in the tribe has died.

spring 2007

Another voice begins:
Knowing love my heart is open to the sky,
Knowing love my heart is open to the sky,
Knowing love my heart is open to the sky,
Knowing love my heart is open.

Songs printed with permission from the songwriters.
“Everything that ever was”
Debbie Christo c.2002“Now is the only moment”
Debbie Christo c.2002“My spirit lives on”
Linda Kohler c. 1996
“Oh Mighty Isis!”
Linda Kohler c. 1998
“A Womyn in the Tribe has Died”
Robin Fre c. 2002
“Knowing love”
Sofia P. Wilder c. 2002
Chants: “Hand to hand and heart to heart” www.ladyslipper.org.

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Chrystos

Barbara Cameron Nation Shield(1954 – 2002)

Photo © 2006 JEB (Joan E. Biren)

Barbara Cameron Nation Shield was one of the most important people
in my life. She understood exactly what I was talking about. We knew eachother for thirty years. We had a lot of discussions that contributed to mypolitical development, and to giving me a sense of dignity about my place inthe world, and my right to be in that place. A lot of who I am is a result ofthat friendship. All of the pride in myself came from her and I continue tomiss her most profoundly, especially her laugh, and she laughed at somereally painful and difficult moments which taught me another way to survive them too.

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79

Kelly Cogswell

Barbara Cameron
Born May 22, 1954 in Fort Yates, North Dakota, Barbara Cameron
was raised on the Standing Rock Reservation by her grandparents. According to her partner, Lynda Boyd, at age nine she read an article about San
Francisco and told her grandmother that one day she would live there “andsave the world, too.” She did her best to fulfill her promise.
After two years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she attended the American Indian Art Institute, majoring in photography and film after high school,
she moved to San Francisco. There, in 1975, just a few years after the Stonewall riots in New York, she co-founded Gay American Indians with activist
Randy Burns.
At the time, “It was just about impossible to stand up and say who you
were. If you had a job you’d get fired. Your family might disown you. You
certainly would be ridiculed,” recalled Maurice Kenny in “Changing Ones:
Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America.”
Cameron’s refusal to be queer in one corner of her life, and Native inanother, is as radical and transformative now, as it was then. Being both gay
and Native American put Cameron in conflict almost everywhere she was.
In “Gee, You Don’t Seem Like an Indian From the Reservation,” Cameron
wrote, “We not only must struggle with the racism and homophobia ofstraight white America, but must often struggle with the homophobia thatexists within our third-world communities.”
Even in gay communities of color she sometimes felt on the outside asa Native American. “Racism among third world people is an area that needs
to be discussed and dealt with honestly,” she wrote. “We form alliances
loosely based on the fact that we have a common oppressor, yet we do nothave a commitment to talk about our own fears and misconceptions about
each other.”
Cameron, committed to breaking the silence, still managed to be “veryrespectful of other people even when she disagreed with them,” as Chrystos
remembered. That gracefulness in the face of disagreement made her a successful organizer and bridge-builder on a number of fronts, from San
Francisco’s Lesbian Gay Freedom Day Parade and Celebration to Jesse
Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, on whose behalf she was a delegate to the1988 Democratic National Convention.

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She was mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and the Commission on the Status of Women, and supported theefforts of women working to improve life in Nicaragua, as well as the international indigenous AIDS network.
Barbara Cameron died at home in San Francisco on February 12, 2002,
and was brought to her final rest at Wakpala, South Dakota, on Standing
Rock. She is survived by Linda Boyd, her partner of 20 years, their son,
Rhys, and a large network of family and friends. A book of her writings andphotos is in progress.
Reprinted with permission from The Gully Online Magazine, 2002
(www.thegully.com)

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Ida VSW Red

Sister Mothertongue[Mothertongue Feminist Theater Collective is also celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.]
Women, let me tell you
I hadn’t known sisterhood‘til I was licked by Mothertongue
folded into her group hug
embroiled in her endless process
seared by her creative fires
scared shitless just offstage
awed by audience intensity
bathed in laughter, in applause.
I’d never had a sister, you see
until sister Mothertongue grabbed ahold of me!
First performance: first all-woman space
first all-woman show, first pro-woman theme
I’d ever heard. My excitement soared.
Our lives, drama? Our lives, important?
Our lives worth sharing, celebrating
showcasing, taking on the road?
This, a life-saving revelation for me.

And the collective keeps giving credit, expanding the boundaries, making space for us all, time for the endless check-in of our feelings before therecounting of our pain and the process of learning how to present ourselves
fairly, making room for our differences, dredging up our herstory, solicitingfrom other women the perspectives we lack.
Like birth sisters, we argue and wound each other — sometimes fromdeeply held polar positions or to get new points of view on the floor, some-82

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times out of pure cantankerousness, competition (though we don’t like toadmit it), or out of old scarcity fears, inadequacy fears. But to outside threats,
we’d defend each other to the death. Mostly we like and love each other andfind plenty of room for our large selves.
We’re lovers of women, justice, life — this life
this pain, this process, this joy we share.
Women, I didn’t know sisterhood
until I met up with sister Mothertongue!

Ida VSW Red
A Mothertongue writer & performer, 1976-1996

Weisbaden Labyrinth. Photo by Ina Auerbach.

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Renate Stendhal

Remembering 1000 Women: The Women’s Memorial
Labyrinth in Germany
In the past two decades, labyrinth movements have been spreading on
both sides of the Atlantic. Labyrinths in different sizes and shapes — themost famous classical example can be seen at the Cathedral of Chartres —have been rediscovered everywhere across the world, in temples, churches
and in the open air. New labyrinths are sprouting in schools, parks, gardens
and hospitals as inspirational tools for meditation, meditative walking, healing
and peace. Most of them are initiated by women, peace activists and feminist activists like singer/songwriter Margie Adams in the USA, and church
women like Lauren Artress. Most labyrinth walkers are women who see thelabyrinth — as one woman put it — as an alternative to “the short traditional paths from A to B, the easy answer, prejudice and standard solutions.” The form is not to be confounded with the maze. The classic labyrinth, set in stone, mosaic, or simply cut into the grass, conveys openness
and clarity. It was designed according to geometrical-cosmic laws with apath that leads from the entrance inward to the center and simply winds
back outwards to the exit. The long, elegant curves with their sudden turns
are a beautiful symbol of life’s rhythms and changes. It takes time to complete the path — time for surprises, insights and emotions to happen along
the way.
I have walked a number of labyrinths in different countries and been
moved in different ways by the experience. Recently in Germany, I walked
an altogether different labyrinth. Its form is a woman-shaped variation of
the original, designed by a Swiss artist, feminist and political activist, Agnes
Barmettler, together with Rosmarie Schmid, the Swiss founder of the International Labyrinth Project. Their Zurich labyrinth, part of an initiative tocreate public spaces for women, was adopted by a German organizer of
unusual women’s projects, Dagmar v. Garnier, and turned into a travelinglabyrinth dedicated to the memory and heritage of women.
In Dagmar v. Garnier’s “Frauen-Gedenk-Labyrinth” (Women’s Memorial Labyrinth), the spiraling path is laid out in flat, square stones — 1000of them, to be exact. Each one is to become a memorial stone, with thename and life dates of one important woman of the past and a brief description or quote from her work. The name of her patroness — the woman who

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has sponsored the stone — is inscribed below (sometimes several women
have grouped together to come up with the money for the sponsorship).
The idea of 1000 great women honored and remembered in this way
derives directly from an American work of art — Judy Chicago’s 1979 “Dinner Party.” This major installation that “set the table” for 1000-some womenof historical importance, profoundly moved and inspired v. Garnier. Dagmar
v. Garnier is a Frankfurt citizen, a dancer and folklore dance expert with her
own folklore ensembles. After lobbying intensely and quite in vain to bringthe Dinner Party to a German Museum, she came up with the first of her
grand visions. She rented the Frankfurt Opera for a rousing ball night —“Das Fest der 1000 Frauen” (The Celebration of 1000 Women) — andinvited women from all over Europe and beyond. Each woman was supposed
to represent one of the 1000 great ancestresses honored by “The Dinner Party”
and to embody “her” woman with costume and regalia at the ball.
I came from Paris to represent The Amazon, dressed in a white tuxedo, one
naked breast painted with a shiny red snake. Judy Chicago came from the States,
dressed as Judy Chicago. The event was a huge success and “The Dinner Party”
finally made it into a Frankfurt museum. Meanwhile its offspring, the Women’sMemorial Labyrinth, has grown into a vast grassroots movement. V. Garnier
has visited over a dozen German cities by now, setting up the alluring stonespirals at prominent sites, each time involving local schools, universities, adulteducation programs, libraries, and city parliaments. Without any grants, any
support from state or church, simply through the voluntary effort of womenfrom all walks of life, the traveling labyrinth has involved thousands of womenin an extraordinary network of activism.
This year in May, at the twenty-year anniversary of the opera ball, thecity of Wiesbaden was chosen as the site for the labyrinth. Wiesbaden is anancient spa town half an hour northwest of Frankfurt. In the old center, not
far from the “Kochbrunnen” (the Cooking Well) that spouts boiling mineral water even today, the stone spirals were laid out in a beautiful town parkin front of the baroque Staatstheater (the town theater and opera house),across from a pond. White tents accommodated food stands for the wanderers, sitting areas for lectures and presentations, and shelter from the occasional spring rain. A small stand offered information materials, books andpostcards. At night, guarded by women, the spiral path was lit by a thousand candles (kept in three wooden boxes at the periphery.) For the entire
month of May, commemorative labyrinth walks, concerts, art shows, performances, film presentations, political gatherings and historical lectures
marked the memorial labyrinth as a “place of learning.” At least one infor-spring 200785

mative or celebratory event was scheduled for each day of the month. In thecourse of one weekend, for example, audiences could take part in a discussion about Hannah Arendt, hear about the famous labyrinth in Chartres,celebrate the 20th anniversary of Simone de Beauvoir’s death, get acquainted
with the numerous Jewish women remembered in the labyrinth, learn about
Islamic women and their mystical pioneer poet Rabi’a Al-Adawiyya (713801), reflect about “The Role of Men in Matriarchal Cultures,” or join v.
Garnier in another attempt to bring women’s art to a German Museum: inthis case Judy Chicago’s “Birth Project” (1980-85).
The high point of the anniversary was a special 3-day “Fest-Kongress
zur Geschichte bedeutender Frauen” (Celebratory Congress for the Historyof Eminent Women”) that marked the half-time of completion: Some memorial 500 stones had been sponsored and dedicated by women who were
now invited to congregate, exchange their knowledge, enjoy art exhibitions
and presentations, a ceremonial labyrinth walk and another great ball. For
the occasion, v. Garnier had rented the famous Wiesbaden Kurhaus (Houseof Cures) with its vast colonnades and baroque ballroom. Once again, the500 patronesses were called upon to appear in costume in order to symbolically stand in for their chosen woman, or to commemorate their original
Frankfurt Opera appearance.
I went to Wiesbaden as the sponsor for Gertrude Stein whom I consider my earliest muse. Should I dress as Gertie? In a burlap skirt and sandals, a flowery blouse and a funny little hat? I also came for the anniversaryof my own creative involvement with the Women’s Movement in Europe. I
had co-authored the first feminist multimedia show, “In the Beginning...ofthe End — A Voaye of Women Becoming,” which was to be shown as partof the Fest Kongress. Back in the eighties, I had repeatedly read at Dagmar
v. Garnier’s Frankfurt Salon and had collaborated with her on consciousness
raising workshops and dance rituals. In order to accommodate my past andpresent roles through my costume choice I decided on a black tuxedo witha red twine spiral as a symbolic Amazon reminder. I gave a presentation on
Stein, then carried my freshly engraved stone through the labyrinth to its
definitive spot while the attending women stood in a circle around the outerrim, “holding the space.” The beautifully engraved memorial stone shows
Stein’s motto exactly the way she used it on her letter paper: “A rose is a roseis a rose is a rose” written in a circle with a small rose in the center.
For me, as for many women I talked to, walking the Women’s Memorial Labyrinth was a particularly touching experience: walking and simultaneously reading the stones was like spinning through a vast network of memo-

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ries, reminders, reminiscences from one’s own past. A witty friend of mine,
whom I had lost track of a long time ago, made me smile when I came upon
the stone she had sponsored for “The Eternal Fool.” There were other “archetypal” designations — for example “The Wise Old One,” “Witches,” or“The 13th Fairy.” The alphabetic order of the stones follows the women by
their first names, not their last or family names which — as tends to be thecase with women — are subject to change. Coincidentally, the alphabet
made neighbors out of Teresa von Avila and Tina Turner, Romy Schneider
and Rosa Luxemburg, and created the unlikely trio Margaret Mead, Margaret Mitchell and Margaret Sanger. Ice princess Sonia Henie was rubbing
shoulders with Nazi resistant fighter Sophie Scholl. Virginia Woolf and Vita
Sackville-West were as closely united here as Gertrude Stein and Alice B.
Toklas in their grave on Pere Lachaise. Within a few steps around the path,
I passed Isadora Duncan, science fiction author James Tiptree (alias Alice
Sheldon), sociologist and Peace Nobel Prize winner Jane Addams, writer
Jane Austin, Chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall, Jeanne d’Arc, Jenny Marx
(wife of Karl), and 17th century Mexican poet Sor Juana de la Cruz, before
arriving in the present with tree activist Julia Hill. Every turn of this“Wanderschaft” through the history of women and the women of history
holds similar serendipities and dizzying associations.
I was surprised to discover that some members of my past feminist
circle had died and that a few others had made their way into the labyrinth
while they were very much alive. Among the stones dedicated to living women
were a number of writers, teachers and political activists who had clearlycreated one of those labyrinthian turning points in the lives of the women
who had chosen to honor them. With a certain sadness I noticed that had I
wanted to honor a personal friend of mine, the late artist Meret Oppenheim,
I would have been too late. In fact, many stars from my private Hall of Fame
and Preference had already been chosen by others, writers Karen Blixen(alias Isak Dinesen), Else Lasker-Schüler, Sappho, Lou Andreas Salome, anthropologist Marija Gimbutas, mystic Mechthild von Magdeburg, artists
Niki de St. Phalle and Frida Kahlo, or, in a charming group dedication,“The Women of the Left Bank.” Small objects of veneration — shells, flowers, artifacts were carried into the labyrinth and deposited on or next to thestones. As all the women in their fantastical costumes gathered to ritually
walk the labyrinth, an unknown patroness handed me a smooth, shiny, roundpebble to decorate the Gertrude Stein stone.
It was a spectacular sight to see the almost 500 women gather for the
ceremonial labyrinth walk, many of them in elaborate historic and artisti-

