This issue is for Barbara Grier (Gene Damon),who wrote sixteen years for The Ladder, editing
it four of those years while averaging sixty letters a day to isolated lesbians across the country;
who gathered the most complete bibliography oflesbian literature available; who knows with suchclarity the importance of lesbian writing andpublishing to our lives: "There are many women tofind, many lesbians to write about and for . We
are the women to do this ... We have to go out on
hills and listen for the wild sweet singin~ ofour past and record it for our future . " (Grier toLesbian Writers' Conference, Chicago, 1975.)
Beth writes: "I know you're a legend but I
don't get choked up over legends. What moves meis the woman Barbara: not-very-humble, not-sopatient, but infinitely generous . For twenty
years you've been encouraging lesbian writers andlesbian readers by sharing your time, your love,
your energy, your knowledge.
Thank you, dear
Barbara. Your life blesses us all."-Beth, Catherine, Harriet-ph oto : Donna McBrideSINISTER WISDOMVOLUME I, ISSUE 2

FALL, 1976

SPECIAL ISSUE: LESBIAN WRITING and PUBLISHINGEDITED by BETH

HODGES

Catherine Nicholson
Harriet Desmoines, editors
Special Thanks to: Charlotte Lesbian Center

Cover graphic by Marianne Lieberman

CONTENTS
The Old Days
TRANSFORMATIONS:

Audre Lorde

4

Susan Griffin
Deena Metzger

10

AESTHETICS:
Drawing Marianne Lieberman
Lesbians and Literature (MLA Panel) June Arnold.
Sandy Boucher . Susan Griffin . Melanie Kaye.
Judith McDaniel
The New Tradition Bonnie Zimmerman
Lesbian Fiction June Arnold & Bertha Harris
Fear of FLYING? Julia Penelope Stanley
REVIEWS:
Collage of Criticism
Lesbian Literature and the Sexual Revolution
Pat Califia
Drawing Tee Corinne
Housework revi e wed by Ja c queline Lapidus
After Touch reviewed by Melanie Kaye
periods of stress reviewed by Susan Sherman
lover revi e wed by Julia Willis
In Her Day r eviewe d by Deborah Core
Of Woman Born reviewed by Joan Larkin

6

19
20
34
42
52
64

67
71
73
77
81
87
88
89

92,93
POLITICS OF PUBLISHING : Photographs
95
The Politi c s of Publishing Jan Clausen
116
Th e Naiad Press interview by Barbara Grier
The Women's Press Collective interview by Harriet 120
122
Letter from the Editor Beth Hodges
126
Letter to Beth Harriet & Catherine
131
Rec e nt Lesbian Titles from Feminist Presses
Contributors' Notes
Susan Saxe~uestionnaire

Published three times a year
Individual subscriptions: $4.50
Instituti ons : $9.00
Single copies . No. 1 & 3: $2.00
Single copy . No.2: $2.50
3116 Country Club Drive
Charlotte, N.C. 28205
Copyright@SINlSTER WISDOM 1976.
(Note: We shall neversign over rights to reproduce any part of this magazine in the non-feminist press.
The right of copy on
all individual pieces. however, is reserved to theauthor.)

2

134
130

ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc~

The process of g e tting an issue out is as exciting
as falling in love--and for the same reason, thatthe act ualit y . is n ever exactly what one anticipated.
All along I h a d expected this issue of Sinister
Wis dom to be a sequ el to the Ma r gin s issue I editedin August, 1975-- t h at is, reviews of lesb ian- fe mini si writin g.
When the a rti cles b egan cDmin g i n ,they were many a nd they were good.
Th ere seeme dno way to se l ect among them unti l Jan Clausen of fered " Th e Politics of Publishing a nd t h e LesbianCommunity." Sin ce J a n' s art i c l e dealt wit h a cru d i a l question fo r wri ters , publishers a nd presses,
i t became t h e foc us for a n e ntir e sectio n of t h emagazine.
Wh~n I received perm i ssio n to in cl ude the MLA
panel, it b edame a natural foc u s fo r a sectio n ofin - d epth articles concer n i ng lesbian aest h et i cs
a nd c riti cism: doe s " lesbia n writing " e xis t? i f
s o , wh a ti s i t s un i q u e

c h ~ r acter?

Anoth e r foca l point was my interest in the co nn ect i o ns and co n ve rg e n ces in t h e thinking of a llof us -- and how such po nv erge n ces tr a n sfo rm o urli ves and h e n ce ou r wr itin g . So I ask e d seve r a l
wri t e r~ to speak to t hi s point, a nd their r es p o n se
became th e first section of the magazi n e.
The r ev i ew section of this i ssu e, unlike ' theMa rgins of a year before, is n ot compr e h e n s i ve .
Reviews are few a nd primarily of the most recent
or l ~ast r eviewe d l esbian fict i o n and poet r y.
There is no me nti o n of drama o r of lesbian
biograph y (th e de c ision to c ut o ut bi og r ap hy hurt
most be caus e we lost Elly Bulkin interviewing
Susan Grif f in and Fr a p ces Do ught y's brilliant
piece on Margare~ Ande r so n).
Although l es bi a n andfeminist magazin es publish mu c h of the n ewes t ,most e x c iting lesbian writing, space limitations(wh i c h were r e ally mo n e y limitati o ns) precluded
th e serious co nsider ation they d ese rv e.
Still, d e spite its limitations, we ar e pleased
with the issue.
We feel that th e variety of v iews
exp ressed here by lesbian writ e rs is repr e s e ntativ eof the v ariety that exists.
And we beli eve that
we are presenting a fo rum in the tru e sense: anopen - e nded discussion of the c urr e nt questions inwomen ' s publishing and c riti c ism .

3

THE OLD DAYS

Everyone wants to know
how it was in the old days
with no sun or moonin our colourless sky
to warn us
we were not insane
only the harsh searing eyeof unblinking madwomen and men
calling our star a zoo
and I have no bride to recall
only many women who whisper
I was always virgin
because I never remained.
I remember you only through the eyesof all the forgotten others
on Monday a cat in the sorceresses' alley
screeched out your deathin another years language
and I had forgotten
your namelike a promise of hunger
trapped into mornings
alone .
Everyone wants to know how
it wasin the old days
when we kissed stone into dust
eternally hungry
paying respect to the crippled earthin silence and in tears
surely one star fell as the mountaincollapsed over our bodies
surely the moon blinked
once
as our vigils began.
-Audre Lorde4·e are d·-z.scov"w
w at we her-z.ng th

to~d

wor~d

weh h -z.t
. theavem. ark
b een
e way
i t -z.s. th e and t -z.s.
we sh areextentv -z.. s ,-z.on. . " 0 th ,e not-P ame ll a Fa rl eysusan griffin
I want to send yo u something rou g h--n ot unworked, unth ought,
but rough , showing, as Eva Hesse o n ce wrote, " the mark of
the h and." Fir st, it seems to me that t h e co nve r ge n ces wen otice, the ones that exc it e us, a~e transformations , a ndthat trans for mations a r e tran sformat i onal . We are a community of those coming to speech from sile n ce . This is a ne l e mEntary fact we s h are -- a h istory of illiteracy, suffocations, spi ritual and literal , burnings of body a nd work, t h e
we ight of the inutterabl e surrounding all of o ur lives . And
in no way can this s h ared history be separated fro m what wewrit e today, nor fro m our lov e of each others ' voices.
Tillie Ol sen has written two pieces of work tran~formational
to me on t he subject of silence: " Silence , When Writers'Don'
Write" an d " Te ll Me a Riddle."( Th e one about the silencesof writer s and literature,. t he ot h er, the story of a li ferobbed of speech, si n gi n g at its end.) And today, I read,with r ecog n itio n , in Ellen Moers' Lite~a~y Women, this sen t e n ce: "Nevert h e l ess, i n their s har e d commitme nt to voici ng
the unh eard, Sand and Gaskell appear to stand together -a s
women writers.
Th ey s h are d that h eig ht e n ed fe minin e senseof the preciousness of la nguage to those who are self - taughi ,who only yester d ay, in the case of women a nd le peupZe b o th ,h ad n o voice." And on the same page, Moers quoting Sand:"ob li vio n i s a stupi d mo nster that h as devoured too many
generations ... Escape o b livion .. . Write yo ur own hi story, allof you who h ave understood yo ur life a nd sou nd e d yo ur h eart.
To that en d alone I am writing my ow n . . . "Thi s week I h ave been r eading and writing a b out the humu s ,and about all the delicate cycles wh ic h k eep t h e soi l a liv e - - the passage of nitr ogen through air, plant, so il ,mic r o - o r ga ni sm, the exch a nge of oxyge n an d carb o n dioxide ,th e intri cacy of the r elations of living things.
(And ofcourse , there was a theory in 19th century patriarchy thatthe soil was d ea d.
A fixe d , s tabl e r eliabili ty .) And I
have b ee n thinking that indeed t hought, too, especial ly inthe twentieth ce ntur y, a nd most specifically the study ofliterature, a nd eve n lit erature itself h as b een treated asdead . Th e uni versa l.
Th e c lassi c . Th e maj o r writer.
Th estandard . The eter n al fo rm . And like all d ead things,
this version of lit erat ur e has b ee n se p arated fro m a ll thatsustains the living, from intri cate r elat i o ns with otherliving forms.
So, fo r instance, in this ol d p atriarchal
study of writing , we n ever e n coun te r the question (let a lone
th e answer) why do es t his writer writ e? Yet, t h is questionis central to all o ur writing now.

6

Why we write, as feminists, is not separable from our lives.
We have woven together a kind of textured echo chamber , a
flexible moving acoustical syst e m, the new s o unds we utter
c hanging the space even before we hear each syllable. Our
writing , our talking , our living , our images have createdanother world than the man-made one we were born to, andcontinuously in this weaving we move, at one and the sametime, toward each other, and outward, expanding the limitsof the possible.
(But this paradox of the nature of movement is reflected in the universe.) And whatever faith I
have in existence, I feel most acutely in my writing and in
my love for other women, and it is out of these reasons that
I write: 'How I love clarity and how I love women who arethinking clearly about our co nditio n.
From the beginning this movement involved personal transformation as part of a recognition of political circumstance:
And yes .. thO
i s was for me too a starting point of terrible
transformation, meeting with a group of women, not raising_our consciousness so much as piercing through the language
we had been given to find hidden realities, testimonies,
each utterance allowing all of .us more vision, until finally
we found ourselves using the power of our minds , turning
this inward vision outward.
From the shared experience tothe vision of how things are.
But this is not an °·easy movement: the pure terror for instance, of recognizing how deeply ingrained is rape in themale concept of male sexuality. How far flung and far backthe practice. How our daily lives are salted with threatsof violence.
To live with this insight .
(Even after myown work on rape several years ago, reading Susan Brownmiller'sbook kept me in a continual state of shock for days.) One
cannot keep such a vision to herself. One could not evenvisualize it fully alone; we first began to speak of thereality of rape togetber, we saw the signs of woman-hating
together, almost holding hands, like children in a dark
house.
And now we live with the ghosts we have routed.
The
old punishments and the old lessons we force into consciousness. Mother-hatred ; self-hatred, fear and awe of thefathers.
And we do battle, not only with the ghosts of patriarchy within us, but with reality again: we see men are
still in power, and to survive we transform, re-tell old
stories, listen, hear again.
This is a kind of bravery, and I am in love with this quality, and this affirmation, Do y ou see what I s e e? And there
is joy in these shared perceptions and a kind of healing.
Listening to the work of Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, I am madeaware of the redemptive quality of history, how deep theneed to restore our past, how deep the need to transfo rm
our past.
I had written (in Woman and Nature: The Roaring
7

Inside Her, a long pros e -poem work I am n ear comp l e ting) a
piece called "Her Body , " a r ecounting of tortures (in thename of cure or cosmetics) to th e female b ody in patriarchy.
Now, as a curative response to that secti o n, I write apiece called The Years, namin g parts of the body as ourh istory, our resistances to torture.
"History" is the h a irof this body of resistanc e:
HISTORY"We begin to s ee t h at so fa r from being inscrutable problems, requiring a nother life to
explain, t hese soyrows a nd p e rpl exi ties of o ur
liv es are but th e natur a l result s of naturalcauses, and that , as soon as we ascerta in thecauses , we can do mu c h to remove them."- Ch a rlott e Perkins Gilman, Wo me n a n d Ec o n o mics
"The hist o ry of mankind is a h isto r y of r e peated injuries and usurp atio n s o n the partof man toward woman, ' h avi ng in d irect objectth e es tablishment of an absol u te tyranny overher . To pr ove this , l e t facts be s ubmitted toa candid world . "- Dec ~ ara t i o n of Se ntim e n t s an d Reso~utions ,Seneca Falls, 1848
Fin e light hairs down our ba c kbon es.
So'ft hairover our forearms.
Our upp e r lip s , Each h air a preC1se fact.
(H e has never permitted h e r to exercise
h er ina~ienab~e rig h t to franchise.
He has compe~~edh er to submit to ~aws , in the formation of which she
had no choice, ) Hair tickling o ur l eg s.
Th e fact ofhair against skin~he h and stroking the h air, theskin. Each hair.
Each cell . (H e has made her, i fmarr ied, in t h e eye of the ~a w, civilly dead .) Our
pair lying against our c heeks. Th e assembl a ge offacts in a tangle of hair.
(H e has taken from her a~~right in property , e v en to t h e wages she earns .
Heh as denied her the faci~ities f or obtaining a thoroug heducation, a~~ co~~eges being c ~osed against h e r.)
Hair rounding our vulvas. How continual are the signsof growth . How from every comple x i ty singl e strands
can be named.
(He has created a faZse pub~ic senti ment by giving to the w o r~d a different code of mora~s
f o r men and women.) Hair curling from und er our arms.
How tangles are combed out and th e myst e rious-rii-d--bare.
(H e has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah him s e~f ... )Hair which surprises us.
Each hair traces
its existence in feeling.
( . .. claiming it his rightto assign for her a sphere o f action , when that be~ongs
to her conscien c e and to her God .) Which betrays oursecrets. The mysterious becomes the commonplace.
Each hair in the profusion has its own root.
(H e has8endeavored in every way he could, to destroy her con fidence in her own powers ... ) Hairs grow allover
our bodies. Profusion is cherished . Profusion is un raveled . Each moment acquires identity. Each fact
traces its existence in feeling .
( . .. to lessen her
self- respect . . . ) We are covered with hair. The past
reveals itself as astory we might have lived.
Th e( . .. and to make her wi lling top ast is cherished.
lead a dependent and abject life .) We stroke ourbodi es; we remark to each other how we have always
loved the softness-of hair-.------ ----

Transformational works, conversations, acts, lives, thelist 'could go on. Mary Daly writing of process . Virginia
Woolf of' Shakespear e 's sister (but even more of he r own
mother) . Judy Grahn writing, speaking these lines, "I will
not shut my mouth against you./ do you not t urn away yourshoulder./ we who grew in the same bitters/ that boil us
away/ we both need stronger water./ we're touched by a simi lar nerve." Adrienne Rich , "A dr eam of tenderness/ wrestles
with all I know of history/ I cannot now lie down/ with aman who fears my p.ower / or reaches for me as for death/ orwith a lover who imagin es / we are not in danger." This
list could continue ind~finitely.
I remember a scene from a film (taken from a novel by Bertolt
Brecht) called The Shameless . Old Lady .
In this film, an
old woman, after the death of her husband , changes her life
completely, sells all her kitchenware, refuses to live withher children, befriends a young prostitute, stays up nights
with a group of men and women drinking and talking, andfinally, just before her death, takes off in a new automo bile to tour the south of France with her young woman friend.
Two scenes in this film are, for me, unforgettable .
In one,a man, a shoe repairman and the intellectual of this nightly
drinking group, holds a book before his assembled friends
and reads from it a passage about the co llective nature ofthought.
That no one re a lly eve r co nceives an idea alone,that thought has a social genesis. One of the men in thegroup challenges him, protesting that he is not reading thisbut is making up the passage from his own mind.
The shameless old lady looks on approvingly at the dialogue, delighted by all this talk, such an isolation has her life
been before.
The other scene I love is a brief silent moment during which
one of the women (the younger or the older, I can't remember
which) brushes the other's hair.
And one other scene . This from a film I want to see .
It
is a film made by a woman about two women who live together.
This is a scene from their daily lives .
It is a film about
the small daily transformations which women experience,9

a ll ow, te nd to, and which h ave b ee n in visi ble in this mal e
In this f ilm two women touch.
In a ll ways posc ultur e .
s ibl e t h ey s how knowledg e of what th ey have li ve d throughand wh at they wil l yet do, a nd o n e sees i n th e ir mo veme nt s
how th ey have s ur v i ved~ I a m ce rt a in t h at one d ay this film
will ex ist.

deena Metzger
Here is an excerpt -- or rather a collage -- fr om The Book
of Hags .. . I think it holds together and illuminates t h eissue of both " transformational works " and ' '' simultaneous
discovery "-- and perhaps the source of the two . . . communal
internal reality . .. which is not a contradiction in terms . ..
but a recognition of the fact that our inner life is ou r'
common life - - or as Virginia Woolf said it --"our r eal lives
are our common lives. " In t h{s ca se t here were two trans formational events -- MEMOIRS OF A SUR VIV OR which I ha d notread as well as THE FOUR - GATED CITY which I al s o had n~read . -- as well as a death shay'ed> tai<en in > t reated a s:experienced as i f it had happened to me or allowing Arda ' s
e x perience (she is my dearest friend) to happen to me as if
I were sh e . . . t he point is .. . t hat as we explore and app r e ciate and de v elop aUF differences -- as we travel int~ the innerreality -- we meet eac h ot h er . .. we discover > red is cover > invent. and cpeat e and affipm

oUPcommon peality.

c:5

fttr.IY

Somewhere on an island on a ro c ky coas t a woman iswriting a lon e.
Th e island is very bare.
The rock s arecompos e d of sandst o n e a nd disint eg rat e when anyone attempts
to c limb them.
It i s impossible to get a foo thold . Mayb e they are n ot sandstone. But they are a yellow stone.
And the su n ma k es them appear eve n mor e yellow > Hay colored.
Dr y h ay . Or wheat.
No co rn.
It is a bar e coa st . Forbidding.
Hot. Dry.
Th e woman is writing a journal.
Sh e is the last or al For years the women h ave b ee n dying.
One
most the l ast.
by one . Stricken in their youth or middl eage.
Just asthings we re beginning . An unknown assassi n.
Ju st at themom e n t when e verything was possibl e . Edu catio n, power ,conscio us n ess, self.
They sickened a nd died . That is nottrue . Th ey did not die of their own accor d . Something
sicke ne d t h em a nd they di e d.
They we r e murdered.
Stri c k e n .
Suddenly.
Th e docto rs cal l it
Poiso n e d . Assassinated.
can cer.
I t is . But of what natur e? And why now ? And why
so ma n y? And so you ng?
Some wh e r e o n a n island with a ro cky coast a woman iswriting a l one.
She is writing in a j our n al which s h e calls
Alma.
Or she is wri ting a l ette r to a woman ca ll e d Alm a.

10Somewhere on an island with a gentle coast a woman issitting alone.
The beach is deep and soft, bordered withdark trees and palms.
The trees cast sharp black shadowson the sand . Black and yellow. Deep yellow.
Sunflowers.
Tigers.
Her name is Alma.
She is an old woman, so dry and twisted and thin, there
is no place for death to hold on to her.
The sun seems toha ve sucked all the wet life out of her leaving a husk grating aga~nst the ground.
Th ere are two women, one is named Ana and the other is
Alma and this is their book or the book Ana is writing or
what remains to us of it ... or an invasion.
Th ere have been three kinds of death esse ntially.
Deathb y hung er, death by cancer and death by madness. Everyone
who says it is a plot is executed or incarcerated or com mitted. ' So there are four types of death esse ntially.
Death by hunger, ' death by cancer, death by madness--and murder.
And there is resistance.
And memory . And there aresurvivors.
You must remember that what is discussed her e has to
do initially only with women . Th e men h ave been shooting
themselves for years.
It is not surprising to come acrossa body lying in the str'eet with a hol e in it , flat andblack a,s a punctured ti.re.
Or in a field.
Or under a bomb.
But the women began dying mysteriously .. .
I didn't intend
When I write these words, I am afraid.
these words.
I do not know where they emerge from.
Whose
are they? Who is speaking?
The demon is at the throat.
The heart pounds . The
words appear unbidden on the page ...
"This is the book I would write if I were to die in ayear."
Dear Doris Lessing:
A woman was writing a novel about which she knew almost
everything and which had been planned in her mind for several months, maybe even a year.
It was a simple book about
voices.
One winding into another ... women's voices and how
we talked to each other and the new sweetness which was anold sweetness which we shared ...
Then Ana appeared.
Sh e named herself.
Implanted herself in the book . Took over.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I am on an island," she answered, "and I am a survivor."
When I read those words, I shivered.
I had been thinking about survivors since I had seen those trees, thousandsof years old, struck by lightning and burned from the genjtals down to the roots, Sequoias , survivors, trees like
women whose feet, branches, leaves, bark have been destroyedby fire, peeled, undressed , stripped by fire, devoured byfire within and without, and who nevertheless survive.
11

Thi s is not the book I int e nde d to write .
In June, Ib egan this b oo k.
In Octob e r, Aurora di e d.
She opened herlegs and death e nt e r e d h e r body b efo r~ she could cry out.
Sh e had not learned to mak e the sounds which ward off d eat h.
She pulled up her legs exact l y as she had when giving birth,and d eat h entered instead.
I had th o ught this was to be a book o n conversation,
woman-talk, but Ana came and I began to write a book on
death and madn ess instead.
Ana appears . She writes doggedly from her yellow island.
I writ e also.
We match each other in intensity,
fighting over th e bon es of our lives.
What belongs to
whom? I try to let Ana speak .. . she has ten years on me,
she kn o ws how this comes o ut.
She writes and writes .
"Af t e r all," she d ec lares, "how many times do we have to say
it ... we a r e n ot writing for e ntertainment; we are writing
fo r o ur liv es . "Earlier, I ,wrote to
I had start e d the novel in June.
yo u , inviting you to a conference.
Th e re, after the speak~e rs , a young danc e r who could only speak in a whisper cameto the stage a nd b e gan speaking in a voice which we could
bar ely h ea r, pointing to h e r throat, the gesture of one
making a flower with her fingers, opening and closing, wher e
if we loo k e d , we co uld see a rose or a thorn.
"I had b ee nsilent for thirty years.
I n eve r spoke.
I had cancer h e rein the throat wh e r e the words lodged, e ating th e life away
wi th acid claws.
Th e h o l e e nl a rg e d in my th.roat ,a nd wouldn't
h ea l.
Th e day I was scheduled to hav e it burned ' away, Ibought a blank book a nd b ega n to writ e ... "'Until now I h ave been afraid to t ell this story, notknowing who it b e l o ng to a nd in who se interest it was s har e d.
I cal l my friend Ard a . " In the mornin g." I t e ll h e r. , "I
don't r ecog ni ze my self .
I am someone e ls e.
Wh e n I speak.
I don't recog ni ze my voice .
I don't kn o w wh o I a m.
I amsaying thing s I h ave never sai d b efo r e.""I didn't r ecog ni ze Aur o ra's voice," 'Arda says hu s ldly .
"When I went to see Aur ora , I didn't r ecog nize h e r . h er
[a ce di sto rt e d into a mo o n,
I f I didn't know what bed she
was in , I wo uld h ave walked b y without turning. had s h ecalled me.
Th e r e wa s someo n e e ls e in h e r bed ' who calle dh e rs e lf Aurora , so I talked to h er as if she we r e my f ri e nd.
Deat h came at night.
In the transition from wo man to start o plan et, th e body d is t e nds a nd we do not re c ogni ze ourselves.""II' I c an't r ecog niz e mys e ] r , then wh a t ca n I rely on?""Look," Arda says, "you are ~oing through thi s birthmildly . You are not dying of ca ncer. yo u don't have to killyour b o dy i n o rd e r to 1 i ve . . . you arc~ not m-aking such a terribl e war upon yoursel[ ... it is not a s truggle to the death.
but only a painl'ul birth.
Le t Ana gC) , let her free.
Let
her say what s h e n ee d s to say.""But now there are two 01' th e m.
The re is Ana and thenthere is Alma."

12

"Let them be," Ana inSists.
" Ana, " I say, "Ana and Anna Wulf and Anubis.
The jackalheaded guide.
Do you remember, Arda, when I went away after
having started the novel, long after Ana arrived and implanted herself , I r ead The Four - Gated City and discoveredt~at Martha was th e survivor.
I read the book through the
n1ght.
There was a storm, the electricity failed and I lay
1n the dark for hours , conjuring th e presence of Martha n ee
Anna.
They are the same in part.
I lay in the dark withmy heart pounding, wondering about the invader who had e ntered my novel, who bor e a name I could not ignor e, who hadlearned something in another lif e another bo ok about suchentrances .
"" 1. do confess. I was afraid.
"When I r et urn e d, Arda, I opened the n ewspaper and r ea dthat Lessing had written a n ew book.
Can you guess ... ?".
"I can '·t," Arda says, shaking her head but lookin g directly at me .

"Memoirs of a Survivor .""Is it your book she's written? Ha ve you r ead it?""No.
I can't.
Not yet·. Not until Ana finishes.
But
it is about a woman who is a survivor after eve r ything breaks
down, according to the r eview .
I t is not un 1 ike my book."
Arda looks at me severely.
"Well, it's clea r , isn't it.
We don't write our books l we just take them in fro m t h e air.
Th~y speak through' us.
We are simply mediums s hak e n by t h eterribl e words which are spoken through u s ."" But I wanted to writ e about us, the stro ng parts which
act against th e death and rap e and madn ess . ""Hmmm, you've added rape," Arda not es, looking down.
"Why not?" I ask her, "since I'm thinking about that too
a nd making lists and gathering statistics . On e out of three
now di es of cancer, almost everyone I meet has b ee n raped,
five out of nin e in my last c lass had been institutionalized
for madn ess.
Rap e. Cancer. Madness. Rape. Cancer. Madness.
This is not what I want to write about.
I want to writ e
about us and all I tind is d eat h a nd madn ess.
Th e Book r e peats itself; the words rep eat themselves.
I no longer
finish a sentence but that I writ e it again and then again.
And finally all I can do is write d eat h and ma dn ess, d eat hand madn ess, d ea th and madn ess ac.ross the page.
"Do it," she says.
"I began to write, " the dan ce r sai d, "to allow th e words
whi c h had accumulated in my throat to spill onto the page.
They came in strange grunts, shapes, grimaces, at fir st,which I. am just coming to recognize.
Th e important thing,"
she hoarsely whispered, "is to speak.
Is to speak . Don't
be afraid to speak.
Sil e n ce is d eat h , " s h e sai d.
In the beginning wh e n I fir st discovered who Ana was,I wante~ to silen ce h e r ... to pull h er words [rom the page.
Now I let her writ e; I give h er paper upon which to type.
I will not be the o ne to refuse h er words.
As long as she
writes, we ca n hear h e r , as long as we listen, she is alive.
Sh e is a survivor.
Soon there will b e many of us.

13I must ask you--do I h ave t he right to Ana -- as I asked
Arda if I had the right to Aurora.
This is the end, in its way, of th e letter .
"Do I hav e the right to record t hi s? Do we have theright , Arda, to mak e suc h us e of eac h ot h er? To write it
down when it is not o ur s to begin with . When it is yo ur
d ead, not min e."
Th e truth is, it is not clear to me who is Ana and who
am I . Someti mes I laugh at myself for worrying about i t .
Aft e r all, Ana knows bett e r tha n ' I that it is necessary togive up false di visio ns . Sh e laughs at m ~ for these separation s. Ana is ol d e r and wiser . Kn ows something I do n't
know.
Yet t he same questions c r op up r epeat e dly in my mind.
Wh at belongs to me? Wh at b e longs to h er? What is mutuall yours? I ask t hese questions agai n a nd again a nd I h ear h er
laughing.
Wh e n I sit h e r e at the typewriter, I tremble to shakevoices off me.
I s th is a rea l sto ry or f i ct ion, ' If it isreal, ' the publish e rs say, " it cannot be us e d . ' Am I per mitted then to writ e o nl y what yo u mi g h t have said , but
d idn't .
I can't . You get in the way.
I remember o ur conversations.
How you looked . What you sai d.
An y r esemblance to c h aracters living o r dead , alas , or dead , or deador dying or goi n g mad or mad . . . is no t coi n ci de ntal . Anyr esemblan ce is unavoidabl e.
Ev e ry resemblan ce is in ev itable .
Wha t is it that I know , Arda? How to take · in a life sothat it is min e.
I take you in.
And Ana also.
But there
is always t he mome nt of humili atio n from loving so much.
" Wh en I stayed with you in the hospit a l the summer yourfat h er was dying, when I sat with you, day and night for an
entire s umme r, n eglecti ng my children, i f that is negl ec t
to take someone else's dead into he rsel f lik e one's own .. .
that summer, Arda, did you think less of me?"
"Whe n Aurora was dying, you were afraid of being invade d , Din a h . You were af raid I would pull yo u down , that
we would go into t he pit togeth.er.
On ce when I went to see
Aurora , you hel d me in your arms, cry ing b ecause I co uldn't
cry, th e n you said ster nly , "don't mak e a myth of this!""I was e mbarrassed to l ove you so mu c h."Every morning we take the paper into t he kitchen inorder to read the d eat hs.
We tur n the pages . We b egi n theday .
"A frie nd said t hat I reminded him of a woman whose b o dy
was falling apart a nd whose s o ul stuck a wkwardly through theh oles in t he fles h.
I imagined f l es h pucking out of a hol ein a stocking just above the run.
Or th e breast peeking
obscenely through t he blouse whe n the infant turns away.
Orthe fat at the waist which fol d s over the b elt . Th e womenh e meet s these days do not dr ess properly, and I least ofall.
He turned away.""Let it go.
Be kind.""Kind! To whom? He do es n't deserve it."" To yourself."