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87

cally inventive costumes. The Swiss initiators of the International Labyrinth
Movement, crones Agnes Barmettler and Rosmarie Schmid, spoke about
the spiritual power and political relevance of women remembering womenand our “herstory” in this gathering. Then the long spiral set into motion,accompanied, from the top of one of the white tents, by Swiss composer
Francisca Gohl and her ensemble. Gohl had composed a beautiful, haunting melody in a 7 by 4 walking-and-swaying rhythm, called Tapuat (Labyrinth) — the Hopi Indian word for source, origin, cradle, mother and child.
Sung and accompanied by flutes and drums, it was the perfect support for
the long, slow procession. A number of women carried their newly consecrated stones into the labyrinth with them. The young patroness for Meret
Oppenheim brought with her her own beautiful copy of the “surrealist”
object par excellence, Meret Oppenheim’s “Dèjeuner en fourrure” — thefur-lined teacup and saucer.
Dagmar v. Garnier, the architect and choreographer of the event, had
tried to figure out the mathematics of the walk, determined to find a walking order that would allow all of the patronesses to stand next to their stone
at the very moment the music stopped. The music stopped several times, tothe confusion of everyone, but no doubt a few of the 500 women had arrived at their commemorative stone. Nevertheless, I am sure the Goddesses
present in the Women’s Memorial Labyrinth — The Wise Old One, The
13th Fairy, The Eternal Fool, Demeter, Diana, Freya, Sheila na Gig, etc. —would have smiled tenderly on behalf of the organizer’s passion.

Note:
The list of names with brief personal explanations by the patronesses
can be accessed online under www.frauen-gedenk-labyrinth.de, or at http://www.fest-der-2000-frauen.de/.
Women who would like to sponsor a labyrinth stone — at the cost of
1,000. Euro — can contact: Kunst- und Kulturverein Das Erbe der Frauen
e.V. (Dagmar v. Garnier, Schneckenhofstr. 33, 60596 Frankfurt, Germany.

88sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Diann Bowoman

In Memory of Marnee Kennedy ~ Fall 2000
Marnee Lee Kennedy was a talented, multi-faceted womyn who felt life
in a wide range of strong emotions — boundless joys, deep fears, passionate
loves, cutting anger and determined stubbornness in the face of adversity.
She was a caring and patient mentor and a devoted friend to many of us
over a twenty-year period. Marnee was a loving partner, best friend andsister activist with me for nearly two decades before we separated a couple
years before her death. She was an attentive parent and a strong role model
for my birth son, Marc during those twenty years.
I mourned her loss greatly when we separated and again when she died.
I needed something of Marnee in the world; I couldn’t stand to have nothing left of this unique lesbian but my memories and a small collection of her
artwork.
Marnee Kennedy knew a lot about people and the world from avid
reading and quiet observation. She loved being close to nature and worked
to educate about and stop environmental abuses. Marnee believed in the
power of an individual voice to create positive change. She frequently raised
hers, espousing radical ideas well ahead of any cultural acknowledgement orapproval. She initiated serious discussions with strangers and friends alike:actively listening one-on-one to women’s thoughts, feelings and experiences;educating and sometimes preaching. In this way she often eased pain or
opened doors no one else realized existed.
Marnee would never call herself an artist, claiming all her creative efforts just copied nature or someone else’s work. But despite that stubborn
refusal, her whole life and the lives of her family and friends overflowedwith her arts and her creative abilities.
In spite of several disabilities, Marnee’s mind and hands were always
busy. Before we met she had written poetry and songs, as well as compilingextensive research for a book which was never completed. She tooled leather,drew detailed layouts which she silk-screened onto tee shirts, gardened, crafted
using offerings from nature, cooked, and refinished furniture. Marnee enjoyed music, especially folk songs & ballads, accompanying herself and others skillfully on the acoustic guitar. She undertook carpentry projects of all
sizes, designing and building: practical items for use around our home; an
intricate scale model of our dream log home; a garden shed and a stacked
wood cabin that we lived in for a couple of years. She remodeled our living

spring 200789

room and built a porch onto our last home. Marnee experimented in numerous mediums, like clay, paper mache, wood-carving, quilting and otherneedle crafts. She was always trying something new.
Marnee’s most striking creations were the faces she brought to life on
paper and on tee shirts. With charcoals and pencils she brought females,
unknown & famous, living & dead, right into the room with us. Using her
own pointalist technique, Marnee developed a series of portraits entitled “A
Living Herstory Series,” images of lesbian and women activists and ‘firsts.’
The idea of “What I Do Is Art” grew from years of watching Marnee’s
constant need to work with her hands, using and enjoying many of thethings she brought to the world, and observing the pleasure and satisfaction
her creation gave her. Yet I heard her frequent denial of being an artist.
Marnee felt she wasn’t really an artist because she wasn’t formally trained,
but self-taught, and she seldom sold or made money from her works.
Marnee was a private womyn. She wouldn’t want a lot of fanfare or
public attention. So “What I Do Is Art” was born. A small group of womengather in a quiet & beautiful natural rural setting at Degrees of Freedom
Retreat Center in northeastern Ohio, each having seven days & privacy inwhich to practice our art. Evenings are spent sharing meals, ideas, feelings
AND validating each other’s creative work & the world’s need of our selfexpression.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Lilith Rogers

Martha Courtot

Martha Courtot (1941 – 2000)
Photo by Tee Corinne

Back in 1983, when I first moved to Sonoma County, California I was
introduced to the wonderful poet, Martha Courtot, by a mutual friend—
Ida Red, in fact. I immediately was fascinated by her—her gift with words,
her deep intellect, her beauty, her spirituality, her laugh. It wasn’t long
before we were lovers and, as you can tell by the poems below, we had a very
passionate connection.
Our affair only lasted three years but it was a wonderful, amazing three
years and led to so much growth for me. And, although we were no longer
lovers, we had a strong friendship that lasted until her much too early deathin the spring of 2000.
Martha was the embodiment of Sinister Wisdom and we were blessed tohave her in our community.
Martha was a deeply spiritual woman, a seeker of truth her whole life, arebel who could never be silenced, contained, or tamed. She was fierce inher mothering, living and loving. I miss her still.

spring 2007

Lilith Rogers

Hills
My lover, like the hills here,
is big and round and rich.
(I do not come from these hills. I come from plains—flat, dull coastal plains.)
When I see these hills
I think of my lover—of her belly—round and creased
as they are.
I see the folds in the hillside
and I think of the deep furrows
the babies growing
so long ago
inside my lover’s great belly
have etched forever into her sweet flesh.
( I do not come from hills or people who love flesh.
I come from that place of flatness, that placeof sterile sadness.)
These hills here
look so smooth and soft.
I long to embrace themto bury my face in themas I bury my face in my lover’s smooth skin.
“You are so soft,”
I whisper to her then—marveling, marvelingat her fragrant, succulent softness
enveloping me, enfolding me
extending all my sensitivities
well beyond their usual limitations.
(I was not raised in this third dimension. I was
not raised to relish such fecundity.)
Sometimes when I ‘m driving in these hills
I laugh.
They are so bold and jolly, these hills here.
I laugh at their boldness,
I laugh at their colors—
deep green, sharp gold, furry brownas the season tells them

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

as they tell the seasons.
I like them solid and firm against an ocean sky
I like them shadowy under a gray fog
confused in a winter rain.
I love them in full moonlight.
Driving in these hills
my lover makes me laugh, too.
“You,” I sing to her,“You lover you.
Like one of these great hills here
you spread yourself before me
you roll yourself under me.
I loved you before I even saw you
loved you first when I saw these hills—
these hills you live inthese hills we live together in now.”(Surely once, long ago, I must have comefrom these hills, too.)
April, 1984

spring 2007

Lilith Rogers

Appearances Can Be Deceiving
1
What do you see
when you look at us—
a dumpy woman with a mustache
in rumpled clothes and purple sneakers
sitting across from a brown-eyedfreckled skinned, fat lady?
Are our hands resting near one anotheron the worn Formica table top?
Are we talking quietlyor perhaps just sitting silent?
Do you imagine
we are trading recipes, perhaps,or childrearing tips?
Or—that we are both so dull
that we have nothing at all to say
and so sit patiently
waiting for our meal?
What do you see when you lookat us?
If you could truly see
you would find two women who—
until now—
had each never met another person
as passionate as herself.
Though each has tried
many partners of both sexes
neither has foundanother
willing to fly as high into pleasureplunge as deeply into desire
as she herself just KNEW
there was to go.
And now—they have met.
They have met and recognized
one another.
They have met—
and met93

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebrationand each time they come together
they meet once more
on a further planea higher passion
a deeper desire.
2
What do you think
as you watch us
eating our large breakfasts
with such obvious appetites?
Do you say to yourself,“What a shame
if only they ate sensibly
they could lose weight,
could even become attractive.
Perhaps, too, if they did something
about their hair
the fat one could easily coverthat little bit of grayshe has in hers
the other’s is so straightso hopelessly unstylish.
And their clothes—of course.
And why not a bit of make-up
to emphasize
what few good features
they DO have?”
What do you think as you watch us?
lf you could REALLY see,you would discover two women
who think one anotherthe MOST beautiful lover
either has ever seen—
two women who spend
countless happy hours
touching, petting, gazing at
cherished features—eyes and necks and breasts
and ripply bellies
arms and thighs and hands—
yes those hands
again lying quite stillspring 2007

have only recently been so busy
touching, squeezing and stroking
all of that soft, warm flesh
which you so casually despise.
Those four hands
have just been kissed, licked, bitten
and sung to.
Those plain, aging, unadorned hands are—to these two women—
incredibly delicate,wonderfully sensitive caressersof one another’s most intimate vitalities.
3
If you could really SEE
the couple at the next table
you would find two women
exhausted—temporarily—
from pleasurefamished from orgasms
eating their very late breakfasts
with the heightened appetites
that comewhen ALL other appetites
have been sated—
at last!
September, 1985

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Kirsten Hearn

Tribute to Tina Grigg (aka Tina Clare)(August 24, 1961 to June 9, 2001)
The Ethics Girl with a Brain the Size of a Planet“What do you do when a dear friend decides to die? You are shocked,
sad, you cry and there is a terrible sense of loss. “She found the ultimate
pain relief ” said a participant at Tina Grigg’s memorial celebration, on 14th
July 2001. So, I think, in the end she made her choice, she found her calm
release. But it doesn’t make the pain of losing her any easier.
In the hours after I heard the news, I wandered the olive groves (I was inSpain at the time), at first desolate, then angry and then just plain sad. Why
did she do it when her chosen family loved her so much, her partner Val wasalways with her, in mind if not always in body? Could we have done anything different? Had we gone round when she didn’t answer the phone thatlast Friday, would she still be alive today? Maybe, but would she just haveput off the time, till she found another opportunity? Who knows?
Friends were quick to reassure us of their admiration of our support for
Tina, “a real and tangible living demonstration of how non-biological families can really be there for each other,” said one. We had chosen each other,for better or for worse, in cloudy times and in sunshine — we gave her all
the love we could, but it was not enough. “And they call it ‘pretend,’” I
raged to a hairy heterosexual man, the nearest human at the time as I paced
the peaceful Andalusian orchard.
Born in Essex into a working-class Catholic family originally from thenorth of Ireland, convent educated Tina was a precocious child, a voracious
reader and a rebel from the beginning. Armed with an English Lit degreefrom Bristol University, she entered personnel management, lectured on
employment law, jointly edited “Croner’s Reference Book for Employers”
before turning her back on the establishment to fulfil her rebellious tendencies, as an activist for women’s, lesbian, peace and green campaigns. Possessing a clear and beautiful soprano voice, Tina sang her way through life,
including a spell as a “top” in the London Feminist Choir, (The pre Madonnas), and the disabled dyke acoustic group, The Tokens.
She was brilliant, engaging and had a wicked sense of humour and impeccable politics on every issue, arising out of her strong and deeply felt
sense of ethics and social justice. When well, she was a powerful advocatespring 200797

and support to her friends. I, for one, could not have managed to live independently during a time of great stress for me, had Tina not been there in
the background, organising, helping and making sure the practicalities of
my living alone as a blind person were sorted.
In the late eighties, she had the first of a number of psychotic breakdowns, culminating in her being “binned.” Even then, she led the other“inmates” to revolt, encouraging them to drink their flower water as soon as
the nil by mouth notice went up above their beds, the warning signs that
this day was to be an ETC day.
Over the years, Tina was to have a number of other breakdowns, between long bouts of deep depression and months, even years, of relative
stability. During such times, she turned to writing poetry and found an
eloquent and vibrant voice, keenly sketching out her life as a mental healthsystem survivor, a cat lover, lesbian and tree lover. Her “mistressery” of language, brittle sensitivity and subtle wit were also evident in the thoughtful
book reviews she penned for Boadicea.
And now this extraordinary woman is gone. I shall never hear that lovely
voice rising in joyous song or feel her tugging at my arm, eager to show me
yet another damp and slimy but to her, beautiful tree. But she has left mewith such gifts — a true appreciation of the importance of chosen family ina homophobic and hostile world, a love of green spaces, the pleasure ofplaying my tongue over a chilled piece of Green And Black organic dark
chocolate and the ever growing sense that I am well and truly alive and am
damn well gonna live life to the full, because I’m doing it for her as well as
for me.
Tina is survived by her partner of eight years, Val Stein and her two ex
radiator cats Puffin and Luna who have reverted to the wild, in their new
home with Marina in Wales.
(July 2001, for Boadicea, London-based disabled women’s newsletter)