14

"But I'm dOing it again, putting his words in the book.
Recording someone else. Why does it matter so much? Why
don't I know how to be casual about another life?"" You're relentless.""A soul snatc her.
Look, I told you, I don't mind thepain of caring.
I don't mind mourning.
I donrt mind grief.
I can bear that.
I mind the sanctions against it.
The stigma.
I always hear a voice mocking me: 'can't you live yourown life?' ' \"It isn't only mine , " Arda answers.
"No.
It has never been only yours.""Nor Elizabeth's, Leyva's, Tamara's, nor Aurora's.
It
didn't only belong to Aurora.
Imagine if she had died andit had not made a difference.
Imagine, if it didn't matter.""When his friend died suddenly, we talked about it fora moment . Then he returned to his work.". "He had no words, Dinah, don't you see he was born withou~ langu age for such moments.
"It isnit my voice which mocks you.
It wasn't Tamara's
voice which mocked you.
When you rode with her in the ambulance, when her heart was too heavy to beat steadily, shedidn '.t say, 'live your own life .- I have nothing to do withyou. '""When Tamara was struck, she went gray and said, 'I havea terrible pain in my heart.' But when I looked at her chest,
even opening her blouse, I couldn't see the pain .
I looked 'for it , but it didn't even cast a shadow.
She had to tellme where and how ~nd even .then I couldn't feel it. When you
were sick, Arda, and almost died , I was swimming far away
in a river and you were fighting for your life . .. I can't bearthat separation.
I have nightmares of how it doesn't matter
when someone dies.
A man falls in the street ; traffic continues . A woman stumbles or screams; the c on versations interrupt , one looks around, then continues .. . "" When Aurora died , " Arda whispers, "her face shone likethe moon.
The spirit had finally broken through the bodywhich had held it prisoner. The body died , it's true, but
her spirit hovered translucent before my eyes .
I didn't
turn away.
I only wished it had emerged sooner, that so
muc h had not conspired to keep her caged and silent.""Why aren't you in a rage? " I grab her arms in my hands.
"Why are you weeping? Why do you go about your life mourning? Remembering, March is the month she began to die, April
is the month she went to bed . June was the month o f her
journal.
August . . . September was the month we said, 'notnow, there is too much death in this month, too many blackbirds, too many crows, wait . .. October . ' She waited. October
was the month she died . . . why don't you rage?""You do it for me," Arda says, "it ' s your job.""Why mine?""Because you claim it. You rage!""But what if Aurora hadn't torn her body open , maybe if
she had been content to live quietly, without speaking, maybe if she had not torn herself apart, she would still be ... "15

"She would be dead . Earlier.
Suffocated. The entire
body turned to stone ... or erupted in' a thousand wounds andpustules . She would have died in a plague ... you rage!""And don't you think less of me that I fight this foryou.
I barely knew Aurora.
I take her on as if she weremy dead. Don't you think less of me that I don't have myown dead?""Everyone has dead .. . too many.
No one has her own dead .
They belong to all of us . And you're absurd wanting more,
yours, when you hate death so ... "The book writes itself.
It dictates what must be said .
I am the medium . The words pass through me, water goingfrom one river to another . The fish follow the river.
Thefish spawn . The riverbed does not pride itself on facili tating this activity.
This is a journal which belongs to several women. Nothing is secret here . Everything written down has been
agreed to. The journal is authentic nevertheless . Lifeholds us with a thousand mundane calls. .Dinners to cook.
Letters to write.
Talk . Yet there is something else.
I
have no grandiose plans except survival.
Arda sits in the chair.
I sit across from her.
"Dare
I say all this about us?""Call it anthropology, if you must," she says stern).y .
"Call it field work, Journalism.
Oral history . ""I imagine my mother reading this, feeling the pain
erode the pleasure.
'Why do you have to say all' this,' sheasks . "Arda nods.
"There is no way she'll understand.
I do
the work I do because my mother's dead.
My work is orphan'swork.""Write that down," I tell her, "it'll make a wonderful
title for a book.""No! You write it down.
Remember, I'm the archive;
you're the scribe.""So there Arda.
I've stolen it.
It's on the page.
It's
yours though.
Take it back if you want it.""And why do you persist in thinking only one of us canuse it.
Shall we footnote every thought and breath so as
to know who thought of it first.
The first man up to
Everest.
The first man on the moon . . . That isn't our game,is it? That only the first counts . Each idea they devise
gets used up so quickly, one shot and it's done . No wonder
the thought is so thin, it doesn't have flesh on it.
Thewitch was right. Hansel was thin as a bone . He did needfattening.
He only chewed something once.
But the hags
chew the bones and marrow like a cud . ""Once, Arda, I wrote a story about a woman and read it
and she said, so sadly, 'Oh I wanted to write it .. . '""Of course . Did you encourage her?""Yes, but she felt it was too late.
I had told it, andnow it wasn't hers anymore . ""She was wrong, wasn't she?"16

"Yes. That was her disease. Another form of silence.
It is never"We tell these stories again and again.
e nough.
They do not empty. Yet sometimes it is like talking to a mirror.
You open your mouth and my words emerge.
I can't tell us apart.""You never learn, do you."
I take"Well, look at me.
I grow fat.
I feed on you.
you in.
I plunder you.
Everything I see is mine.
Everything I hear is mine ... ""Ours! · Don't fixate on the notion of property again!"In the morning I write in my journal. Like Ana.
Then
I write the book.
I put you in this book, you Alicia,
Aurora, Tamara, Arda, Elizabeth, Leyva.
And you also, Anaa nd Alma, though I do not ask your permission.
In the end
I will send out a little piece of paper asking you to allow
me to commit this outrageous act. This is your journal, but
I do notknciw another way . How can I write about my life
as - if you had not stepped into it.
I have no life separate
from yours.
I expose us nakedly.
I want to look at the snake womenin yourselves, at the raw flesh beyond the skin, at thebone ) the place where life and ~eath meet in us and dance
together : You live in me , hot creatures, whose mouths suckand chew my bones. Your feet in my breast·, on my breastbone , are the only remedies I know against the boots which
would tread my spine .
I send out letters to everyone: Arda, Elizabeth, Leyva ,Tamara.
"Be warned.
Prepare for an invasion. This is thebook of our lives." A book of healing . While we write it,while we peel the skin from each other, we make a graft.
Here where I am naked, where I have been burned by fire, I
take some skin from the inside of your thigh, and there
where you are stripped and the flesh is vulnerable, I give
you something to cover yourself with from the softest partof myself, from under the arm, the breast. There will be
no scars , I promise you.
This is a book of healing. Thisis a book of healing, of grafting each other's skin over
our wounds while we lie still , thigh to thigh until it takes .
The women gather their old flesh into sacks and carryit along the road . Under bridges in the middle of the night,
they tell stories to one another.
Each secret told gains
a year.
"Why are you telling me this?" one asks .
"So I won't die."
They gather the secrets up like stones and put them ina rag bag, in a soup, under the house.
The sack is as heavy
as that which drowned the witch.
It is with these veryrocks that they were stoned once upon a time .
Once upon a time .. .
And no more.

17

AESTHETICS

Lesbians & Literature~seminar at the Modern Lang uage As sociatio n. San Fr a n ci s co .
December . 1975 . with June Arnold . Sandy Bouc her . S us an
Griffin . Melanie Kaye and Judith McDaniel
Judit h McDaniel :I want e d to open this seminar today .
I'm going to betalking abo u t some of t he problems of teac hin g traditional
texts as a l e sbian f e minist critic.
I do have a problem
an d t hi s probl e m came to my atte nti o n abouc two years ago
when I was doing a seminar on Th e Woman's Vo i ce in Modern
Literature.
In a dis c u ssio n gro up on Mr s. Dall ow a y o ne of
my st udents was going o n a nd o n a b o u t why Cl a rissa pref e rred Richard Dalloway to Pete r.
Thi s co nversation e nded
when a yo un g woman r aise d h er hand and said, "I don't
und ersta nd why we're talking about aichard and Peter . Why
didn't Clarissa get it together with Sally?" And I thought,
now that's a problem I hadn 't really considered.
I'll comeback to that, because "Why not Sally?" is the title of thistalk.
I wa nt e d to preface my thoughts on Clarissa Dallo"way
with some of the probl e ms I hav e found teaching in thistraditional academic e nvironm e nt .
I think that we're justbeginnin g to understand some of the dimensions of femini$t
criticism, a nd I p e rsonally am beginning to ask if I amr ea din g differently as a lesbian feminist than friends who
are feminists.
And I think I am.
But if . I am , how does
it work? What h appe ns? If there is such a thing as a lesbi a n feminist cr iti c ism, is it limited to explicating
images of lesbian sexua lity in standard works? Or to finding closet dykes where none had been suspected? Or denying
tnat label when it has b ee n used as perjorative for certain
typ es of fe mal e portraits? And then I wondered , p e rhaps
lesbian femi nist cri tici s m is a politi ca l or thematic perspective, a kind of imagination that can see beyond thebarri e rs of heterosex uality, role stereotypes , patterns oflanguage a nd c ulture th at may be repressive to female sexua lit y and expr essio n.
I obviously hav e an opinion, but noa nswers . Still I do know I am reading differently from a
fr i e nd who read Mrs . Ste v e ns He a rs t he Me rmai ds Singing
without realizing that Mrs. St eve ns was a lesbian.
This past f all, I began r ev i e wing Mrs . Da l lo wa y with
Dora Odarenko, a colleague of mine in the English Depart me nt of Skidmore College, who could not be her e today topres e nt these remarks with me.
We began to r eco unt thefamiliar and frequent statements about relationships in20

this novel; for example, Woolf says of Clarissa and Sally," They spoke of marriage always as a catastrop he ." Mrs .
Dempster is thi nk ing abo u t pretty youn g Maisie J o hn son ands he says to hers elf: "Get marri e d .. . a nd then you'll know ...
But whe ther I ' d have c hosen quite like that if I co uld h ave
know n ... Pity s he asked of Maisie Johnson, standing by th eh yaci nth beds . " Peter obse r ves a b out Clarissa a nd Richard:" With twice h is wits, sh e had to see things t hr ough hi seyes -- one of , the tragedies of marri e d life." Clarissa
thinks of Sally's l,miqueness: "it was bound, Clarissa used
to think, to e nd i n some awful t r age dy ; her death; hermartyrdom; instead of which she had ma rri ed, quite un ex pectedly .. . " When Clariss a a nd P ete r face eac h ot h er att he ir reunion, she sits with her scissors an d he f iddl es
wit h his pocket knif e.
Wh e n Ri c hard buys his wife flowers,
he goes to her "bearing hi s f l owers like a weapon."Why is this kind of selection not trivial, obvious?
Dora ~ and I had the impr essio n it was not and we co nfirmed
this by look i ng at the f un ct ion of cer tain major images
in the nov e l itself which sustain that impr essio n.
Ther eare two passages of vivid and sensual description of female
sexuality that simply can't be i~nored.
On e occurs as
Claris's a realizes that in "something yielding to the c harmof a woman'... she did undoubt e dly then feel what men felt,"
and then goes into a d esc ripti o n of female sexuality as a
curative.
The seconG, and mu ch mor e exte nsive, is given
to Peter's consciousn~ss as he listens to a batter e d oldwoman sing of Love.
"As the ancient song bubbled up opposite Regent's Park ' Tube station still the earth seemedgreen and flowery; still, though it issued from so rude amouth, a mere hole in the earth" muddy t oo , matted withroot fibres and tangl ed grasses, still the old bubbling
burbling song, soaking thr o ugh the kno tt e d roots of infinite ages, and skeletons and tr easure , str eamed away inrivulets over the pavement and all along the Marylebone
Road, and down towards Euston, fertilising, l eavi ng a damps tain,"The re is powe r her e, transforming powe r , in this des cr iption, and in con trast , the most o bvious male imageso ne r e members in the novel are not transformative ; if theyilluminate, it is only bri ef ly: "a match burning in a cro c us; like a n inn e r meanin g a lmost expressed." Or the maleimages become ludicrous in context, as in the scene whenMiss Kilman , "fingering the last two inches of a chocolate
ec l a ir ... ope n e d he r mo uth, slightly projected her c hin,and s wallowe d down the last in c he s of th e chocolate eclair ,the n wiped h er fi ngers, and washed the tea round in h e rcup."
Thi s sense of delibe r ate a nd provocative e mphasiS isheightened when we look at the mythi c women who appear int he novel . .. there are no male counterparts for t he terms
in which these go ddess women are presented. Th e old woman
si ngin g b ecomes "th e vo i ce of a n a n cient spring spouting
from the eart h," She ha~ sung "through all ages --wh en the21pavement was g r ass, when it was swamp, through t h e age oft u sk a nd mammot h , t hr ough t he age of silent sunrise , theb attere d woman ... stood si nging of love , love which has
lasted a million years, s h e sang, l ove which prevai).s" .. .
a nd when she eve r di es, "lai d he r hoary and immensely aged
head on the eart h, now b ecome a me r e c inde r of ice ... thenthe pageant of the uni verse wou ld b e over." No parallel
male image appears in t h e nov el .
In ot h er seq u e n ces Peter im ag in es a so lit a ry trave ll e r
meeting an el d e rly woman "wh o seems .. . to seek, ove r adesert, a l ost so n ; to search for a rider d e stroyed; to b e
the figure of t he mother wh ose sons hav e been kill e d in
the b attles of t h e world." Sir William Bradsh aw 's goddess
Pr oportio n " h as a sister, l ess smiling, mor e formidable, aGodd e ss eve n now e n gaged in dashing down shrines, smashingidols , a nd setti ng up in t heir place hei own stern countenanc e . Conv e rsion is her n ame" in this scene, but in Indias h e is Ka li , in Af ri ca yet a noth er . In effect ual, but domi neeri ng La d y Millic e nt Bruton was a woman who "could haveworn the he lmet and shot the a rr ow, co uld hav e led troops
to attack, ruled with indomitabl e justice barbarian hordes
a nd lain und er a shield noi se l ess in a church or made agree n grass mound o n som e orimeval hillside ... "Th e tension created b y t hese images and their expectations, or r at her the expectations of the reader, is neverr eso lve d.
Th e o ne mome nt of insight, the epiphanaic encounter b e tween Clarissa and Sally in the garden, is severely limited.
It occurs too early in the nov e l for its felt
influenc e to carry through to Sally's arrival at ClaTissa's
party.
And it is solitary . Th e re is only void after, no thing r ep laces that moment in e ith e r woman's life.
Clarissa
gives parti es . Sall y gardens be cause plants are so super ior to human relationships.
So wh e n I b eg an talking a bout Virginia Woolf this fall a
student came up to me and said, "Ms. Odarenko says that
Clarissa is not a lesbian." I too have come to agree that
suc h a label is unn ecessarily reducti v e.
She is not a les bian.
Clarissa is a woman trying unsucc essf ully to r eco n cile h e rs elf to her marri age . The perils of heterosexuality
as a rigi d soc ial and p e rsonal v ision are clearly shown.
But there is no woman in this nov e l who understands theimpli cations of her own insight about these perils.
We
have a se ns e t hat they bear the consequences of theirc hoices without fully knowing or identifying the sourcesof these pressures.
Clarissa goes upstairs to her evernarr owi n g b e d "like a nun withdrawing . or a child exploringa tower." Clarissa is not a l esbian, but she does not know
wh y.
She has fa il e d those impuls es, those desires , thosetale nts of e n e rg y and imagination which might have led her
to amazon ac hi eveme nt , the writing of great poetry, theability to feel and c r eate tr ~ n sfo rming love .
To r e turn o n ce mor e to my b eg inning question , why doesn't
Clarissa get it together with Sa lly? Inde e d, why not? It
seems quite clear that t h e r e is some l evel on which this22

expectation is raised and it is ~ o t , obviously, fulfilledin the novel .
It would be gratuitous to criticize Virginia
Woolf for raising an issue that she did not resolve.
It isfine that she raised it at all.
I don't feel we can condescend toward Woolf for raising the important question ofwhat it is possible in any society for women to achieve.
The problem is that the question she raised has not beenclearly understood or explicated by conventional criticism
and it is only when we can ask, "Why not Sally?" that
Woolf's text begins to assume its full social , politicaland literary dimensions.
S a ndra Boucher:I assum~ I am speaking to a roomful of writers--whether
we're writing poems or stories or scholarly papers or dissertations or letters or diaries - -some of us are participating in the creation of lesbian images in literature thatwill be quite different from those given us by a previous
generatio~ of writers.
t'm going to talk about my own experience in writing
stories- - three stories in particular. My first story about
lesbians was written when I was 24 years old and just married.
The year before I had been involved in a relationship with a woman and I wrote this story to terrify myself,
to keep me firmly within a heterosexual lifestyle, to lockthe door en my closet, you might say.
In order to do this,in the story I had to create a liaison between two womenthat .was so dangerous and so doomed that I would never be
tempted to try it again myself . The two women in the story
were abstractions .taken from what I knew generally about
lesbians, plus a little bit of erotic detail which I had
picked up firsthand.
The story progressed from falling inlove, to fear, inner torment, and intimations of disaster -the romantic, tragic (very usual) way of looking at lesbian
relationships, at least in stories.
And it ended with thesuggestion of suicide.
This story was very successful.
It really did frighten
me a lot.
It had served its purpose, and so I put it away.
Even though I was writing and publishing stories at thattime, this story was meant for my eyes alone.
I showed it
to no one.
The year was 1961.
So really I was doing what
was possible for me within that historical context--of thelate fifties, early sixties.
I had a B.A . in English Literature, but it is a notable
point that I could do all the reading necessary for that
degree, and I had never come across an overtly lesbian character.
In Gertrude Stein, in Carson McCullers and Virginia
Woolf, there were women who acted rather strangely sometimes, but you would never have been able to say definitelythat they were lesbians.
I had not read Colette yet, orProust or Djuna Barnes, or the rest of Virginia Woolf, orMargaret Anderson, or Psyc hopat h ia Sex u aZi s, or many otherwriters and books I later came upon.

23

The gentlest male treatme n t I can remember was a novel
by Robert Kirsch, who was the Book Review Editor of the
L. A. Times . The central character was an uppermiddleclasshousewif e who was going through some sort of crisis a nd washaving a series of brutal and thoroughly disgusting a nd
humiliating affairs with men.
At one point s h e meets an othel housewif e in her neighborhood wh o seems to be a d ecent
human being, and h appens to be a lesbian, a nd who i nv it es
the central c h aracter to be h e r lo ver.
At which the mal ea uthor speaks with h orror t hr ough his c h aracter's mind,"Oh no, not t hat ! " and he sends h er out into the world fo r
a n ot her e ncounter with a man even worse than the precedingo nes .
So t h is was the co n text in which that first story was
written.
You might say it was the "Oh n o, not that !"ap proach to lesbianism.
Ten y ea rs later in the early 70's it was a different
world.
And I was a different person .
I was no longer mar ried.
I had become a feminist and then a l esbian.
I hadbeen living for three years in a collective of women andc hildren from which we put o ut a feminist newspaper and did
other political work.
I felt co nn ecte d to and supported by
the community of women and the feminist and lesbian writers
I knew here in San Francisco.
On a backpacking trip in the Sierras, I began thinking
abo ut my first woman lover, the woman I had known befor e I
got married. Hiking a l ong, I began to tell myself the story of who t h at woman was, how we met, and what we did toget her and I was trying to bring her back, trying t6 evoket h e r eal woman just as she had been, and the intensity ofthat experie n ce for me.
Th e ac tivity of hiking in themountains was woven in and became the frame for the story.
And as I told it to myself over and over, I became awaret h at the theme of c limbing the mountain waS a metaphor forthe long and difficult journey I had traveled since I knew
t h at woman.
In \\Ti ting this sto ry--which is called " Moun - .
tain Radi o·· --I was accepti ng her back into my life. Here's
a quote from th8 st0ry to gi v e you a n idea of who she was :" Lenora is a woman of so rr ows . We sit in the back of
the shop, and we drink tea a nd she tells me about her
life.
A long road dotted wi th stopping places full of
anguish, the rest rough and lon ely . She is a jewish/
catho lic 38-y ear - o ld reformed-alcoholic dyke who thinksthat being a lesbian is the worst misfortune in theworld.
She is a small sad cocky individual p e rmanently
barred fro m the respect of her fellow c itizens , whos e
only satisfyi ng relationship is wit h her poodle, Anna
Pavl ova.
We sit over our tea and for hours she indulges
in her melancholy, tal kin g in a deep ca ramel voice aboutlost lovers."

24

The story was a n acceptance of Lenora, and it accorded
h er the co n siderable importance she had had in my life .
I t expressed the joy of our bri ef knowing of eac h other andf inally acknowledged my identification with her.
So, besides being an account of certain c haracters andevents, and a pond'er ing o n vario us ideas, the story was apolitical stateme n t, a de c laration of loyalties , a nd a
definition of myself as "a woman responsibl e to myself,
having c hosen to l ove women and h avi ng opted out of alle giance to an d suppo rt of, the Man."( I t's interest ing
th at when "Mou nt ain Radio" was accepte d for publication in
Ms . magazine, t he line I just read you was the one line
they wanted to cut.)Th e third story I want to me nti on, which is called "Retaining Walls," is a s eq uel to "Mou n tai n Radio." I t isabout my goi n g back to visit Lenora as she is today.
Isoon disco"ver t h at s h e is no longer the gaunt tragic persons h e h ad b een (or I h a d thought s h e was).
She and her lover
are two .ag in g dyk es, comfortabl y sett l e d in the s uburbs ofa Midwestern city.
Superficially , it would seem they live
mu c h like their straight neig hb o rs , yet there are cr u cia ldi ffe r ences arising f r om t h ei r b ei ng two . women who lovee~ch ot h er.
It was t h e te n sio n s within their outwar dly
secure a nd comfort a bl e l~festyle that st ru ck me and that I
wanted to investigate in t he story, besides my own reactiqn
to t h e cha nges in ·Le no r a a nd the impossi bili ty of fi nding
again what we had h a d together .
Th e first two stories I' ve talked about were self-serving--a working o ut of urgencies in my own lif e . In " Re t ai nin g Walls," I was more free to se rv e the sto ry .
I
cared a lot about Le no r a a nd h er l ove r, and I fe lt , esp ec iall y when I began to r ead the story aloud to g roups ofwomen, that in writing as hon es tl y as I co uld about these
women, I had be e n writing about myself and many of us.
So there has be e n a progression.
The first story was a
cautionary tale , the ' second one , a confrontation with thepast and a political · statement.
Now, with "Retaining
Walls ," I a m committ e d to an examination of what is in ourlives.

Susan Griffin:

I want to talk about silences and how they affect a writer's lif e . Of course many of us have read Tilli e Ols en's
book on silences in which she talks about the effects ofmaterial co nditions on writ e rs' lives and especially onwome n's lives , but I want to talk today about psychic si lences -- silences that occur b ec ause of psychic co nditi o ns
and particularly that silence which affects us as lesbians.
I fee l in fac t that the whole concept of the muse, or of
inspiration , is one that is kind of a cop-out co n cept . Thereis something very fasci n ati ng going o n in the writer's
ps yc h e when there is a sile nce , an inabilit y to write, .andit can' t very well be exp lain e d by "we ll, today I was Inspired ," or "it's flowing now. "25

But in fact, eac h sile n ce an d eac h eruptio n into speec hconstitutes a kind of event and a kind of struggle in thelife of t h e writer . To me t he largest struggles in my life
arou nd silence h ad to do with t h e fact t hat I am a woman
and a lesbia n.
Wh en I fi r st r ecog ni zed my ange r as a woman , my feel ings
as a femi n ist, suddenly my writi n g was transf o rmed.
Sudd e nly I h a d mat e rial , I h ad s ubj ect matter, I h ad some thing
to write a b o u t.
And then a few year s afte r that I fo unda not h e r great si l e n ce i n my life.
I fo und myself unh appy
with my writing , unhappy with t h e way I expressed myse l f,
unable to speak.
I wrot e in a poem--."wo rd s do not cu me to
my mo u t h anymore . " I happ e ne d also in my personal l ife tob e ce nsoring t h e fact that I was a l es bian a nd I t houg h t I
was doing that be c ause of the issue of chi ld c u sto d y . That
was and is a se rious issue in my life, but I was n' t ack now ledging how important it was to me both as a writer a nd ahuman being, to be ope n and to write a bout my feeli ngs as alesbian.
In fact, I t hin k t hat writ e rs are a lw ays dealing
with o n e sort of taboo or a not her .
I f these taboos a re notgeneral to soc i ety, yo u may experience in your private life
a fear of p e r ce iving some truth because of its impli ca ti o ns,
and this fear ca n stop yo u f r om writing.
I think this is
why poetry a nd dr eams have so mu c h i n .common- - becaus e thesource of both poetry a nd dreams is the kind of perception
similar to that of t he c h ild who t h o u g ht the e mp e ror had noclot hes . Th e dan ge r ous perceptio n . Da ng erous to the curr e nt or d er of things .
But when we come to th e ta b oo of l esb i a nism, I i hink that
this is o n e that is most loaded fo r everyo ne, eve n for those
who are not lesbians.
Be ca us e the fact of lov e betwee n women, the fact that two wom e n are abie to be t e nder , to besexual with eac h ot h e r--i s one t h at affects eve ry event in ·this society- -p syc hi c and politi ca l a nd sociological.
For a writer th e most savage ce nsor is o neself . If in
the first place, you have not admitted to yourself that you
a r e a lesbian, or to put it in simpl e r language--that you
lov e wom e n o r a r e capabl e of wanting to kiss a woman or
hold h e r--this o n e fact, this littl e per cept ion, is capableof radi at ing o ut a nd silenCing a millIon other perceptions.
It's capabl e, in fact, of distorting what you see as truthat all.
To give you one exampl e, there hav e been numbers and numbers of psy c hoanalyti c papers , poems and articles written
on the Oedipal relationship.
Everyone seems to recognizethat the son can love the mo ther and that then there is the', conflict with the fat her.
This is supposed to be a big
taboo and yet everyone can talk about it easily.
And yet,who of us really, even lesbians, can talk about the love ofthe daughter for the mother? Yet all human beings learn
love from their mother whether they are male or female .
Everyon e who's ever been a mother kn ows that for a fact, achild learns to smile from the mother, learns to enjoy being held.
The first love-affair , male or female, is withthe mother.
26

I feel that the mother/daughter relationship is one thatis central to all women's lives , whether they have made thedecision to be heteros e xual or homosexual.
In fact, when
you come to a relationship about the mother and the daughter, you come to a relationship inevitably about the daughter and her own self.
If she cannot accept the love she's
f e lt for her mother, if she cannot accept that identification, she cannot accept also the love that she's felt forherself . ' We get back here to what I think ' is the central
problem with women's writing: that is self-hatred, hatredof the body , hatred of one's own voice, hatred of one's own
perceptions.
In fact , the female voice is characterized as
ugly in this society--especially our mothers' voices . Our
mothers' voices are characterized on tv as loud, as harassing, as bitchy, as fish-wifey.
Many women, whatever oursexual identification, try to move away from the motherrathertha'n to go back and look at this important relationship. This is only one way in which, as a writer, censoring
your feelings of love for women can affect your perceptions.
In fact , I want to tell you the story of a poem that I
wrote.
I wrote the first line of it a year before the restof ·the poem was written. This was a case in which the musecame back a year later, and a real process occurred while'she was gone. The poem is called "The Song of a Woman withHer Parts Coming Out." The title occurred to me and the "first few lines , but I just simply could not go any further
and it was a mystery to me why.
It was during a period in .
which I was in a relationship with a woman whom I loved, but
I was not writing about anything in that relationship because I was worried about child custody and ,because she also
was not really willing to call herself a lesbian.
And sotherefore I couldn't really call myself a lesbian.
I
couldn't use that word to myself and words are magic.
Shakespeare understood word magic.
In Kin g Lea r just thesimple "nothing" changed everyone's life in that play .
Words have a tremendous power and I believe that it is extremely important to use that word, to be able to say: I
am a lesbian.
The rest of this poem did come out when I re-examined
this in myself and decided that indeed I had to use thatword.
I had to be open about my sexuality in my writing .
And I'll end by reading that poem, "The Song of a Woman
with Her Parts Coming Out," (published in Th e Lesbi an
Reade r, Amazon Press, 1975).
No t e : t h i s wa s an e xt empo r aneo us sp e ech d eliv e r e d fromn o tes.

27

Jun e Ar n old :Daughters, Inc. is a Vermo n t-base d publishing company
specializing i n novels by women , fo und ed by Parke Bowma n
and me in 1972 . Our f ir st list came o ut in October 197-3
a nd since the~ we h ave published eleven nov els and one
a n t h ology.
We began with o ur own money, the two of us ina n old Vermont far mh o u se.
We spec ialized in no ve ls partly
be c au se the ot h er women's presses were publishing poetry,s hort stories a nd n o n fictio n , a nd partl y be caus e we believed
in t he n ovel as a woma n' s art fo rm--that it could be ane xt e nsion of and intensification of co ns cio usne ss -rai si ng ,a plac e wher e reader and a u t h or coul d communi cate o n an
intimate per s onal level , wh ere t h e read e r could see her own
or h e r sister's experience portrayed and receive it i n adiff e r e nt way tha n t hrough the mind.
Becaus e we thi nk
peopl e do things not because they know what is right orwrong but b e cause t h ey feel · deeply about their own oppres sion.
I want to talk about what I think is ex isting right now
as a lesbian-f e mini st or fe min ist -l e sbian nov e l.
I' ve got t e n this i d ea fro m r ea din g ma nus c ripts submitted to u s,
nov e ls we've publ ish ed , an d ot her women's press publications.
It's not prescript i ve; I just think that certai n th i ngs ha ve
happened.
And I thi nk women everywh e r e in the women's move ment are trying to express very much t h e same thing but I
t h ink the lesbian feminist will be t h e o ne to bring t h edevelopment to the most plump, rich, f ull ripeness .:.
There is a pre-women's moveme nt n ovel, Gertrude Stein's
MeZanat ha, which I t hink is a fo r e runn er of what lesbian
feminists are now doing.
Wh at she called ' exp l ori ng theinfinite comp l exity of the present' is very mu c h what lesbian fe min ists are now trying to do , becaus e we have n o·past.
The d ialogue b et we en Me lanctha and th e docto r shows
the imposs ibi lity of the do cto r, who stands for r easo n andsociety, ever und ersta nding the mind of a woman with only upresent.
And the circularity of Melanctha's sentences a ndthoughts o p ens up, for those of us who follow, t he pro bl e mwhich ever y les bian fe minist feels in her un co nscious: how
to phrase what has never been.
I t h ink the novel--art, the pres e ntation of ~omen inpurity (also I would include poetry, short stories)--will
l e ad to, or is revolutio n.
I'm not talking about a n alter nat e c ulture at all, where we leave the politics to t h e
m n . Women's art is politics, the means to c hang e women's
minds.
And the wome n's presses are not alternate eit he r
but ar e th e mai nstre am a nd t h e thrust of the revolution.
And ther e 's no tenure i n t h e revolution.
On e o f the things we have noticed in readin g women'spress writings is a change in lan guage . We've gotten ridof harsh e xpr e ssions like screw a nd spread you r legs (womenas prop e rty/objects) , we've reclaimed fat an d wrinkled as
adjectives o f beauty, we've experime nted wi t h unpatriarchal
spelling and n e u t er prono uns.
I think we've changed oursentence structure, a nd paragraphs no lo nger co nt ai n one
28

subject since the inclusiveness of many compl ex t hings is
striven for.
We write to express feelings not appeara n ces.
I think cha nges in language are hard to pinpoint but it's
clear to me that l esbian feminist writers are tryi ng toshape a n ew tool fo~ n ew uses, to r ec laim o ur language foro ur se l ves with a very strong se n se t hat we have been divided
from it .
Th e form this ne w novel is taking--it's d eve lopin g awayfrom plot~t im e v ia autobiography, co nf essio n , o r al t r adit i o n
into what might fi nally b e a spiral.
Expe ri ence weaving i nupon itself, commenting on its e lf , inc lusi ve, not ending
in final victory/ def eat but e ndin g with the sens e t h at t h ecommuni ty co ntinues . A spira l sliced to present a visio nwhich reveals a whole an d satisfies in some different way
than t h e male res o lution- of-co nfli ct .
I also think we lose
a little bit of the old adre nal in -r aisi n g intensity by rloin'g t h is ', arid what we'l l h ave to fi gur e out a way to do,bo t h as readers and writers, is to express the intensity
differently and learn to hear it dj ffe r e ntl y, in di ffe r e n t
ways.
As fa r as c haracter goes, there a r e usuall y many c har ac ters' o r at l eas t several . Th e re is no h e r o (whi c h is aheri tag e fro m the Greeks who cared ve ry lit tle a b out women).
Th e r e is a n interinvol veme n t of women in a commu nit y . Now
I think the lesbian will be the o n e most likely to be a ble
to deal wit h women 'r ela tin g to women within a communit y,which do es n't mean that every lesbian can d o that or thatno fe minist can; it means t h at their own experie n ces will
force lesbian writers to conf r o nt communiti es of women.
Wh e n we have talked about ge niu s in t he past, lik e
Gertru de Stein , we usually mean that one p erso n ri ses up
o ut of her time and coord i nat es or solidifies what's go n e
bef o re and makes it palpable.
I don't ~hink we'll see l es bian feminist genius in t h e same way,
I think it is arisingright now and it. i s a co ll ect ive genius, coming fro m one
woman's poem, a noth er's comment. a scene fro m a chapter ofa no ve l .
I think we are all in the process of writing together.
I feel that a s a writer; as a publisher from themat e rial we get I see it; and I certainly feel t hat as areader.
Th e artist, if she calls h erself a lesbian fe minist , isgoing to have to b e r esp onsib l e to the feminist c ommunity
and involved in it . As a n artist she must c hall e nge all
assumptions.
The lesbian und erst ands in the most intimate
complex detail how assumptions attempt t o limit and channel
human possibility.
In reje ct ing the culture's most fundame ntal patriarchal patt er ns , the ~ es bian starts with her
h ea d empty, or free of solutions, answers--a v ital preco ndition for discovery.
This responsibility to and involv e ment in the community
leads to seve~al new qualities in the art produced:

29

"

There is a breaking down of distance between the writerand t he reader.
An example of this i s Elana Nachman in
Riv e rfinger Women when Inez, speaking about the past, says
" Tho se nights wit h your arms curve d around your ow n t hi ckness sayi ng to yourself , 'I will be e nough for mys elf.
Iwill never need anyone.
Never.
I will be for mys elf, warm
and all'--are those times gone? Those times are now, dammit ." And you're br o ught right into th e story .
Th ere's a change in humor, a softening, search for adi ffe r e n t way of telling a jok e, getting away from h avi ng
a butt of a joke (which was u s most of th e time).
Th e humo r deals with the absur dity of th ~ p atriar c h y but also o ur
own foibles, assumptions and presumptions which we discover
during t h e learning of lesbian feminism.
No o n e is born alesbian feminist --we ourselves are in process and the pro cess will be revealed in th e novel too.
I think we hav e a kind of unprecedented, compl ete ho n es ty ,however e mb arras sin g . In Nancy Lee Hall 's A Tru e S tory ofa Dpu nken Mot he r, the b ee r that s h e h ~d made and stored inth e garage exp l o ded.
It was her security.
In panic she
screams t 'o h er daughter : " It's blowing up , stupid! Run inth e house and get all the pans and pitchers you can find-hurry . " Th e c hild returns with one pot . Th e moth e r screams,"You brat!
I said all yo u ca n." Th'is is a very hard thing
to write about a nd expose , an d requires caring mor e about
women than about yo ur own image.
Because of this softe ning , opening honesty , I think the
women's communi ty is goi ng to trust, if it do es n "t now , thel esbi a n fe minist writer--which means that if a hundiedsociologists say that o ld women are timid, conservative teasippers and o ne l es bi a n feminist writer says NO , old womenare dangerous, furious, r eady to swoop down on society because they have no life to lo se, ,you .the reader can believe
it be cause the dyk e author is committed only to the truth,
having no ' stake in placating the culture-~no life to loseeither. Th e fe minist presses, fo r the same reason, will be
the ground in which this new art is br ought to flower.
It is the responsibility a nd privilege, too, of feminist
criti ci sm a nd feminist studies teachers to participate in
the de ve lopme nt of our own voice and art--and 'also to watch
out for and warn of tricksters who try to use the ingredients learned at pan els lik e these, inst ea d of he r own experience, to gain a new kind of fame as a fe mi nist .
'I think we know a lot about how l esbian s are oppressed .
I'd like to say that the lesbian fe minis t nov el ists, shortstory writ ers, poets , artists of a 11 kinds and th e feminist
presse s the mselv es are, I think, magnific e ntly privileged
to have the art of the future in their hands.
(The idea of breaking down distance is from an unpub lished paper by Andrea Loewenstein . This talk first appea re din PZexus, Feoruary, 1976.)