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Cathy Cade

Elizabeth Freeman (1919 — 2006)

This photo of Elizabeth with her beloved dog is how I mostremember her.
Photo by Cathy Cade 1975

I first met Elizabeth Freeman at her home in Wolf Creek, Oregon when
I was visiting friends living nearby at “Women Share,” lesbian land outsideof Grants Pass. I was drawn to what I called Elizabeth’s New England women’s
intellect, for she reminded me of my grandparents’ widow friends we used
to visit in the summers when I was a child. These were smart, vibrant women,
forever running to the next room to bring back the latest fabulous bookthey were reading. That was Elizabeth, but she was no widow. At 56, aformer WAC during WW II and a retired high school teacher and counselor, in addition to books, she was excited by her new lesbian community

spring 200799

(which a bit later would include her lover Elana/Elaine Mikels) and her
beloved nephew Carl who lived across the road.
I was 33, had come out as a lesbian feminist four years earlier as part of
the women’s movement, and was equally excited by the growth of lesbiancommunities. From the very first there were other sources of special energy
between us. Though I was happy to be wearing my liberating jeans, tee
shirts, and, yes, the flannel shirts and hiking boots of my generation, hersoft butch intense attention thrilled my femme heart.
I think too there was a kind of inter-generational excitement flowing
between us as I told her of my activism and showed her my photographs; as
she reported on her work with the Older Women’s Network and Oregon
Women’s Land Trust. Now, at 64, I am beginning to have some of these
exciting inter-generational relationships with younger appreciative lesbians— that are not without butch-femme undercurrents.
I returned to Wolf Creek in 1977 for the Older Women’s Network
workshop held at Elizabeth’s. I was newly pregnant by donor insemination.
What a surprise this young generation of lesbians must have been to her.
Like fairy godmothers Elizabeth and Elana arrived at my house shortly
after my son was born, bringing with them Billie from Woman Share tohelp care for me. I named my son Carl, in part after Elizabeth’s gay nephew,
Carl Wittman, who I’d known in the South through our civil rights work.
At a time when many lesbians questioned giving attention to boy children,
Elizabeth’s demonstrated love for her Carl was sustaining.
I visited Elizabeth once after she moved with Carl and Allan Troxler to
Durham, North Carolina. By this time Elizabeth had gone beyond the avid
reading of my New England widows and was excited about her publishingcompany “Crone’s Own Press,” which was publishing writings of old lesbians. She also co-funded a housing co-op for women, supported the Selfhelp Credit Union and demonstrated for peace, gay rights and the environment. (This August I will return to Durham for my first national gatheringof Old Lesbians Organizing for Change.)
I love you Elizabeth. We knew we loved each other then, for our faces
would light up in each other’s company, but in those days I’m not so sure we
said “I love you” out loud.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Marge Nelson

Remembering Elizabeth Freeman
I think about the old dyke movement as a mighty river with tributaries
flowing into it from all over the country and beyond; grass roots organizing
at kitchen tables, bedrooms, coffee houses and computers every where. So
although it’s not accurate to designate one person as the leader of all this, I
want us to remember and honor Elizabeth Freeman who with her partner,
Elana Mikels was dreaming and creating this powerful vision over thirty
years ago.
In March 1977, in Volume I #1 of a publication they named Our Own,
Elizabeth put out her dream of old women living together in communities.
Especially concerned with women who were alone and isolated, she imagined a network of these communities: the Older Women’s Network, or OWN.
Her brainchild was a directory of members that would encourage communication around the country. Over the next years, OWN mushroomed tothe midwest and the east; it included OWL (Older Women’s Land), Options for Women over Forty at the Women’s Building in San Francisco andmorphed into the Old Lesbians Organizing Committee, and into a nationalorganization,OLOC: Old Lesbians Organizing for Change.
I met Elizabeth when Polly Taylor and I parked our RV in her driveway
on Coyote Creek Road in Wolf Creek, Oregon, August 1977. She and Elana
were so welcoming of us, so encouraging of our dreams. We had left Buffalo, New York and were touring the country seeking the older women’s
movement. And here it was. After three weeks, we drove with them down to
Woman Hill in Napa for a retreat of OWN that would bring together country and urban dykes. Elizabeth and I stayed in touch over the years, but I felt
sad when she left the west coast.
In the summer of 1989, the Old Lesbians Organizing Committee met
at a national conference at San Francisco State University. Elizabeth washere and stayed with me. A group of us demanded that the organization
focus on ageism, racism and other issues pertinent to old dykes. That waswhen we changed our name to suit our more activist and political ambitions. Since then, the national organization has declared ageism as our primary concern, but local groups carry on as we see appropriate. There is somuch history here that we need to be collecting!
I have a lovely memory of the last dinner of the ‘89 conference where I
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Wisdom), Shevy Healy and her partner, Ruth Silver. Shevy was excitedly
talking with Elizabeth and all of us about assuming a national leadershiprole in OLOC. Elizabeth, who by this time had become focused on localorganizing for Co-op housing in Durham, North Carolina was very encouraging to Shevy who went on to become a vital leader for OLOC.
I feel so grateful to Elizabeth through whose vision I found a community that continues to give my life heart and meaning. I know that I shallnot forget her.

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Sandia BelgradeHome
After a 30 year odyssey
your body is where I land
love had shipwrecked
weighted by the freight of Calypso—
and was the other one Circe?—home did not register on mycompass
land had its own temptations
the young girl set out
roaming, tasting the wines
encountering false travel guides
a wolf spider covering an entire wallin Mexico
Pacific sirens —some now dead—weaving the spirit lines
phosphorescent stars blurred the lip
between the wrinkled sand and the shore
I had to climb out of my own myths
Nothing felt home till I returned and knew the place
the body retains what the mind discards
fingers swimming with sea anemones
through the waves of desire
have memory old hungers
remain in the wizened heart
Love in old age knows what the sails are made of
how navigation is karmic
how the compass—having experienced
the spiders and sirens—points homeback round to the weaver
and I go down on the universe
The older woman lands awake
beside your familiar bodymy beloved polestar
fingering the human compass
I go down on the universe

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Katherine

Sharon Silvas (1944 - 2006)
Colorado Publisher Believed in the Beauty and
Empowerment of Women
Sharon Silvas, who died on April 12, 2006 at the age of 62, was thevoice of the Colorado women’s community through Colorado Woman News,a publication that she founded in 1988. That same year she started theColorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce which was the first in the country, now boasting over 1000 members.
Born Judy Sharon Habush in Portland, Oregon, she and her family
moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin when she was ten; she detested that city
because of the American Nazi sympathizers she saw in parks during thesummer. Silvas was born in 1944 a year before World War II ended and she
grew up knowing camp survivor friends of her parents. Although the atrocities of Hitler were not discussed much at home because the genocide was
too painful and overwhelming, it of course left an indelible mark on her
young soul.
Silvas was a local and modern example of the Jewish and Jewish feminist ethic of social justice in action. She worked for the Anti Defamation
League (the Jewish advocacy group) and was the public relations coordinator for the Colorado National Organization for Women in the 1970s. Silvas
was a radical feminist who distrusted government. She had Emma Goldman’s(the Russian Jewish anarchist who was forced to leave the US in 1919 during the height of the Red Scare) quote on her office wall: “There has neverbeen a good government.”
Silvas believed in self-determination for women. That included her belief that women should take care of their own abortions through natural
means so that the power struggle and the permission that women today arestill seeking from men would end. Silvas always knew the underlying issueof social problems was abuse of power and she resisted patriarchal control
her whole life.
Silvas published Colorado Woman News monthly from 1988-2003 until
she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. She then published it online.
The magazine was a way to keep feminism and mostly women’s accomplishments in the public eye so that our lives would be recognized and known.

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For Silvas the biggest highlight of her publishing career happened in
2002 when a fiction manuscript by Kris Radish called The Elegant Gathering of White Snows became part of her book division (Spinsters Ink Books)
and was bought out by Random House. Silvas always knew how to spot
great talent and Radish has gone on to publish additional novels with Random House.
I would say one of the messages of Sharon Silvas’s life was the importance of all women to be woman identified/feminist regardless of sexual
orientation. She spoke truth to power in her radical feminist editorials andshe came out publicly as a lesbian in Colorado Woman News after the passageof Amendment 2 in November 1992. Her courage was well received in the
GLBT and mainstream community.
Silvas will be missed as a great feminist writer, publisher, visionary, business and community leader, partner, mother and friend to many. She diedpeacefully on the first night of Passover which was fitting for a woman who
most of all stood for freedom and liberation.
She is survived by her partner of 14 years Katherine; her sons Geoff,
Jonathan (Denver) and Daniel Leventhal (Baltimore); her nephews Jesseand Issac Rembert (Denver); her sister Susan (Gene) Kauffman; her niece
Melynda Schneider and first cousin Mary (Sanford) Barbas of Los Angeles,
California.

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Marilyn Murphy

In the Presence of Greatness: Barbara Deming
Because we had friends in common who insisted we meet, Barbara
Deming invited my companion lover and me to visit her at her home on
Sugarloaf Key when our RV trip took us to the Florida Keys in February,
1984. All we knew of Barbara at the time we received the invitation was that
she was a peace activist, a writer and a Lesbian who was convalescing from apainful and debilitating kidney ailment. We obtained her book, Remembering Who We Are and read it aloud over morning coffee on our way south,
learning some of who she was and how she thought. We were very impressed by the person revealed in the book. Still, we were reluctant to intrude on a stranger, especially one who was ailing, even though our intrusion would be minimal. We would park in her yard; live in our camper; stay
only one night.
Nothing, really nothing could have prepared us for Barbara Deming.
To be in her presence was to be in the presence of greatness. She was whatsome would call an “old soul.” I had to fight the urge to kneel, an ingrained
Catholic reflex. Joan of Arc came to mind and stayed there — for both ofus. We opened our camper door at her knock. “Hello! I’m Barbara. May I
come in?” And her spirit entered our space before her body did. We consciously had to force ourselves to behave in an ordinary way so as not toembarrass ourselves or our extraordinary guest. I have few “new” words orsimiles to describe our experience of Barbara Deming and find myself falling back on those of my Catholic past. All those stories of angels and saints
whose holiness shines through their faces and hands, causing awe and reverence in the hearts of those who saw them reverberated in my mind eachtime I was in Barbara’s presence.
Barbara climbed into our camper that first afternoon swathed in sweaters and coat, muffler and gloves, hat and boots. “I can’t seem to get warm,”
she explained, this sixty-seven year old, tall, bone-thin woman with her glowing saint’s face. So we talked first about her health, with Irene, a nurse,
urging her to eat for strength and to see a traditional physician, “just incase.” We talked of Lesbian life; she and Irene pleased to meet another Lifelong Lesbian, to discuss the differences feminism made in their lives. She
wanted to know about our work, Califia Community, the Lesbian News, mywriting. She asked our opinion, our views, on issues she was thinking about.
She listened to us with her entire person at attention. The intensity with

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which she listened left us
feeling that what we said
was important to her, that
we were important to her,that we were important.
When she began to tire,
she reached out her hands
and grasped ours. “I’ve
loved our talk,” she said.
“You will stay, at least a
few days, so we can talkagain, won’t you?” Since
we would have accompanied her to the court of
the French Dauphine, weeasily agreed to change
our plans.
Barbara’s place, in asparsely populated area on
Sugarloaf Key, was a small
Lesbian enclave, four
plain houses surroundedby greenery, trees, shrubs,
Barbara Deming. Photo ©2006 JEB (Joan E. Biren)
flowering plants, giving
the place a secluded atmosphere. Here she lived with her beloved companion, her Lesbian neighbors, and a constant and ever-changing stream ofvisitors, strangers like Irene and me, and her friends and comrades from thecivil rights, peace and women’s liberation movements. Because Barbara wasthere, the place seemed shot with magic. I wanted my children with me, mysisters, my mother, my friends. I wanted to share this experience with all thepeople I cared about.
That sharing is impossible now. Barbara died on August 2, 1984. Memorial services were held for her in many places in the east. Friends are
writing and publishing moving accounts of the passionate way she lived her
dying. Yet few Lesbians know of her life, her work, her books. Barbara
Deming? Who was she? She was a powerful woman, a shaper of American
society, a LESBIAN whose life and work and words could be a source ofpride and inspiration to her Lesbian sisters. She could be lost to us because
of sexism and homophobia and the resultant difficulty Lesbians encounter
when we try to make ourselves known to one another.