30

Kaye :Jud it h tal k e d a b o u t t eac hin g as a l es bian , a nd th e o th e r
t hr ee pa n e li s t s t a lk e d e l o qu e n t l y a nd b e auti f ull y abo ut
wri t in g as l es b ia ns . I ' m go ing to t a lk a b out r e ading as alesb i a n , a b o u t wh a t . I l oo k fo r in l e sbian l i t e r at ur e, wh atdoes a nd does n 't n o urish me.
I wa n t to t a lk a b o ut si x b ooks; f irst, t wo whi c h ma k e me
a n g r y : Ka t e Mill e tt's Flying and Ma rg e Pi e r cy ' s Small
Changes . I me n t i o n them not b eca us e I'm p eevis h but becau seth ey ' r e bes t ~ e ll e rs a nd th ey do n't giv e me wh a t I n ee d .
Ma r ge Pi e r cy d e pi c t s women' s r e l at i o nships , sexu a l o r not,whi c h seem la c king any inn e r dynamism ; fr a nkly , I d o n' t und e r s t a nd what go e s o n betwee n tho s e wome n.
Th e n o v e l seems
writt e n f r om th e outside , t o e xpl a in fe minism in ge n e r a l a ndl esbi a nism in parti c ular t o p eo pl e who f ind th ese ph e nome n aa li e n ; a worthy goal but on e Pi e r c y f ail s to a c hi eve, s in ce
I ( from th e ' insid e ) do not exp e ri e nc e h e r wome n as f ull,c r e dible pe o pl e . Th e nov e l ' s s in g l e l e sb i an r e l a ti o nshipis s o co ppe ct .
I n o lo ng e r go t o lit e ratur e fo r pos i t i ve
images o f gay women : I s ee th e s e a ll around me in my own
li f e and the lives of my f ri e nds . Th e right-on r e l a ti o nshipbetwee n Beth and Wand a t e a c hes me no thin g; it b o r e s me .
What I want is a thoughtful s i f ting of ex p e ri e n ce t h a t helps
me t o understand th e pr e s e nt o r e n v i s i o n th e f utur e.
Fl y ing is, I think , a mu c h mor e h o n e s t b ook, written per.h a ps too much f r om th e insid e; I n eve r sto pp e d fee ling likea vo y e ur.
Ka te Mill e tt pr e s e nts h e rs e l f a s o v e rwhelme d by
and incapable of learning f r om h e r e xperi e nc e , a s wallowing
in h e r pain.
And I have e no ugh tro uble making sense of myown exp e rien c e without r ea ding a book by someone who doesn't
understand h e rs.
So let me mo ve on to four b o oks which d o give me what I
want.
Sandy Boucher's As saul t s and Ritual s offers exactly
this thoughtful sifting of e xperi e nce from a perspective I
recognize as woman-identified , written from the inside.
And not just her inside.
She ent e rs into other sUbjecti v ities : an old Mallor c an woman who, grief-dulled, r e fuses tobe dragged back into the busines s o f human relationships;
her ten-year-old self's ac c ount of a father destroying hisson, her brother; and espe c ially, in the open- e nded stories
in which she appears, unashamedly "I , " "Mountain Radio" and"Retaining Walls," where she pays such careful , loving attention to the actual being of the woman who was her firstfemale lover , and (in "Retaining Walls") to her former
lover's lover. The relationship between June and Lenora is
not correct; it seems, even from a sympathetic point o fview , somewhat stifling.
I share Sandy's frustration trying to explain the women's movement, the gay mo v ement t othese isolated middle-aged sisters, share her irritation at
June's perpetual chatter.
But the right of Jun e and Lenora
to their own perceptions is assumed.
Th e y are presented
with respect.
These stories weav e the texture o f lif e lived
by someone who understands where h e r life is go ing, e ve n if
she doesn't know the exa c t form it will tak e . Nothing g e ts
M e~anie31

sol ve d but e xperi e nce is integrated, learned from, and one
continu e s t o b e --as Adrienne Rich has said- -rash enough to
go o n ch a n g in g he r life.
Th e n e xt book I want to mention is June Arnold's T h e Cookand the Carpenter . Th e non-gendered pronoun, n a , is what
you f ir s t no tic e ; but if th a t were all the book offered, it
wo uld b e a n ove rwe ight gimmick.
I made my decisions earlya nd e a s ily about who was what sex, and stuck to them; but
I ' m us e d t o women building things, living together, making
l o v e . P e rhaps na p e rforms more startling revelations forh e t e r o s ex uals.
What was important to me about the book isth at i t 's on e of the few to come out of the movement whichd e als l y ri c ally a nd non-pedagogically with the joy of making
our n e w liv es , free-form , of creating our own moments ofo rd e r, of loving without role-constrictions or directions,of tryin g t o build a political movement which is at once
ef f ec tiv e a nd gen e rous--and with the difficulty of doing so.
I a ppr e ciat e Jun e 's treating political reality, not in ap e d a nti c fa shion , like Piercy, for those dummies who don't·
hav e th e ir a c t tog e ther on race, class, sex and sexuality,
but with some trust in people's ability to understand thesepoliti c al fa c ts.
I also appreciate the book's taking ser~­ousl y th e live s of both middle-aged and adolescent women
without confusing them.
For me, a~ age 30, it suggests
p os sibilities of growing older as a full human presence.
Joanna Russ' Th e Fe ma le Ma n is a book of vision andch a nge, in which four female experiences face each other,as in distorting mirrors.
The woman of the ' 30' s · · is who weescaped being (though she reminds me of my adolescence inthe 50's); the contemporary woman, like ourselves, confronts
daily an old world with her raised consciousness and allthat rage , too familiar; Jael, the terrifying harpy of an
inverted patriarchal world where women rule and men are 'slaves , objects; and Janet, from an all-women world, embodies an unsentimental and thoroughly interesting visionof a possible future.
Janet's existence ' suggests that there
are a million ways we might go, and that we get to choose.
I am getting now into something else I want from lesbian
literature: new ways of imagining the future, both abstractand intimate.
I have so many old ways of be~ng, I need fromliterature a sense of awakenings, directions , possibilities.
On e of the book's most powerful sections is the visit to
Jael's world.
It reminds me of· what I don't want, of thedangers of assuming that we are inherently better--more
generous, kinder , more sensitive--than men, that the NICE
gene sits securely on our X chromosomes, and that if we had
power over them , all would be well.
An added bonus fromthis section is the scene in which Jael fucks her houseboy
Davy: she takes him into her, she rides him; his penis is
not a "rod , " does not become erect: it is "little davy" andit fills up; the inversion of traditional images of heterosexual sex made me recognize again and deeply just how arbitrary , how serviceable to the patriarchy, these traditional

32

images are , for this inversion seemed at least equally accurate.
This is something else I want from lesbian literature : weapons with which I can fight back against my own
socializatio'n.
Monique Wittig'~ Les GueriZZeres gives me both weaponsand vision.
Everything in the book--images of a female
collectivity, non-linear narrative, inventive language , revised mythologies, the insistently present tense of thesentences dissolving time so that our cause- and- effect men tality staggers, bewildered- -the very process of reading
the book , forces us into battle against the patriarchal modesof thinking in our own heads.
It inundates me with a huge
range of options, ways our liberation will happen, is happening, the many people I could be.
It helps me workthrough my anger, gives me permission to hate, kill, dismember and ' devour men; and then heals me: " The women say,wliether men live o'r die, they no longer have power." Per haps most important and most intriguing, it lets me imagine
living not as an individual, an isolated ego locked in myown skin, but as part of a tribe.
It seems obvious that inorder to make the future we want we're going to have tolearn to perceive ourselves and each other in astonishing
new ways.
Wittig envisions us as one, illuminates thedepth and complexity of individualism, the thousand tiny
tightnesses and fears that pull us apart, make us afraid
to join or create or believe in movements for social change.
Finally, the book assures me that victory is not only possible but inevitable : "They say, does the weapon exist thatcan prevail against you?"I'm not sure exactly what the focus of my remarks is.
Maybe what I'm talking to is the writer in people, asking
for what I want people to write . I don't want to read lesbian literature that recapitulates old patterns, or tellseasy, pleasant lies, or creates a world of women-lovingwomen divorced from the political facts of life.
I wantbooks that help me realize just how deep the revolution I
need and need to make is, that it is fundamentally not spiritual or escapist or rural or moon - worshipping or orgasmic ,though all these may be included, but that it is a questionof gaining power over our lives , that is to say, political.
I need books which begin with this assumption , which deal
with the many-layered changes through which we are passing ,which help me to imagine changes to come.
I need inspiration.
And I look to lesbian literature for this inspiration because it seems that mostly women who dare to imagine
such deep changes are lesbians.

33

The New Tradition-bonnie zImmerman
Next tIl ants, human bpings mu st c ompris e the species mostcomp e ll e d t o order, organize and ea tegoriz e.
It is note nuugh that we i.nsist on writing books; o n ce they are writt e n, we a r e obsC'ss e d with orde ring t h ese l.J(loks into tradi tions.
And the traditions thus create d -- l i ke the se ductive,mind-numbin g c h a nt or "And Se th b egat Enos begat Cainan"-hav e b ee n us e d ve ry p u rposely to es tablish the lit erary
Go s p e l t h at k ee ps u s all in l i n e.
We h ave the Gosp e l acco rding to the Norton Anthology a nd the Gospel according
to the Oxford Anthol ogy and the Gospel accor din g to F.R.
Leavis, a nd if there are minor di verge n ces between the main
traditions, as in Mark , Matthew, Luk e a nd J ohn, the basic
outline do es n't c h ange.
We still learn in ou r English
classes that Wordswort h/Co l er idge beg at Byron/Sh e ll ey/ Keatsbegat Ten ny son /Br ow n ing ; that Georg e Eliot b egat He nry James
begat Conrad an d on to more recent times.
Not o nly a re these the writers who are read, these a ret h e writers who define what "art" is .
And, to judge fromt h e Gosp e ls, o n e would think that all great art h ad been
written with a pen in one hand and a penis in the other .
(Had Mary Ann Evans n ot for tuitously adopted a male pseudonym what ever would t h e Gr ea t Tradition hav e don e? ) Vi rginia
Wool f observed the sit u atio n and turned a~ay shuddering toinvestigate the ramifications of the female se nten ce . Sev e ral twenti e th ce ntury critics hav e noted that t h e h a nds area 11 smo()·t h a nd mani c ur e d and hav e uncov e r e d an alternate
traditi.on or working c l ass and radical writ ers'.
In the wakeo r t h e radi ea li s m of th e late sixties, ma ny hav e aba nd o n e de ntire ly th e id ea of traditions at all: all sta nd ards of"good" and "bad" ar e mea ningless at best , elit jst and r eact ionary aL worst.
And the feminist moveme n t ha s bl'l.!,"un to
un cov~ r thc! Lraditio n of women's literature a nd to co n tin u e
it wiLh a co nsc iou s comm itme nt to f e mini s t writinl.!,".
Twor ece nt book s, Li..t (! I' r1I ' !J Women by Ellen Moers and /'(':;uianIm~~ c H by J u ne Rul e, make t h is attempt to trace th e tr a di tions actually exista nt i n lit e ratur e writt e n by wome n andby l es bian s, r es p ect ively .
In b ot h cases , the r es ult s are
informativ e a nd provo cative but of mi xed s u ccess .
Ell e n Mo e rs' purpos e is to ma ke s e ns e o ut of t he tradi tion of wome n writers . Sh e remind s u s t hat someone else
was involved in all those b egats, and wh at is m9re importa n t, these ot he rs c r eate d th e ir own tradition or, more co r-

3'1

rectly, community of art and expression.
For Li t e r a ry Wome ndoes not create a "great tradition" but instead explores ademocratic female commonality.
It shows us that the women
writers of the past have not been austere matriarchs , buttransmitters of an acknowledgeably femaJe experience.
Thepath from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Emily Dickinson,from George Eliot to Gertrude Stein, from Ann Radcliffe to
Sylvia Plath, from George Sand and Mme. de Stael to virtually everyone else reminds us that c ommunica te and c o mmunity
have the same · root . I do not know if the responsibilitylies with male writers or male critics, but the great tradition concept creates a literary Olympic in which each writervies for the most points. The myth of Chronos and Zeus-that a poet can only be born by killing his predecessors-is a male myth.
Li t e r ar y Women illustrates a different myth,that of growth and fruition through cooperation: the mythof '. Demeter a'n d Persephone .
. Moers began her book with what she calls an open question: "What did it matter that so many of the great writersof modern times have been women? what did it matter to literature? For this is something new, something distinctiveof mGdernity itself, that the written word in its most memorabJe form, starting in the eighteenth century , became increasingly and steadily th<? work of women." (xi) . The focusof her study is primarily the English, American and French .
wri ters of the nineteenth century , what she .calls the "epicage" (a term used by both Elizabeth Barrett Browning and
Virginia Woolf). Her values are not primarily those of style
but of content and vision: her dominant figures include
Browning and George Sand, whom standard critics (wrongly)
dismiss with a shudder, and Mme. de Stael, who I suspect isprobably unreadable today. Moers wants to discover the way
women writers have perceived their world, themselves andeach other and the way in which they have turned their perceptions into fictional and poetic form.
The range of subjects she comes up with includes "Romanticism, opera , pronouns, landscape, work, childhood, mysticism, the Gothic ,courtship, metaphor, travel, literacy, revolution, monsters,
education" (xii-xiii).
As this list suggests, the book is
also fun to read.
Moers' ultimate success is, however, mixed.
She succeeds quite brilliantly with much of her literary history.
The direct connections she uncovers between various women
writers is the strongest point of the book.
Emily Dickinson,for example, wrote lyric poems, arias as it were, on therecitative of Browning's Aurora Leigh.
Literary Women is, as a whole, a rather amorphous but
strikingly brilliant mass with admirable breadth but somewhat unexplored depth . I am not sure we can always trust
her general conclusions or her individual interpretations~for example, I can claim some expertise about George Eliot
and I don't agree with most of her literary interpretations.
If I am being fair, then I wonder how valid are her readings35

of other a u thors . And in one respect, of most relevance tothis issue , Moers is irritating l y near-sighted.
The index
lists only two references to lesbianism.
On e referenceclassifies it amo n g the "monsters" women writers have cre ate d in t h e twentieth century Gothic; t h e other ide n tifies
it as an epithet, along with harpy a nd neurotic, viciously
attached to the lives of women artists . Now, that si n gle
women are call e d lesbians as a n insult is obv i o u s to. u s a ll
a nd it is good t h at Moers is sensitive to the n asti ness
women writers hav e had to endure. But many great writ ers
wer e lesbians and sure l y that h as influenced their co n sciousness as women.
Th e association of lesbians wit h co n tempt a nd di sgust
is more blatantly homophobic wh e n we co n sider h ow much isleft out or distorted in Moers' i nt erpretat i o ns.
The most
obvio u s example to me was h er a n alys i s of Christina Rossett i' s
"Goblin Market." Th e poem may indeed b e a fa n tasy of c hildhood sexuality, but in a more complex way t han Moers d ares
to make explicit . The "rough-and- tumb l e sexuality of thenursery" (105) in t h e poem is . not t h e me mory of r olls' int h e h ay wit h brothers as s h e suggests, for those gob lin me n
are too horrifying, repellent a nd threatening . Th ey represent, rat her, a c hil d h ood (and a dul t.) fear an d d isgust of
sexual co nt act with men.
Th e un co nsc i o u s sexuality th at
f u els the poem, which eve n Moers recognizes as it s erot i ccore, is between the two siste rs . The fundamental attraction is more than sexual, it is an e motio n a l b o nd, 'creatinga protective community sheltered from the hostil e mal eworld.
As such, I b e li eve "Goblin Market " is a fantasy symbol of the female c ulture and emotional inter-dependence
that Ca rroll Smith-Rosenberg ( Signs, I, No.1) has called
the foundation of nineteenth century domestic li fe.
That·
Moers could misinterpret thi s poem , when its implications
are so in lin e with her d e lineation of female literary commonalit y, suggests a d eep fea r of any implication , howev e r
subconscious , of l esbian sexuality . It is hardly surprising,then, to read that Willa Cather and Gertrude St ei n never.
married without a mention that they did , in fact, share
their lives--with women.
Nor is it unexp ected that th e
discussi o n of women's love poetry as "ve rse letters directedby a woman to the specific man she loves" (167) refers to
Sappho , Amy Lowell , Edna St . Vincent Millay and Louise
Bogan--all of whom definitely or at least arguably wrote
love poetry to women .
For Ellen Moers , lesbianism is a very small part ofliterary tradition--the smaller the better.
For Jane Rule,in Lesbian Images, it is a literary tradition in itself.
In her preface, Rule says:
This book is not intended to be a comprehensive lit~erary or cultural history of lesbians.
It is, rather,a common reader--or not so common reader--a statementof my own attitudes toward lesbian experience as
36

measured against the images made by ot her women writers in their work and/or their lives.
But this statement is too ingenuous.
Rule does not primarily give us a statement of her own attitudes , but a personal
definition of a t~adition of lesbian art. When she says,"my concern is to discov er what images of lesbians women
writers have projected in fiction, biography, and autobiography" (3) she is in effect saying that it is justifiable
to read women writers specifically for th e sexual conte ntof their life, to interpret specific literary creations as"lesbian" and, in some way, to link that together in what
can only be called a tradition.
Now all this may be possible and enlightening.
One would only ask that the category ''' lesbian writer" be argued and developed--as Moers doeswith the category "woman writer"--and not assumed.
Le sbian Images is a valuable book in several respects.
For the casual reader who wants an intelligently annotatedreading list, it is invaluable.
It is much more usefulthan "The Lesbian in Literature" bibliography, and, as afriend of mine said, it is the only book of its kind around.
Although I am surprised at some of her omissions (what about
Virginia Woolf , Sybille Bedford, Mary Renault , Kay Boyle,
Jane Bowles, Monique Wittig or innumerable poets?) she covers the territory with adequate breadth and depth. For toe
curious, whether lesbian or not, Lesbian Images provides
fascinating tidbits of information and perceptive discussions of many excellent books.
But for any purpose deeper
than enjoyment or bibliography, some warnings need to be
made.
Rule has a ~ery definite political, or perhaps I should
say sociological, orientation, summed up nicely in her introduction: " I am concerned with the interaction of thesewriters with their culture, that is, how they are influenced
by religious and psYchological concepts and by their own
personal experience in presenting lesbian characters." Now
those of us who feel that culture concerns something morethan religion and psychology may find ourselves put off
by Rule's rather simplistic history of homosexuality.
Itis unfortunate that she chose to begin her book in thisway, for actually religion and psychology only intrude on
her literary analysis in the discussion of Radclyffe Hall,
where it seems quite justified.
I suspect that many of
Rule's readers, like myself, will cursorily jump over the
early chapters the first time.
We are not confronted withher politics again until her final chapter on recent nonfiction ' which extols Lesbian Woman as the best book of its
kind (which it admittedly may be as yet) and very uncomfortably and defensively attempts to come to terms with Jill
Johnston and radical lesbian/feminism. But between Freudand Johnston, we are gratefully spared much in the way ofpolitical analysis.
I also found myself confused and somewhat annoyed
throughout by the rather hazy sense of purpose behind the37book.
Rule seems to be uneasy in her relation both to otherlesbians and to the straight world.
She finds it necessary
to justify herself to "militant lesbians who find me a political sell-out of the worst sort," (10) which is merely
symptomatic of the book's real problem.
Rule also feels
it necessary to justify lesbians as a group to the straightworld: "For anyone who wants to know what it is to be lesbian, this book offers as many answers as there are voices
to speak" (heaven help us if we are judged by the lives ofColette and Violette Leduc!) Thus , she extols Maureen Duffy
for having "contributed nearly as many portraits of lesbians
as Colette did in the whole of her writing life" (175).
She
looks too myopically at the surface of literature, what appears to people, rather than at its depth, the transformation of reality through the medium of an author's mind.
It
is difficult not to conclude that Rule stays on the surface
because she does not want to see beneath, that a part of her
is still ins e cure about being a lesbian and needs to defend
the category with glitter and pomp: "If this book astonishes'
simply by the number of women, and very gifted women, whohave been concerned about love ' between women, it will havefulfilled its purpose, f o r n o o n e c an c om f o rt a b ly di sm i ss
all t h o s e who fi nd a place in thes e pa ge s" (italics mine).
Such is also the message of her self-justification about
including Dorothy Baker: "If Dorothy Baker were alive today, I hope she would be pleased to find herself in such
good company as this book has gathered together" (157).
This suggests a rather awful vision of a Society to Im~rovethe Image of Lesbians tea party .
Another warning I will make is that approximately sixty
percent of the literary section of Le sbian Im age s consistsof plot summary and another thirty biography, leaving only
, ten percent for literary and social analysis. Within this,Rule raises many important points although she can do no
more than suggest further lines of inquiry,
She briefly
introduces the ideas of Richard Bridgman that Gertrude
Stein's notorious obscurity veils many references to Alice
Toklas and their sexual love.
It is good to see that she
does not limit the discussion to Q.E.D., which, after all,is hardly major Stein.
She does a fine hatchet job on thestraight male bias of Willa Cather critics, insisting that
her sexual tastes "extended rather than limited her sensibility," particularly in her ability to project herself
through both male and female consciousness.
I especiallyliked her handling of Colette, always a curiously alienating
writer to me: "The only bed really big enough for Colette
was her own, the raft of her old age, on which she went on
denying the value of her own great gift in favor of being
a woman" (138).
And I am grateful to anyone who c-an help
bring Maureen Duffy out of her undeserved obscurity.
Againstthese I would balance derivative and workmanlike discussionsof Vita Sackville-West, Elizabeth Bowen, Ivy Compton-Burnett
and Dorothy Baker and distortingly brief references to important modern writers like Djuna Barnes, Anais Nin and38

Bertha Harri s lost amidst many commonplace and minor "popula r " nove li sts.
Ma ny o f Rul e ' s points are only the seeds of further explorat i o n , s u c h as in her discussion of May Sarton : "TheMu se (r or Sa rtoEJ is . irrevocably female; therefore a poet
really h as no choice but to seek inspiration in women.
Ifthat po e t h ap p e ns to be a woman, l esbian attachments are
esse ntial to he r art" (165) . Pursuing this beyond Sarton's"pro t ective " u,se of the Mus e, what is the source of artistic
inspiration and the actual process of art? Do women (orl esbia ns) c reate differently than do men? What, if any,unique symbols are used by women? These questions have beenasked by artists like Judy Chicago ( Th r o ugh the Flower ) andw~iters like Marguerite Duras ( Signs , I , No . 2) but so far
I hav e not found their answers satisfactory as either afe~inist or a lesbian .
.. One other problem with the approach of "lesbian images"(just as with "images of women") is that it blurs or totally
ignores the distinctions of diff e r e nt cultures and historical periods.
Lesbianism for Colette and Violette Leduc was
not quite the same as it was fo~ Anglo-American writers .
Ta pa~aphrase the tritic Rebecca Wes t, Colette could say a
lot of things for which British writers would have been
thrown in the slammer.
Ninete e nth ce ntury domestic culture,
the Su f frage movement and twenti et h century Freudianism all 'left distinct marks6n relationships between women- - as thecontemporary women's movement is doing.
What we are soquick to label ,jlesbian" was a quite different, and important, phenomenon to Willa Cather, Ivy Compton-Burnett or
Elizabeth Bowen (and even more unique as we move further
back into the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries.) The
deeper we look into historical distinctions, the more complex and fascinating they undoubtedly will prove to be .
I was also intrigued by the personal lives of thesewriters (like another friend of mine who was struck by how
unhappy these women seemed), the question of whether lesbian
literature falls into specific genres (such as the girls'
school novel, the m~nage ~ trois, the initiation into adulthood and so on), and the thorny issue of class and decadence.
But I want to move on to what I found to be the most involvedof these unexplored concerns: the issue of male or female
ide ntification.
So many of Rule's portraits are of women
wh o ran from their womanhood and adopted male identity withva rying degrees of int e nsity.
There was Radclyffe Hall of
co urs e, but also St e in and Cather and Violette Leduc ; Duffy's
most me mor a ble c h a r ac ter in The Microcosm is a heavy "butch"
who ca nnot eve n identify with the female pronoun. Yet it
is not quite right to say that Stein thought of herself asa man; clearly she identifi e d strongly with the female sex
in Three Lives . Ida ~ Miss Purr and Miss Skene . and The Motherof Us All (just to name pieces I am familiar with) . Whatbalance, what contradictions, what pains and joys divided
these women against themselv e s? We know how to ask and answer this question now, ' because of feminism; we need no39

longer be defensive about a woman's r efusa l to accept thelimitations of femininity . Yet wit h t h e d e ni al of femininity came, too often , the denial of womanhood, a nd surely
this is a strong tensio n in the writing of lesbian women,
probably stro n ger t h an in h eterosexu a l women . How, then ,does this affect their novels? I find t h e quest i on extremely charged, for it seems to me that consciou s lesbian l iterature, such as that by Hall, Leduc a nd even Rita Mae Brown,shows l ess lov e and respect for women than muc h "straight"
literatur e.
There is a strangely dist orted l ove/hate rela tionship b etwee n lesbianism and feminism.
And yet, thismu st be qualified , for so many of the most fe mini st (orproto-feminist) women writers, lik e Charlotte Bronte andVirginia Woolf, were moti vate d by an intense l ove for ot h er
women.
Thus, what I am l e d to through this rather co nvo lut e dr easo nin g is that the question before us does not concernt h e natur e of lesbian writing, but the natur e of woman~
identified writing . Ellen Moers, through p a inst ak ing re search a nd stron~, if sometimes di ff us e, a rgume ntation, af firmed my belief in a female tradition in lit e ratur e.
Ihav e n ever needed co nvincing that there is a female con sciousness in lit e rature.
Jan e Rul e, h oweve r, failed me on
both counts.
I am not co n v in ce d that there is a useful
category " l es bian wri ter. " Th at many g reat (and not-so great) writers had long a nd/or intense r elat±o nsh~ps , .sexualor not , with o th e r wome n; that they have at times made thisexplic it in their literature ; that sometimes their sexualproclivities had a profound in f luenc e on their conceptionof themselves a nd their art: all this is clear from Rule'sbook.
But that these women had any influence on each other;that they d eve lop within similar cultural ambiences; thatth eir r e l atio nships with women were the determining factor
in their a rt ; that, in fact, there reallY ' is a term "lesbian"that can mea ningfully encompass Radclyffe Hall, Gertrude
St ei n , Willa Cather, Elizabeth Bowen , Margeret Anderson,
Colett e, Djuna Barnes, Jill Johnston, et aI, is still an
open question for me . Oddly enough, after the five yearsof my conscious identification with the lesbian movement,
Rule's book leaves me questioning what, after all, is les~bianism.
For what common thread unites these women? They did
not all have sexual relations with women, nor did they all
describe exp licitl y lesbian women in the ir literature , nor,for that , matt er, are they all writers (unless one considers
that Margaret Anderson's memoirs validate h e r place among
writ ers rather than editors.) Ah, but did they not all love
women and describe women loving women? Well, yes, but so
do es virtually every woman writer, and many men as well.
Does Colette's sex make her voyeuristic portraits in Ces
Plaisirs more a part of the "lesbian tradition" than D . H .
Lawr e nce's in The Fox? Does the fact that Ivy ComptonBurnett lived with a woman (apparently without sex) make her
one girls' school novel "lesbian" whereas The Group is dis-40

qualified by Mary McCarthy's having a husband? Does it dojustice to May Sarton to concentrate on the only two of her
umpteen novels that suggest or admit to lesb~anism? Whyd e al with T h e Dark I s land and not Orlando ?--because Virginia
Woolf rejected Sackville-West sexually? My list of questions
could go on for a considerable time.
I am quite surprised to find myself actually resenting
th e labelling of "lesbian" after reading Le s b i an Image s.
I have be~n convinced my Jane Rule's own fear of ghettoization.
Le s bian I mag e s ghettoizes its subjects rather thanconsidering the characteristics that open out of the ghetto
into a community.
And the community that I believe e xists,that Rule does suggest behind the plot summaries, is createdby woman-identification.
Its opposition is not heterosexuality per se, but male-identification : the self - hatred thatforces women, often lesbian, to reject their womanhood forapproval , or ' acceptance by the male world,
I do not believe,and I write this guardedly, that there is a lesbian aesthetic, although lesbians today may deliberately create oneout of pride, defiance, sexuality and revolution . But I
firmly believe in a feminist aesthetic and a woman - identified
consciousness.
Lesbianism, in many different forms, iscertainly vital to that consciousness but, at least historically, we cannot say that it has been essential in the creation of a literary tradition . I would hope our concepts wi~l
expand toward a greater understanding of the comprehensive
women's culture that has always existed, though crushed forthe most part beneath the iron foot o f the great tradition.
We need to define the many inspiring ways that women haveprovided love and support for each other: as mothers , sisters, friends, teachers, political comrades , lovers and literary mentors.
I think we will find --we are finding--thatthe relationships women have had with each other throughout
history have been deeper and more intense than we have everimagined.
Sexuality will then prove to be one way , given
historical, cultural and personal conditions, in which women
have solidified their bonds . Lesbianism will no longer bea ghetto, but one of the roads through which passes the encompassing world of women's culture .