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Barbara Deming was born in 1917, the daughter of a well-to-do Republican attorney and a woman of privilege. She attended a private Quakerschool through high school. She studied literature and theater at Bennington
College. She worked in a variety of jobs related to literature and the theater,
including one as film analyst for a Library of Congress project housed at
New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. She was an aspiring writer. Mostof her work of that period was not published until later, but several of her
pieces appeared in magazines like CHARM and THE NEW YORKER. She
traveled extensively, too. Her life through her mid-thirties, as it appeared on
the surface, could have been a film starring Katherine Hepburn as the earnest, attractive, dedicated-to-the-single-life career woman, needing only Cary
Grant or Spencer Tracy to give her a happy ending.
Barbara was a Lesbian however, rejecting, by sixteen years of age, a traditional life. She learned early to question the so-called truths of her sex, herrace, her class, her entire culture. She developed into an American liberal, a
Democrat, in favor of civil rights and unions, against racism and the loyalty
oath. She was, in fact, similar to the Lesbians of her race, class and generation we know. She might have stayed “ordinary”, for a Lesbian, if she had
not studied the writing of the Mahatma Gandhi after a trip to India in thefifties. “I realized I was in the deepest part of myself a pacifist,” she wrote.
She committed herself to non-violent activism and was to become the foremost white spokesperson for non-violence as the sane and ethical way tolive one’s life and to bring about peace, racial justice and women’s liberation.
From 1960 until her death, Barbara lived her truth...“The truth, above
all, that every human being deserves respect. We assert the respect due ourselves, when it is denied, through noncooperation; We assert the respect due
all others, through our refusal to be violent.” This truth took her to Moscow, Cuba, Vietnam in the cause of peace. It succored her during her many
imprisonments in the jails of her own country for acts of civil disobedienceduring demonstrations for peace and racial justice. It gave her the strengthfor her fasts; and it enabled her to endure the physical and verbal abuse towhich she was subjected by the racists and warmongers on the streets, by theInternal Revenue Service, by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and by the former husband of her beloved companion in the courts andin person. Her truth, as she lived it, made Barbara the kind of person who
could listen intensely to each person. It was that quality that illustrated thedepth of her respect for each person. She would not only risk her life and go
to jail for us; she was also willing to listen to the least of us with the attention she gave to those with the power of life and death over the whole human race.

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Barbara Deming’s written work is known and cherished by thousandsof women and men who do not know she was a Lesbian, or who are “shocked”
to learn she was a Lesbian, or who admire her “even though” she was a
Lesbian. These are the people who write “respectful” obituaries and articles
in major newspapers, obituaries and articles which erase her Lesbianism
from her life and who will erase it from the history of the nonviolent movements for peace and racial justice in our time. This erasure is the final violence done to her; it is the removal of her sexuality when she is no longer
here to protest the outrage.
We, her Lesbian sisters, know that her sexuality is likely to be the placefrom which she grasped the truth by which she lived. Once, when her Lesbianism was under attack she wrote, “In short, my pride was for the first time,perhaps, assaulted IN ITS DEPTH. One’s sexuality...is so at the heart, theheart of one. And just as one fears physical hurt to that part of one’s body, feels
its vulnerability, so one fears the psychic assault—and of course, yes, precisely
because it is most deeply joined to what is spiritual in us, what allows us tolose the cramped sense of being only single selves.” And again,”...because I ama homosexual I know in my deepest being what it feels like to be despised.” It
becomes the pleasure, the privilege and the responsibility, of Barbara’s Lesbiansisters to remember she is one of us, and to make sure her Lesbian life is noterased from history. Those of us who do not already know her, can meet her inher books. * One last letter was written by Barbara Deming to all of her sisters
twelve days before her death. It is her last gift to us.
To so many of you: I have loved my life so very much and I have loved you sovery much and felt so blessed at the love you have given me. I love the work somany of us have been trying to do together and had looked forward to continuing this work, but I just feel no more strength in me now and I want to die. I
won’t lose you when I die and I won’t leave you when I die. Some of you I havemost especially loved and felt beloved by and I hope you know that even though
I haven’t had the strength lately to reach out to you. I love you. Hallowed be (mayall be made whole). I want you to know, too, that I die happy.
*A good place to start is her last one, a collection of the best pieces fromall her previous work. The volume includes information about her life andher political evolution by its editor, Jane Meyerding, and a wonderful introduction by Barbara Smith of Kitchen Table Press. Its title is We Are All Partof One Another: A Barbara Deming Reader.
Reprinted from Are You Girls Traveling Alone? Adventures in Lesbianic Logic, by
Marilyn Murphy (Clothespin Fever Press 1991) with permission from Irene Weiss.

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Ona Marae

Remembering the First Lesbian in My Life
It was 1977 and I was 13 years old. Briefly, I had known camp counselors who were big and strong women, but she was the first one to walk into
my life to stay. She was, as the stereotype would have it, my gym teacher andcoach. She wasn’t, however, big. Shorter than I, she stood about 5 feet tallwith long flowing hair. But make no mistake, she was a strong female, none
the less!
I was severely lacking in female role models in my life and the entranceof Coach made a great difference. She coached all the junior high girls teams,
as well as the high school volleyball and track teams. She also taught highschool Physical Education and Biology. In a few short days, I had found myhero. She did teach me that clumsiness was no excuse for not trying. Heavyset and far from graceful, I had always been the laughing stock of the PEclasses. Coach stopped that and helped me specialize in something I could
actually do well: serving in volleyball. And it worked. In 8th grade, I served aperfect 15 point game.
Because of her encouragement, (and my secret, or not so secret crush
on her), I would try many things in junior high that no one else would ever
have convinced me to try. Run the mile competitively? You’ve got to be
kidding! But I did it because Coach needed someone. This round girl ran
from one light post to another, chanting to myself, just one more post and I
can quit. Her cheers of encouragement were enough to keep me running till
I reached what seemed the end of a horrible distance.
High School was easier. Though I was still heavy set, I was always one of
the first ones to finish wind sprints, hoping she would notice me. I specialized again in serving and earned athletic letters for being able to come off
the bench in times of trouble and change the tide of the game. That confidence she gave me was life changing.
Off the court, things were difficult. I was beginning to recognize I wasn’t
the same as other girls, and I didn’t want to be. I played sports, half because
I wanted to be around the jocks who played sports, and half because it gaveme more precious time with my coach. After my year of Biology with her
was done, I did a special independent study in Advanced Biology under hertutelage. I was never so happy as when I was in her room with just her,laughing or discussing whatever was on our minds for that day.

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Things at home were hard at well. My father had left us and my motherwas a housewife with no schooling or training. Many times I worked after
school or practice, cleaning homes for fifty cents an hour, so that we would
have grocery money. Coach also was supportive through that. During the
break at volleyball tournaments, the entire team would ride the bus to arestaurant for lunch. I would sit on the bus with my homemade meal waiting for them to return. She never challenged my pride by offering me money
I couldn’t repay, but there was always a brownie or cookies to share when
she returned.
There is one memory I will never forget. I had begun drinking heavily
while visiting my father on weekends. It got me in a lot of trouble, including being gang raped at a keg party the summer before high school. I wasawkward and definitely ill equipped to deal with the social life of my father’s
new family and life. Drinking with them was the only coping mechanism I
had. The weekend before Christmas of my freshman year, Coach took me
aside and promised me a scholarship or someway out of this small, nowhere
town if I would quit drinking. I quit that day. My trust in her was complete.
If I studied and practiced hard, her words would come true and I wouldfind a way out.
I hit my suicidal moments in high school. Living with a mother with anuntreated mental illness was hard. Sometimes I would come to school witha suitcase, not knowing where I was running to, but knowing I had to getout. Coach was always there for the conversation that helped me reconcile
my own sanity with my home life.
I didn’t have any idea that Coach was a lesbian until I hit high school.
Then her roommate, a woman electrician, would join us for the end ofvolleyball practice, shagging balls. She was a very nice woman and one day,it just hit me. They lived in a trailer, way out in the country, and this woman
had moved and changed jobs to follow Coach to this school district. I didn’t
have hard proof, but it was clear enough.
I did get as much hard proof as I ever would my junior year. Some sortof vague argument about how many hours Coach was teaching came up
before the school board. She was teaching all six periods, but not receiving
the extra pay that teachers in that situation received. It seemed like a stupid
thing for the school board to do, when it was so obvious with other teachers. And then the rumors started. She was really being run out because she
was a lesbian. I was crushed. Many of her girls were crushed. We sat in thehall crying when she gave us the news.

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The end of the year was a wreck. She kept trying to hold us on task, andall we could think of was her leaving. The track team would sniffle in the
middle of practice. My advanced biology experiments all deflated like theballoons I used to simulate the lungs. This woman had given me hope anda future and I was losing her.
Finally she gathered us up for a talk. Yes, this was hard, but hard things
happened in life and you just had to deal with them. Her leaving didn’tmean she didn’t care about us, and wouldn’t be cheering for us. She justwouldn’t be coaching or teaching us. We did our best, half-hearted though
it might have been. We tried to just suck it up and deal with it.
One of the hardest things was not having her and her partner along forathletic events and practices. The next coach must have had a miserable
year. He came into a group of grieving girls and tried to change everything
she had taught us. That wasn’t going to happen.
Finally graduation came, and I was able to leave that school and town.
Coach had been right, straightening up my life had worked and I had a fullride scholarship to a small Midwestern college. While there, I signed up forevery Physical Education class they had. I was still heavy set, but had learned
the joy of playing, of using my body and being wildly exuberant with it. I
tried to track her down but wasn’t successful. What information I could
find was that she had left teaching and coaching and was working in thefamily business in her hometown.
What a loss for girls and young women everywhere: someone who could
speak our language and earn our respect, taken out of the profession because of her sexual orientation! I hope she knew we loved her as much as we
respected her. I hope she eventually got back into coaching, if not teachingin a public school. I hope her gift has not atrophied. I doubt it has. Such a
powerful woman could not stand to sit idle for long, a gift she taught us. We
loved you Coach, and when we get together to talk, we still do. Thank you
for giving us the strength and the courage to be ourselves, to come out andface the world with a solid stance and an unabashed eye. You made a difference in our lives. And surely, that’s what it’s all about.

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tatiana de la tierra

Dreaming of Lesbos
I can enter the morning with traces of an eternal dream: to live on aplanet of women. we sing in the fertile forest, caress on lavenderhills, bathe beneath cascades of clear waters. and just like that,nude and wet, we mount each other’s bodies. our desire is a whalethat searches for calm in the depth of the sea.
I smell sex in my hair when I awaken.
the dream perfumes all of my days. I go to the post office and look
for stamps with etchings of flowers and fruits so that I can send
letters to the women who loved me in my sleep.
we are in a world that is not ours. what do we do with the dreams
that touch our consciousness in the nude each night?
our planet of women is nothing more than a dream. who knows
how many of us bathe in the woods or which ones of us havewings that let us fly with our flesh? it’s not for anyone to know.
fortunately, we always dream paradise, we make it ours. there, wefind each other and live in our collective memory.
and so, I smell sex in my hair when I awaken.

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tatiana de la tierra

Pathway to Lesbianism
the path to lesbianism implies the renunciation of the path that was
already written. everything that you should be and do is replacedwith what strikes your fancy.
being a lesbian is a changing of the hands of power. it is true thatthe power is always ours but many times we allow others tomanage it for us. a lesbian reclaims her power.
the ceremony of initiation is a wedding with oneself. walk toward
the altar, alone and dressed with the gown of your skin. with eachstep you leave behind the destiny that was never your own andyou get close to that which will be of your making. detain yourself
at the entrance to the door of lesbianism. promise to be faithful to
yourself, kiss and embrace your own body.
that is how you enter lesbianism: naked and in love.

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Kathe Kirkbride

Colleen Regan (1949 – 2006)
Colleen Annette
Regan was born July 18,
1949 in Detroit, Michigan and died August 9,
2006 in Santa Fe, New
Mexico. Colleen neverrecovered from a neardrowning accident in
Mexico on April 8,
2006. Her last conscious
act was to save a friend
from drowning. Colleen
epitomized the era of the
60s and loved the musicof John Lennon,
Jefferson Airplane, The Photo by Kathe Kirkbride
Doors and others. She graduated as valedictorian of her high school class at
McKenzie High School in 1967 then received a BA in English and MS in
Education to start her professional career as a teacher, but that wasn’t her
niche. She went back to school to get a BS in Accounting and an MS in
Taxation and became a dedicated CPA with a 20 year career; her tax clients
more often than not became her friends. She loved to travel and visited several
countries before her retirement in July 2003 at which time she began traveling
fulltime in an RV mostly in Mexico and Central America.
Colleen was a highly competent CPA and a generous friend who sampled
life like a hummingbird samples flowers. She was fearless, generous, loving,talented, hard working, impish and eccentric and will be missed by all who
knew her. She knew there is more to learn than what we discover during ourlifetime on this planet and now she is out there finding out what she always
suspected was our inter-connectedness in the universe. She was ever hopefulthat we humans would learn to take better care of this Earth and learn tolive peacefully as one United World. We who loved Colleen will watch for
her to show up in our lives when we most need her or least expect it. A
memorial celebration of Colleen’s life took place on September 10, 2006 in
Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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Janet Mason

A Reverie: To Alexandra Grilikhes (in memoriam)My friendship with the poet and novelist Alexandra Grilikhes was oneof the great pleasures of my life. The author of nine small press books ofpoetry and one novel, also from a small press, Alexandra was an accomplished writer who in many ways was also overlooked — especially by her
own community. Her work has often been described as oblique and incandescent. She often reinvented myth and followed it to its mysterious core,evident in her poem “Mistress of the Animals” published in her book The
Reveries from Insight To Riot Press:
You will know her presence/ in the half-light/ fathoming her
power/ you cannot see her/// in the howl of animals/ who makethe quick/ slide through the grass, / her power in their blood/
noisily beating/ and echoing in the flesh of the hunter/ attempting
to silence his/ pounding breath, Mistress / of animals be/ kind,give// succor in the dark/ be sun in the dark.

Alexandra followed certain themes in her life and writing and the Mistress of the Animals was certainly one of them. Her novel Yin Fire, published by Harrington Park Press was nominated for a Lambda literary award.
The narrator, Doris, paces the streets of the Village in Manhattan searching
through her past for what she has always been looking for. “What she needs
is to keep tracking her way West or East until after the right number of
missteps and fumblings, some magic will tell her who and what she is — awoman, lover of women, daughter of the Lady of the Beasts, the Mistress of
the Animals, the bear-mother-hovering-figure, the one she is forever seeking and loving or longing to love.”
Yin Fire was Alexandra’s last published work before her death and in it
is some of her most compelling writing, evident in such passages as “Theaffect of each of these women on Doris – Dreaming Awake. Speechlessness.
Magnetized. Struck Dumb. Hot. Grabbed. Dazzled. Ablaze with longing.
Obsession.” As the narrator retraces her footsteps that led her to this pointin her life — where she has a lump in her breast and has come to visit apractitioner of Chinese medicine — she looks back at her own relationships
with women lovers and her friendships with several gay men and her fascination with their world of anonymous sex where their “connection to a
stranger was everything and anything.” Also, in this novel, the narrator —116sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Doris — takes a hard look at her childhood and her family, including incestuous relationships with her father and brother.
Alexandra died in 2003 at the age of 70. Her death — anotherstatistic in the raging epidemic of breast cancer — was a profound loss for
many, including those who gathered at her memorial service. Alexandra was
the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication Library in Philadelphia from the late 1960s until she retired in the early 1990s and was well known for her important work building the library’s collection. But in the end, at her memorial service, it was
the poets — many of them her former students and close friends such as
myself — who turned out in force, remembering her with readings of herwork. The memorial service was a sad goodbye but it was also a reminder oflife in all of its beautiful fragility, best summed in her poem “Mangled,” also
from her collection The Reveries.
I write you/ my tongue mangled on your/ flowers, flowersthat you brought me/ from the city, mangled too on / you,your body a green/ stone washed ashore at high/ tide andstill glistening./ You are all I wish for in the clear light of thisearly/ August day. The/flowers push upwards/ from thebrown bottle, wanting to/ live and I love their short fragile/
lives, their sweetness, their slight/ fragrance almost lost here
in / the high sea winds.
Yet their outline,/ sharp
against the light,
fiercely/ grips this room,and continually, my/looking at them.

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Janet Mason

Impulse to Fly: a Memory of Almitra David
Almitra David was a wonderful poet, translator, and teacher. Most of
all she was a lovely human being.
The first time I heard Almitra read, she gave me a copy of a poem that
I liked very much. It was called “Fig” and was about Pittsburgh where she
had grown up, where as she wrote in her poem
“women still cut crosses/ in their bread still roll pasta/ to dry on thetable still wait/ for the orange zucchini blossom/…/they know
where they are/ they don’t expect to smell Mediterranean air/ don’t
look under their pillows/ their houses are brick/ and if a rose
blooms—basta/ I think of Etruria/ when grandmother mentions
Rome/ and when she says God/ I remember the one/ of the Wild
Fig Tree the one/ whose hands are like mine/ She in whose housethere is/ sun enough for figs.

I told Almitra what the poem meant to me and she handed me the copy
she had read from. That’s the kind of person she was. This reading was atGirlfriends Bookstore (a now defunct feminist bookstore that for a relatively short period of time inhabited a storefront on a run down block ofSouth Street in Philadelphia). It was decades ago, before “Fig” was published in 1993 in her first collection of poetry, titled Between the Sea andHome, from Eighth Mountain Press.
Almitra and I were friendly rather than friends. Since we traveled inmany of the same circles, I often ran into her and her partner, the artist
Rocky Toner, at poetry readings, art shows, and events in the lesbian community. Once she was with her adult daughter who with her large deep set
brown eyes and gentle smile resembled her mother. Almitra had three children from her early marriage, another daughter and a son as well.
As time goes by, memories are increasingly fleeting. I do remember that
it was always a pleasure seeing Almitra. She had depth, perception and,perhaps above all, compassion. She once changed my entire perspective about
my life with a single short sentence. “But, Janet, those are all good things.”
Almitra was a dedicated Spanish teacher at Friends Select high school inCenter City, Philadelphia. I remember that I envied her students.
As I look back on my early acquaintance with Almitra, it is almost as if
I am remembering myself as a different person. Perhaps we are all less inno-

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebrationcent than we used to be. As a young lesbian feminist, I was imbued with thepower of one who is intent on changing the world. I was optimistic andnever lost hope. I thought people would always be there. In retrospect, I see
I was naive.
Almitra’s death, at age 62, caused by a reoccurrence of breast cancer isanother one of life’s cruel and sudden betrayals. Now she is everything she
ever was and more. She is another statistic in a raging epidemic.
When Almitra’s second book of poetry, Impulse to Fly, was published in1998 by Perugia Press, I introduced her when she read at Giovanni’s Room.
I said that her work reflected the profoundness of ordinary life and that she
also spoke in a poetically ancient voice.
When a writer dies, the work survives. Still, I cannot think about Almitra’s
work without remembering her as a person. Almitra was many things tomany people. For me, she was a bridge to earlier writers who have also
shaped my world. Once a student of Muriel Rukeyser, Almitra described
this legendary women in a poem to her:three flights you/ climb to this room/ where windows don’t/ shutout October wind you/ stand defying/ the doctor who said/ stayhome in this room/ women who come together to write/...
and again you have come to the gatesthis time you say to a
new power of women to
the woman as writer
you havesurvived wars to say thisspring 2007

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Nyla Dartt

The MotherLode Collective
San Francisco, CA 1969-1974“Deborah Gerson, who participated in the budding women’s movement
and later wrote a doctoral thesis on it, recalls that nothing in the broadside
MotherLode was news by journalism school standards: First-person articles
on such topics as body image, family relations, women in prison, and lesbian mothers dominated its five issues. The news was our re-understanding
and reflecting on our lives through consciousness-raising, understanding how
women’s oppression worked,” Gerson says.
(As quoted by Marci Rein of Media Alliance on the explosion of alternative media in San Francisco.)
I have a photo of one of our collective members, Sandra, holding a
copy of our newspaper, The MotherLode as she leans against a light pole andnext to her, a man who was never identified, holding his newspaper called
the Effeminist. They look alike, same hairstyle, same height. Sandra’s smile iswan, and she looks a bit tired. She had been hawking our paper all day andthe duties of preparing a newspaper and caring for our two children on topof being politically involved plus selling the papers at the March against the
war in Vietnam: all of it was wearing thin by 1972.
Though Sandra went to the rally that day, you do not see the waving
signs of the anti-war protesters, you do not see the marchers themselves, andyou do not see the others of our household. Though all of us participated inthese events, someone had to stay at home to be with the children and I
believe it was my turn to parent them that day. In order to produce the next
issue we needed to sell as many as possible. We collected the nickels, dimes
and quarters from individual sales and plowed the proceeds back into ourcommon pot.
Years later I learned from my daughter Karina, that she and her “brother,”Tracey also found the MotherLode money can which we thought we had
hidden away from their fingers. But we were too busy to notice many things.
They busily came and went while we folded and stapled the paper, prepared
meals and held meetings, endlessly, in our household which was not only alittle yellow stucco house on Winfield Street in the Bernal Heights neighborhood in San Francisco but it was also a hub of activity for the women’s
movement. The folks we bailed out of jail for spray painting political slo-

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebrationgans on walls, stayed with us. Women who were performing or speaking in
local events bedded down on our floors, and meetings with the Women’s
Health Collective members were also held in our kitchen. And of course,
meetings about our house and or the school we created, were also held in
our living room.
We called ourselves the MotherLode because that is what we named thepaper, after many hours of deliberation. We called our household a “collective” because we didn’t know what else to call it. We were not a commune.
In fact we wanted to distance ourselves from the hippie-commune movement.
We modeled our household on the Kibbutzim notion, as described by
Bruno Bettleheim, who believed that children could be raised collectively,that they could and should learn that their mothers were not the only people
who could care for them and love them. We believed that the nuclear family
was destructive to women, in particular, and discussed this theory at length
in one of our newspaper issues, entitled “It’s All in the Family.” We also
discussed together how we wanted to handle the responsibilities of the children, given that in most nuclear families it is the woman who is totally
responsible for all of their care. We did not want to replicate that in our
household. We created a schedule where each of us was responsible for thechildren for two days in a row. All of us took on the job of being a parent toboth children. We made decisions about the children as a group. And as
one-parent we all went to PTA meetings, much to the surprise and chagrinof their teachers and fellow parents.
We came up with a plan, a format, a map, as it were, of how we wishedto live together. Three of us were lesbians. One woman Joan, came with herman, as she put it; though she was a feminist and wanted to join in with ourplan of raising children, she was in a long term relationship with Chuck
who was along for the “ride.”
Jeri Robertson and I met Sandra at Glide Memorial Church in San
Francisco in 1969. Jeri and I were facilitating consciousness raising groups.
The announcements of these groups were being spread by word of mouthand by the Feminist magazines and alternative media at the time. We leftthese consciousness raising groups exhilarated and inspired and volunteered
our time and energy. As single welfare moms anxious to find other womenand to get involved in the feminist movement, we were unprepared for theamazing transformation that this experience was creating. Neither Jeri nor I
had done much about our budding feminist consciousness but we had been
thinking about feminism in our readings of Simone de Beauvoir (The Sec-

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ond Sex), Anias Nin (The Diary’s of...) and Betty Friedan. But then we got
our hands on the BITCH Manifesto! a radical feminist lesbian separatist
manuscript, unpublished, but which was spreading around the country by“alternative” means. And wow.
It was in one of these groups where the members agreed to become an
on-going, weekly and cohesive unit so we decided to close our doors to newcomers and got down to business. Apparently, this is the same kind of groupprocess that was going on in many other groups around the country.
As Jeri, Sandra, Joan and myself got closer in our group, we decided tolive together. Eventually we found a house to fit us comfortably and after
much discussion, we began our giant experiment. It was not long after thisthat we embarked upon the creation of a newspaper which published fiveissues.
One of the first articles we printed in our newspaper was “Why I Wanta Wife” by Judy Syfers, (1971). Because of our political beliefs about themeaning of “collective,” we did not copyright our material. Therefore, withour blessings, Judy was able to sell her poem to MS Magazine almost withinmonths of the article’s appearance in our newspaper. I mention her article
because I can “Google” the title today and get an archived copy of it, since
MS was able to conserve it and place it into their archive. When I Google
Mother Lode, I get a listing of Christian celebrations of motherhood andmuch about the wonders and beauties of childrearing. That is not the spiritof the paper we created. We critiqued motherhood. We felt we had a right tocritique it; we were, after all, mothers ourselves and had been extremely
disappointed by all of its attendant myths.
Sandra was the writer among us. It was she who led the way in fashioning the overall content; it was she who delegated the assignments, ushering
the writing process until the end. Jeri was the artist who had created newspaper paste-ups previously and it was she who guided us in doing the art
work and pasting up the document, readying it for the printers. We each
had a hand in writing the articles after doing the research, and then directing the placement of the articles on the page. But we each had a task wewere good at and so we encouraged its development. I had a hand in thedevelopment of the primary school and Joan performed much of the houseduties, as she was a capable organizer and could negotiate with the outside
world. Our children adored Joan and they would frequently seek her out
when no one else could comfort them.
Jeri and I participated in the Women’s Health Collective, which started
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then it moved to 24th St. and eventually it moved to SF General, where it
exists today. At first we were just a referral service but we quickly developed
skills to demonstrate the use of speculums to an audience of women interested in learning the tools suggested in the book Our Bodies, Our Selves. We
eventually learned how to perform menstrual extractions, and were able toadvocate for the needs of women as regards abortions. An entire issue ofMotherLode was therefore devoted to women’s health care. Jeri and I spearheaded the research into the subject based upon our experiential process.
Our Collective spent hours in late night discussions, while we sewed
the hand-puppets we sold on the streets of Union Square, while we createdthe lunches for the kids to take to school, while we made placards to use in
the anti war demonstrations. In our spare time we helped a poet friend handprint her poetry manuscript into a chapbook. The printing press was located in the basement apartment of her home and required that the handle
be turned manually. Though her pages were exquisite, she knew no publisher would produce it because one of her titles was “Edward the Dyke,” apiece which would eventually become famous but at the time, we were amazedthat she could so boldly say the work DYKE.
We talked and talked until our ideals began to take shape into a livable
politic. When the Women’s Bookstore opened in Oakland at the corner of
51st and Broadway, we were thrilled. Even better was the opening of Old
Wives Tales Bookstore in San Francisco. In both these venues we could
display our paper, find other women’s literature and have a space to hear
poetry and other writers read their material. Sandra and other writer friends
converged upon the SF Chronicle (a daily newspaper in San Francisco) andstaged a sit-in to protest the fact that there were no women editors on thepaper. Every week it seemed new women’s newspapers and or events wereinaugurated. I recall a meeting held at Glide Church to meet with Robin
Morgan. The church was so crowded that women were spilling out into thestreets. Information about all of these events was spread by word of mouthand “alternative” media. There was no internet. There were few radio stations willing to make announcements about women’s events.
Our MotherLode household became a magnet for misplaced and or neglected families in the neighborhood and we became a neighborhood “safe house”
for abused animals, children and adult women abused by their husbands. Oneof the many amazing events that we did together stands out for me, in fact. We
stood guard in a home of a woman who was being stalked by her estranged
husband with a gun. He eventually gave up and went away, giving her justenough time to disappear off the face of the earth. In 1971-1973 women did