Ellen Moers, Lit e rary Wo me n (Doubleday and Co., 1976)
Jane Rul,e, Le sbi a n Images (Doubleday and Co . , 1975)
This article has been slightly abridged.
text will appear in Margin s #38.

The entire

41

LESf3IAN FICTION:
a dialogue
JUNE ARNOLD and BERTHA HARRIS
J: You've given talks on lesbian fiction and so have I, so

let's assume everybody is familiar with what has beensaid.
I don't think we ought to begin at the beginning.
Let's begin at the end.
I was interested in yourmonster theory: what exactly is the monster? The girlfalls in love with the monster and it's the male patriarchal power that tries to get her away from the monster?
' B : And that leads to what I call phallic socialization.

J : Why does the girl fall in love with the monster?

What

does the monster represent to her?
B : The monster represents the merger of her maidenhood, inthe literary sense of the word, with wildnes3.
It's arebellious act.
The girl- - the virgin--and the monster
are a co nfiguration of power . And it's the girl's last
stand--both in literature and in life , too.
For example,
adolescent girls adore animals ... there are a lot of
psychological theories that explain this away but ofcourse psychology is always wrong about that .
J :42

I think al l our readers would agree that psychology ismale bullshit. What I want to know now: there are certain girls who adore horses and there are other girls
who are frightened of horses or who have an antipathy toanimals.
Would you say these girls are frightened of
their own lesbianhood or bestiality?

B : That's possible. The other possibility is that there's
a different kind of girl and ci,rcumstances of her life
don't get her in touch with animals, but she finds her
particular image or configuration of wildness in otherways, for instance, locking herself in her room and doing nothing but reading novels and masturbating--which
is what a lot of adolescent girls do--and knowing she's
wrong.
She has to figure out how she's going to join
the world somehow.
Joining the world means getting
fucked, getting phallicly socialized.
J: So the wildness is really the innate lesbianism in women--the desire for that freedom and that power?
B: Lesbianism at that age means being a daughter all yourlife , being free all your life.
J: I'd like to say something about power, because the daughter of mine who was most interested in horses identified
with them partly because they were extremely powerful.
They've always had that image , in mythology and in our
dreams.
Now she had what seemed to me a natural desire
to express, to reinforce, her own sense of power. Would
you say that lesbian fiction is conflicted right now
because the women's movement (or certain parts of it)
identifies power as male and refuses to have anything to
do with power? Do lesbian writers feel--do you or I
feel--that in our novels we have to tone down the urge
to express that power which is possibly a root elementin our lesbianism? Did you feel that when you werewriting Lover, that you couldn't unleash the power altogether?
B: No. · Lover is the f ·irst thing in my life that I've everwritten that I felt like I could go with a complete marriage with power.
I think the most crucial politicalmistake women make is identifying power with the male.
Men have no power.
They've constructed institutions togive themselves power. Men recognize this too; in all
their literature, women are identified with the physical,
with the animal, with the earth, with sensations of violence. They always name hurricanes after women.
It'sin the popular, in the social, in the intellectual culture.
When women deny that they have power and that
they. must take power, they're going with the male.
Power
isn't male; it's woman. But before I wrote Lover, theother two novels I wrote I was writing for the maleestablishment.
J: For the male publishers and critics, and possibly teachers.
B: Trying to get approval from them.
I was disguising my
power so they would like me. But with Lover I was able43

to do it for a women's publishing company.
I was able
to do anythin g I wanted to , and the power happened . Soy ou answe r that question now .
J : We ll , I know when I wrote my first novel I held backfrom describing the actual physical brutality that exist e d in this marriag e, and I often wondered why I did
that.
I agr ee th a t it was partly to please, but partly
it was to d e ny that my life had really been that sortof gutter viol e nt fighting thing, because it cert a inly
wasn't suppos e d to be, and I wanted to be universal.
Had I b e en ab l e t o be really honest , that struggle with in marriag e wo uld have be e n more visible, less literary.
My charact e r f e lt that h e r urge to win was "bad"--penis envy , they c a lled it . And I still feel the remnants ofthat--whether it ' s c omin g from the l e sbian movement orjust in me, I don't know.
So I don't fe e l that Si s ter
Gin is anywhere n e ar the end; I think we're going tokeep on being more and more honest, and the more lesbian'readers we have and the more ' they respond , the more
we're going to grow.
I think our ultimate expressionof lesbian power is yet to come.
We're still crippled ...
B: We 're peeling off layers--of inhibition and of what
we've learned--and trying to recapture that which isth e source of literature , which is intuition tot a lly
engaged with intellectuality, with a sens e of ar.roganceabout it.
J: Yeah,arrogance is another word that's misunderstood.
There's also an overwhelming humility in writing a book,because you know that you can only speak from your own 'limited sphere, your own consciousness, your own limited
mind--which without gin sure seems limited.
The ginhelps a lot,
But at some level you wait until the bookis finished and women read it, because you're not surethat it i s all women--it may be just your own crazyindividual perversions.

B : And that's where the fear comes in, along with the humility , because at the same time you're writing thisbook, you're . terribly afraid that in expressing what
you've experienced as a particular individualized thing,
you're not going to be understood, that ' women at large
won't see it. But they do , they always do.
J:

I want to say something about the fact that in the be ginning of the women's movement, certain things werebeing codified.
There was a particular style that you
had to accept to join the women's movement: CR, not interrupting your sister, collectivity, exchanging jobs ...

B : Downward mobility , to use that sterile jargon .

'44

J: Well,it did me a lot of good so I can't put it down.
But I wonder if there's another kind of censorship going on among lesbians now which hasn't been stated: that
we're supposed to write about women being tender, sensitive, understanding, etc . , about women working ingroups . But when you're in the middle of a novel andyour character is dOing something that's against that ...

B: And you 'kno~ it's true, what the character is doing.
J: You've got to stay with the character.

Even if thecharacter i~ a drunk and the critics say, Don't you know
a lot of sisters are having trouble in the bars andthey're becoming alcoholics and aren't you romanticizing
alcohol? Do you think we have some responsibility tothat, or dO we only have responsibility to the character?

B: No. We have only responsibility to the character.
If
you're writing from the absolutely raw place . Because
responsibility to the character and what you're doingis ultimately responsibility to the women's movement andto· all lesbians '.
J: Even though it's not clear right now.

B: EVen though it's ' not popular or clear, because, alongwith us writing fiction, we assume that women who readare also peeling off layers of consciousness . I thinka big misunderstanding of what sex is, has been put
about through the lesbian-feminist movement in particular . Sex among women sounds like early childcare sometimes.
J: Babies playing in the rain and all love and sweetness.

B: We all know that's not true.
Sex can be violent, anddevastating, and I think that to write a novel in which
everything is sweetness and light, sexually among women,
is lying . And lies always propagate not only bad literature but bad politics.
And losing. People who believe lies lose.
J:

At the recent conference, we had a writers' workshop at
which we discussed this question of responsibility.
Letme suggest something: suppose I write a novel and I see
a great tragedy happening to the women's movement, avery bleak picture.
I write this and it discourages
women from opening presses, writing books--we don't knowthat novels have that power, but let's just say this one
does.
Then should I not publish that novel if its immediate effect is to demoralize the women's movement,
give ammunition to the male establishment which is nipping at our heels the whole time? Or should it be given
to a jury of the women's movement to decide?

45

B : No.
I don't think that it's possible to write the truthand have it demoralize anybody . The truth is always
more important than anything else, in and out of fiction.
You write the truth through your flesh and your brain
and your experience, through your vision of what's goingon.
In the doing of it there will be too much paradox,
too much irony, too much this and that for it to be a
picture of disaster.
J: The irony is very important--women's capacity for irony .

They don't see things as one way or the other. They
always see them as very complex, subtle, and interinvolved.
You were saying the other night that you missed
ir~ny in a recent lesbian-feminist book.
B: A lot of new lesbian fiction is trying to present what
they imagine to be a party line. Too good. Sweetness
and light.
Say there ' s a thirteen - year-old girl in
Saskatchewan who reads all this new lesbian fictionthat "cleans it all up." What the author is doing is
to totally disillusion that girl before she's twenty
years old. And it divorces her from her own experience-which will teach her that it isn't all sweetness andlight .
J : Makes her feel like a pervert all ov~r again, just likeheterosexual fiction used to make us feel.
There . are
all these lesbians out there who never fight, never haveinsurmountable problems, are never mean--and I'm not oneof them.
So I'm just as queer now ...

B: Right.
J:

So we've got to tell the truth.

I agree with you but I still have another question.
Suppose this hypothetical novel is picked up by the New
York Times and Publishers Weekly as the truth.
Now allthe rest of the publications of the women's presses havenot been picked up .. . we ' re being blacked out . sinister
Wisdom is being blacked out . But this book~ because it
says essentially what they want to get across to young
women in America--Beware- -will be promoted.
They'llteach it in women's studies, in high school.

B: But I think that if you or I or any other lesbian wrotethat book, that in the writing of it, it would comeacross ...
J:

In the experience of the language.

B: In the experience of the language, in the reality of thetotal emotion. They could not handle it that way.
Theboys at the New York Times would not be able to use it
as propaganda because we're incapable of writing a book46

that would have that effect.
There's nothing that we
could write that they could us e .
J: That's very good to know.
B: They couldn't use anything.
J: But the women who read it could .

They could use all ofit .

B: They could do two things at the New York Times: they
could say, At last a lesbian novel that gets to the realiti of the matter--and they would be covering theirasses.
If they think something's going to be culturally
important they want to get in ftrst . Or they could ignore the lesbian issue and talk about existential reality or they could compare it to Henry James or D.H.
Lawr~nce ... they have all these outs when they face literary truths.
But the women would have it.
J: At the conference I was talking to a woman from Amazon
Reality about--I think it was Norse myths.
She was~elling us a ~tory : a woman had to marry a man, a foreigner, and take his name.
She didn't want to take his
name, she wanted him to take her name. She ended upkilling their t.wo sons and feeding them to him, at whichtime he went crazy and she either killed him or he died.
And it seeme~ to us that that story was an old matriarchal tale--you're supposed to go with your mother'sfamily, so if you have to take a male name or go into
his land those children are really children of rape, arenot children.
These stories are from the middle period-the beginning period of patriarchy. Another woman fromShroder Music was telling us about a story in which awoman was in love with her horse, wanted to marry her
horse, and at the end of the story, the horse turned
into a charming man and she married him, naturally.
B: That's what I mean by phallic socialization: the good
beast turned into a husband.
J: They're changing the endings of the stories. Do the
grandmothers keep telling the stories in their changed
version, thinking, hoping that the granddaughters will
get the message--since that's the only safe story totell ?
B: I think so. They can't be literal. But they will tellthis and if the daughter or granddaughter picks up thereality, good for her.
If she doesn't, too bad.
J: So one of the lesbian writer's primary duties or tasks
is to write in such a way that each woman reader learns
to get in touch w~th her own source of truth, so that47

if the time comes and our tales have their endings
changed, women will have withi n t h emselves the means,the touchstone, to say, This is the truth and that theyadded.
Which gets u s to language.
Th ey've tak e n away
our language and we ' ve got to restructure, redefine-the word s are too abstract --we ' ve got to us e languagei n s u ch a way and lesbian r eaders h ave to read it insuc h a way that it r eawak e n s a mu c h more basic immediate
way of communi cat in g.
You ca n' t us e their language todo that.
You h ave constantly to expe rim e nt with themost dir ect, the most s h ockin g, . t h e most unpeeling kindof languag e to bring back this bond of communi cation,
bec a us e this is going to be our only hope in th e f u ture .
B: Exac tly.
My formula for that in life as well as in writing (and I'm ab l e to d o it maybe fifty per cent of thetime) is to keep some sort of idea, vis~o n , in my mind . . .
everyt hin g that is accepted as goo d, acceptable, ri ght,
no matter who presents it--whether the me n do it o r themo vemen t or l esbians do it--you turn it around in yourh ea d a nd look at its opposite, a nd then de c id e what the
good/bad situation is, and then you have a c h oice ofb ei ng either good or bad.
Of course you hav e also thec h oice of goi ng against the mainstream of public opinion, wh et her it's the establishment o r the moveme nt .
But I want to get into this whole thing of what lesbian
fiction is . .. I hav e to ask you a dir ec t que~tion about
what you think lesbian fiction is, be caus e ther e are
two opposite ext remes in my mind of what it isn 't, · thath ave go n e like cannonballs through the women's movementin the past few years.
At one e nd of the spectrum is
May Sarton , at the other, a little book ca ll e d The Ripen ing Fig . Both of these I co nside r the absolute death
to a ny kind of illumination we can get from lif e orliterature.
May Sarton is very popular with academics
a nd with women who're looking for a pro~ e r l esbian or a
distinguished lesbian.
I · think they're a l so attracted
to her because she's a n old woman.
The Ripening Fig isa campaign in self-promotion. Could you talk about thatsome?
J: The May Sarton book I guess you're talking about is Mrs .

Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing , because in As We Ar e
Now that very alive love/lesbian r e lation betwee n thetwo old wome n was denied by the c h a racter and the author.
I mean the author let the c hara c t e r's d e ni a l stand . But
in Mrs. Stevens , the character us es her lesbianism al most to say, I have the freedom to experiment with thisbad wild woman if I get a nov e l out of it .
It 's Ameri can materialism.
Lesbianism is fi n e for artists because
it produces art, it ends up as a product.
Yo u're eve nallowed to commit a murder if that will bring you a workof a r t--o n some level you're a ll owe d .
It's the murder
that's really passionate, that you do b ecause you want48

to kill somebody, that's punished in this society. So
I don 't know why Mrs . Stevens is read as a book for
lesbians--and the women I know who like it are young
women . Sarton ce rtainly chose for her mus e a young man.
May Sa rton is still playing to the mal e establishment.
I think sh e wants a doubl e thing going for her : she isa woman and th erefo r e special, but she's not your ordin a ry commongardenvariety woman . She feels that being al esbian is a sign of having mor e male hormon es, a malebrain- - she thinks that's androgynous.
Now The Ripening
Fig is the sort of boo k I think the CIA could publish
in Africa and South America to discredit the wQole woman's ~ovement.
I don't think I want to say anything
mor e about it.
B: . Okay.
I . use May Sart o n--ther e are others I co uld u se
~ just as well - -because she's come home to me lately.
She 's somebody I read years ago when I knew she was alesbian writer. Th ere was mu c h that disturb e d me abo ut
it but at least I had a lesbi a n novel to read.
This
connects with our dis c ussion- of language, too, a nd t h e
i 'dea of sensibility.
Wh at is the lesbian se nsibi lity?
What frightens me is that books lik e Mrs . Stevens a nd
the whole icon of May Sart on c reate a n idea of what
sensibility is in liter at ur e, and it a ls o separates literature from politi cs . And women who buy t h is of co urse
are buying the idea that c ulture, art, est hetics, e tc.
are separable ' entities from political life a nd what I
think the best novelists are trying to do is to do the
awesome gruesome frequently bac kbreaking task of integrating that politics which is moving and changing withan esthetics which is also mov ing and changing. We
don't know but we have to t a k e the risk.
I may c hang e
my mind next year but it'll b e a diff e r e nt boo·k . But
it both e rs me that ~ es bians--I'm not surpris ed abo ut
straight women--pick up these icons of l esbian sensi bility, at one ext r e me May Sarton , at th e ot he r ex treme
The Ripening Fig -- eve n the title alone of t hat o n e you
could make jokes about.
But what bot hers me is ignor ance, and I guess that's why I've b ee n in educatio n fo r
so long.
That this terrible b oo k , in all se n ses of th eword--its writing , its images, its vision, everyt hin g .. .
J : Its total dishon es ty.

B : Total dishonesty.
And that women fall for it . What I
can't endure is women falling for total dishon es ty , inliterature.
I can't e ndur e it in other places but when
they fall for it in lit e rature I really get upset.
J:

Don't you think one of th e reasons for that is that women have experienced literature as male--it's be e nshoved down our throats at school and it's always been49difficult because it h asn't related to our lives . So
there's an assumptio n that literature is d ifficult, n ot
pleasant, and wome n wan t somet hin g that's easy to r ead.
And The Ripening Fig is certai nly easy to r ea d--in ase n se.
I t doesn't ask you to put away you r l ast twenty
or eig ht y years of reading malese to try to expe ri e n ce
somethi ng n ew .
I t pand e rs to their language, for mul a,
st ru ct ur e . It tells you what is h ap p e ning . ..
B: Yeah.
Th ose a r e t h e two extremes that I wanted to brin gup.
It di st urbs me becaus e it means there's no point
almost, except a personal n ee d, a political n ee d, in
writin g what we co n si der the truth about our experience
as fe mi ni sts, as women, a·s les bj.a ns, i f we ca n't simultaneously reach women a nd tell them that they're being
co nn e d, o n th e o n e hand , by the o ld establishment-sentime ntal bull s hit of May Sar to n a nd o n the other hand by
what a mounts to vulg a r trash--stuff o n the l eve l with
Pl ay b oy, for examp le.
J : It' s disturbing b ec aus e May Sarton keep s that straddle

going; s h e ' s n eve r said she's a l esbian.
She wants t oreach bot h lesbians a nd mal e critics who sell books.
Th e boys say May Sa r to n is goo d and· wome n have b ee n told
for so long that what the boys say is good, is good.
I
hop e d that our "natural" a udience o n this thing would
be complet ely over that and would distrust everytbingthat the boys say.
When I read in Publishers Weekly ·that a book is a great lesbian novel , I know it's shit;or that a b ook is terrible - -strident feminism, breast beating, more of th e same old whining--I rush right out
and buy it, eve n though it's published by the boys.
But in gen e ral .1 don't trust anything they publish.
B: What do you think a l e sbi a n sensibility might be?
literatur e .

In

J : We ll , the l esbian's sense of reality h as been challenged
every single day since she was born, even if she wereli v ing as a straight woman as I did for years:
Our
sharpest weapon, or the instin c t we've sharpened most,is getting a grip on--a definition of --o ur sense of.
reality.
I think we've worked hardest o n this.
We
hav e n't worke d hard on plot , or atmosphere- - but I think
we've worked our asses off to get down our sense of reality.
So I think a lesbian sensibility is a very v e ryheightened awareness of reality .

B: That lesbian sensibility is also about grabbing thatreality: it may be, for now and for many years, co ntradictory , it may be painful, it may b e impossibly odd.
But when I t hink of a real lesbian nov el ist working, I
think that what sh e 's after is getting some shr e d ofthat reality back, that lost reality, which you h ave to50

go back to girlhood to find.
J : You ea n rt have a c haracter walk into a room and say,This woman was so beauti ful that I . fell in love withh e r--as if we don't fall in love with women whether or
not they are beautiful.
As if love, sex, the cunt-itch,
has to do with the fact that she looks like Susan Sontag .
We've got to find new words for
Yet we ,still do that.
beauty, fQr cunt - itch, for love , lust. We've got totalk about lust as opposed to the feelings we hav e thatare frie ndship.
We'v e got to deal with the fact that
we fee~ mainly friendship feeli ngs for ce rtain women
but occasionally we feel lust toward them too--which we
probably act on if we're young and don't if we're old ,Or maybe it's just the opposite , We have to say allthat,
B: We'v e got to find a way to say that in f i ctio n, andthere's no formula.
Th ere's no tradition of saying it.
That's what mak es writing a novel as a lesbian fromthis point of view so dif f i 0 ult .
J:

So interesting.

B: Interesting and difficult.
J:

Because the boys never did that, They would only won der why, when ' they have a per fec t wife, they have aprick-itch for a beautiful woman, or why they're at tracted to bad people, and stuff like that.
We have todo that also. We have to discuss things like the factthat our baby dykes who can do no wrong find themselves
attracted to women who're embracing the bad.
At thesame time we have to deal with the fact that there's nosuch thing as beauty, or love, or, .. there's no suchthing as anything.
That's where the lesbian writer
starts.

B: We're inventing the world.
J: Righ 'c,

51

Fear of FLYING?
----julia p. stanley
Two years ago Elinor Langer published her review of Kate
Millett's Flying in Ms . magazin ~ . The review itself tells
us more about Langer's state of mind than it does about
FZying, and the same is probably true of this article.
That a book can call ·forth such passionate appraisal, however, testifies to its stature and the power of its contents.
I hardly know where to begin, and, after two years,
readers may wonder why it is still important to me to expose Langer's review article.
There are two answers tothat question: (1) I think Kate Millett's Flying is one of 'the artistic achievements of the twentieth century; (2)Elinor Langer's attack on the book illustrates the contradictions, paradoxes, false claims, and self-righteousness
typical of criticism written from a patriarchal perspective.
Rather than justify my own judgment · that Flying represents
the best literature in our century, I have chosen to analyze
the ways in which Langer's review exemplifies the worst aspects of the male critical traditions.
Among the tasks offeminism, one of them is the on-going analyiis a~d examination of the values of patriarchal culture, and the ways
in which these values influence our judgments of ourselves
and other women .
In Sexual Polities Kate contributed oneof the first extensive feminist analyses of patriarchal
values in ' literature .
In Flying she turned her analyticalabilities to herself, her life, her friends, her lovers ,to the movement in which she struggles for herself.
The
statements that derive from both stances ~re valuable tous . It is past time to consider the responsibilities of afeminist critical position if we are to rescue our writersfrom the judgments rendered by those critics who continue
to serve patriarchal literary values.
I think that thetraditional function of the critic--as judge and mediatorof aesthetic values in the culture--may be obsolete. Perhaps this is optimism on my part; certainly such critics
would be the last to admit that they have no function.
Asiong as people like Elinor Langer take it upon themselves
to judge books according to prevailing masculinist attitudes
and the aesthetic that embodies these attitudes, those of
us who are willing should endeavor to expose the sources of
their criticai statements.
The title of Langer's essay, "Confessing," makes explicit the direction her attack will take.
The editorial comment immediately beneath the title sets the tone for thereview.
" In the June, 1974, issue of Ms ., we published along excerpt from Flying, Kate Millett's latest book.
The52

following essay raises some questions about the genre ofwriting e xemplified by Flying ; questions which ar e important to f e minist writers and reade rs alik e ." Set o ff in
the middl e of the p a ge so that the reader's eye is imme diately drawn to it is a quote from the essay : "Confession
protects.
By pretending we are presenting 'life , ' n o t art,
we avoid c riticism." The dichotomy presented to us h e r eaccurately represents the attitude of Langer's criti c ism.
Life, she , maintains , is not "art , " although she never defines " art" for us , and she does not seem to feel that thisdichotomy meFits justification. The first two paragraphsof Langer's article illustrate the self-righteous tone thatpervades 'the review :Men repress ; women confess.
The stiff upper lip versus
the quavering one.
There are occasions when too muchof the latter makes th e former seem attractive, andfor 'me reading , Kate Millett's Flying was one of the,m.
After it, I would ch e erfuliy have settled down with
the Pri nc i pia . As it was , I reached for the Kleenex,
my sorrow not only for the author of this mo dern pilgrim's progress, but for its readers.
Confession, under the auspices of the Women's Movement, is getting to be a messy business,
This is as
good a time as any to 'bring it up.l
If Langer really b~lieved that the tone of : ly i ng was comparable to a "quavering" lip, she is not what one mightcall a "careful'" reader .
Having been trained in the tradition of male criticism,
I'm finally tired of reading and hearing about tne "triviality" of "confessional" writing and its "debased" character as a literary genre unworthy of critical attention .
Thanks to Elinor Langer, I've realized that I learned mydisdain for "confessional" writing from the male critics
who praise male authors who write for male audiences.
Of
course, disdain may be too strong
word, because I simply
did not pay attention to so - called "confessional" literature.
While I read diaries and journals outside of my classes asa leisure activity, such works were not taught as part of"our" literary tradition, a critical negligence that createdan unnoticed gap between what I read and what I called "literature." In short, if most of us don't, or can ' t , take"confessional" literature seriously, it is because of themale value system that has structured our personal, intellectual, and aesthetic jUdgments.
As the existence of Langer's review testifies, it ispast time for us to examine the cultural biases of the aesthetics we have learned, to re-evaluate the literature
handed down to us by patriarchal institutions, and to consider the possible features of a feminist aesthetic.
I
have as yet no general understanding of what a "feminist
aesthetics" might look like, although I don't think it would
obviate critical judg~ents .
Judgments would be based on thea53valu e of a literary work in feminist te r ms -- t hat is, a g i ve nwork would be j ud ge d according to t h e ways it illumi n ates
a n d captures the hopes and s truggles of wome n.
Becau se th i s
positive defi n it i o n is necessarily vagu e, p e rh aps a c l ose
exami n ation of La n ger's critical ju d gme n ts wi l l ma k e c l ear
wh at a f e minist aest hetics is not . Her ex pl oitat io n of t h eterm confessional is a good p l ace to s t a r t .
Histo r ica l ly, l itera r y t r a d i ti o n h as exc lud e d mos t "co nfessio n al" a u t h o r s f r om t h e r a nk s of t h e " r es p ec t a bl e , ""seriou s" wr i te r s, a nd La n ger h as writ te n wi t hin t hi s t r a d itio n .
( I ' l l co n t inu e to u se th e te rm confes si~ nal, in
qu ota t io n ma r ks, in or der to ma k e clea r my ob ject i o ns tot h e term. Howeve r , as I hope to s h ow, t h e r e is no s u c hge nr e as "confession al" literat ure; t h e te r m "co n fess i o n a l "i s a label fo r a category create d to co n demn t h ose wo r ks
t h at a r e classifie d as s u c h . Flying , acco rd i n g to Ka t e
Mil lett, "ref uses a n d el ud es a n y l it e r a r y catego r y, . . . ,, 2)Crit ical eva lu at i o ns h ave always go n e aga in st "co n fess i o n a l '.'l iterat ur e when j u dgm e n ts o n i t h ave b ee n offe r e d , a nd we
n ee d to ask wh y this i s so.
~~ ill e tt h e r se l f h as as k e d why
Lang e r c h ose th e l a b e l "co n fess i o n " a s a "ro ut e t o co nd e mn. "I wo uld s u gges t th at Lan ge r c h o s e i t b ecaus e i t i s th e e a s i es t way to d ismiss l ite r at ur e th at o ~ e find s disturbin g ;"con fe s sio n " is th e r ea dy-t o -h a nd l a b el pr ov ide d by masc u linis t aes th et i cs fo r t h ose wo rk s th a t fo r ce t oo p e r so n a l ,t oo imme di ate a co n f r o nt at i o n b et wee n a utho r a nd r ead e r .
Thi s unm as kin g of t h e self as a u t ho r and c h a r ac t e r ·, th isface - to-face mee tin g of a r tist a nd r ea d e r , ar o u ses r ~p ul s i o n
and disd a in i n lit e rary c riti cs tr a in e d in th e aes th e ti csof t h e mal e tr a di t ion.
I wo uld lik e t o s ugg e st th a t t h e rear e a t le a s t two so ur ces fo r th e p e j o rati ve fea tur es of th et e rm confession : o n e d e ri ves f rom the r e li g i o us assoc i a ti o n s
a tta c h e d t o th e word , a nd t h e o th e r is manif e st e d in th ekind s of li te r a tur e r e gard e d as "seri o u s " by ma l e c riti cs,
i.e. f i ct i o n.
A third p oss ibili ty ma y st e m fr om t h e f a c t
t h a t " co n fess i o n a l " li te r a tur e does no t r e quir e th e " midwifery" of t h e c riti c as me di a t or b et wee n a rti s t a nd r ead e r ,a nd t hu s e lud es c r it i ca l ob f u scatio n .
Th e lab el confession h as b ee n take n ove r b y c rit ics asa mean s of co nd e mnin g wo rk s of a rt th at a r e access ibl e to
the r ea d e r.
Th e te rm i s l ess d esc r i pti ve a nd mo r e p e j o r a tive t h a n we've b ee n l e d to be l ieve .
I f o n e as k s
c ri t i c
to d efine t he c h a r acteristics of "co n fess i o n a l" l ite r at u re
as a genre, t h e a n s wer can o nl y be fo und in t h e l o ng l i stof works a lr ea d y cast i n to t h at catego ry , n ot b y ti t l e, b ut
b y a u t hors h ip.
" Co n fessio n al" literat ur e is u s u ally, bu t
n ot a l ways, writte n b y wome n, abo u t t h e l i ves of wome n int h e u n comfortab le f i rst pe r so n . Th e labe l "co n fessio n a l "f u nctio n s as a li mitatio n , implyi n g t hat t h e work s so categorized lack "scope . " Th at is, critics wou ld h ave u s b e lieve that "co n fessio nal" literat u re is so perso n al in i ts
content, so spec i fic i n its telli n g, t h at i ts va l ue as li t Even as t h e
e r ature does n ot exte n d beyo nd its cove r s.
worl d in h a b ite d b y wome n is l i mi ted by t h e terms of me n , soa54

our perceptions and lives are dismissed as "trivial." Consider the way in which Lang e r uses confession : "The confession is not disciplin e d a utobiography.
In autobiography,
the writer may us e the self to inspect tbe world; in confess ion, the self runs rampantly through it, c rashing up
against eve r y thing ~n its way.
Eve rything is seen throughthe fil t e r of ego." Well , one might ask, what isn't? In
another vein, I wond e r whether Langer would have had thesame things to say about th e co n fes sions of Rousseau or St.
Au gus tin e, a nd I think that her distinction betwe e n autobiography and co n fess ion is only expedient.
The r e ligious associations attached to the term confes s io n can be traced to the Catholic ritual in which the penit e nt seeks absolution from " the father" for real or imagined"sins. " The roles, as they are defined and .enacted in thisr it ual , refl ect their f un c ti o n in mai ntaining the oppressivest~ uctures c reated by mal es .
Th e p e nitent , the one who mustseek forgi ve ness, has t r an s gY'es s g~: , o r 'c!iQlat e d , the " father's" la w.
In seeking absolut i on for o ne's transgressions ,one sub m i ~ s oneself to that la~ , ackn o ~le d ging the power andcontrol of the church as represented by its male prie sts.
Only males can function as conress o rs. as the representativesof t heir "heavenl'y fa th e r " here o n e arth.
Of course , males
can absolve themselves and eac h o ther . ~hile ~omen must"seek" absolution from them , being in capable of absolving
one another.
In t~e mal e · cosmology. ~ome n. as subordinate 'and inferior in spiri.tual ma;tt e rs, must go to the "o ther,"i.e. men , if we are to have a place in a patriarchal "afterli fe . " Langer, by characterizing Fl ying as "confessional,"
can imply that Kate has done something embarrassing and in appropriate for which transgression she is in need of abso lution.
As Langer herself describes her reaction: " I findFl yin g as pitiful as I found Sexual P~litics brilliant; ...
Confession , self-revelation, and subjectivity, all instru ments of insight and development and experimentation when
they occur within small groups, or writing classes, or are
explored in private journals, can look shabby-- even indecent when they appear on the public shelves, where both
lit e rary and moral-political judgments must be made if the
public side of life is to have an~ integrity at all.
When
you write a book--as opposed to speaking with a friend--youproperly invite the highest et hical and aesthetic judgmentsof human society upon your efforts." Such revelations must
be k e pt in the privacy of the co nfessional booth, and Kate
has transgressed.
Lang e r couches h e r attack in the terms of "the highest
et hi ca l .and aesthetic judgments of society," thus aligning
herself with male cr itical traditi o n.
Or has she? I 've
a lr eady mentioned the confessions of St. Augustine andRo uss eau , and Lang e r seems to hav e forgotten the ecstatic
religious poems of J o hn Donn e and the "terribl e" sonnets ofGerard Manl ey Hopkins . Consider, too, the fra nkl y autobiographical writings by me n that h ave n ot been catego riz e d ortrivialized as "confessional" wit hin the male literary tra55

clition. When men exami n e the pain and joy of their intense
experiences, t heir work is not cast into the "confessional"
waste bin.
Such works are a mong t h e most acc l aimed piecesof literature.
Walt Whitman's L8a v e s o f Gr a ss is cal l e d a n"epic." Henry Th oreau' s Walde n is a "utopian blueprint."
And both a uthors are usually classed as "transcendentalists,"
a term that s h o uld merit f urth er di scussion e l sewhere . Or,
compare the literary treatment of e.e . c ummings, Hart Crane,o r Dylan Th omas to that accorde d Ann e Sexton, Erica Jong,or Sylvia Plath.
Are the poems of the mal es a ny le ss "p e r sonal" (confessional) than t h ose of the women? Yet, only
recently have t h e women begun to be ackn ow l edge d as comp e tent in the literary world.
Th e favo rite ploy us e d to main tain masculinist aesthetics is to dismiss the work of womenas "confessional," while t he lyrics of men are praised andpassed on to fut ur e ge n e r ations as "universal" statements
to be treasured a nd preserved.
Clearly, when a mal e writerh as received the en d o rs ement of male c riti cs, his statements
are accepte d as " uni versal truths," utteran ces which willb ear the scruti ny of generations of male readers.
When awoman writ es about l ove, or any o~ her aspect of her life,
she is di s mi ssed as a "co n fess ional" writer , and her "outpourings" aren't eve n worth the paper they're printed on,when they do get published.
Elinor La ng er h as behind h e r revi ew the weight of se ve ral cent uri es of male c ri t i cism, a fact that lends her criticism a certai n credibility, esp ecia lly to those who areunwilling , or unable, to grant that the Western traditionof literary critic ism exists only to endorse and perpetuate
those works that e mbody th e values of the prevailing patri archal c ultur e .
If me n hav e had a monopoly on literature and its presentation, parti c ularly that literature that f ills the tedi ous ho urs of sop homor e lit e ratur e courses, it is appropriate
to ask how they hav e organized a nd maintain ed. this monopoly.
On the political side, of cours e, th ey hav e been able tomaintain their d ominan ce in lit e rature be cause they co ntrol
the resources a nd met h o d olog i es of power and always hav e.
But the political r esponse, while valid, presents a n ove r simplified answer that disguises the subtleties involved .
Whil e it is true that women h ave not had access to e du catio n
an d , thereby , literacy, till recently, if we st op at thisp oi nt we will fa il to recognize that the exter nal structuredraw s its coercive power fro m the va lu e $ystem that has
h el d off women fo r ce n t uri es.
Ge tting power is one thing;m~i ntainin g tt is a n other affa ir that r eq uir es a compl ex
syst e m capable of repeating itself ind efi nit ely . In fact,
the system itself is easy to d elimit , but exploring all theways it h as permeated our lives and perceptions is a mu c hlarg er task . Nevertheless, the masculinist aesthetics is
one of the obvio us ways that t h e male value system r epeat s
itself.
Men have used their power to define the "proper
scope" of literature, a nd their perceptions have struct ur e dan aest h etics that endorses their perceptions as uni versal
truths.
56