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not receive protection by restraining orders due to domestic violence; as far as
the police were concerned then, it was a private, family matter.
We came to realize in our discussions and readings how women enacted
their second class citizenship. It happens when one woman fails to takeseriously what another woman has to say, about any topic of importance.
An example is when a woman provides information or makes a suggestion
to another woman, how often she will not take seriously what she had been
told by a woman and how often the very same question is asked of a man.
Because men have the answers. They are smart. Women are dumb.
And finally we discussed how gossip was a controlling tactic of the patriarchy, especially since we learned that gossip only works if secrets have to
be kept. It only works if women can be shamed by the gossip. Once the socalled sordid information is revealed by the person themselves, they cease
being vulnerable to being a target of the gossip. All of these topics weretouched upon in our consciousness raising groups, and these topics madetheir way into our discussions vis-á-vis the MotherLode Newspaper.
Though we were feminists we had a boy child AND a man, in our
household, something that set us apart from the culture of feminist separatists. We couldn’t be separatists. When we went to women’s events, we had toleave the boy child home. At the time, Lesbians did not have children. And
the lesbians we knew did not want to deal with children. Child care wasusually not provided at lesbian events. We learned that “straight” womenwith children were far more supportive of us. And it was they that offered usa hand. The lesbians didn’t. As much as we were learning to love women,
learning to love ourselves, we were getting a message that children were notwelcomed. This aspect of lesbian life has changed drastically in the past
fifteen years.
The divisions dividing us as women were beginning to have an impact
right in our household. Out of the four of us, three of us were lesbians. One
woman was straight. The straight woman wanted to have children and was
uncomfortable with our critique of motherhood. One of the lesbians knewthat she would never have children of her own, but made a decision to giveliving with children a try. The man in our household rejected our children
as they were not his; he saw himself as only being in the household in orderto relate to his girlfriend. She, in fact, was always feeling torn between thefeminist spirit and excitement and her loyalty to her man.
At some point, we all decided to take a vacation. Together. To take abreak from our busy lives. And we journeyed to Arizona, the Grand Canyon
was the place, Havasu Indian Reservation, the destination. We packed our-124

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selves up in a “Grapes of Wrath” station wagon with a trunk on top, and weventured forth. First stop were the grandparents in Arizona who were demanding their grandson. Patriarchy satisfied, we went onward, finding solace in the thirteen mile journey down to the bottom of the gorge, where wefound Native People living in trailers. For two weeks we lived on liquid foodcooked over sterno. My daughter learned to read by putting together the
pancake dough. While we traveled we processed our household. It wasthere that Joan and Chuck decided to tell us that they were moving out.
Devastating news. We were disappointed yet convinced that we could andwould continue.
We did continue; however it was not for long. Nyla fell in love with awoman who was on a one year fellowship and was intending to return to
Ohio to complete her PhD studies. The newspaper edition maintained for
one additional issue but disappeared altogether when Sandra and Jeri separated. The collective had served its purpose, providing support and encouragement and love in the midst of great historical changes which have followed us throughout our subsequent lives.
Today Tracey and Karina are both adults with interesting lives of theirown. Jeri is a practicing therapist in the SF bay area and a grandmother ofthree, Sandra continues to live and write in the Bay Area, and Nyla’s daughter has moved to Boston where she enjoys a lesbian community. Joan has
disappeared from the “airways.” Any information as to her whereabouts
would be greatly appreciated. Nyla has been with her lesbian partner for 19
years; they divide their time between the SF bay area and the Seattle area.

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Books Reviews
With Her Machete in Her Hand: Reading Chicana Lesbians by Catrióna
Rueda Esquibel. University of Texas Press (2006) ISBN 0292712758
Reviewed by Patricia Cardozo, Xiaoxin Zeng, and Esther Rothblum
Catrióna Rueda Esquibel’s book, With
Her Machete in Her Hand: Reading Chicana
Lesbians, opens with a quote from Sheila
Ortiz Taylor that suggests her reader is a “detective” who goes “in search of clues” regarding the existence of Chicana lesbian fiction(xiii). Esquibel’s project is to investigate thepresence of lesbians in traditional and contemporary Chicana/o texts, myths, and literature for her readers. She observes: “I get
to be the reader who recognizes the allusions
to Aztec Princesses, to corridos, to lesbian
bookstores and coffee shops. I get to be thereader to whom the author doesn’t have toprove she is queer enough, Chicana enough,lesbian enough, Mexican enough, feminist enough. (Enough is enough)” (xv).
This lays the foundation for the journey she takes with her reader.
Throughout this literary and historic voyage, she documents the important roles of Chicana lesbian characters and writers struggling for new
identities and subjectivities (in)forming Chicana/o culture and U.S. history. Esquibel suggests, “The Chicana lesbian characters, and the writers
behind them, have chosen to fight, each with her pluma, with her pen in her
hand, for her place in Chicano/a culture and U.S. history” (6). This corresponds with the title “With Her Machete in Her Hand” and reemphasizes
the necessity of incorporating lesbian perspectives into interpretations ofChicana/o texts.
For instance, the famous painting “Amor Indio” by Jesus Helguera depicts two heterosexual lovers, Ixta and Popo, as hypermasculine and feminine. Esquibel shows how the gay and lesbian community have appropriated this image into queer art; thus using Mexican historical folk in a more
contemporary — and political — manner.
Finally, Esquibel’s methodology uses Hayden White’s theory ofmetahistory and emplotment that relies on the narrative form; she hopes to126

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avoid a linear, chronological timeline which would suggest an evolution ofChicana lesbian fictional writing (18). Esquibel takes her reader on a journey of lesbian perspectives to read the characters of “La Llorona, the Aztec
Princess and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz” and the literary representations of“girlhood friendships, rural communities, and Chicana activism” (5), as aninvestigator who realizes the case is not closed.

Compañeras: Latina Lesbians (AnAnthology) / Lesbianas Latinoamericanas(Expandido en Español compiled andedited by Juanita Ramos. (Latina
Lesbian History Project, 1987, 1994,
2004)
Excerpts from reviews by Tania
Ramalho and Vanessa Nemeth. Excerpt
from the Introduction to the book by
Juanita Ramos.
Juanita Ramos’ anthology of writings
by Latina lesbians represents an act ofaffirmation in today’s conservative
political climate. The narratives,
portraying complex personal and social
realities, fill a void in Latin American,
lesbian and women’s studies literature.
This book will become a friend of many
Latinas who wish to learn more about their sisters in struggle and their own
heritage.
The idea for the book originated in Ramos’ search for identity, inspired by
the successful example of Black lesbian activism. Juanita decided to contact
other Latina lesbians to share stories and create their collective memory. For the
next seven years there were inter-ethnic volunteer brigades, fund-raising concerts,
and dances, coalitions … Finally the Latina Lesbian History Project (LLHP)
was founded to publish and distribute the book when presses failed to showcommitment to the project.
Excerpt from a review by Tania Ramalho “La Lucha Continua” in Belles
Lettres (Winter 1989, p. 2)**************************************************

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The lesbians represented [in this book] – Puertorriqueñas, Chicanas, Cubans,
Chilenas, Hondureñas, Brasileñas, Colombianas, Argentinas, Peruanas, andNicaragúenses – all the people I wish I had met when I was trying to come out.
They are the friends I wish I had, the women I fantasized about. All together
they give me a sense of what a real home would feel like which is the main thing
I’m striving for in my life and why I relate to this book so much. Compañeras isreally all about making that home, a place where we can take off our shoes andsit under the tree.
In addition to the oral histories, this collection includes poems, essays,
interviews, short stories, and art. Most of the pieces are in English, some are in
Spanish, others are in Spanglish.
Excerpt from a review by Vanessa Nemeth “Latina Lesbians: Making Room
for Ourselves” in Gay Community News (October 23-29, 1988.
**************************************************
Since Compañeras was first published in 1987, significant economic,
political and social changes have taken place within the contexts in which
Latina lesbians live. Despite numerous personal and political setbacks, there
have been countless victories. Most importantly, Latina lesbians all over theworld continue to struggle to end all forms of oppressions. Today we are
more visible than we have ever been.
Between 1980s and 2004, Latina lesbians in the U. S. and Latin America
increasingly formed their own lesbian organizations and became active
participants in local, national, and international lesbian and gay rights
movements. In Latin America, lesbians also participated in the organizingof the nine feminist encuentros and the five lesbian feminist encuentros
held in the region between 1980 and 2001. Most recently, they have become
visible in the growing Afro-Latin American and Afro-Caribbean women’s
movements. Additionally, while some Latina lesbians joined revolutionary
movements, others participated as open lesbians in political elections, joined
coalitions to eliminate anti-lesbian and gay laws, helped create women’sstudies programs, research centers and NGOs. Still others published theirown newsletters, journals and books, and wrote and performed their own
music and theater pieces. They have formed and participated in the creationof communications networks of various sorts. The contributions of Latina
lesbians are as varied as their personalities. All have contributed, not only
toward increasing our visibility, but also to our knowledge of each other’s
struggles and the ways in which we can support one another across nationalboundaries to change oppressive conditions. These actions have taken placeat the same time that we have been coming out of the closet to ourselves,
our families, our friends, and our co-workers.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

This third edition of Compañeras continues to document the politicaland personal struggles of Latina lesbians in Latin America and the U. S. I
hope that each person that reads this book, which has been prepared with adeep sense of love, respect, and solidarity, will get from it the same strengthand determination to continue growing emotionally and spiritually that I
have gotten from working on it.
The added last section of this edition, “Forging Identities, Building
Movements and Feminisms in Latin America,” all in Spanish, was takenfrom video-taped interviews conducted by myself, Mariana Romo-Carmona,
and Rosie Muñoz. Combined with the entries included in the first two
editions, their inclusion allows for the publication of the words of 63 womenborn in 15 different countries.
This third edition is dedicated to the memory of those contributors
whom I know have passed away since the publication of the first edition:
Rota Silverstrini, Aida Santiago (Esther), Cenen Moreno, and Gloria E.
Anzaldúa.
Excerpt from the Introduction to the Third Edition by Juanita Ramos.

Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde. Alexis de Veaux. New York,
NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004
Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan. June Jordan.
Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005.
Where the Apple Falls. Samiya Bashir. Washington, DC: Red Bone Press,
2005.
Armor and Flesh. Mendi Lewis Obadike. Detroit, MI: Lotus Press, 2004.
Chinese Blackbird. Sherry Quan Lee. St. Paul, MN: Asian American
Renaissance, 2002.
Once and Future Warriors by Julie R. Enszer
Warrior Poet, released twelve years after Audre Lorde’s death, is the authorized biography of Audre Lorde and an important contribution to feminist scholarship. With Warrior Poet, Alexis de Veaux has brought forth athorough narrative of Lorde’s life that begins to explore many critical aspects of her life and work and provides a strong foundation for future feminist literary scholarship about Lorde.
De Veaux organizes Warrior Poet into two parts that she calls “The FirstLife” and “The Second Life.” “The First Life” covers Lorde’s childhood
through her delivery of the seminal lecture, “The Transformation of Silence
into Language and Action” on December 28, 1977 at the Modern Lan-spring 2007