Among the a rtistic mode s th a t me n hav e us e d to ma inta i n
the ir interpretation of t h e world i s fi c t io n . Supp o s e dl y,fi c tion is characteristi call y a fabri c ated universe that ref le c ts the world ; it is some thing " not r eal " th a t c ontains"t ruth ." Ther e has nev er b e en much doubt amo ng literary
critics that literature is based on li fe exp e ri e n c es to v arying d e grees .
The exact de g ree and nature o f th a t relationship has , of course , provided much of the fodder for " paper
wars , " and ' the revolutions which periodi c ally l e gitimize oneof the competing theories of literature that e vo lves out o fthese battles.
It would be ridiculous to maintain that malewriters hav e not used their experiences as the basis of
their literature , although the more successful the writer at
disguising his own involvement, the more "meritorious" theart thus produced.
By this criterion, Ulysses is a shooin for the "great novel" of the twentieth century.
And itis .'fair to ask in this context why Po r trait of the Artist a s
a Yo ung Ma n , A Child 's Chr i s t ma s i n Wale s, and Moby Dickhave been passed off as ~niversal in scope, while Flying
is condemned by a single label, " confessional ." I thinkthat the term con f e ss io n al isol~tes those works of art that
do not perm-it d'i s t .ance .
Langer herself has some trouble in her condemnation of
Fl y i ng, because there is distance , but not enough for her
taste. On the one hand, she characterizes the act of writing a book as "a professional activity, like running a dress
shop or a kennel.
It is a business . . . A book is a work oflanguage, nothing ·else.
It is not flesh and it is not time.
It is not life . Long as this book is , it is shorter thanMillett's year .
It is not her year.
It is conscious andcontrived, each word a literary choice as much as--even morethan--an emotional one." Yet , having correctly pointed to
the fact that Fl yin g is a conscious work of literature , art ,she tries to have it the other way, too.
"She has recorded
all her impressions , but she takes responsibility for none .
Free association has supplanted thought ~ .. Clarification ,new ideas, would have more value than a seismographic recordof all the orgasms in history.
Millett could think it
through, but won't.
She will only tell how it feels: shitty.
'Thinking' for her is no more . " How, I ask, can one construct a conscious and precise work of art, without "thinking"? Clearly , Langer is referring to the male d e finiti o nof "thought" as the only possibility; she is dissatisfied
because there is not enough "objectivity , " not enough " distance," for her aesthetic standards, which she characterizes
as "the highest ethical and aesthetic judgments of humansociety." , What is the purpose of these judgme nts? Atleast one' answer lies in Langer's combination of the words
e t hical and a est he ~ic . How did these two terms come to be
so intimately associated?
Most of the male writers usually thought of as the"great" writers fi c ti on a lize their experience, thus raising
it to the level of "art." By making their lives into fictions, they avoid the hardships and pitfalls of honesty, in

57

'.

the process establis hin g "distance" between themselves andtheir audience . Fiction, the untrue telling of one's perceptions and interpretations of experie n ce, creates a mode
within which men have been able to establ ish their interpretations of life as "univ e rsal truth." Obviously , onlyin fiction are "universal s" possible, only in the fictio nof men do we find claims abo u t the "human condition," which
are really portrayals only of the ma~e co nditi o n .
(Womenin these fictio nal ized accounts function as decorative backgrounds against which male fantasies of power and infantilism
are enacted as "art.") The "alienated hero" is the perfect
example of the mal e version of the "human condition." Within such fictions we find the perceptions and experiences ofmen present e d as abstractio ns which embody traditional maletheories about the nature and structure of the universe.
For examp l e, the male co n cept of tragedy typically cente rs
o n some man of exceptional social status who is incapableof seeing himself as he is, in fact, someone who pefuses tound e rstand reality.
Meanwhile, women appear and disapp ear
in these little dramas, eit her as the "evil" woman who leads
the "hero" astray, or as the supportive c haracter who keeps
trying to tell him what is pea~~y happening, but whom heassiduously ignores in order to act o ut his tragedy.
(Consider Oedipus Rex and the Agamemn o~ , or for that matter,
The Dang~ing Man, Poptnoy ' s Comp~aint , or anything else you
ca n think of.) Since men conceived and created the "world
view" we ne ed not be surprised if male critics are only too
willing to promote their view as "universal." Nor shOUld
we b e taken by surprise when men dismiss the writing of women as merely "confessional," or "limited," or too personal
to be of any importance as "art." Kat e Millett did not establish enough distance between herself and her readers . in
F~ying; that is her transgression.
She is not alienatedfrom her life ; she is too intensely involved in her perceptions and emotions.
The danger of such jnvolvement, especially for the c ritic, is the passion of such literature, andthe term "confession ." provides one way of establ ishing a
comfortable distance for oneself .
Thus far, I hav e dis c ussed two possible reasons forLanger's use of the label "co nfession" as the focus of her
attack on Flying : the religious associations with "sin" and"tran sgressio n" that the term permits , and the male literary
tradition that n eeds to deny the artistic value of the literature produced by women.
Th e third possibility I'v e suggested is the co ns eq uence of intense and personal lit e rature
for criticism itself, and Lang er states the situation herself.
She Q}ate Millet£} has made criticism of the book's
conte nt impossible.
Everything one might think to
say about it, she has said herself ... How does one
criticize the sad, true, tragic-comic and egocentricmaterial that is the heart of most private journals?
What is a reader to say? Where is the opportunity
58

for discussing either style or values? .. The critic
is either silenced or hypocritical ... How artificial
to demand a subject when the subject is the self.
The creators of works of literature like Fl y ing make thefunction of the critic obsolete. The actions and emotionsof the work are immediately available to the reader, andthere is no need for the friendly intervention of the critic
as gUide or explicator.
Langer's justification for her review is at stake here, since Fl y i n g doesn't require her
discussion of style, although her essay is a study in itself of "values." As long as men recreate their lives on
paper as abstractions, as "fictions," there is plenty ofroom for the parasitic critic to live between the lines,
filling up yet more pages with additional abstractions peddled variously as "explications," "explanations," "keys."
The more successfully males conceal themselves in theirsymbolic and allegorical literatures, the more securely entrenched is the critic as the only "educated reader" ofsuch stuff.
It is true, as Langer has observed, that "Thecritic is either silenced or. hypocritical" when confronted
with intense writing.
The presentation of one's life as
art has its . own inherent profundities, a fact that doesn't
leave much room for critical intrusions and misrepresentations.
By refusing to deny the authenticity of her interior ex~eri­ence, by refusing the abstract, Kate Millett has forced
critics to deal with the content of Flying as essentiallyreal, and most critics have had no preparation for describing realities .
It's much simpler to toy with Platonic"ideals," Swedenborgian cosmologies, Christian angelology.
Fiction permits the creation of more fictions; indeed, it
necessitates more fictions, and calls them forth.
Such are the consequences of the masculinist aesthetics,
the "genuine" tradition which Langer calls upon in order toattack Flying . And there is one additional element inLanger's review that might have given rise to the vehemenceof her attack: only the masculinist tradition could haveprovided Langer with the self-righteousness to call the lovescenes in Flying "pornography . " At one point, Langer claims
that it "was not so much the pornography, or the book's be trayal of personal relationships, as the politics, Millett's
refusal to countenance and record the grave events that occur outside her own body . " Earlier in the essay, part ofthe evidence Langer offers for her observation that "thebook is false" derives from her parallel claim that Millett's
voice in Fl ying is not her own.
"The literary voice thatshe says is her own is a voice I have heard before: it is
Joyce Stein Lawrence Mailer.
Flying is heavily pornographic,
and I swear the model is Mailer's short story, 'The Time of
Her Time. '" In addition, then, to Langer's use of the termc onfession without sufficient justification, she also used
the word pornograph i c in her effort to denigrate Flying .
At no point does she attempt to define her use of the word,
nor does she justify its application to Millett's work, and,59

by comp ari n g Mill e tt' s s tyl e to " J oyce St e in Lawrence Mailer"
she h as simply revealed t h at she has an un trai ne d l iteraryear .
I s the c h a rg e of "pornographic" serio us e noug h to meritconsideration? I would a n swe r "yes" for two r e asons.
Fir st,th e label is not applicable to what Mill ett ha s written.
Seco nd , I am c ur ious to know why He nr y Mill e r 's nov e ls havecome to b e ca ll e d "art" ; how could a ny o n e regard his descri ptions of h is sexual encounters with women as a nythi ng but
pornographi c? Yet , if Kate Millett desc rib es making lovewith a woman , Lan ge r ca lls it "pornographic." Th e re is a
dis c r epan cy in t he application of the term to what I regard
as two di ffere nt points of view.
In an effo rt to illustrate
th ese dif fere n ces , the two following quotations (the firstf r om Miller , t he second from Millett) are offe r e d fo r read er
comparison.
Altho ugh some of th e wo rds a re i d ent i cal, noti ce
particularl y the diff e r e n ce in tone and sen ~e~oe structpre,
an d the ways the indivi dual s described relate to eac h ot he r.
I would ask h e r to prepare the b at h fo r me.
She would
prete nd to de mur but s h e would do it just th e same .
On e day, while I was seated in the tub soaping myself ,I noti oe d that she had fo rgotten the towels .
'Ida,'
I called, 'br i ng me some towels!'
She walked into theb at hr oom a nd handed me them.
She had on a silk bathrob e a nd a pair of silk hose . As she stooped over the
tub t o put the towels on the rack her bath~6be slid
open.
I slid to my knees and buried my head in her
muff.
It happened so quickly that she didn't have time
to reb e l or even to pretend to rebel.
In a moment I
had her in the tub, sto c kings and all . I slipped thebathrobe off and threw it on the floor.
I left thestockings on--it made h e r more lascivious looking, more
the Cranach type.
I lay back and pulled her on top ofme.
She was just like a bitch in heat, biting me all
over, panting, gasping, wriggli~g like a worm on thehook . As we were drying ourselves, she bent over andb egan nibbling at my pri c k.
I sat on the edge of the
tub and she kn ee l e d at my feet gobbling ~t. After awhile , I mad e her stand up , bend over; then I let her
hav e it f rom the rear.
She had a small juicy cunt,
whi c h fit ted me like a glove.
I bit the nape of her
n eck, the l obes of h er ears, the sensitive spot on heT
sho uld e r, and as I pulled away I left the mark of myteeth on her beautiful white ass.
Not a word spok e n. 3
Co axing h e r st roking h er, my e nemy the New York Times
crinkling und e rn eat h , then sliding to the floor . But
if she is loath it is hopel ess. Even now giving in tome, raising herself upon h er side h er hand fi nding me ,always she wishes to take me first, serving me.
I amslower to heat , whereas she is a lw ays r eady , open tome.
I must doubt it, even this , h er hand on my breast
will she touch the nippl e with exquisite care, feels60

like it connects to the clitoris begins the heat between
my legs. Should I not take her first, give myself
time? Shouldn't we take turns who is first? Though she
laughs at me, 'Do you want to keep score on the wall?''Equity,' I would lecture, but her tdngue whispers in
my ear, 'Shut up.
Take your clothes off.' How I adore
her orders, loving to be bullied by her. What sickth04ght is this, or is it that final safety with her,bewild~red at the joy in her hand searching me, opening
me to h~r fingers upon the lips of my other mouth wet
making little noises, silence to be filled with her
tongue while she sifts me, reams, files, selects, andplays upon the nerve like a button pressed all heatflooding out I open wider to receive her will split myself take her whole up to the elbow, straining in hope.
I love the way you move as I move dancing under yourhand's power deep in me shaking when you press hard
fast against the wall deep like a storm in me.
I muststop breathing, so fierce you are.
So powerful.
Coming, dragged even, making no effort, believe only inwhat she does, cease to give directions from your mind
spoken or stralned in thought ESP of the will give overand follow be taken, hurled by a hand shaking the fear
one hopes for, away from the Ferris wheel, then whenit plummets t~rror you are the unconlrolled, taken to
the place beyond thought or knowing.
While it is untrue, as Langer has charged, that Millett did
not record "the grave events outside her own body," shedoes stay in her body for much of the book.
Millett does
not take it upon herself to "get into" the minds of theother people involved, and the quoted love scene is typicalof the way she tells us only what she knows.
She does notpresume to record the other woman's experience of her own
sexuality.
The passage from Miller's Se xus contrasts with
Kate's meticulous respect.
At no point does Miller tell
us what he experienced, nor does he seem to care what the
woman f e e l s.
(For example, he mentions that "she didn't
have time to rebel or even pretend to rebel.") Except forthe sentence in which Ida is described as a "bitch in heat,"
Miller describes what he does t o her.
The scene from S e xus
typifies the literature of male porno-violence in which
distance and "objectivity" figure importantly.
Elinor Langer, in justifying her attack on Fl yi ng , hasreminded us "of the absence of a genuinely critical tradition ip the Women's Movement."
I haven't the time here to
explore what she might mean by "genuinely," but I think the
body of this article provides an outline of what she mightmean.
As for tradition, we haven't had the time to develop"traditions," so we needn't torture ourselves for that failing.
Nevertheless, the publication of Langer's review demonstrates that we cannot regard criticism as "feminist" because
a woman has written it. We do need a consistent criticalapprbach to our literature that is based on feminist prin-61

ciples and values.
The existing vacuum invites the likes
of Elinor Langer, who would use our space to vilify one of
our finest authors, to wish for Flying "a speedy oblivion."
To say such a thin~ is, of course, to wish Kate Millett oblivion--her life, her actions, her words, her feelings.
Langer concludes her review by telling Kate that "Notall confessions end in absolution," as though that had been
Kate's purpose in writing Flying.
Flying is not a "confession"; Langer's sole reason for invoking the male criticaltradition through that term i9 that it gives her an excuse
for refusing to "absolve" Kate.
That is, Langer hit on ameans of negating Kate's art and her life.
I do not believe that there is such a genre as "confession" literature.
As I have suggested, the label is simply
handy for dismissing art that the critic wishes to trivialize.
Erica Jong has much the same oplnion.
In an interview with the New York Quarterly, she was asked how she
felt about confessional poetry.
She responded : "There isno such thing as confessional poetry.
Anne Sexton gets 'branded with that and it's absurd.
I think it's become aputdown term for women, a sexist label for women's poetry.
People who use the term are falling into the subject-matter
fallacy.
Subject matter doesn't makepoem.
And so a
critic who uses that term is showing his (}licl1 total ignorance of what poetry is about.,,5 The same observation holds
true for those who use the term confessional to damn any
work of art.

a

An earlier version of this paper was prepared with theidea that Ms. magazine would publish it as a response to
Elinor Langer's review of Flying.
The editors of Ms.~ however~ refused to allocate pages of their magazine for sucha rebuttal, although they allowed Kate Millett to answer
in their ~Letters" section (January. 1975).
I wouZd liketo acknowledge my debt to all th e women who read early versions of this article an~ offered me their own observations.
My special thanks to Ginny Apuzzo for her comments on confession in Catholicism and its function in patriarchal culture. and to Moira Ferguson for suggesting that I use theHenry Miller passage quoted in Sexual Politics and forbringing the interview with Erica Jong to my attention.
FOOTNOTES:
1.
,

2.
3.
4.
5.

62

"Confession," Ms., III (December, 1974), pp. 69-71; lOB.
All subsequent quotations from Langer are taken fromthis source.
"The Shame is Over," Ms., III (January, 1975), pp. 27-2B.
Henry Miller, Sexus, as quoted in Sexual Politics by Kate
Millett (New York: Doubleday, 1970), p . 3.
Millett, Flying (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), pp. 4BO"Interview with Erica Jong," Here Comes and Other Poems(New York: New American Library, 1975), p. 26.

" The j'e l'lin i s t is by def1:nit 'Z-on
a c l' 'Z-tic.
'.''-Pamella F arley

WHAT

~S

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM IN THE MOVEMENT?

JOAN LARKIN: Books like Ad-rienne Rich's Of Wo ma n Born contain passages of criticism , and are important for evaluating and putting material into a perspective that is supportive.
Criticism must not pit us competitively against
one another--that kind of measurement-consciousness ispatriarchal.
I don't mean that we shouldn't have standards
for ourselves. But criticism cannot be trashing, which it
is too much of the time in the male press.
It should be,
for us, a way of learning to listen to each other more effectively.
And an opportunity for us a s c r it ics to tellwhat place women's writing has in our lives, not in an intellectual or aesthetic vacuum.
JAN CLAUSEN:
I believe a f eminist critic should bring to
her work a receptivity to unfamiliar voices and new forms,
combined with a love of language , a delight in figuring
out how literature works-~all this in addition to the authentic commitment to women and their work which makes her
a feminist . She should not shrink from offering negative
as well as positive reactions, but must avoid the destructive , senseless ranking procedures ("While not a great writer in the sense that Sophocles, Shakespeare and Joyce are
great , X is worth reading ... ") so charac teristic of establishment criticism. She should be willing to . ~egard critically her own critical function , guarding on one hand against favoring work which bears an establishment seal of
approval, and on the other against knee-jerk anti-intellectualism . Beyond this, I believe we can only learn whatfeminist criticism is by engaging in it .
.
SUSAN SHERMAN:
I helped start a magazine, IKON,in the middle'60s precisely over this issue.
A quote, "There is nolonger a place for the p~ofessional critic, the professional observer . There is no longer a place for the uninvolved .
But this does not mean there is no place for judgment, observation, dialogue.
Information that can .serve as an impetus to action, not divorced from, but irrevocably a partof our involvement in this world, this present moment inwhich we find ourselves as participator and participant.
This .in 1965 as an artist, but certainly even more today,in 1977, as a woman.
II

PAMELLA ·FARLEY: Our responsibility as feminist critics is
to put things together: audience, writer, and work as theycollide in history, which is our lives. The critic gives
us another perspective for our time . She, too, is a writer.

64

WHY PRACTICE CRITICISM?
LYNDALL COWAN:
We need to say honestly what is good a ndwhat is bad , a nd why; we n eed to l ear n to give hon est sup port. Part of it, too, is simp l y getti ng the wor d o u t,r eco rdin g history.
We've been d e ni e d a hist o r y a nd a means
to talk to o n e' a not h er for too d a mn ed long.
(About a year
and a half ago I fo und o ut t hat there were over 2,000 "Lesbian" books instead of 10 , a nd was s ho cke d , a nd was ANGRY.)
So ....
BARBARA GRIER:
Th e f un ction of the critic is to bring t h ebook to t h e reader and the reader to t he bo ok . Practice dwell, it s hould be little more than a nn otated book listings.
It is a te rribl e arrogance for reviewers wh o havenever writte n a book to presume to be capable of sayingthat a book is "good " or "bad" a nd /or to analyze styles
of writi n g.
Noyelists and poets cann ot help but be atleast mo d erate l y kind (or weak) in their reviewing, forthey know t h e ago n y of creatio n.
And no n-wri ters who
sou nd off pompously lack the g r ace of humili ty in fro n t
of work t h ey themselves ca nn ot d o .
Wh y practice criticism? I f you ' ve tried
RITA MAE BROWN:
everyt hing else and fa il ed, criticism is t he last h ope ofa lib e ral arts e du cated woma n . It allows you the prete nsion of intelligence.
You get to read books wit hout paying
fo r them and better, you e nj oy the revenge of the mediocre.
You can slas~ a good writer publicly, harm her career an dslow down her ne xt novel . You, meanwhile, are safe froma similar at ta c k b ecau se you produce n o work of your own,
just c riti c ism.
I f you get really good at it you can a lso receive bribes to p e n favo rabl e reviews.
You then get
a double tr e at : you can refuse the-bribe thereby demonstrating your high e r instin cts (publicly, n at ur ally) or
you can take th e brib e (privately) and bu y yours e l f a
pearl-handled stiletto . I think critic ism is a marve lous
caree r , matched only by electo ral politics.
LYNDALL COWAN:
Revi ewi ng is a process for me, too.
I' ve
be e n br e d to the mal e academic "literary elite " where cri ticism is, more ofte n than not, disguis e d competit ion andtrashing . Reee ntly a f ri e nd told me that "book r ev i ewi ng
is l earning to love ," and I am finding that is true.
FEMINIST CRITICISM.
RHEA JACOBS:
What do you do with a bad book? Besi d es,
who are you to call a book bad? Considerin g my meage r
talents as a writer, I fee l I have no right to knock anyone else.
Nonetheless , I' ve r ea d a whole l ot of books
whose badness has disgusted me , and I feel some obligation to share my feelings.

65

DEENA METZGER:
The purpose of criticism is to explore anddiscover .... it is not to condemn, judge or to create fads
or false circulation.
Criticism can function to create
the bond between artwork and audience, so that each exists
in a common culture.
Women's criticism would, I hope, connect the work to the real lives (personal, public, spiritual) of those to whom the work is addressed.
Criticism
would be a bridge.
MELANIE KAYE:
Criticism is one form of propaganda (literally:
things to be transplanted, spread), one way in which
I can share my thoughts about other thoughts.
In a worldtransformed according to our best visions, the functionof criticism would be essentially the same; only a little
less defensive.

IN A WOMAN"S WORLD, WHAT WOULD BECOME OF CRITICISM?
FRANCES DOUGHTY:
For me, ~ non-question.
We're so profoundly shaped by this culture we can't even see most of
its effects on us.
How can we guess what kinds of souls
a woman's world would produce? If we want criticism, we'll
have it, in whatever f0Tm(s) suit us.
JULIA STANLEY:
I think critics will become obsolete because the words of women speak to other women; , there isno need for a mediator between us.
Right now, those of
us who write criticism can facilitate the transition bymaking the works of our authors known to each other, andby rebutting attacks on them in journals like MS .
BEVERLY TANENHAUS:
In a woman's world, we could joyfully
pursue what it is we're saying without the necessity tophilosophically discredit the male superstars who haveovershadowed our lives.
I see less censorship--publicly
through a biased media and personally through suppressed
anecdote--where we have liberated ourselves from our secrets and the anonymous woman is heard with , the story of
her life .

'.

66

WE KNOW WHAT WE WANT
pat califia"LESBIAN LITERATURE MEETS THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION"
Because the dominant culture insists that lesbianism is awaste of any sensible woman's time , and a perversion toboot, there is tremendous pressure on lesbian women to always be emotionally healthy and sexually successful . Any
admission that we might want more information about oursexuality or have problems in bed just like othe~ folks canbe seized upon as "proof" that when two women make love,nothing really important is happening . Maybe that's why it
has taken so long'for erotica and sex education materials
to emerge as respectable topics in lesbian letters. Prior
to 1975, we wro'te about our childhoods and politics andvegetarianism and politics and haircuts and politics andpolice harassment of our bars and politics--but we almost
never wrote explicitly about our sexuality. The prevailingmyth was that because all lesbians are women, we "intuitively"
and "naturally" know how to please each other sexually.
Anyone who wrote about sex or tried to talk about it wasviewed with suspicion. Were they trying to betray us to thehets? Were they trying to commercialize our sexuality andrip it off the way pornography had for so long? Who wanted
to talk about lesbian sexuality when there were more important issues--vital concerns like abortion and childcare!
What this did to sex was make it a big secret we were
all supposed to be in on.
I f you had a questio~ about inorgasmia or venereal disease or masturbation, you were stuck .
You could suffer in silence , risk asking a friend, or try
sifting through medical textbooks or pornography in hope offinding pearls among the trash .
None of these alternatives was likely to be very helpful.
When I came out in 1971 , I was perfectly capable of
speaking on gay liberation to a roomful of hostile Psych
101 students, but I couldn't figure out how to reach orgasm
with a lover.
I tried putting up with it, slipping fromwoman to woman in quest of the Magic Tongue, and only gained
a reputation for being the one to ask if you wanted to be

67

'.

brought out.
I eventually gathered my courage into the palmof my (swe ating) hand and asked a friend, a woman who hadb ee n o ut for 30 years, what in the world I could do about
thi s .. . failing of mine.
Sh e stared into her beer, thenrai se d h e r h e ad and look e d de e p into my eyes.
I trembled .
Fin a lly--"Ar e you sure you're gay?" she demanded .
Traditional sources--and I include pornography as wellas th e social "sciences"- - ar e so distorted by heterosexist
bi as that they ar e guar a nteed to frighten the hell out of
a n yo ne in qu e st of knowl e dge or help.
In the public libraryyo u will f ind shitpil e s of c atchy phrases like "sublimatedma te rn a l instinct" (kissing a woman ' s breasts), "narcissism"(y o u'r e b o th 21 and blond e ), and "fear of penetration"(th e r e 's no o ther r e ason to lik e cunnilingus).
In the dirty
boo k s t o r es, yo u ar e co n f ronted with wornout ladies in soiled
pa s t e ] ling e ri e strapping dildoes on each other.
Porno andps yc ho lo g y ar e both us e d as we apons against women, threate nin g and insulting us and explaining us away.
.
Eve n some of the more "liberated" sex education material
to come out has not be e n particularly relevant or h elpful
to l e sbian women.
In Liberating Masturbation Betty Dodson writes almost
exclusively for and about women wbo relate sexually to men.
Sh e limits h e r comments about lesbianism to the stateme n tthat , "If you are homosexual and monogamous the same prob lem s o f th e romanti c id e al will hold true.
In some ways
th e g ay sist e rs hav e to deal with a double romGLntic image
that e ach woman brings to the relationship." This is only
a half-truth.
Most lesbian women would say we are more
oppr e ssed by the heterosexual romantic ideal than our own.
Dodson does not deal with the rewards of monogamy for two
women or it s value as a survival unit in a society hostile
to l e sbians . She does admit (it seems rat h er gr udgingly)that " relations with another woman can be a reasonable al ternativ e for some women," which implies that heterosexuality
is the first choice.
Libe~cttin g Ma s turbat i on does a great
job of giving support for pleasuring onese l f and clearly
outlin e s the ways out society puts down autoeroticism for
women.
But don't try to get any support from it for being
a lesbian .
Lonnie Garfield Barbach (in Fo r Yo urs el f: The FulfilZ ment of Female Sex uality ) at least has the guts to clearlystate, "A f e w women were in homosexual relationships, but
most were in heterosexual relationships and the language ofthe book reflects this bias." It's still annoying to h ave
to mentally change the pronoun "he" to "she" so often,This
probably .discouraged some gay women from enrolling in preo rgasmi c women's groups .
Dykes must finally have gotten tired of this internal
editing and realized that when something has to be doneright , you do it yourself.
Many gay women are moving to
cr e ate a n e w definition of erotica and disseminate positive,
accurate information about lesbianism . Lesbians have begun
to speak graphically about our fantasies. concerns. turn -G8ons , needs , techniques , kinks and options. We have begun
to tell the truth about our sexuality to each other.
The foremother of this new literature is Lov i ng Wome n,a warm and witty book authored by The Nomadic Sisters. The
book itself is pretty and well-made, printed in brown ink
on cocoa-colored paper, wonderfully illustrated by Victoria
Hammond.
The authors state, "We wish to reiterate our rec ommendation for enjoying all those things which feel goodto you and your partner. Uptightness or moral judgment
regarding any technique that is enjoyed by women can only
add to the already long years of sexual oppression of women."
Because of this nonjudgmental philosophy, Lov i ng Wome n
is a manual of all the techniques The Nomadic Sisters could
think of for masturbation and sex with a partner.
Different
positions, solutions to possible difficulties, and briefcomments by other women are included . The book ends withfour sexual experiences, lovingly detailed.
If you've al ~ays wanted to r~ad something sexy to your partner but
couldn't find something that wouldn't gross her out, one ofthese might do nicely.
The book would be incomp~ete, however, without Victoria
Hammond's drawings . There are gleeful orgasms, moments oftenderness, rapt concentration on a partner's pleasure, sadness and self-consciousness~-all the shades of feeling possible during lovemaking. Victoria portrays so many different kinds of wome'n that it is impossible to emerge with astereotyped picture of a lesbian.
The most consciousness-raising jolt t have experienced
since The Feminine Mystique was on the very first page, inthe glossary.
"Penis" is defined as "a dildo substitute."
I do have a few quibbles with Loving Women.
The fact
that The Nomadic S isters don't reveal their names seems tosuggest that the freedom and openness they advocate cannot
exist outside the bedroom.
I also think some information
about anatomy and physiology would have been useful; specifically, a diagram of the female genitals and a full description of the female sexual response cycle.
Less well - known is What Lesbians Do, printed by Jackrabbit
Women's Printshop and distributed by the Amazon Reality
Collective of Eugene, Oregon.
If you should happen upon a
copy, open it quickly, before the horrible maroon-and-sillyputty cover gives you terminal eye strain.
It will be worth. your while to browse through the poetry, graphics, cartoons,prose and photographs. You are bound to find something you
will like.
Unfortunately, you are bound to find something
you hate, too, because the quality of What Lesbians Do isvery uneven--which is to say that some of it could have beenleft in private notebooks or simply thrown away.
Of the score of women who contributed to What Lesbians
Do, only a few can be mentioned here. Pamela Lupe's work
is always good and sometimes exquisite.
She draws womenin their pleasures with delicate, suggestive lines, achieving a powerful erotic effect.
Marilyn Gayle's poetry is anatural, honest voice that shares with us the jealousy, .
triumph and anger of loving women.
Most of the other poets69

also have a dir ect and simple style." Through their work,
we recognize our own bedroom jokes and whimsy, and h ear ourown moments of awkwardness, deceit and bliss expressed.
Some of my other favorites include a fie rce , archetypal
cunt by Tracy Lilian, a cartoon captioned "Lesbians Do Morethan Just Make Love," the drawings of cats which perch withgreat self-satisfaction atop any available ass, and "Afterthe Bar or Young Love," by Chicken.
The ni ce thing is that you can buy both LW and WLD without wasting your money b ecause they are completely different .
The Cunt CoZoring Book by lesbian photographer and artist
Tee Corinne is equally unique.
The introduction is by Martha Shelley .
In the beginning we come f rom the cunt, notfrom some man's side; and we a re washed in the waterand blood of birth, not the spear- pierced side ofsome dying god.
In the beginning women made pots
and jars shaped like wombs and breasts, and decorated them with triangles, which were symbols of
the cunt . So the first art was Cunt Art . The
bones of the dead were laid in jars- - perhaps to
speed the soul to its next womb? Did the ancient
women sing, how delicate , sensitive, delicious, howstrong the ring of muscle between one life and thenext? There are tribal women today who sing praisesof their cunts, how pretty and long and full theirlips are, how the hair curls and glistens ~ithmoisture .
The drawings in this book are of real women's
cunts .
"Why did s he call it that ?" a friend of mine wailed when
I showed her my copy .
I told her I liked using the word
"cunt" because it wasn't medical or clinical and because,
unlike "muff," "clit," or "box," "cunt" includes all theparts of my genitals . The same thing can be said for "twat,"but The Twat CoZoring Book doesn't have that pleasing alliteration .
I think it is about time we began to cr~ate affirming
images of our genitals instead of using them for pleasure
without ever calling them by name or tasting their juices .
Some women relate to their own cunts the way men relate towhores.
We have been bombarded with constant messages thatthe vulva is dirty, smelly, ugly, a symbol of our vulnerability and second - class status. We use our cunt for pleasure and then ignore it.
We objectify and become alienatedfrom our own bodies.
Self-love does not come easily towomen.
Leafing through Tee's book, one begins to marvel.
The genitals resemble seashells, flowers, exotic landscapes,
winged women --without losing their reality as the yoni.
Afeeling of delight in the female body is released from thesepages.
70

Tee has included different types of cunts so you canprobably find one picture that looks like you. Or you canjust have fun looking. Seriously, it can be a great relief
to discover that your genitals are not unusual or funnylooking.
It is also a relief to see proof that we don't"all feel alike in the dark."