129

guage Association meeting in Chicago.
It includes Lorde’s initial diagnosis
with cancer. About “The Second Life”
de Veaux writes, “Though she continued to evolve as a writer, activist, andwoman, fear of cancer seeded Lorde’s
second life.” De Veaux concludes thebook in 1986, six years before Lorde’s
death, because she “did not want tooveremphasize the cancer…I had nowish to chronicle the prognostics of aterminal disease.” It was a wise choicebecause the autobiography brings into
sharp focus the life of Lorde and herwork without pain or regret.
Through the text, de Veaux provides a thorough narrative of Lorde’s
life including a throughtful analysis of
the formation and evolution of her
identities. Lorde is iconic in her description of herself as “black, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet warrior;” inWarrior Poet, de Veaux teases out each aspect of Lorde’s identity including
how it develops over her lifetime and how it shapes her life and work. In
addition to her iconic description of herself, Lorde’s oeuvre also provides avery particular and stylized presentation of herself. De Veaux examines that
presentation throughout Warrior Poet sometimes exploring the interstices
and dissonance between Lorde’s self-depiction and her actual life and sometimes demonstrating their unity and integrity.
There are some limitations to this book that are necessary to all autobiography and single book projects. These limitations are not those of de Veaux
but suggest important places for future scholarship. In Warrior Poet, de Veaux
provides basic details about the beginnings of Kitchen Table Press and Lorde’s
involvement in it, but I believe that there is an important story to be told
about that significant press, and I missed not having more about it in thiswork. Similarly, I read with fascination the conflict between Lorde andChrysalis, a feminist magazine; that story is one that will benefit from feminist historical scholarship and analysis in the future.
There are two significant relationships with women in Lorde’s adult life:
one with a white woman with whom she spent eighteen years and one with an
African-American woman with whom she partnered until she died. De Veaux130sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

includes much about the relationships from a narrative perspective, but alengthy and in-depth exploration of both of these relationships would be illuminating for both Lorde’s work and our broader understandings of lesbianidentity and creativity. Finally, the publisher of Warrior Poet missed an important opportunity to include a full bibliography of Lorde’s work in the book.
That oversight is a sorely missed opportunity for scholars and readers alike.
Warrior Poet is an important step for scholarship about Audre Lorde andthe constellations of literary, theoretical, and political studies that surroundher, including, but not limited to African-American studies, Afro-Caribbean
studies, feminist studies, and lesbian studies. Still, there remains much to bedone for Lorde’s legacy. From this biography, it is clear that there is a substantial corpus of personal and professional correspondence that would be fascinating to feminists and scholars. Private exchanges between Lorde and her
publisher at Norton, while recounted in the biography would be excellent
reading. Private exchanges that became public such as Lorde’s open letter toMary Daly would also be informative not only for feminist scholars and historians, but also to people continuing the political work of Audre Lorde. Warrior Poet in its release begs for future volumes of Lorde’s letters. In addition,
Warrior Poet draws on the journals of Lorde which certainly tantalizes readersand scholars. The compilation and release of Audre Lorde’s journals would be
welcome insight into her writings and her life.
Outside of these academic points, however, Warrior Poet is a great readfor lovers of biography and fans of Audre Lorde. It is certain to be cherishedby many for years to come.
*****Another important contribution to feminist scholarship is the release of
Directed by Desire, The Collected Poems of June Jordan by Copper Canyon
Press. Weighing in at 629 pages, this is a compendium of Jordan’s work
since 1969. As is typical of Jordan, Directed by Desire is a diptych: it is not
only the story of the development of a poet as her voice evolves and distills
in its power and craft but also the story of progressive political struggles thatare both thematic and textual elements of Jordan’s work.
Reading through Directed by Desire is to see the connections that exist
across a lifetime of the issues that Jordan cared about. From “The New Pieta:
for the Mothers and Children of Detroit,” including “On the Murder of Two
Human Being Black Men, Denver A. Smith and His Unidentified Brother, atSouthern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1972” and “Poem about Police
Violence,” to the poems of her unpublished collection which appear as the
final section of this book, Jordan cares about people and people’s lives. Her
work as a poet is as central to her identity as her work as an activist.

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Jordan wrote many people that have become anthems for progressive
movements and that work continued until her death. One of the poems
from her final unpublished manuscript is titled, “Poem of Commitment.”
In it, she writes,
I commit my body and my language
to the sheltering of any Antonio/Tyrone/Valerie/Yunjong
just about to choose hisor her own
namefor the family and the strangers
still not listening
to the great good newsof his or her
own voiceJordan always has the voice of the people in her work. She captures
stories and diction and language to document and bring hope to our lives.
She also uses contemporary voices to critique the world and further her
political agenda. Two other poems in the unpublished manuscript are homages
to Eminem, turning his racism and homophobia upside down as poet Jordan
calls herself the Slim Lady in one and writes for Wen Ho Lee in another.
Jordan’s work is substantial and having it all collected in a single volume
creates great possibilities for discovery of both her poetic voice and also thehistory and stories she committed to telling. The final poem of the bookcould be seen as Jordan’s message to the living. Titled, “Poem for Siddhartha
Guatama of the Shakyas: the Original Buddha,” it is two lines:
You say, “Close your eye to the butterfly!”
I say, “Don’t blink!”*****
Reviewing the weighty books on Lorde and Jordan and reflecting on
their importance to me as a poet and writer, I wondered who is writing now
that will be the Lorde or Jordan of our future? Lorde’s first book, The First
Cities, came out in 1968 and Jordan’s first book, Who Look at Me, was in1969. Those years of the black arts movement were very different than themost recent few years. Moreover, it would be impossible at any time toprognosticate who will be revered and recognized as the caliber of Lorde or
Jordan, but three first books by women of color caught my interest in thissearch for the powerful voices of this moment and our future.

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Samiya Bashir is one of those voices.
Where the Apple Falls is her first collection, although she has edited two
anthologies and two chapbooks of her work have previously been published.
Each poem of Where the Apple Falls is strong; in the collection, Bashir demonstrates not only her power with language, but also her ability to writefrom a variety of vantage points. In the title poem of the collection, Bashir
writes as the apple tree,
The first fruit is promised before birth, its branchestied with sweet butter ribbon. The rest hang heavy
on her chest, growing plump, syrup and pulp pullingtaut skin against the cooling night. In turn harvest
moon leaks gold in the swirling flush of dance aflame.
She needs this feeding, trepid, wanton lust. Each fruit
must be released. She pushes her story, note by note,
pitches crescendo to a rustling backbeat of wizened
harmonies.
If Bashir is comfortable with this traditional poetic diction and conceit, she
is just as comfortable writing poems like “Blue Light Basement,” which begins,when i grow up
i wanna be like traci
wanna huff and puffa like herwanna move and writhe
be tiny and throw-around-ablebike heryeah like heralwaysThe book transforms itself poem by poem with mastery and control thatfew poets demonstrate in a first book. Where the Apple Falls is large in its scopeand content and language. Bashir does not recoil from the conventional poetic tradition, but she does conform it to her vision integrating African myths
and contemporary references into her work. Where the Apple Falls is an exciting and ample book. As a reader, I am overjoyed about Red Bone Press publishing this book. Small presses have always been essential for lesbian poets.
Hopefully, Red Bone Press and Bashir both will have long and vibrant careers.
Mendi Lewis Obadike’s first book, Armor and Flesh, was the winner ofthe 2004 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award sponsored by Lotus Press.

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What captured my imagination in this book is the unusual diction employed in nearly every poem. Obadike was raised outside of Nashville, Tennessee and the poems echo with southern diction, including some explicit
mentions as in the poem, “A Far Cry,” where she notes, “A smile,/a shuffle,a voice I lace with please and a twang.” Yet, that southern sensibility is only
a part of the diction that packs the power of these poems.
In the poem, “Don’t Get It Twisted,” Obadike writes, “She loves hardness./The slick shell/of things. The sex/of bravado, especially on girls.” In alater poem, “Tell Me This Is Because We Remember Long,” Obadike concludes the poem,
I have a foot-washing Baptist’s mouth. Her speak is a seed in it.
Tell me our foremothers chose this way, this humblingof self before sister. Tell me no relic shackles our tongues
and this rite is older than chains.
Obadike captures language and distills it to its essence revealing itself
new and interesting. That is, of course, what all good poets should do, but
her language pulls and compresses in new ways that I haven’t read prior toArmor and Flesh.
Obadike’s poems also tell stories that I cherish. In talking with a white
woman in the poem, “Across the Table from a Hole,” she writes,
I tell her I’m thinking
of growing mine back.
But at that length it doesn’t lay right. . . .
The words morph into gestures.
She turns to expose the grindevouring her body:
What? Is it too black?
It’s cute how she says
black
Like a white girl.
The poem continues until Obadike delivers the final gotcha line. You’ll
have to read it to understand.
Sherry Quan Lee’s book, Chinese Blackbird, is a fascinating narration of
how race is lived in the United States today. Born to a Black mother and a

134sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Chinese father, much of Sherry Quan Lee’s life was spent understanding raceas she lived it in the United States. In the opening poem of the collection, shewrites, “I am pregnant with myself/gestation: fifty years.” She comes to poetry
later in life, but with the emotional power and language of a convert.
Quan Lee describes her life, “Like a magnolia/—whose sepals neverfuse—/my life is disparate/here a Black/community,//there an Asian/community,//everywhere, white.” Chinese Blackbird is the narrative of Quan Lee’slife and her exploration of race, gender, love, and marriage. It is fierce andtender, angry and understanding, hurt and honest.
Some might call the book, not a poetry collection, but a textual gatheringof one woman’s life. Indeed, the poems are accented by photographs of Quan
Lee and her family and her birth certificate. They are important visual moves
in the collection, adding connection for the reader to these poems. Many ofthe poems are written in the style of prose poems, such as “Magnolia Café,”“Mother’s and Mine,” and “I Ask My Husband if He Thought I was a Lesbianand He Said Yes.” This density of language and narrative builds throughout
the book to Quan Lee’s final assertion of herself as an autonomous Chinese/Black/Woman in “I Am the Snake I Feared,” she writes,
Sometimes I think I’m whispering
when you complain I’m hissing.
I’m sorry if my wounds are noisy, but
I haven’t left. I’m not leaving.
Only my thoughts wander
I am home, for the first timein fifty-four years, venomless.
Quan Lee’s poems and this book, Chinese Blackbird, are the examples ofthe space and legacy that Jordan and Lorde dreamed when their wrote theirtruth on the page. Sherry Quan Lee, Mendi Lewis Obadike and Samiya
Bashir are three new voices weaving their stories, their words, their ideas
into the poetic fabric continued by June Jordan and Audre Lorde from all of
the foremothers who have written and spoken the truth before them.

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Contributors’ Notes
Sandia Belgrade: Sandia has published poems and translations for 30
years herself. Her poetry book The Running Shape of Wisdom will be published late Fall 2006, and she’s hoping to find a composer for her libretto on
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.
JEB (Joan E. Biren): When I began documenting the lesbian community, I had no idea what it would feel like over 30 years later when so manyof the people I portrayed can no longer be photographed because they havepassed on. Looking at the images, I think about how these vibrant, powerful, beautiful women changed my life and the course of our society. I am
honored to have known them and I am glad that they agreed to be photographed, so that I can give these images to you. If you want to see more of
my work, you can find it in my two volumes of photography: EYE TO EYE:PORTRAITS OF LESBIANS (1979) and MAKING A WAY: LESBIANS OUTFRONT (1987) and in a number of films distributed by Frameline.org. My
work also appears in many books and films by others and my photographs
are in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the Schleisinger
Library at Harvard University, the Academy of Arts in Berlin, Germany,and the National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis.
Cathy Cade has been photographing women at work, union women,
lesbian mothering, and lesbian feminists in the San Francisco Bay Area since
the early 1970s. She has a business helping people tell their stories using
their photographs. She lives in Oakland and is working on an East Bay
Lesbian Herstory project. Visit www.CathyCade
Patricia R. Cardozo is a MA candidate in Women’s Studies at San Diego State University. She is finishing a thesis titled “Representations of Vietnamese Women in Film During a Time of War.” She currently teaches English
at Grossmont College in El Cajon, California and Women’s Studies as a
Graduate Teaching Associate at San Diego State University.
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.
Tee A. Corinne (1943 – 2006): A regular contributor to Sinister Wisdom, Tee Corinne’s artwork has been identified with the journal since her

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

cover and poster for issue #3 in 1977. She was the author of one novel, threecollections 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.
Nyla Dartt was born in Berkeley, California and was raised in Oakland
at 30th Street and Telegraph. Attending San Francisco State University during the Black Student Strike she belonged to the SDS movement which
propelled her into feminism (how many mimeographed newsletters wererun off during each SDS meeting by the women in the back of the room??),she participated in the Glide Church consciousness raising group trainings,
she helped with the development of the Women’s Health Collective, which
went on to become the Women’s clinic at SF General Hospital. Over theyears she has worked in the field of mental health, and has written many
professional articles, leading groups for women whose sons have died of
AIDS. Nyla has been watching the diminishment of the ethics and principals of the women’s movement fade away.
Billie Dee served as the 2000-2001 Poet Laureate of the National Library Service. She completed her doctorate at the University of California at
Irvine, with post-graduate studies at UCLA. Her work has appeared in Squaw
Valley Writers’ Review, Spillway, Weber Studies, Echo 681, Poetry Southeast,and other journals. She has published four chapbooks, the last, Hooves of theWild White Mare, through Burning House Press, 2005, and is presently
shopping her first full-length book.
tatiana de la tierra (Villavicencio, Colombia, 1961): Born in
Villavicencio, Colombia and raised in Miami, Florida, tatiana de la tierra isa bilingual bicultural writer whose work focuses on identity, sexuality, lesbian phenomenology, and South American memory and reality. de la tierra
has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at
El Paso and a Master of Library Science from the University at Buffalo. She
is the 2002 co-winner of the New California Media Award for International
Affairs and the 2001 creative non-fiction winner of the Just Buffalo LiteraryAwards. She is the author of a bilingual book of lesbian poetic prose, For theHard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology / Para las duras: Una fenomenología

spring 2007137

lesbiana (Calaca/Chibcha Press, 2002). She has a chapbook of prose dedicated to pleasure, Porcupine Love and Other Tales from My Papaya (Chibcha
Press, 2003) and a Spanish-language poetry and song chapbook, Pintame
una mujer peligrosa (Paint Me a Dangerous Woman, Chibcha Press, 2005).
De la tierra has done readings in Cuba, Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and throughout the United States. Her writings havebeen published in anthologies such as Bend, Don’t Shatter: Poets on the Beginning of Desire (2004), Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing
Up Working Class (2004), This Bridge We Call Home (2002), The Power ofLanguage/El poder de la palabra (2001), Gynomite: Fearless Feminist Porn
(2000), Pillowtalk Two (2000), Latino Heretics (1999), Women on the Verge(1999), Chasing the American Dyke Dream (1998), and The Femme Mystique(1995), and in periodicals such as Aztlán, El Andar, Críticas, La Calaca Review, Mid-American Review, Flyway Literary Review, Cimarron Review, The
Calaca Review, Perra!, Outlines, Tropic Miami Herald Sunday Magazine, New
Times, and Curve. She was co-founder and editor of the Latina lesbian magazines esto no tiene nombre (1991-1994) and conmoción (1995-1996). She isco-founder of El Salón de Belleza/The Beauty Salon, a creative writing collective based in Buffalo, Nueva York. She is currently a librarian at the
University at Buffalo.
Julie R. Enszer is a writer and lesbian activist living in Maryland. She
has previously been published in Iris: A Journal About Women, Room of One’s
Own, Long Shot, the Web Del Sol Review, and the Jewish Women’s Literary
Annual. You can learn more about her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.
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.
Robin Fre: I am a 53 year old lesbian feminist having come out at
a time when that label was new. I’ve been lesbian since age 19 and it always was just who I am. I am also writer, witch, tarot card reader, quiltmaker, fabric artist, now disabled with Multiple Sclerosis. My play was“Quest of Blue Elf ” which I wrote, produced, and directed at theStonington Opera House in Maine where I lived for over twenty years. I
have writings published in Hot Wire, Womanspirit, and Lesbian Connection and now Sinister Wisdom.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Pat Gargaetas: I am PGar, photographing since 1967, working nearlyexclusively in black and white until 1990, doing portraiture, landscapes,
urbanscapes, shapescapes, bodyscapes. Using color, I photographed lesbians’ home altars, the subject of a Masters thesis in Anthropology completed
in 1993. In 1996, I escaped urban environs with my life, if not my health,and for the next nine years photographed my cat, the birds, my garden/
shrine, the ever-changing daily views from the Ledge on the Edge, 1600 feetup on Kaluna Cliff, Lost Coast, Turtle Island. In 2001, I began learning
PhotoShop which gave me back photography, lost to chemical sensitivities
in the 90s. I came down from the Ledge last year and am Loose on Turtle
Island, gleefully mining images from my files of numerous negatives, scanning projects including the Altar Project, creating CafePress image and commentary shops, practicing new tech skills with a digital camera, and generally trying to fulfill a mission to remain a practicing social irritant.
Jae Haggard: 25 years ago when I left my first Homestead I looked fora name I could grow into—Haggard, she who is strong, independent andmakes her life with wimmin. Our Lesbian community and the Earth haveprovided the opportunities to do that and more. I’ve also learned about
Connection. I am a blessed womon.
Kirsten Hearn is a 50 year old blind lesbian feminist activist from London in the UK. She has been involved in women’s, lesbian and gay anddisability politics for twenty-five years. She is the founder of a number ofradical UK-based community organisations including Sisters Against Disablement, Lesbians and Gays Unite in Disability and Feminist Audio Books.
These days, she is a non-executive for boards that run London’s Police andTransport Services and is a coach, trainer and author. Read some of her
writings on her web site at www.wholeworlddesign.co.uk.
Denise M. Hise continues to live and learn in Maryland.
Alison J. Laurie is a New Zealander of mixed European and Maori heritage. She has been active in lesbian, gay and feminist politics since the 1960s,
and has published on lesbian history and politics, including as co-author, with
Julie Glamuzina, of Parker and Hulme, a lesbian view, on the 1954 teenage
murder case, later the subject of the film Heavenly Creatures. She is editor of
Lesbian Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and with her long-term partner Linda
Evans, co-editor of Outlines, lesbian and gay histories of Aotearoa. A founder of
new Zealand’s first lesbian organisation SHE, and of the first lesbian maga-

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zine Circle, which she discusses in her article, she and Linda Evans were also
the founders of New Zealand’s first lesbian radio programme, which they
hosted for over 16 years. A late academic, she is now Programme Director of
Gender and Women’s Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, where sheteaches queer and lesbian studies and courses on oral history.
Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien: After living in the urbaness of Oakland
and San Francisco for twenty years, she now resides with the cat Fur in thewilderness of Humboldt County California. She writes a monthly column
for the L-Word, an Arcata lesbian publication. (L-Word website:www.lword.mamajudy.com/index.htm
Lauren Levey, having had a variety of careers due to fundamental unfitness for office life, is currently self employed and living in New York’s Hudson
Valley, where she rides motorcycles as much and as fast as possible; and tries
to make trouble for patriarchy and community for lesbian feminists as andwhen opportunity presents. She has now slightly outlived her grandmother
Fanny, and is in excellent health.
Bea Loud: I’m a 66 year old dyke activist of WASP and US American
privilege who misses her Loud sisters and is re-learning to scream.
Ona Marae is a forty something year old disabled lesbian who lives in
Denver, Colorado. She has worked with battered women and children forthe past ten years and is writing her second novel. She is a LGBT anddisability rights activist. She has written non-fiction for years, including
writing for LIC (Lesbians in Colorado) in the early 90s and editing a newsletter for a battered women’s shelter. She writes to express herself and tocelebrate the magnificence and power she finds in the women in her life.
Janet Mason is the author of three chapbooks of poetry, including When
I Was Straight from Insight To Riot Press. Her poetry and prose have been
published in more than sixty anthologies and journals, including previous
issues of Sinister Wisdom; the Exquisite Corpse, the Brooklyn Review, The Advocate, and the Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly. She teaches creative
writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. Visit her author site and litzine at www.amusejanetmason.com.
Pat Meller is a senior technical writer, now free-lancing, and Chris
Roerden, a long-time book editor, is the author of Don’t Murder Your Mystery.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

Ruth Mountaingrove: I lived one third of 30 years in Oregon and two
thirds in California. In Oregon there was WomanSpirit, The Blatant Image,the Ovulars (photography workshops) traveling, and separatism. In California there was “Through the Eyes of Women,” a weekly radio program
and two masters from Humboldt State University and little separatism.
Merril Mushroom: I am an old-timey dyke and have been a frequent
contributor to early lesbian periodicals. An excerpt from my sci-fi novel
Daughters of Khaton (Lace Publications, 1987) appears in the first issue ofSinister Wisdom.
Marilyn Murphy (1932 – 2004), a radical Lesbian feminist activist,
helped found Califia, a Lesbian feminist camp that was known for its workshops on race and class. She also helped found the San Fernando Valley
Rape Crisis Services Center. She was the author of Are You Girls Traveling
Alone? a collection of some of the columns she wrote for Lesbian News published in Los Angeles.
Chase Nascent: i am a 21 year old pagan dyke who discovered the joysof feminism & the lesbian community in my teens... i would prowl about
used book stores in search of back issues of sinister wisdom, inspired bythese womon who came before me. i revel in the feminist & lesbian literature of the 1970s and sometimes believe i was born in the wrong decade.
slam poetry has been my passion ever since i discovered such a medium
existed - i live in a community rich with lesbian poets and am grateful everyday for the support & freedom to slam my words outta me.
Marge Nelson is a seventy-five year old radical feminist dyke who lives
in San Francisco. She’s active in OLOC – Old Lesbians Organizing for
Change, the History Committee of the Women’s Building and a Women’s
Committee of the GLBT Historical Society.
Marjorie Norris is an ardent writer who belongs to two writing groups:
Women of the Crooked Circle and Spiral Sirens. She was “Just Buffalo Poetin-Residence” in 1999, and has taught creative writing at State University of
Buffalo’s Women’s Studies Department and Chautauqua Institute, as well as
participating in Feminist Women’s Writing Workshop in Ithaca, New Yorkand Southern Lesbian Writers’ Conference outside Atlanta. She has been
published in Arizona Mandala Quarterly and other national publications.

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Kit Quan is a Chinese American immigrant from Hong Kong who
lives and works in San Francisco. When she is not hard at work at the Asian
Women’s Shelter, you can find her doing tai chi, biking, reading loner novels, making Vietnamese yogurt, seeing indie films, and hiding out in a nature spot not far from the city.
Tania Ramalho is a feminist teacher and scholar who lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Juanita Ramos is the pseudonym for Juanita Diaz-Cotto, Ph.D She
describes herself as a Black Puerto Rican, lesbian feminist socialist. She isauthor of CHICANA LIVES AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Voices from El
Barrio (2006), GENDER, ETHNICITY, AND THE STATE: Latina andLatino Prison Politics (1996), and editor of COMPAÑERAS: Latina Lesbians(An Anthology), Lesbianas latinoamericanas (3rd ed., 2004). She is a co-founderof Las “Buenas Amigas,” New York City’s Latina lesbian group and currently an associate professor of sociology, women’s studies, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at SUNY-Binghamton, New York.
Ida VSW Red is celebrating thirty years in our amazing, beautiful, artistic San Francisco Bay Area lesbian feminist community.
Lilith Rogers is a longtime writer, gardener, and lover of women—
especially the latter. She has recently published a CD-Rom, paper-free bookof her poems and photographs (taken by herself and Sun Bell) called Persimmons and Other Lesbian Erotica. To order, contact her at
Lilithrogers1@juno.com. She is currently performing a one-woman show
about Rachel Carson. Website: www.Rachelcarsonshow.com
Esther D. Rothblum is Professor of Women’s Studies at San Diego
State University and editor of the Journal of Lesbian Studies. Her research
and writing have focused on lesbian relationships and mental health.
Jean Sirius: In New York City, in 1981, Jean Sirius and Cara Vaughn,
her lover, turned down Tee Corinne’s proposal that they pose for her, nude.
Corinne immediately determined to return to the west coast, where women
were more accommodating. The southern Oregon women’s community
therefore owes Sirius a debt of gratitude. Vaughn died in 1997, and Sirius isan artist, writer, photographer, and storyteller who lives in Oakland, Cali-

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

fornia. She maintained a weblog during Corinne’s last months, which canbe found at http://jeansirius.com/TeeACorinne/tee_update.html.
Renate Stendhal, Ph.D. is a German born, Paris educated writer, writing coach and counselor with a private practice in San Francisco and Pt.
Reyes Station. Among her publications are True Secrets of Lesbian Desire:
Keeping Sex Alive in Long-Term Relationships and the Lambda Award-winning photobiography Gertrude Stein in Words and Pictures. She is working
on a Paris memoir.
Jean Taylor loves and lives as a radical lesbian feminist in Melbourne,
Australia. She is eternally grateful that the WLM happened along when it
did and reckons that coming out as a lesbian was one of the best things she
ever did.
rainbow williams, a found objects artist, lived at pagoda community
for twenty years, edited a monthly newsletter in orlando for eight years,
participated in the Peace Walk gainseville to key west in 1984, taught art
and worked as architectural designer until retirement. now runs Riverview,a non-commercial gallery and salon in st. Augustine.
Xiaoxin Zeng received her BA in English Language and Literature from
Beijing Second Foreign Language University. She is now a first-year graduate student in Women’s Studies at San Diego State University. Her researchinterests include gender, family structures, marriage and divorce, culture,
women and work, social change, love and power.

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Books Received
Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme. “Rural Women in
Canada.” A York University Publication (Summer/Fall 2005).
Best Lesbian Love Stories 2005 edited by Angela Brown. Alyson Books,
2005.
Feminist Studies. Feminist Studies, Inc. (Fall, 2005).
Feminist Studies. Feminist Studies, Inc. (Spring, 2006).
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist
Philosophy. “Special Issue: Maternal
Bodies.” Indiana University Press(Winter, 2006).
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist
Philosophy. “Special Issue: Feminist
Epistemologies of Ignorance.” Indiana
University Press (Summer, 2006).
Latina Lesbian Writers and Artists edited by Maria Dolores Costa.
Harrington Park Press, 2003.
Radical Teacher A Socialist,
Feminist and Anti-Racist Journal on
the Theory and Practice of Teaching#74: “Teaching in a Time of War.”
Center for Critical Education.
www.radicalteacher.org.
Women in Action #1: “Beijing: A Decade Under Scrutiny.” Isis International-Manila, 2006. www.isiswomen.org.

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebrationspring 2007

22

17

24

HAD05

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sinister wisdom #70 — 30th Anniversary Celebration

A Shade of Gray Bookstore
A woman-centered bookstore located in Indianapolis focusing on marginalized communities such as
feminists, people of color, and the LGBT community.
We offer new and used books, greeting cards, buttons, magnets, bumper stickers, and on-line browsing of our inventory. To find out more about us you
can contact us by phone at (317) 423-3316, by email
at ashadeofgray@sbcglobal.net, online atwww.ashadeofgraybookstore.com, or by postal mailat 1402 N. Pennsylvania St., Indianapolis, IN 46202.

spring 2007

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 KarenDavis’
photographs,
layersrecognizedpolitical
thinker.
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 Feldman
tion, 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
Women’s Review of Books

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Upcoming Issues: Call for Submissions
Please read the submission guidelines on inside back page before sending
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#71 Open Issue: Forthcoming#72 Two Spirit Women of First Nations
Deadline: March 1, 2007
Guest Editors: Chrystos (Menominee) and Sunny Birdstone (Ktunaxa)
Colonialization has marginalized Indigenous women (as well as men),making Native Dykes almost completely invisible. We celebrate the survivalof Two Spirit women of First Nations in this issue. Submissions may be in any
format - taped interviews, dialogues, as well as fiction, poetry, etc. Please respect certain definitions, which have often been violated – ie, we ask for workfrom lesbians who are Native in this lifetime only, recognized by their tribes orcommunities (although a BIA number is not required) and willing to use
their name rather than a psuedonym (this is to help prevent submissions of
non-authentic work). We define Indigenous Dykes as coming from the Americas, as well as the Pacific (Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia), with a land base(ie. reservation, ranchero, etc.) and a tribal affiliation (Maori, Koori, Cree,etc.). Government recognition of tribal status is not necessary (ie. we recognize the Duwamish). We are particularly interested in stories from dykes who
were in residential schools, Elders, incarcerated, & in honor of those whohave passed on (Barbara Cameron NationShield, Smiley Hillaire). Megwetch.
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