71

Lesbian Love and Liberation, a pamphlet with text by
De l Martin and Phyllis Lyon, is put o ut by the Multi-MediaResource Center as part of th e ir "Yes Book of Sex" series.
LL&L would probably be most us ef ul to wome n wh o are justcoming out o r h ets who want to e ducat e themsel ve s about lesbiani s m.
Th e overall ton e is supportive of gayness and positive about gay sexuality, a nd there are lots of photographsof happy l esbians . But th e information given is too ge neral
to interest a woman who has already broken into l esbian
society.
Although more and more lesbi a n nov e ls are being writt e n
and are inc l uding descriptions' of l ovemaking as part of thenarrativ e , the id ea of l esbi a n e roti ca is brand new.
Creating e roti ca for o ur own us e and tea c hin g eac h otherabout womansex is a way to mak e our e n viro nme nt more comf o rtable, pleasing and nouri s hing . Th e r e is no o n e way to lov ea woman .
I f we can ac cept this idea aad beg in to explore
it s compl exit i es, perhaps we can cease attacking each other.
It is a waste of pre c ious e n ergy to trash this woman for·pr om iscuity and that woman for b e ing kink y a nd this woman
f or b e ing monogamous and that woman for being ce libate . As
we b eg in to integrate s ex uality into the rest of our lives,
we will discover wellsprings of new strengt h.
We will finally toppl e one of the oldes t walls separating women fromour own , inalienable power.

Loving Women , The Nomadic Sisters, illustrat ed by Victoria
Hammond.
$3.50 plus $.25 postage a nd handling from:The Nomadic Sisters , P.O. Box 793 , Sonora , . California,
95370.
Add 6% sales tax in California .
What Lesbians Do, copy right Godiva.
$4.50 plus $.25 pbstagea nd handling from: Amazon Rea lity , P.O. Box 95, Eugene,Or ego n, 97401.
The Cunt Coloring Book , Tee Corinne.
$2.00 plus $ . 40 post age, handlin g and tax from: Pearlchild Productions , 1800
Market Street, Box 151, San Francisco, California, 94102.
Liberating Masturbation, Betty Dodson.
$4.00 from Bodysex
Designs, P . O. Box 1933, New York, New Y9rk, 10001.
For Yourself : The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality , Lon nie
Gar f i eld Barbach.
$3.95, hardcover , from Doubleday and
Co. , Dept. ZA-529, Garden City, New York , 11530.
Also
available in paper.
Lesbian Love and Liberation, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon .
Multi-Me dia Bookstore, 1575 Franklin, San Francisco.
California, 94109 . $1.95 plus $ . 95 postage, handling .

I f you would lik e a copy of the lesbian sexuality question niare Pat Califia is circulati ng in con n ec tion with h er
forthcoming book, please write to her at 1800 Market Street ,Box 151, San Francisco, California, 94102.
Free!

72

POETRY
Joan Larkin's HOUSEWORK

r eviewed by JACQUELINE LAPIDUS>!

Half a life ago, I met Joan Larkin in a writing group atcollege . She was a strong , exciting poet and, apparently,
a shy, self-effacing person.
I was in awe of her and didn't
get to know her very well.
It has taken us this long to get
in to u c h , first with ourselves, then with each other,throughthe women's movement and through poetry, through our selfdiscoverY as lesbians.
But we have been richly rewarded
for what we now see, not as a wait or a change, but as aprocess of re- c reation.
Housework , though Joan Larkin's first published book ,is the work of . a matur e poet - who has been practicing her
craft for twenty years.
Th e title, deceptiv e ly simple, indicates her point of departure : the traditional femalerole.
But it has other -co nnotations. Hous e = where you .
live.
Work = what you do to mainta in where you liv e.
These
poems are maintenanc e of the self , the woman, the lesbian
feminist struggling to dev e lop fully in spite of a fearful,hostile , oppressive society.
Into Joan Larkin's house , which she shares with pilesof books and papers and a growing daughter , friends, lovers
and parents come blundering, projecting their own problems
or r e flecting hers . Brought up to suppress her revolt andto look on the wry side of things, she observes her world
with irony:i move lovers
in & outof this hous elike rented pianos
Attracted to women , she evokes the fear of closeness, thefear of invasion inherited from previous relatio nships :Watch out! fresh painis allover this woman
You want to touch her
but you're afraidsome of it will rub off>!For publishing information on all feminist press books
reviewed, see pp . 130 - 133 .
73

This feeling of vulnerability, turned inside out, becomesa "Monogamous Fantasy," a longing for a relationship thevery exclusiveness of which is potentially fatal:
I imagin e a futurewith you moodysmoking & always near me--& again I try
behind my back the double knife :Mine.

Alone .

Possessiveness and isolation, traditionally attributed toor imposed on women, are inimical to a healthy partnership, but an apparently casual acceptance of lesbian loveby "liberal" society, leading to "integration," is not ananswer. only a trap:
advancingon my belly .
through the mined fieldof your body
I saw we were surrounded
citizens children your motherwatching we were roped off
they were commenting
I give it a month
I thought she'd neversettle down
is this one jewish
etc.
Larkin's lesbian feminist consciousness makes her painfully aware of how many layers of cultural barnacles people
must scrape away in order to attain the freedom and selfacceptance that makes love of any kind possible.
"I think
it only fair to warn you," she says to a gay man friend,"the heart is sexless/ I t lies undressed in the dark,/
and under the silk/ or the single earring of gold,/ themany-sexed apparel,/ the heart, naked, is beating/ need
need need."
One of the most profound discoveries she makes in loving another woman is how deeply that love challenges all one's
previous assumptions, brings about a radical upheaval in
one's sense of self:
I was not going to say
how you lay with me
nor which of us wept
to set the dark bed rocking
nor what you took me fornor what I took you for74nor will I say whose bodyopened, sucked, whispered
like the ocean, unbalancing
what had seemed a safe position
Love between women is enriched by the recognition of 'likeness, o~ shared experience. But we have so few models toemulate, an.d get so little support, that our vision is still
precarious:"An open woman has nothing to anchor her dream : /the dream rocks on the window ledge like a bottle/ of children."In the "True Stories" section, Joan Larkin revisits
her childhood depicted as fairy tales gone sour , recalls
how grownups condition children , especially girls, to subdue and limit themselves .
....... . . . . . The neat ruleof their geometry is to givenothing.
The beauty of sto,ne.
I know th~t ~ have always beenalone, and nothing- about thisis different : only that I know it.
My father's mouth is stone.
Adult women, victims of the same process, survive as best
they can. Aunt Betty's defense is to deny her origins:"she's a jew/ ' like the rest of them but eats/ like athin richlady".
The mother's defense is rejection : "Arethese my children? I do not recognize my children,/such ugly feathers, says my mother the goose . "In the light of these experiences, Joan Larkin feelsa special responsibility not to cripple or subdue her own
child by compromising with the system, and hates it when
she has to:....... It doesn't
feel good feeding you
to the barred playgroundthe bloated schoolroom,
the hard street that scrapes
you daily whining
to a sharper blade
The primary relationship, mother/daughter, is natural, secure , fulfilling:o bean, egg , bunny,
I loved your red
head, your just-made lipsthat sucked me satisfied
when my own bodywas the food you wanted75

Larkin reminds us, in "Notes to Kathryn as Myself," of thedangerous results of denial and frustration, both personally and politically:
You refuse speech
to your anger.
Insteadthe sap flows backward in the branches,rage turns to bitterness in you-like the ghettos setting themselves on fire,
like hurt women turning on themselves,
turning on one another, refusing
to spend their anger on a real enemy.
"Is it so hard," she asks, "for us to heal ourselves?"
And answers : Yes, yes it is hard, but it is necessary.
Itis worth the effort. Our greatest need, and our greatest
reward, is "a certain notion of stren~th"-- our own, unlike
the rigid violence of men, the strengththat is without impact
energy that is still like waterenergy that keeps going like waterenergy that is sustained motion like water
And we can find it, affirms Joan Larkin's final ' poem, in
ourselves:
go down to the water and look
go down to the water and look
These poems speak so eloquently for themselves that
it would be superfluous, I think, to comment on their technical brilliance.
Joan Larkin is still, more than ever,the fine, exciting poet she was half a life ago.
What shehas to say is as vital as her manner of saying it.
Housework is as essential as bread, as delightfuL as grass, as
controlled as a clenched fist, as liberating as a leap.
Larkin's poetry shows, with dazzling clarity, how the lesbian experience is, or might be, every woman's experience .
This book deserves to be widely read, and re-read often,
and given as a gift to those we love.
'.

76

Jan elausen's AFTER TOUCH

re ,v iewed by MELANIE KAYE

I'd heard Jan Clausen read her poems a few times overthe las't two years, liked the poems, wanted to read lotsof them 'a t ;Leisure, and welcomed the publication of thisbook.
She's organized the poems chronologically by seasons: wint'e r, spring, summer of 1974-75.
It seems thatsomehow "women are knowing that the process of our development is crucial and to be charted (one explanation for the
rush among feminists to keep journals). , I appreciate theopportunity to follow her year, her growth, to root theindividual poem in a context larger than itself, to seeconnections with her life not obscured but illuminated.
"
Tbe process ~ncludes her deepening relationship with
Brooklyn, New York, where she moved after growing up in
Oregon.
I, having grown up in Brooklyn and now livi n g
in Oregon, surrounded by back-to-land freaks, especiallyvalue the attention she pays to hardcore city existence.
The poems are shot through with contrast/tension between
her chosen home, "this legendary cold city" with "a sky
the color of bruises" and Oregon, "with the clean streets/th"e real trees," 'ngreen suburbs/smoothly "layered/ years."
She sees the city with the eyes of discovery, fills thepoems with city noises, scenes, images--kids playing outside, garbage on the streets, and always the subway:
sometimes tbe runaway dream-train; sometimes the place where
one reads in a newspaper over an irritated fellow passenger's shoulder about women raped and murdered, or notices "women trying to arrest the cinema/that rattles
pleasantly enough through passive brains"; sometimes simply the way one gets " to work.
In "May,"" she makes hercommitment:i, an immigrant "no longer blinded by my dreams
of freedom
marry this city
there is no way
to pay the passage backA no-return journey then:one of becoming "not afraid/you
look anglo.," of learning that "with your back to the prejects/that sky could be anywhere."
These last lines reflect her gift for naming experiences.
Non-New Yorkers never seem to understand that you
can always, though with effort, connect with open spaces,
notice and enjoy them.
Similarly, in "February 1, 1975,"
I recognize the amazement of suddenly knowing I am finishedwith someone, have given up old love and old anger, have .
77all the while been disengaging the person at whom I've
directed these charged feelings from the feelings themselves:i had you wholea corpse embalmed in anger,bones, relics of witch o~ saint.
time now to name you changed, unknowable ...
She evokes the joy, relief, sense of victory I remember
feeling when the wa'r ended at last in Viet Nam:do you understandwhat it means
how the news transfigurep
even this occupied city:t he y ha v e gi v en t heir c i t yla ne w n ame
th e bar s a r e cl os e d
I respond ambivalently to " t he ba Yls ' ar e closed." I knowthat in bars people are exploited, weakened, pacified; but
I also know the importance of gay bars, as places to bewith women (nor am I convinced that socialist countries
treat lesbians any better than capitalist ones)~ I know
the solace of bars, as places to feel less alone; and sometimes I have fun getting drunk in · company.
I wonder about
revolutionary puritanism, The poem's last line, unintentionally I think, thus suggests to me questions which seemoutside the poem, questions the poet has not considered.
On the other hand, by letting the two facts speak for themselves, she · asks me to imagine a culture changing utterly,
where people create .their society, name ' their city like ababy, where bars may no longer serve a useful function foranyone ,Another kind of naming happens in "Office Lunch/A
Poem of Solidarity, For Kathryn at Work," as she gives
form to one of my favorite fantasies :what if this were the kind of world
where midtown crumbled simply
confronted by solidarity, King Kong as
our laughter/our boredom/our radical disbelief
in the sanctity of
government - arranged deathand corporate espionage
our delicious loves/
our hairy legs78Delineating the effect of articulating 'our silent rebellion--the emperor has no clothes on, spoken aloud--she reminds me of t~e arena we enter in order to survive, also
to change, be changed by; of the ways we are and are notof it (in another poem she writes:"the struggle to see
myself as separate from/a part of the environment engages
all my strength"); how the community and the love we makewith each other are fundamentally opposed to the corporateway.
She helps me feel both the power of our sly resistance and its insufficiency.
And I delight in the imageof women with rolling eyes and huge roars ripping apartscaled-down cardboard buildings.
I am interested by the conflict she describes invarious ways, between the tedious necessary work of revolution and the apocalyptic desire for all pleasure immediately; most concretely, between a "sense of reality" likethat of. . . north vietnamese ~h~build bicycles and cook1ng potsfrom bomber wrecks ...
coax plant life backto cloak the damaged, cratered land
and her... ancestral memoryo.f a place
where our hungers
are fearlessas wateron waterI don't fully understand the contradiction she posits between what seem to me two essential kinds of vision.
I dounderstand the contradiction she describes in "The Third
Day of the Garbage Strike"; yes, there are the daily atrocities which will make history, but
i have been away
in my lover's body ...
and have notbeen reading the papers
She writes exquisite, specific love poems, like "FDR
Drive/Brooklyn Bridge" in which the haunting refrain "kathryn touch me" punctuates scenes of the wintering city until
her desire finally bursts into the body of the poem:
kathryn touch me
as alone i fly
above the untouched river
kathryn touch me
let me touch you/vb
79

(th e s e s e asons we cannot control
this city stain e d with distances)
kathryn this po em
i tri e d s o l o ng to write
without you in it
it is your name
Ther e are po ems of awakening lesbian sexuality and of sexual fear.
Erotic fantasy/memory flashes in and out of her
examination of the world familiarly; we are sexual, political , cr e ative , greedy, frightened, frozen, perceiving
animals all at once, not one at a time. But she writes:
climbing into your bed at night i call on you mypersonal solution i am not comforted.
She knows that after touch there remains the fact o·f "thecity folding in on/itself the country the house of cards
in flames.""What is needed here," she notes with admirable c onciseness:"the courage of a species to evolve." Atall order.
.
I have not yet said what should by now be apparent:
these are brave , thoughtful, energetic, often wonderful
poems . Occasionally her obvious enjoyment of sounds calls
too much attention to the words themselves, a~ in thefollowing:
i thought
if a woman opened and opened
and could not stop
what needles , glass slivers, sharp objects
from the world,what turds, hard words
might not rush in
to force each vulnerable orifice
The almost inherently comic "turds," rhymed to boot, distances me from the emotional force of the image. Mostly,
though, the poems hold me to them.
She writes, in "ForMy First Sister,"when you walk/among mountains
don't make the mistakeof overestimating/the distance
between us'.

I don't make that mistake.
I feel close to her questions,to the groping authenticity of a voice still discovering its
own power , the power at the center of ourselves when wewatch carefully inside and outside our bodies, then tell
the truth as best we can.

80

Ir e n e Klepfisz's PERIODS OF STRESS re v ie wed b y SUSAN SH ERMAN

Reading Irena Klepfisz' new book of poetry , periods ofstress , I keep returning o v er and over in my mind to Rilke ' s
description in the Noteb ook s of MaZte La u r id s Brigge of thenumber of faces each human b e ing wears in their lifetime-a description which culminates in his agony seeing a woman ,her face held, finally, in the hollow of her hands:(the woman , startl e d) pulled away too quicklyout of herself , too v i o lently, so that her facer e mained in her two hands .
I could see it lying
in them, its holl o w form . It cost me indescribable effort to stay with those hands and not tolook at what had torn itself out of them.
I think if there is anyone theme that threads throughIrena Klepfisz' collection of poems, it is precisely thisi mage , the image of a woman stripped to h e r essential features , looking (as it were) into the shell of her face and 'the many faces , both her own and o thers, that app e ar there.
period s o f s tre ss is, to me, a book of examination/
contemplation/description of the " o ther , " that "other " whocan be seen only in relationship to the self--as a person
only really understands herself, perceives herself as aseparate entity in relationship to the "other . " The observer/participator is seen in many guises.
The specificpersona (aunt, child, lover , old woman) all point to one
central face--the individual woman, the poet, always essentially alone, as one is in the act of self-conscious perception , description, creation, in the act of birth , death ,in "periods of stress," at the moment of writing the poem.
perio ds o f s t r es s is , in every sense, a search. Thereis an obsession with meaning , with trying to grasp what infa c t is left when the " face" is torn off . The conclusions
range from a profound despair:the face was a ma sk
and i pull e d it off
and ther e was nothing.
t o a r eco gniti o n of the o t h e r a s t h e e ss e nti a l el e me nt ofho p e, of that which n o uri s h e s , gi ve s l i f e, and finall y ,me aning:
l as t night i dr eamt i wasa g aunt and li fe l e ss tr ee
a nd you c limb e d int o me t o n es t.
y o u we r e c alms o se rious
as you wrapped y o ur l e gs

81around my trunka nd pressed
your body aga in st me.
andwherever your human skin
touched my rough barkisprouted branches
tilllush with leaves i grew
all green a nd silver fra illike tinsel
ho lding you
asleepin my wooden arms .
perioqs of stress begins,as it ends, in struggle,
human struggle.
It b e gins in war, the Second World War,and ends in Part VI, "Self-Dialogues" on a different battlefield--the interior of a woman.
Born in 1941 , in Poland , Klepfisz seems in the firstsection of th e bo ok to be defining for herself the lif e experiences that shaped h er c hildhoood , in much the same
way others of us, born into diff ere nt circumstances, attempt to r ec reate, hold, und e rstand what gave us birth, 'what mo ld ed o ur ear liest thpughts, feelings, expressions.
In her po e m, "p 0 w's," she writes of he r father's "return" :my father came home
to me
for th e first timein twenty-nine years
just last night
in a
dream
h e was old
and tireda nd so scarred
so very unlik e
th e imagei have of him
h e pull e d his h at
downover hi s eyesashamedof his years ...
he was thirty
killedby a germanmachine gun defending
the roofof a brush factory
was declareda heroawardedthe highest medala soldier could
get awarded
posthumously
i am now
almost thirty twoshould have borne
him a grandson to carryhis n a me
he came home
a bit
early

'.

Thes e are not easy poems . They hold no easy solutions.
Klepfisz tries to grasp and express the complexity of a worldin which things are not sharply defined .
Irena Klepfisz'
po et ry, at its best, is most strikingly characterized by its
intense humanity . She consciously avoids the rhetoric of fantasy, choosing instead t o grapple with the contradictions ofreality , those events which move us most profoundly, whichshape our 1 i ves :
listening to conversations
over brandy
i am always amazed at their certainty
about the past
how it could have beendifferent
could have been
turned aroundwith what ease
they transport themselves
to another time/placetaking the comfort
confidence of an after dinner drink82it would be too impolite
to saymy mother hid with mefor two years among ignorant peasants
whowould have turned us inalmost at oncehad
they known who we were
who would have watchedwith glee while we were carted off
even though
grandad had bounced me on his knees and fed mefrom his own spoon
and my mother is a frightened
woman
The poems continue through years and places--Peekskill,
Montauk, New York--a journey inside and outside the self.
But always the focus is on that relationship between theself and the world, whether the outside world takes on the
aspect of a place or another person. And always there is thehonesty of feeling, even of awkwardness, confusion:
the rooster
in the backis confused
unable to recognize
the dawn
he crows
at irregular intervals
and sometimes
by chance
he gets it righteven though the poems themselves are never awkward, never ·confused. Often with a deep sense of irony, with just theright touch of humor, Klepfisz moves in and out of her persona, herself, her lover, until the two become fused (insome of the poems) or, in others, irrevocably separated.
Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the title poem,"periods of stress" :it is unwise during periods of stressor change to formulate new theories.
case in point:
when about to begin
a new love affair
without having ended
the previous one
do not maintainthat more freedom is required for the full expressionof individual personality ...
try instead:i am tired
tiredof the nearness
this small apartmentof the watering can and level of the window
shade .
I prefer to drift toward more spacious rooms
towards intimate restaurants and dimly lit unfamiliar
beds ...
As Klepfisz' search for meaning proceeds through theconsecutive sections of the book it becomes even more defined, more filled in, as she increasingly focuses on thesame point from different angles.
In "the house," shewrites:83

arranging it is far easierthan living it.
the books
stand ready on the shelves.
classifications by time or placecome naturally to me.
alone
finding the book important is difficult ...
the world here is fluid
the beaches undefined.
there are rocks
whose function
i do not know.
In the poem which follows, "blending," she continues her
preoccupation with meaning, with seeing how the pieces fit--slowly coming to the realization that solitude is, infact, the key to the puzzle:
in montauk it gets so clearthat sky and sea
become discrete like jigsaw pieces you can pullapartand fling yourself through the space
between.
it is a constant temptation
for hereis neither love nor admiration.
you get onor you don't get on.
it's a coldon your own
world ...
The primary contradiction involved in establishing one's
identity after all is the fact that one becomes unique atthe price of recognizing one's separation from all otherthings:the only reason she was n·ot able
though she'd been on her own andwas that she'd never before beenherself from trees
or sand andto make it on h.er own
alone most of her life
forced to distinguishsea ...

There is finally no choice. One has to recognize one's individuality in order to survive.· But the line between identity/creative individuality and separation, madness and separation, terror and separation is a thin one: ·there had been that moment looking down toward the point
when the horizon had distinctly separated the ocean andsky
and waves came in regular motions
building and collapsin
in unending fury that she felt herself losing groundevaporating.
The conclusion of this poem, "edges," is a stand-off really.
The battle is climaxed by anger and a gesture:
she walked for a mile collecting all the fish skulls she could find and arranged themconcentric circles placing a rock in the middle. finally84

she carried some large stones to the foot of a bluff hoping
to prevent erosion
A metaphor, certainly, for the act of writing the poem itself.
The attempt to bring order, to recapture unity, from whatever
motive -- Iove, rage, separation, the balance, the extreme. The
gesture of defiance, of protest , of affirmation as well as denial.
Another poem on the same theme, one of my favorites, is"they did not build wings for them . " Here the isolation , thesolitude, is diametrically opposed to the gesture of despera tion in '! edges .
Al though perhaps finally the difference ismuch morE,) subtle than might appear at first glance. In "theydid not build wings for them" the action is chosen.
In "edges"
the woman is acted upon, placed in a position by forces she
dqes not , until the end, recognize.
It is a position that isforced upon' ,her, rather than one she ,c hooses, unlike the "unrriarried aunt" who 'II '... secretly grafted and crossed varieties
creating singular fruit .of shades and scentsnever thought possible.
her experiments rarely
failedand each spring she waited eagerly t 'o see~hat new forms would hang from the trees.
here the world was a passionate place and shewould visit " it at night baring her breasts
to the moon .

pe ri o ds o f str e ss is a book that reaches beneath the surface to ask basic and difficult questions, questions that lie
along the edges of all of our lives, as women, as human beings
living in a world, all of us, circumscribed continually by war,by struggle--a world that Irena Klepfisz examines with power
and precision, in a way that is both moving and immensely human.
One could go on , and on quoting from her poems . The only
way to appreciate them really, to understand any poetry is toread it in its entirety. And periods o f stress is a book that
I have read several times and will certainly read again andagain.

85

FICTION
Art and illusion, illusion and art
Thia is the song that I ' m singing in myheart . ..
Art and illusion , illusion and art
Are you really here or is it only art?
Am I really here or is it only art?
-s ong by Laurie Anderson
Bertha Harris' LOVER*

reviewed by JULIA WIL LIS

Ve ry little and not enough has been said about LOVER (lower
case 1, indtcative of more than one, the term in generaluse), a novel by Bertha Harris, and I suppose there is areason for this, and that is that women all across and around this land, from somewhere outside of Albuquerque tothe distant Poconos , are simultaneously, now envision this,
dropping to their knees and/or falling out of Volkswagens,ciutc~ing this book to their respective hearts and bosoms,
pinging hymns of praise and weeping tears of great joy forthe angels with a heavenly differehce to see, ,and from eachtear - from each beautiful woman who is pure in her spirit that falls upon the mother earth will spring full somethingor other a ninefoot Amazon in all her battle array andsince this is happening so very much that sooner or later
it's going to get in the newspapers when plenty will besaid about LOV E~ but by then of course it will be toolate, no one has really had a chance to collect her thoughts
and inform everybody else of this peculiar phenomenon (except by way of mouth, c ~ rtainly one of the sweetest ways).
And I just thought you would ~ike to know.
This is Bertha Harris's third novel, and it is a third novel, it has taken a lot of practice and it may take some getting used to, because we are not simply talking about lesbian history anymore , some f01ks are doing something about
it, and the transcendence of dykelore is the myth, and themyth is the belief and the belief is the reality, and if
you understand me then my mother is Amelia Earhart who wasnever quite the same after her last flight in 1937 when my
mothEr was fifteen and my grandmother was the age of Amelia
Earhart only she is Katharine Hepburn who was actually,
younger but it all works out and time doesn't make any dif-*from Studio International , London, July/August 1976, p. 19 .

86

ference wh en my father was an incubator which has longsi n ce become obso l ete b ecaus e I am Amelia Earhart too and
I am flying t hr oug h the universe with women I love because
we are all wh o we t hink we are and who we think we are notan d we are a ll the woman and we are all the lover and Be rtha
would be the f ir st ' to admit it, s h e may well b e the firstto admit it, in writing.
Let me then be the first to e n courage you, in writing, tofi nd yourse~f in LOVER, and I h ope that I can do t h is without quoting more than one part of the whole out of context,
a lthoug h I will remind you t h at just because eve rything is
the same does not mean there are fewer stories, on the co ntrary there are more sto ri es than there ever were b efore:" The story of Vero ni ca goes: inspired by a suffering face,
she h el d a clot h to it; a nd on the c loth was left an imageof the face she had wiped.
No one knows for sure, however .
Some imagine h er to be that woman who had ' a n issue of blood'.
Others point out that the English word ' ver ni c l e ' meanstrue image." And it is just as true th at art do es indeed
imitate l ife as it is just a nd tr u e that li fe ca n and will
come to imitat ~ a rt - within every woman who creates andt hus wi thin ever'y woman who is there is the br ai n machine
which sits on the dinin g r oom table a nd tells the truth a ndt h e lov er,who runs through the st r ee ts t el lin g the truth as
it happ e ns , and Bertha Harris as a woman who creates tells
a nd i s t e lling , sitting a nd running, the truth in colors
that move and flow a nd me rge and dissolve and become t h ewhite light that is o u rselves, a ll of th e m, and one d ay wewill thank her for it.
I a m thanking her n ow, but t h en I
always was a nd will be.

Rita Mae Brown's IN HER DAY

reviewed by DEBORAH CORE

Rita Mae Brown's n ew n ovel is about revolutionary
young lesbian feminists and closeted middl e - aged lesbians.
Mostly ,' the bo ok is about what the two can learn from eachother . Carole Ha nr atty, a professor of art history, a ndIlse James , Vassar graduate a nd wait r ess at New York's Mother Courage restaurant, become lovers at the beginning of
the book and break up at the end.
In between, they makelove, argue a b o ut politics, and show eac h ot her anotherside of the l esbian experie n ce.

87

The political attitudes of the book will probably gen erate controversy among lesbian feminist readers.
The narrator maintains some distance from the beliefs of both women by revealing almost every point through dialogue or internal monologue.
Therefore, neither Carole's happy capitalism nor lIse's revolutionary fervor is condemned.
Somereaders might wish for a clearer political h e roine, hut I
think the narrator tries specifically not to provide such amoral center.
Instead, "her day" is the day of both women,because both have a place in the feminist world .
The narrator is less successful, though, in other areas.
The novel depends on dialogue; when the dialogue is weak or
the narrator must take' over, serious stylistic flaws occur.
Too often the narrator tells us things that should be left
for us to infer from the action.
F~~ e xample, we learn thatafter Carole's sister's death, her brother Luke " . .. took atypical male retreat and drank alarming quantities of whiskey." The commentary is unneces s ary and therefore weakening.
The same sort of thing occurs, more intrusively, near theend of the book when lIse and her group confront tbe men at
the Villa ge Rag .
Instead of letting the men be made real by
their actions, the narrator resorts to sarcasm, calling Martin
Twanger "the intrepid reporter." The novel would be moreconvincing if the narrator were more consistent.
There are a few other stylistic problems . Some scenes
are gratuitous, such as the one in which lIse is,' accosted by
an exhibitionist.
The scene functions solely to provide anoccasion for the feminist put-down, "That looks like a penis,
only smaller." The book is also marred by several spelling
mistakes and a curious disregard ·for commas.
Comparisons will inevitably arise between In Her Da~ andRubyfru it Jungle, Rita Mae Brown's first novel. Most readers
will find the earlier novel the more successful of the two,
because it is funnier, clearer, and sharper in its political
purpose. But In He r Day is, though flawed, a rather brave
book, and it will be interesting to see what Rita Mae Brown
does next.

'.

88THEORY
Adrienne Rich's OF WOMAN BORN: MOTHERHOOD AS EXPERIENCEAND INSTITUTION (W.W . Norton, 318 pp., $8.95)
reviewed by JOAN LARKIN

I had not imagined that a book about motherhood would
be a broad theoretical feminist work of far-reaching significance--but that is what Of Woman Born is. That the con notations of motherhood for me before I read Of Woman Born
were still larg ely of "private" experience, and of interest
principally to ' those who had experienced biological motherhood, helps to say how important this book will be in transforming our vision of OUr lives and demonstrating theinterconnectedn~~s of experiences heretofore seen as having
rio connection.
"Motherhood calls to mind the horne, and welike to think of the horne as a private place." In fact,"private" strands are woven through all of this book: memories, conversations, excerpts from journals--deeply felt
personal experience that gives integrity and resonance tothe prose, supplying the tones usually missing from a "sci entific" work.
(That dualistic thinking--which splits"in ner" and "outer," body and mind, irrational and rational,
poetic and scientific--is inadequate to describe our actual
perceptions of reality, is one of many points Rich develops
through the book.)
Rich evokes the institution of motherhood--distinct from
biological motherhood--as an institution created by andserving the patriarchy and, "because we hav e all had mothers,(affecting) all women, and--though diff erently --all men."
She demonstrates that both childbearing and childlessness
are used by the patriarchy to define women negatively.
Inwriting the book, she found that she was "thrown back onterms like 'unchilded,' 'childless,' or 'child-free'; wehave no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines
herse~f, by choice, neither in relation to children nor tomen, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself." Whatever our choices, whatever the limitations on our freedom
to choose, all women will find support in this book. Oneof the things I appreciate most about it is its inclusion
and integration of both homosexual and heterosexual experience, not as opposites, but as points on the continuum of
women's sexuality (she writes--in a passage critical, fromthe viewpoint of one inhabiting a woman's body, of Freud's
division , of things into what is "insid e me" or " outside89

me"--of the sense "in love-making which is not simply'fucking' .. . of interpenetration, of feeling the melting of
the walls of flesh ... blurring the boundary between body andbody . " And in the next sentence: "the identification withanother woman's orgasm as if it were . one's own is one of
the most intense interpersonal experiences . .. ")Rich develops a vision of the institution of motherhood-of the patriarchy that depends upon it and the ways all
women are limited by it--through a series of chapters on
many of its aspects, researched with thoroughness, and incisively analyzed; she is at home in a surprising number ofareas.
She writes of the power stolen and withheld fromus in the name of this institution--through laws and penalties , art, psycho-analysis , the medical establishment andall establishments of male "experts" : "The absence of rerespect for women's lives is written into the heart of maletheological doctrine , into the structure of the patriarchal
family, and into the very language of patriarchal ethics:"
One of the chapters most exciting to me discusses theGreat Mother in her early forms (Ishtar, Astarte, Demeter)
and the gradual devaluation of the Mother Goddess paralleledby the increasing reduction and rejection of the human woman.
While emphasizing the "need to be "critically aware of thelimitations of our sources" (she discusses and evaluates
the search for traditions of female power in the work of
Bachofen, Briffault, Elizabeth Gould Davis, Helen Diner,
and others), she posits "the idea of a prehistoric period,
when not a handful, but most women were using their capacities to the utmost," and when "the mother relation and status
were far more important than the wife-status . " She evokes
the images, "beautiful in ways We have almost forgotten,"of the prepatriarchal goddess-cults, in which the femaie wasprimary and which "told women that power, awesomeness, andcentrality were theirs by nature, not by privilege or mir acle." She differentiates power over others from the trans forming power symbolized by the sacred vessel--pottery - making ,invented by women, being one form of woman's experience as"a creative being possessed of indispensable powers . "(Sheemphasizes that "in primordial terms the vessel is anything
but a 'passive' receptacle : it is transformative--i.e.,
active, powerful.") And she shows how patriarchal thinking,expressing deep unconscious fears of woman, has rendered
aspects of female experience - -the menstrual cycle, for ex ample--sinister or loathsome.
The history of the control of woman's potential relationship to her powers by the patriarchal system "which has been
so universal as to seem a law of nature" is documented inchapters on the history of obstetrics and its transformation
into a province of male power; the use by the patriarchy ofthe labor of childbirth as support for the idea that woman's
passive suffering is inevitable- - "the purpose of her existence"; the relationship of mother and son, including explorations of the mockery leveled at the Jewish - American
mother, of the misreading of the s u rvival - strength of the so-90

called bla c k matri a r c h as power, of th e sentimentalizationand hatred of a ll mo th ers; and of "the pressure o n all women- -not only mothe rs -- to remain in a ' g i vi ng,' asse n ti ng, ma ternalistic relationship to men . " In discussing birth con trol, a b o rtion , d ay care, c hild battering, in fanticide (thelist is , incr edibl y, l o n ge r) , s h e revea l s "the mac h inery of
institutio nal v iol e nc e wrenching at t h e experience of motherhood ."The c h apter o n motherhood a nd daughter hood seems especiall y hop ef ul , 'urgin g co ur ageou s mothering:"The quality ofth e moth e r 's life--however emb attled a nd un protected," rath er than the institutionalized sacrificial absorption of
all our e nergi es into taking care of ot h ers whi c h men h ave
d e ma nded, must b e a woman's "primary bequest to h er daug h ter."
And this holds for o ur ot h er relationships as well:"The
mos t important thing o n e woman can do for a not h er is to illumin a t e arid exp a nd h er se n se of act u al possibilities."- It i s frustrating to attempt to summarize in so briefa space the co n ce pts of this b ook, o n nearly every page of
which I have underscore d whole paragraphs.
I t will taketime and ma ny r e - readings to assimilate Of Woman Born . But
already its effect o n me h as been like that of a series ofco ns ciou s n ess - r ais in g sessions, in whi c h it is not so muchthe startlin g or i g in a lit y. of stateme n t (though t h ere ismu c h that is n ewly sai d h ere) but the accretion of many conc r ete details a nd ~tories, the demonstration of their interrelatedness, a nd the r ef u sal to cut fee lin gs away from theint e ll ect u a l pr ocess, that h ave burned into my conscious n ess a vis ion of things as they really are, stripped of patriarchal sentimentalization, conve nt io n , and lie.
Of Wo man Born h as tran sforme d my way of seeing my life and t heli ves of others, and I want to give i t to all the women I
lov e .

91

THE POLITICS
OF PUBLISHING/. S.!l nd'l 150f.)ChEr
2. BErf;'.,HarrIS

3. R; I;} }tJE&'0"'",

1. ....Tu/i;} PL,.dof~
5f;;J"/E.'1

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" We as lesbian writers are influenced by each other ' s
opinions , art , politics .
This interaction has its
positiye and negative aspects , but at the very least
we have to recognize that we ' re stuck with each other .",-- Jan Clausen

94THE POLITICS OF PUBLISHING AND THE LESBIA:t')" COMMUNITY
by Jan Clausen

I will not die in your city.
I will not be buried
under your streets. I will not dress myself inyo~r ~ouBes of gold and lies and grotesque f orms .
--Susan Sherman , "The Fourth Wall"
In June, 1976 , I sent a questionnaire entitled "Publishing
as a Political Act" to over 35 lesbian writers, editors
and publishers .
It consisted of nine questions touching_on political issues lesbians face in making publishingdecisions--issues important to me personally or which werecurrently being discussed within the lesbian community.
In an accompanying letter I explained my plans to write anarticle on the politics of publishing: by making use of
the questionnaire responses I hoped to represent a wide
variety of existing perspectives on the subject.
I got , back 20 questionnaires, some of them filled out
in great detail, many with accompanying letters or answers
running over onto extra sheets of paper.
Reading them has
been very helpful to me personally ; in the classic tradition of consciousness-raising, it has made me aware of theextent to which my seemingly individual concerns and perplexities are in fact shared.
Later on I'll discuss theresults and offer selected excerpts.
First, however, it
seems necessary to explain the circumstances, both private
and public, which impelled me to write such an article.
I'd prefer to pretend to myself and to you that I'm
dealing with these issues from a position of objectivity.
But finally I cannot escape my awareness that writing suchan article is itself a political act . And it seems to me
that by feigning neutrality I risk writing something which
is -dishonest; bland to the point of inutility, or both.
Therefore, what follow's is avowedly subjective, one voice
among many .
,My basic assumption is that a writer's decisions about
how to make her work available to an audience are in somemeasure political decisions--whether or not she acknowledges the fact.
For it is not only the content of art
but its context which determines its value and impact.
Appar'e ntly this assumption was shared by a great majorityof the women who answered the questionnaire, though ideas
about how to proceed from there varied considerably.
For a long time I have been thinking about the politi'cal implications of my own publishing decisions. At one
time I submitted (unsuccessfully) a manuscript of poems toa variety of publication contests and establishment publishers; subsequently I decided, for a combination of95

"political and practical reasons, to abandon that firstmanuscript and work cooperati v ely with other lesbians topublish later work through Out & Out Books.
That decision constituted a commitment t o distributing a book to
women at bookstores wher e th ey buy and at prices they canafford; it gave me a concr e te s e nse of feminist alternatives to establishment publishing. But it was only abeginning; clearly I would continue to face difficult
decisions about where to publish future work . Writing
this article is in part an attempt to deal with some of myown conflicts on the subject .
In addition to my private concerns, several controversies involving publishing decisions arose within the lesbian ~ommunity.
One of these centered around the proposed
publication of a second lesbian issue of Ma rgins, thereview of little magazines and small press books.
Th e first lesbian Ma r gins , guest - edited by Beth Hodges
and appearing in August, 1975, served as an unprecedented ~highly valuable collection of critical articles about lesbian literature and publish{ng .
It sold well , becoming
the first issue of Ma rgi ns ever to be reprinted.
Tom
Montag , the regular editor, requested Beth Hodges to do asequel issue. Plans for this were underway when several
women who had participated in a Modern Language Association
panel on lesbians and lit e rature stated their feeling thatthe transcript of that discussion should no·t appear in
Margins, as had been proposed, but in a feminist publication.
Shouldn't the feminist press be receiving the prof it and prestige from the Margin s material? After muchdebate, Beth Hodges made a search for a feminist publisher,ultimately reaching an agreement with Harriet Desmoines
and Catherine Nicholson of Si ni s te r Wis do m.
I reacted with dismay.
It had not occurred to me tosee anything "politically incorrect" in .a lesbian Margin s.
Beth Hodges had complete editorial control; the magazine ,which cost a dollar and wa s well distributed, was readily
available to women.
(And it was later reported that
Margins made little or no profit from the lesbian issue.)
As an author with a book to be reviewed, and · a reviewer
contributing an article , the fact that Ma r gin s "is read bypeople who don't usually read lesbian/feminist publications, including librarians, was important to me.
"
I bore no ill will toward Sin is te r Wi s dom ; I knew
nothing about it.
But it seemed clear that a brand-new
magazine couldn't hope to provide distribution similar to
Marg i ns and would almost certainly cost more. What most
disturbed "me about the Marg i ns controversy, however, WaS
not its immediate practical consequences but the fact thata publishing decision affecting a large number of women
had been made on the basis of what appeared to be a minority's political convictions.
The second incident which raised important politicalissues did pot involve me directly.
This was the arrangement made by Gina Covina and Laurel Galana, editors of The
Lesbian Reader (Amazon Press), to have Harper & Row publish96

a second edition of the Reade r.
Factors involved in theultimate failure of that arrangement were writers' demandfor control over their work (the signing over of copyrights
to Harper & Row would have prevented authors from reprinting
their own work without payment of permissions fees), writers'
demand for more money for their work, and eventually a conflict between the editors and Harper & Row over the issueof payment for copying the original edition~ Questions
were raised about the responsibility of editors to authors,
and about what kind of compensation we are entitled to expect from the commercial press. , The demand of one author
for $1 , 150 above the $40 that contributing authors werepromised challenged the legitimacy of publishers' traditional
profits.
The third incident which propelled me toward the writing of this article was the May, 1976 New York City Lesbian Conference's panel-discussion/workshop on lesbian: publishing. On the panel were June Arnold and Parke
Bowman o"f Daughters, Inc., Elly Bulkin and Joan Larkin of
Out & Out Books, Fran Winant of Violet Press, and Bertha
Harris. What many in the audience hoped would be a disc~ssion of practical aspects ' of publishing and self-publishing quickly turned into an acrimonious debate over thevalidity of publishing with "the man." While painting
what seemed to me an overly rosy picture of feminist pub~lishing alternatives, June Arnold, Parke Bowman , andBertha Harris took such a strong stand against publishingwi th the male-,controlled presses under any circumstancesthat some who disagreed with various points they made (myself included) felt reluctant to speak up.
In the aftermath of this experience, however, I felt
increasingly that the solution to such conflicts must lie
in the direction of more discussion, not less. And I had
urgent political concerns which I wanted to share.
I
decided to write an article about the politics of publishing, an article I hoped would contribute to a public discussion involving as many lesbian writers, editors andpublishers as possible .
I want to clarify the fact that my own political concerns--like those of a number of women who answered thequestionnaire--are not confined to those issues which
affect either only lesbians or only women. The emphasis
on lesbian-feminism in the questionnaire is due to thefact that the writers with whom I interact are for themost part lesbian-feminists, and that I am writing for a
primarily lesbian audience.
Several women objected to my references to "the lesbian community" and "the lesbian writing community."
Julia Stanley pointed out that "a 'community' is a groupof individuals banded together for 'common cause,' andmost of the lesbians who live in the U.S. are not membersof any community." Susan Griffin mentioned that the word"community" has sometimes been used as a "sort of club toback up one's opinion." I agree heartily that lesbians
97are not a cohesive social group, nor do we share a common
political philosophy.
If we were, if we did, this article
would be unnecessary. What I meant to imply by using
these phrases is that we as lesbians and especially as
lesbian writers are aware of each other--influenced byeach other's opinions, art, politics. This interaction
has its positive and negative aspects, but at the very
least we have to recognize that we're stuck with eachother.
My thanks go to Fran Winant for pointing out the significance of using phrases like "major press" and "majorcommercial press." This, she says, simply perpetuates theview that "their" presses are "major" and ours are "minor."
I've tried to correct that error by henceforth simply referring to "commercial presses." And apparently the distinction I made between feminist and lesbian presses waslargely irrelevant (partly because the respondents, withthe one exception, were not lesbian separatists, partly
because a large percentage of the women's presses are run
by lesbians).
So from now on I'll just speak of "women" spresses . "What follows is my analysis of tpe response to eachquestion, including questionnaire excerpts which areeither representative or striking in some way.
Question #1: How would you feel about publishing abook you wrote or edited with each of the following: amajor commercial press; a university press ; a,small press
which is controlled entirely or in part by men; a feminist
press; a lesbian press.
Please discuss the reas~ns foryour preferences.
Several women -said they would prefer commercial publication. The majority mentioned their awareness of theimportance of the women's presses to us, a desire to support them, and a feeling that feminist publishers would
have the greatest understanding of and concern for theirwork.
But they also indicated that practical considerations
had led them or might lead them to choose other alternatives ,at least for some of their work.
These considerations included money, the desire for better distribution (which theyfelt would mean reaching more women), the need for "credentials" and, in several cases, the fact that they might
be unable to find women's presses willing to publish theirwork (especially if they wrote novels or prose non-fiction) ,Interestingly, several women who are very much involved
with women's publishing indicated that they couldn't fault
women for choosing non-feminist publishing options because,
as writers, they themselves are acutely aware of the hardships and limitations of small press publishing.
Though several women had published or wished to publish wit h a university press, most felt that this alternative had neither practical nor political advantages.
Themale-controlled small presses seemed to be the least attractive option; Sandy Boucher's comment that "individual men
would be making decisions affecting my material, probably,

98

from a viewpoint of little comprehension of it or downrighthostility to it,"· was typical.
Except for one woman who specified that her response
not be quoted unless the article appeared in a publication
with "for sale to women only" printed on the cover, no one
categorically ruled out options outside the women's presses.
"I want to tell you that I prefer publishing with alesbian-feminist press (and I am) and that lesbians should
publish wit~ women's presses , but my experiences as editorof Z3th Moon can't permit me to affirm such romanticism
for other women.
I'm beginning to feel that unless you
are rich and/or you have no other outlets there is a certain masochism in these choices."--Ellen Marie Bissert"I think I would consider the other types of presses
only if I had approached the feminist and lesbian or lesbian-feminist presses and they had rejected my book. But
I must say that though I have been writing for a long time
I have never yet been in a position where there was realmoney to be made from what I write.
Still, here is myreason for wanting to be published by women.
I write forwomen; last year's ·publication of my book of stories cameabout because of the support of women and the initiativeof a women's press.
I was able to work with these women
during the printi~g and publishing process, and to havesome control over ·content and form.
They did not rip meoff. Now all of us split the proceeds (small as they are)from the book. . In other words, this publishing process
was integrated into my life and my politics . . . "--Sandy Boucher"My preferences would be a lesbian press, a feminist
press but that preference would be superseded by desire
to see my work published.
Thus, I feel at this time
women/lesbian writers should use any of the above if they
can manage without having work butchered."--Maureen Brady"I believe that in fact those who are critical of Feminist writers publishing with trade houses must face theconsequences of their criticism: that the only women who
can write without support are the wealthy and those whoare not responsible for the care of children.
And ifthose are the only women who can devote full time to writing the content of Feminist writing will not reflect the
lives of most women .. . Yet the fact that I choose to publish two books with a trade house does not change my feeling about Feminist and lesbian presses ... There is no way,ironically, I could write the book I am writing without
their existence, because these presses have made possible
the creation of a woman's literature, and it is in thewake of the reverberations of our culture, inside thisculture, that I write ... What I am doing, and intend to99

continue doing, is to support the Feminist and lesbianpresses in any way I can, including a commitment to publish future books with Feminist presses, and at the sametime, to seek out and accept every possible source of support that I can find which will allow me to continue
writing as a Feminist."--Susan Griffin"I write for every human being who can feel the touchof my words, and out of every diverse and particular partof my self.
For different reasons, and being aware 'of theassets and liabilities of each, I would publish with anyof the above save the University Press ... 1 guess my preference would be a black lesbian press (which I notice you
don't include). And of course the absence is instructive;
we'd all like to be in perfect harmony with our publisher,
but barring that, 1 choose by the nature of my material,
who and how many I hope to reach, and last but not least
how much shit I have to put up with to get my work over ... " '--Audre Lorde"I would prefer the lesbi~n or feminist press because
my material would be more respectfully treated by womenthan by men, in general. However, if I got decent treatment plus adequate compensation I wo'u ld not be averse to
publishing with commercial presses."--Martha Shelley"The power to grant validation and status is, ·I believe, the greatest power that the establishment has . overwriters.
They make you a 'real' writer, not just selfpublished or a 'small press person . ' They give you credentials which have meaning and va:ue on a job resume.
They validate you in the eyes of your sisters--not only
women who have never heard of small presses but women who
know perfectly well that small presses exist and the struggles we are going through ... Movement feminist 'critics'
base their concepts of good writing on the kind of women's
writing that is being publi~hed by the establishment . .. aslong as that power of validation exists, 1 don't think awriter can be condemned for publishing with the establishment."--Fran Winant"My first preference, though it is not without conflict, is to publish with a major commercial press (witha contract giving me control over jacket design, advertising, etc.).
Reason: to me I write primarily to communicate, to a~ many women as possible, straight and gay,feminist and nonfeminist, and the major presses vastly
surpass the others in reaching power ... "--Irene Yarrow
Question #2: Would the content of the book in question
influence your decision about where to publish? In what
way?
100

Here a number of wome n indicated their sen s iti vity to
the way in which conte n t would influence a publisher ' s
c hoice , thus limiting the writer's options (e.g . commer cia l press e s publish very little poetry, male-controlledpresses are hostile to overt political content, feminist
presses aren't equipped to publish certain types of scholarly writing).
But it seemed clear that content would
have some influence on most women's decisions . Several
mentioned that they would not publish anything critical of
the women's movement in the mafe-controlled press.
"Yes . The more outrageous the book in feminist terms
the less likely the establishment press would publish it
unless they could see money in it, despite their personal
preferences .
I see my political wri'ting going to the feminist press while , in time, my fiction will go to establishment press'es."--Ritii Mae Brown"Yes . At this stage in the Women's Movement there aresome books which all women should have access to.
In 1975
it would have been ,terribly wrong , I think, not to havetaken advantage of Knopf's distribution to get The New
Woman 's Survival Souroebook places any woman could see it.
If 'my book were important--in the way TNWSS is--I would'
look for a major commercial press.
I wonder too whether
the lesbian presses should publish everything . . . If they
are busy publishing what others would be willing to publish .. . there's lesbian work that is not being published."- - Beth Hodges"The content of the book would affect my decision lessthan the quality of printing and of care on the part ofthe press . Bonnie Carpenter at Effie's Press, for example,
does extraordinarily loving, careful and beautiful designing and printing. But 'content,' if one can call it that,
did have some influence on my desire to publish the new
sequence with Effie's Press; I wanted these poems to appear
from a woman-controlled press first, although they will
event u ally form part of the next book I publish with
Norton."--Adrienne Rich
"If I felt this was just another of my many creations ,I would be a lot less careful than if I thought this was
my life's work, and contained most of what I had to say to
the world.
If this was my life's work I would b e reluc tant to offer it to anyone but lesbian/feminists , because
I would want to be sure it was not advertised or used in
an exploitative way, or just buried, and I would want tobe sure I would not lose whatever rights I felt entitled
to concerning my work.
I also might be nervous about thebook going out of print - -but there are problems with thisin both the establishment and small press scene .. . "-- Fran Winant101

Que st ion #3 : In your view , what impact does the exis tence o f a variety of publishing option s f or les bian s ha v e
on t he s trengt h o f les bian presse s ?
Again, many respondents e mphasized the l ack of options
for most women; we publi s h wh e re we can.
Several suggested
that commercial publishing b y lesbians might strengthen
the women's presses by cr e ating a market for lesbian writing . Most , however , r e cognized an existing or potential
conflict b e tween the needs of the women's presses for support and t heir own personal needs as writers . There wasa feeling that women could and should continue to support
women's presses even if they chose to publish elsewhere-by contributing money, publi c izing the women's press e s,
and continuing to publish some work with them .
"Lesbians who successfully publish lesbian work withthe man are weakening the small press women ' s movement."--Ellen Marie Bissert"I doubt that other options at this time compromise
the strength of lesbian presses.
I read the books published by lesbian presses but I need more reading material
than they supply.
Also I don't like the idea of seeing
lesbian publishers attempt to compete with major publishers
in the sense that high volume sales be c ome a goal (existingin conflict with espoused politics of our movement) . A
lesbian press should exist as a sample of woman cultute-anti-patriarchy, i.e. important differences should heapparent in relationships of 1) publisher to writer , 2)publisher and writer to reader, 3) writer to publisher
and 4) reader to publisher.
(Greater accountability!)"--Maureen Brady"The more open lesbians who get published regardlessof the press , the better for lesbians and the lesbianpress.
If on~ feminist-le dbian author 'breaks through'into establishment publishing the publicity will help sell
lesbian press books.
The more money the lesbian presses
make the more authors they can publish."--Rita Mae Brown"I am not sure that lesbians who are at all militant

hav e that many options in terms of book publishing--although they may have more options in terms of mags.
The'variety of publishing options , ' on l y for well-publishedwomen , acts as a drain on the lesbian writing community,and create"s competition and jealousy.
It encourages lesbians to censor themselves in order to get grants andmajor pre ss publication, and as Fran Winant once pointed
out , makes women's presses f eel that the y have to have aslicker product. "--Alison Colbert

102

"I think the strength of lesbian presses has first of
all to do with the strength of lesbian writing, and withthe strength of the diffusion-network being created by thefeminist community.
I think lesbians, like all women,should feel free to use all the options at our disposal.
I have been able to call attention to lesbian- and feministpress books in places where small-press books were not yet
available, where I had been invited to read because mybooks were available.
I see this as a halfway house, however, a si t 'ua t ion that wi 11 be changing as more and more
women's bookstores and communications proliferate. At
present, we need all the options possible."--Adrienne Rich
"If you mean options in the commercial press, it all
depends on what you are wriTing.
Lots of material won't
get in the commercial presses, not because lesbians wrote
it but because it is too radical. So it depends on whether
you can please the boys or not.
The majority of lesbians
and radicals don't have access to the major publishers, so
we need the lesbian presses, independently of whether or
not the boys will publish one' or two lesbians.
In otherwords, we don't ' all have options about which press to publish with--we just hope someone will, or we do it ourselves."--Martha Shel.ley
Question #4: Some writers who begin by publishing withsmall presses subsequently have the opportunity for majorpress publication.
How do you feel about lesbian wr i ters
doing this?
Several respondents felt clearly positive about this;most felt ambivalent--aware of the dangers of opportunism,
but also sympathetic to the factors which might make sucha choice desirable or necessary.
A recurrent theme wasthat choices have t6 be made according to each individual'ssituation and needs, and cannot be judged categorically.
"a) On one hand, I feel the way I do when a frienda grant from a State Arts Council--jealous. b) If I
like the woman's poetry/prose, I'm glad that it will beacknowledged and consequently distributed well (most of
the time, it doesn't, actually, get good distribution).
c) If a lesbian writer chooses to publish with a commercial press, I support her decision, though it may not be
my own.
People have access to different things at different times.
Lesbian writers will come to an understandingof their own needs and convictions only by following
through with what they feel is best at the time."--Robin Beckerge~s"I, as a small press women's publisher, don't like it.
But realistically as a sister writer, I can't blame themand wish I could do the same."--Ellen Marie Bissert
103

"I think it's a good idea--certainly for economy anddistribution.
But I don 't see it as a progression--beginning a nd advancing , et c . Ther e are some books that belong ,by the ir nature, to differ e nt types of presses . . . "--Audre Lorde"Hard--I like to see writers able to live as a resultof their work--also feel a well-known writer can help makea small press successful--trade-offs have to be weighed
individually."--Judith McDaniel"I think we should seize whatever opportunities areavailable to us.
If a door opens to one of us, I thinkshe should walk on through it!
Looking backward, lesbians
face an existential void of thousands of years.
If weshould fail now to make ourselves heard, we will fail future generations of lesbians who will wonder where we were,
just as we wonder about our foremothers ... "--Julia Stanley
Question #5: Do you feel that a lesbian's decision
about wher e to publish her work is a private matter, ordoes she have a responsibility to a larger community?
The obvious problem with this question is that "responsibility" and "community" can be taken to 'mean, ' a lot ofdifferent things.
Respondents tended to emphasize responsibility, while rejecting authoritarian imposition ofrules of conduct--pointing out that in the end the individual must make her own choice.
"Responsibility is a complicated thing.
I feel responsible to a number of communities, indi viduals, ideas, traditions.
My sense of myself does not derive from a SINGLE
SOURCE, but from MANY SOURCES.
There are so many contradictions inherent in all our lives, so very many, that I
want to support quality work by gay women in many capac ities .. . "--Robin Becker'.

"A private matter--but that word private carries connotations of separateness, disconnectedness and lack of
responsibility to others which I don't mean to condone andwhich many people react against and in reaction swing
toward the idea of a group decision -making process.
Ofcourse ~ny decision involves many people and many possibilities, but while these should all be considered, an
author's decision about where to publish her work must in
the end be a matter of individual responsibility or else
the author has abandoned her self."--Gina Covina

104

"If the entire community stands to benefit in the longrun by individuals' refusing certain options, then thecommunity should be able to explain exactly how the progr a m works so that the i ndividual makes the decision toc onform , for everyone's good.
(And probably the community
will have to figure out how to share money so that writers
can survive--without making the man rich in the process.)"--Beth Hodges" Very definitely responsible to her community--which
doesn't mean she will always only publish within that community, but is accountable for her decision to those peers
who are supporting her in her work."--Judith McDaniel"I think it's a moral matter that must be dealt within terms of each writer's morality. The larger community
for me includes everybody, and so that's where I participate as much as I can . "--Jane Rule
"We have only begun to build our 'larger community.'
And because we have only ~tarted, responsibility and truthfulness are of primary importance . Somehow, we have toforge ~ur individual concerns so that they do not impede
or intrude upon the larger community ... it would be unfair
to myself to pretend that my private concerns don't exist
if they happen to be 'out of step' with current dogma in
the lesbian community . However out-of-step I may be, I
still have to deal with myself as honestly and responsiblyas I can, and I really can't let the opinions of otherlesbians stop me from being who and what I am--this is a
hard lesson I am just beginning to come to grips with.
I
feel a tremendous responsibility to our community, and I
think I am most responsible when I am completely honest
about my feelings."--Julia Stanley"The responsibility is mutual between the community
and the writers ... In general , lesbian writers are not being sought out by their community as was the case in theearly days of the movement.
Some lesbians can hope to geta 'name' by being published by a large or well-organizedlesbian press that has the money to publicize them.
The
1-2 presses in this position can't publish everyone. Women lucky enough to be published by these presses will
get an equivalent VALIDATION to what they would receivefrom the establishment presses. So they get a really good
deal: moral 'purity' and the validation-in-advance-fromsome-higher-authority that their lesbian-feminist community
seems to demand/need before it can truly take an interestin their work."--Fran Winant105

Question #6: What is the respon s ibility o f the editorof a lesbian anthology to the author s represented? To thelesbian community?
In asking this question I wanted to get at the factthat slightly different issues are involved in publishinganother ' s work than in publishing one's own; the editor
has to respect political viewpoints which she may not precisely share.
Responses put a premium on honesty and decency on the part of editors , especially in setting andcommunicating the terms of publication , rather than on a
specific political stance. Beyond that, mention was madeof the need for artistic integrity and inclusion of work
which is fairly representative of lesbians, not exploitative or gratuitously negative.
Alison Colbert mentioned
the necessity for including more work by Third World andworking class lesbians.
The question of money for editors
is a delicate one; Melanie Kaye says, for example, that
editors should not make money off other people's work,
while Susan Griffin points out the need for an editor toseek some support for her labor.
"If you're talking about money, perhaps then not tohoard it is the responsibility of the editor. With mostanthologies however that's not much of a problem . For example, with No More Masks!, our advance didn't nearly
cover our own costs of xeroxing, postage, etc.
And so far
our royalties haven't equalled permissions, so -we're stillin the red after three years of vigorous sales',,,--Ellen Bass
"Re: The Lesb ian Reader I f.elt these responsibilities
to the authors:--To be honest and as clear as possible about our relationship , the details of publication, the finances involved.
--To make that information available to all the authors
promptly, and any other information any of them wanted
about the book.
--To make a cohesive whole from all their parts, an end
product visually beautiful, well-designed and pleasing toeveryone.
--To try to arrange for the widest-reaching communication
possible for the book and the most possible money for theauthors."--Gina Covina"

liTo authors--if she decides to use their piece, tomaintain the articles' perspective if any editing is necessary--to be clear about money, copyrights, who is publishing, printing, etc.--if this isn't decided when callfor articles goes out, that ought to be made clear too andwhat possibilities she will accept or reject.
To community--mainly accountable for quality and politics of articles--good writing--no gratuitously negative
or destructive pieces--criticism/self-criticism can be aconstructive concept."--Judith McDaniel
106

"The editor's responsibility is to make sure the authors retain copyright over their own work, to make surethey are paid adequately and that information is not withheld from them concerning the financing, distribution , etc.
of the book.
Toward the community, her responsibility is
to present a book which can be used as a tool for ourlib e ration.
I ' m not trying to sound utilitarian in thestrict and puritan sense- - a book which makes you think,which makes you laugh , share sorrow--anything except abook which lies about us."- -Martha Shelley
Question #7: Do you feel that the le sbi an writing com munity sh ould act in any way to encou r age or di sc ourage
certain publishing deci s ions on the part of its members?
This turned out to be the most emotionally charged of
all the questions.
Many respondents expressed vehement
opposition to any such "encouragement or discouragement."
Julia Stanley's, "No.
I believe that coercion is wrong,no matter who engages in it!" was typical . Some were incredulous that I'd even suggested the possibility--whichsurprised me, given that · such actions, of both encouraging
and discouraging yarieties, have been taken by individual~
and groups within the community in the recent past . Some
women did, however, suggest non-coercive methods of encouragement.
Question #7 takes on added relevance in light of thisstatement by June Arnold in her recent article "Feminist
Presses and Feminist Politics" (Qu est , Vol. III #1):
"Itis time to stop giving any favorable attention to thebooks or journals put out by the finishing(Eommerciaypress . .. It is time to un d erstand what male status reallymeans and withdraw support from any woman who is stilltrying to make her name by selling out our movement."(June Arno~d--like Judy Grahn of the Women's Press Collective and Coletta Reid of Diana Press, whom she credits,
among others, with providing help and criticism in the
preparation of her article- - did not return a questionnaire
sent to her.)"No.
I think, however, that where to publish should
continue to be a topic of concern and discussion, but thatthe community shouldn't take a hard line and expect lesbians to follow it.
That's too simplistic and there are
too many other factors. I want to relate a personal instance here.
When my book, I'm Not Your Laughing Daughter ,was reviewed in Amazon Quarterly, I was reprimanded for
publishing with a University Press and having a book comeout that cost $7.00.
Aside from the fact that in paperback .the book was $3.50, I felt I was lucky to get published anywhere.
I felt ... that I might never get a chance
to publish again, that I'd better take the first c hance I .
got and could later , when I was in a position of somewhat
107mor e power, be choosier ... Until then the idea of publishing a book s e emed like a dream.
It could happen to otherp e opl e but not me.
The editors of Ama z on Qu a r te rZy inth e ir r e vi e w of me seemed to assume that the power wasmin e o r that I should have assumed it was mine at a time
wh e n I didn't believe it was mine a nd the only way I knew
to g e t it was to say yes for a while . Now, I have thatpowe r and f e el I can choose , and so I do c hoose . But noo n e c an l e gislat e that for anyone else."--Ell e n Bass"r [e e l that people o u ght to be e n couraged to investigal e th e possibiliti e s of publishing with lesbian-feminist
pr e sses , that pe o pl e who ha ve done so ought to talk aboutth( ' ad v antag e s of doing this ... I agree with June Arnold
in h 0 r saying that the boys pick you up a nd drop you at
wi 11 . and wh e n t h e y d ec ide in a few years that neitherl e mini s m no r Les bianism i~ fas h ionable a nymore, t hey can .
drop all th e dyk e s. and that's it.
Whereas if we publish
wiLh th ~ Les bian - f e minist presses, a nd those presses growand prolif e rat e . th e re will be no way we can b e dropped or
8 i I ~)TI ce d. "--Sandy Bou c h e r"What are t h e stories , the text ures , the sources of
e motion behind this question? I am indeed part of a political group now whi c h h as called a boycott of the maleleft publication M,) t h e 'f' J ..·n e s.
We are ask ing that feminists withhold writing from them until they meet our demands (whi c h include t h at they give us an issue to e dit ,that they hir e t wo feminist editors , that they begin to
pay th e ir f e mal e staf f overtime pay).
So, yes.
But I ' amal so co n ce rn e ~ about tras hin g in the movement.
How mu c hthi s tak e s aw ay from us . How I see it as a kind of proj e ct e d s e lf-h a tr e d . a woman -h ating.
And how tired I amof it . Ho w SUSP1 C l. O US I am now of any but the most thoughtful , c an.' tlll C l'l.t.i c: ism . "·--Susan Gri f fin"" Some th o ught s about b e ing a member of the lesbian
writing co mmunit y: I appreciate the opportu nity affor ded
by this f o rm to e xpr e ss my thoughts , b eca use I am a l es bian who writ e s.
Living in the northwest I am mostly
is o lated from this c ommunity as , I am sure, are many women
who write . Before women who are better known as writers(wh o are mostly clustered around t h e east coast and S.F .)lay down ~od e s of conduct, some attempt to forge lesbian
writers int o a c ommunicating community sho uld be happ eni ng ,so that community decisions c an be representative andc areful . .. "--Melanie Kay e"I don't understand this que stion.
I t sounds like censorship and I know you must be talking about something108

e ls e.
Please p a r t i c ul a ri ze o r c l a rify.
k i ll h e r ? ) "--Audre Lorde( I di sag r ee , l e t's

Qu e stion #8: 00 you identi f y s trongl y wi t h a pol i ti c al
moveme n t othe r t h an le s bian - f emini s m? How doe s t h i s i n fluence yo ur publi s hing deci s ion s ?
Ab o ut hal f an s we r e d a s impl e " no " t o this que sti o n ,se ve ral men t i o ning that the y d i d not identi fy with lesbianf eminism as a p o liti c al move me nt e ith e r.
Se v era l mention e dsociali-sm , o r a co n ce rn with a vari e t y of is s u es in vo l v ing
oppr e ssed groups whi c h h ave no t been organi z ed i nt o a mov e ment with whi c h they ca n id e ntif y .
" Yes , , socia l i s m.
It doe sn't influe n ce my publishiI).gd ec isions a ny mo r e o r l ess th a n fe minism.
Ne ither mo vement economicall y has c r eat e d o ptions for me o r an y oth e r
artist or sales c l e rk o r a ny o ne . Un t il ec onomi c o ptions
exist all th e rumpu s i s ho t a ir."--Rita Mae Brown"I suppose I am a s oci a li s t , but a m not re a lly a member of any political gro'up pe r s e .
I have a de e p c ommi t-:ment to exposing th e c ontradi c ti o n s o f c orpor a t e c ontrol 'in this so c iety , ~nd th e effec t s of co rp o rat e c o-optation(such as by major publishing ho us es ) o n ' lib e r a tion ' mo ve ments such as feminism ... A r e lat e d publi c issu e of tremendous con c ern to me is the c r e ation o f hi e rarchies amo ng
wome n writers , and lesbi a n writ e rs in parti c ular , be c au s eof inequalities in publishing history .. . I wish co ns c iousn e ss of such c ontradi c ti o n s we re ' high e r in th e feminist( and lesbian-feminist) c ommunity th a n i t is , but unfortunat e ly it's not."--Alison Co~bert '" Yes , though I can't name the movement : I'm strongly 'anti- c apitalist, support struggles of third world people,
working people, etc., and hope ev e ntually for a coalitionof all oppressed peoples ag a inst our oppr e ssors (how notto sound like a goddam leafl e t?) . Thus , ultimately I'm
not a separatist, though at this point in time I think of
my community as women--that's wh o I want to rea c h.
I feelpoliti c ally c loser to wome n who a r e socialist-feminist (Imean really feminist) than to le s bians into separatism a s
a goal , who see straight women as the " oth e r " and all me n
as the enemy, and who don't think in t e rms of e co nomi c s ,i.e . capitalism.
This would influen ce my publishing , atthis point, in that I want to r e a c h many women , not o nl ylesbians and not even only feminists . . . "--Melanie KayeQuestion #9 : Pleas e fee l f r e e to d i s c uss an y issu e s.
i mp o rtant t o you which h a v e n ' t b ee n rai s ed in t h i s q ue s tion n a i re.
109Responses to this question included the following:"Polarization is the sign of a wea}< mind.
Once youthink establishment presses vs. feminist presses you al ready blew it.
The point is to be imaginative.
To tryand find ways to use the establishment press for the benefit of feminist presses and to try and help the feminist
presses become more professional.
As it now stands femi nist presses are generally run on the whim of the owner.
If they don't like you, no deal.
That's no way to run abusiness or a revolution . "--Rita Mae Brown"The main clarification that has happened for me as I
worked on this form is that my first priority is not thesurvival and strengthening of the lesbian presses.
I don'tthink alternative institutions will revolutionize society.
though they can help, and especially can help support.
those of us trying to make changes; and I count the lesbianpresses among these alternative institutions.
I would liketo see more discussion of how we can use art in service ofsocial change .. . and less of how to build women's or lesbian
enclaves .. . "--Melanie Kaye
"We--and by we I mean any group of two or more likeminded individuals of whom I happen to be ·one--we must beware of the fatal tendency to strangle anyone who chooses
to expand our definitions of ourselves. beyond ourselves.
What is a lesbian?
a lesbian/feminist?
the lesbian writini community?
the lesbian press? is it black white poor richmiddle class working class scholarly academic
anti-intellectual funky racist or demure? Doesit brush before bedtime?"--Audre Lorde"There are assumptions in this questionnaire thattrouble me - -that political responsibility and loyalty to agroup are one in the same thing, for instance; that there
is a distinction between private and public morality . . . AIso I think the moral issues are more difficult for me whenit comes to magazine rather than book publication since a
book, even attached to a large commercial house, has amore independent life than a story or article in a magazine
whose other material and advertising may be offensive . . . No
publisher. has ever 'controlled' a book of mine except byrefusing it, and the 'profits' have always been marginal
enough so that I could even politically rationalize that
I'm, in a small way, helping to pull the poor old giants
down.
I've never involved myself in the promotional pro cess, give very few interviews, reserve myself as much as
I can for my own work so that I can grow like a tree towhatever height and age is measured for me."--Jane Rule110

"If all lesbians put work time and energy back into ourcommunity in some way I think we would have to worry a lot
less about what the establishment was dO'ing, or who wasbeing published where.
I think what worries the community
is that the community itself gives so much credence andauthority to establishment-published women or any other
women who come to us highly-publicized and pre-packaged ,even through movement channels. The community has always
had the ab,ili ty to validate its own writers and support its
own presses. The early lesbian movement started to do
this, then the tide turned ... The women who have tolerated
this situation should be questioning the community ' s responsibility and not the responsibility of the indi v idual
writer."--Fran Winant"I t hink I felt a bias in your questions--I felt I'should· feel lesbian writers should support lesbianpresses. Didn't think this ideal for getting real answers."--Irene Yarrow
Having attempted to present a comprehensive picture of
the questionnaire results, I want to recapitulate the issues which seem most important to me.
First , I am profoundly uneasy about the implications of choosing to pub~ish
commercially.
I ' mistrust the publishing establishment for
more reasons than simply that it is male-controlled andmale-identified, largely indifferent to or contemptuous or
exploitative of women's work . Commercial publishers arecapitalist corporations, tied into an inherently destructive economic system.
I cannot claim to oppose that system
while ignoring the way my own actions are shaped by and inturn feed into it.
Unless and until the economic basis of the publishingindustry changes, its motives and methods will remain contradictory to the interests of serious writers.
The publishing industry does not exist for the sake of books-not even for books which fit neatly into the patriarchal
literary tradition.
It treats books like commodities,
sells them through mass-media promotional campaigns, turns
authors into celebrities, shapes public taste to suit its
purposes and then claims it is merely giving the people
what they want.
For everyone of the books important to
us which it distributes , others are suppressed--rejectedin the first place, or neglected and left to go out of
print once published . Comme rcial presses publish an infinit 'e simal amount of poetry , regarding what they d o publish as an act of charity--because poetry doesn't "sell."A recent Village Voice article intimated that c ommercial
publishers could make publishing poetry more profitable ifthey chose to do so. But why should they , when they c an
make much larger profits on mass market paperb acks? Stories of good experiences with th e commercial pr e sses doexist, but they're the e x ceptions.
111"At t h e same time , I beli eve we have to recogniz e thatt his fo rm of publi s hin g is with us t o st ay.
For on e thing ,th e op t ion to publish with a wome n' s pres s is no mo r e a uto mati c f or most wome n th a n is th e option to publish comme r cially . Th e ex istin g wome n' s p res se s a r e simply no t
equipp e d t o publish all lesbi a n s ' writing; t o a lar ge de gr ee th e y t e nd to publi s h wo rk by their f ri e nds or writers
already known to th e m.
I f y ou've writt e n a novel which is
rejected b y the Wome n's Press Collective and Daught e rs,
In c. , you're out o f luck ; the situa tion with poetry is notmuch better . Thus , a gr e at deal of women's publishing isa do-it-y ours e lf op e ration . Self - publishing is a draining,
demanding o ccup a ti o n , and not all women have the resources,
skills and time which it r e quires.
The~ the r e is the questi o n of money.
Daughters is , asfar as I know , the only wome n ' s pres s (except possibly the
Feminist Press, which publishe s a differ e nt type of material) capabl e o f p a ying write r s at a scale comparable toor abov e t h at o f th e commercial presses . Most other wo me n's pr e sses struggle to break even, with perhaps enoughmon e y a head to reprint or to publish a new title .
In addi t ion to p ay ing (often inadequately), commercial publi cation may op e n up the possibility of jobs, reviewing
assignments, e tc . which are especially important to women
who lac k a cade mic c redentials . Finally, there's no doubtthat tho'u gh th e attention the commercial press pays us isarbitrary and sup e rficial , th e distribution it affords has
been important in some cases. The results of the question naire made it clear to me that a number of lesbians aregoing to c ontinue to choose commercial publication; I beli e ve that any attempt to pressure them into doing otherwise, or to read them out of the movement for incorrect .
behavior , will only prove divisive and, ultimately, ineffective .
But we do have the possibility of taking certain kindsof collective action - -not against each other, but against
the establishme nt presses . The strategy employed by femi nists who organized a boycott of Mo th e r J o n e s (discussed
above by Susan Griffin) might aga.in be use d ag.ainst establishment targets . And we should be looking for ways toactively support future labor actions against publishers
such as the strike at Macmillan several years back.
What about the alternatives to commercial publishing?
I'll d e al first with the least attractive. The university
presses are appropriate for some kinds of scholarly material, and they do print poetry. They exist in a kind oflimbo half .in and half out of the establishment , offering
prestige but little in the way of either money or distribution. Then there is the male-dominated small press movement. While in general it is as oppressive to women, ascondescending, as uninterested in our lives and visions as
the commercial presses , at least it serves to undermine
the hegemony of those presses. And without the network ofsmall press directories, print centers, distribution mecha112

nisms, etc. which it has generated , the women's presses
would not exist in their present form . For this reason I,
unlike many who answered the questionnaire, feel some small
degree of affection for the male-controlled small presses.
And I continue to publish a few poems in male-edited literary magazines.
The women's presses are simply indispensable to us.
Most of the work they publish would otherwise never beseen.
In ' large part they are responsible for the amazing
vitality and ' variety of contemporary women'~ writing. At
the same time, they can in some measure serve as a testingground fQr our vision of what truly feminist publishing-publishing on our terms--ought to be.
(The substance ofthat vision depends to a large extent, of course, on one's
political perspective. One indication of a failure ofvision and practice is, I believe, the fact that women's
publishing has not adequately reflected the experiences
and needs of women from other than white, middle-classbackgrounds. As Audre Lorde points out, there are no black
lesbian presses. But this is intimately connected to apervasive problem within the women's movement . )The suggestiop was made in ~everal questionnaire responses that the women's presses ought to represent a true
economic alternative to the commercial presses. Perhaps
we could create more press'es which, like Daughters , areable to make more than token payments to writers . But it
is unlikely that most would-be publishers would have readyaccess to the capital necessary to do this.
And an important theoretical issue is involved, that of the extent towhich "feminist businesses" can represent an authentic alternative for women.
In the long run , I don't believe theycan . The laws of profit which govern their functioning
are the same as those governing other businesses.
Any"counterculture," ours included, exists in reluctant symbiosis with the dominant culture. Until the dominant culture is destroyed or transformed, the subculture survives
marginally, precariously, on suffrance.
This, paradoxically, is why the women's presses cannot
be our final goal, our ultimate solution--and why they are
absolutely necessary to us.
We have written nothing that
can't be forgotten, ploughed under, as the efforts and insights of nineteenth century feminists were ploughed under .
In the end, only our own will and effort will keep ourwords alive. Therefore we (and that includes lesbians whoread books as well as those who write them) must continue
to support our presses--by publishing with them when wecan, by contributing money when we can, by buying books-and by endeavoring to develop a feminist criticism which
validates women's experience, recognizing good writing(and by "good" I do not refer to an aesthetic standard divorced from our political values) no matter where it ispublished .

113

This brings up a related point, the fact that packaging communicates its own message. A book published by thecommercial press transmits the message, "The commercialpress thinks that writing by this woman is important,"
while a book published by women says, "Women have impor tant things to say to each other and they are willing andable to make books to do it." The latter message validatesus.
I think this factor ought to be weighed along with therest in making publishing decisions--particularly, perhaps,in the case of an antholo~y.
I am concerned about the way in which the process ofgetting published, getting recognized, conducting a "career" emphasizes individual accomplishment rather thanhelping us to remember · the collective sources of our creativity. Doris Lessing once said (in "Doris Lessing at
Stony Brook," interview with Jonah Raskin reprinted in A
Sm a ll Pe rs on al Voi c e , Alfred A. Knopf, N.Y., 1974, p . 68),
" .. . when I start writing, the first thing I ask is, 'Who'is thinking the same thought? Where are the other people
who are like me?'I don't · believe anymore that I have athought . There is a thought around." I would like totake this view of my work , at the same time accepting myneed for a certain measure of personal recognition.
The
existence of a publishing establishment, with its emphasison competition and its influence on our notions of success,exacerbates the difficulty of doing so--for me and, I suspect, many others. Again, the women's presses-' can facilitate a process of self-validation, if we choose to usethem for that purpose.
We are right to be wary of the consequences of personal
power ; we have to admit that individual accomplishment on
the part of any woman does not further the cause o~ other
women if it serves to separate her from them . But we must
be careful how we judge each other . As I read the questionnaire responses, I had a feeling that many of them had
been written by women looking nervously over their shoulders, afraid almost to write down their opinions . Several
women wrote of their concern with trashing.
Several others
told me they felt apprehensive about how their publishedcomments would be received.
Clearly, an unhealthy atmosphere has arisen--one in which women are afraid to voice
their thoughts.
Susan Griffin suggests above that trashing is ·a "kindof projected self-hatred." I see it as tie d up with ourown personal guilt, a guilt proportional to the problems
we face . Unable to arrive at solutions, we blame ourselves
and/or each other . I hope this article will contribute toa general recognition that, though each woman's publishingdecisions 'are her own responsibility, the dilemmas themselves are not private but built into the system underwhich we live. That system seeks to pit us against eachother; it forces us to do thing s we don't want to do inorder to survive.

114

That far-flung, heterogeneous grouping I have designated "lesbian writing community" for lack of a better
term is never going to agree on a single political philosophy, strategy or code of conduct . Nevertheless, it isimportant for us to talk about where we're headed, because
the general tendency of what we do together is going to be
more important than the actions of single individuals.
For many of us, the women's presses have literally madepossible our art, our movement, our lives.
They represent
a sort of vast collective accomplishment on the p~rt oflarge numbers of women who have never shared a unified
political vision.
I intend to continue working and publishing with smallpresses, for the most part women's presses. Like most of
the women who responded to the questionnaire, however, I
will not absolutely rule out other publishing options.
Iknow that there is no way to live in America without participating ' in capitalism on some level, or for that matterto live in the woild and remain aloof from patriarchal
values and institutions . We live in occupied territory.
I am determined not to lose sight of that reality, no matter what opportunities may become available to me or toother individual women.
I want to thank Ellen. Bass, Robin Becker, Ellen Marie
Bissert, Sandy Boucher, Maure e n Brady, Rita Mae Brown,
Alison Colbert, Gina Covina, Susan Griffin, Beth Hodges,
Melanie Kaye, Audre Lorde, Judith McDaniel, Adrienne Rich,
Jane Rule, Martha Shelley, Julia Stanley, Fran Winant andIrene Yarrow for returning questionnaire responses andElly Bulkin for providing support and criticism.
By sharing their ideas with me, they made this article possible.

115

THE NAIAD PRESS
An interview by Gene Damon (Barbara Grier) of The Ladderwith ANYDA MARCHANT and MURIEL CRAWFORD , founders ofTh e Naiad Press. The interview takes place in Anyda andMuriel's home in Pompano Beach, Florida.
G: Since , until this time, virtually nothing has been known
about The Naiad Press, will you please tell us somethingof your backgrounds and earlier life?
A: I think I may speak for both of us.
I am a lawyer, witha good many years of service in private practic~ and in
the U.S . government and international organizations.
Muri e l has likewise spent her working life in the legal
field.
We have the same general e thnic and cultural background--English-Scotch-French ancestry long settled in
the southeastern United States. We have neither of us
been married. We have both earned our livings since ourteens. We are of the generation that was overtaken by
the great depression of the 1930's when we ~ere firstgoing out into the world on our own. We have both had
ample experience of the problems, the frustrations , theput-downs that women are subject to in the male-dominatedbusiness and professional world. We are both feminists.
I can remember, as a young child, the last episodes ofthe votes-for-women struggle right after the first world
war, watching the suffragettes being bundled into police
wagons for picketing the White House.
I was a very juniorassistant to Alice Paul in the early attempt of the 1930's
to get the Equal Rights Amendment adopted.
Now, fifty
years later , I am still plugging for ERA and am active inthe current phases of the women's movement.
G: In what way does this lead you to the present publishingventure?
A:

In the first place, we are both now retired and able togive our time and energy to some activity concerned with
opening up opportunities for women. We have noticed that ,though there are a good many women's presses coming into
existence, none of them are doing just what we would liketo do.
We both have always been inveterate novel-readers,with definite ideas about what a novel should be. We arealso, as I am sure many other women are, dissatisfied
with what is available in published work by lesbian authors

116

G: Do you see The Naiad Press as very different from , say,
Diana Press , Daughters , Inc. and The Women's Press Collective , and if so, in what ways?
A: I find it difficult to describe The Naiad Press in comparison with the other women's presses , since I am notsure that I clearly understand their several viewpoints.
It is easier to say what The Naiad Press is striving todo.
In the first place , The Naiad Press is dedicated to
the work of lesbian writers. As anyone knows who has
examined the two editions of your bibliography, The Le s bianin Lite r ,ztu r e , lesbian novels have until recently fallen
into three or four categories: tragedies depicting thehopeless quality of lesbian love amongst women more thanhalf-convinced of the truth of the epithets leveledagainst them; caricatures of non - women and menaces tosociety~lesbians as objects of ridicule; and, down at
the bottom, straight pornography for the titillation ofmale appetites.
The exceptional novel that is veracious
in its portraiture and of good quality as a novel is evennow very rare.
We are convinced that this scarcity is
due at least in part to the - ob~tacles in the way of publication .
Otherwise, The Naiad Press can be described as asmall press, operating-on a shoestring, brought into being, like most other small presses, in protest against .
the strangling~ffect of the market conditions that dominate the large commercial presses.
G: What do you see in the future for feminist publishing?
For The Naiad Press?
A: Let's take the future of feminist publishing first.
All
I can say is that I hope such publishing ventures continue to exist, that they will not be put out of businessby economic pressure and the apathy that comes from lackof support.
Women's presses speak for women. They givean outlet for the voices of women that would not otherwise be heard.
At the stage of development now reachedby the women's movement, they are essential.
And as we
see lesbians as the quintessential feminists, we feelthat a lesbian press has an especially important reason
for existing.
As for The Naiad Press, its future depends on theacceptance of its books by the readers for whom they are
published . At present the Press is not self-supporting.
The authors it publishes must be content with the satisfact~on of seeing their books in print and available toreaders . Already it is apparent to us that there aremany women who find pleasure in the books we have published .
If our readership grows, the future of the Press
will be assured.
G: How do you feel about propaganda and art?

117

A: There is at present a tendency, which I consider unfortunate, to require all feminist publications to be propaganda devices for the women's rights movement. This
exclusivist view is one I deplore . Women artists must
be free to practice their gifts as they see fit.
Anartist's spirit cannot b e harnassed arbitrarily for the
purpose of propaganda, even in a good cause.
The Naiad Press operates on the assumption that there
is an art of the novel.
And please remember that in thelast two hundred years of the novel in English women havebeen the great innovators . Novel writing has been the
one form of art in which women have successfully circumvented the determined efforts of the male Establishment
to suppress the very idea of women as artists.
Novelists
can, of course, have great influence on their r eaders.
But any argument projected in a novel should be there by
implication. The novel should never be merely a vehicle
for the argument . Otherwise we return to the days ofthe moral tale.
G: The work of Sarah Aldridge gives rise to criticism that
it is "elitist" and "apolitical." Do you find this in compatible with your own personal socialist leanings?

'.

A: No.
I have always been a socialist--never a Marxist,
since I have never been able to accept determinism.
I
have always been very much opposed to any social, econo mic or religious dogma that seeks to shackle · the humanspirit.
I am opposed to chattel - slavery, sexu~l slavery,
economic slavery of every kind.
And I don't find any thing in Sarah Aldridge's novels that offends my feel ings.
I believe this sort of criticism is irrelevant.
As we see them at The Naiad Press, Sarah Aldridge's
novels portray women of a certain background, living ina certain set of circumstances. The fact that in doing
this she projects a society in whic~ there are a great
many injustices does not mean that she advocates thepreservation of those injustices.
In fact, Sarah Aldridge's novels do seem to have a
purpose beyond the entertainment of the reader. That
purpose is simply to portray women who love other women
as normal, valuable human beings. Her characters refutethe stereotypes of lesbians as abnormal, perverse, guilt ridden aberrations in the body of human society . Every
woman who has experienced love for another woman (and I
mean erotic love, not affection) knows these stereotypes
to be false, mere caricatures and labels. How better toshow this than by portraying ordinary women living or~
dinary lives in easily recognizable circumstances?
G: What has ' The Naiad Press published so far?
A: The Naiad Press has so far published four novels, three
by Sarah Aldridge: The Latecomer is the love story of118

two dissimilar women who meet by accident; Tottie is thestory of two young women involved in the violent unrest
among young people in the 1960's; Cyther e a's Breath is
the story of the love of two women active in the women's
rights movement in Baltimore at the beginning of thetwentieth century . The fourth novel, Robin Jordan'sS p ea k Out, My Heart, is the first published work of ayoung writer whose concerns are those of young American
lesbians who now have the choice, if they have the courage, to emerge as what they are and what they see themselves to be.
Our fall, 1976, titles are the first English translation of Renee Vivien's novel A Woman Ap p e a r e d to Me
and, of course, Gene, your own Lesb i ana, a collection ofbook reviews (1966-72) from The Ladder.
G: What futu~e projects are underway at this time?
A: The Naiad Press's future projects are, for money reasons,still tentative.
But it is hoped that within the next
year we shall be able to announce the publication of two
novels, one by Jeannette Foster and the other by Valerie
Taylor.
In doing so, we are seeking to make available
to current readers the work of two of the most popular
contributors to The Ladde r.
Also, in the future The
Naiad Press hopes to publish a biography. The life of
one colorful lesbian is under consideration .
G: The Naiad Press differs greatly from the other feminist
presses springing up in one area, that is, the Press does
not physically create its own materials in all cases.
Do you feel that this is in any sense important to the
future of the Press?
A: It is true that The Naiad Press pays to have its books
produced by commerc·ial printers.
As far as The Naiad
Press is concerned, the printing process is a means toan end--the production of books.
In itself it has nopolitical nor ideological significance.
In the case of
Robin Jordan's novel, Womanpress of Chicago produced thebook.
In the future, where possible, the resources ofwomen book manufacturers will be used.
G: What is the relationship of The Naiad Press with The
Ladder?
A: In publication, the manufacture of books is only half ofthe p 'r oblem.
There must be some means of bringing thebooks to the attention and into the hands of readers.
The Naiad Press has been fortunate enough to gain theinterest and cooperation of The Ladder in helping to
distribute its publications. We hope to continue thiscooperation to our mutual advantage.

119

WOMEN'S PRESS COLLECTIVE
a n inte r view b y Harriet wit h MARTHA S HEL LEY of Th e Women 's
Press Collective , Sep t ember 5, 197 6, Women in Print Con f er ence , Omaha , Nebra s ka

H: You've been with the pr e ss collective for two years, but
it was started six years ago, in 1970 . Could you tellsomething about the origin of the press?

"

M: It started off as a mimeograph machin e in somebody's
basement. Some women got the idea of publishing a bookof poems and drawings by women because there wasn't anything around like it . They produced the graphics on
onion skin , which stuck to th e mimeograph drum so they
had to lift each sheet o ff b y h a nd.
After many hours andlots o f spaghetti and cof fee they managed to produce thisrather thick book called Woman to Woman , staple it to gether and start taking it around in shopping bags tosell.
The day after it appeared on the streets, Glide
Me mo rial Church call e d the wome n o ver and said we'd lik e
to gi ve this b ook nat ionwide distribution but there's on e
thing wrong : the se pas s ages from the S . C. U. M. Mani f e s toare too extr e me, too offensi ve , too whatever. Well, ofc ourse , the women got incens e d about Glide's wanting todelete mat e rial.
Th ey said no , so the guy asked , what
are your plans f or th e book? They hadn't had any plans,
they'd just produced the book , but they started dreaming
up plans and said oh, well, we 'd like to produce more
books, and we'd like to get a printing press, and theywent on c r e ating plans all of a sudden, ' and what happened
was they walked out with a check for $500 to buy a . press- knowing nothing, of cou~se, about presses ! , They took
the grant and bought thls huge old klunker of a Germanpress - -they just wanted the biggest press they could find .
It was broken, they couldn ' t get parts for it, they didn 't
know how to fix it, and the only guy in town who could
fix it said sure he'd do it if one of the women would
sleep with him, so they threw him out and called up every
woman in town who knew anything about mechanics , electricity or printing . They struggled for two years withthat press and produced only one book , but they learned
alot about presses . Then they managed to get rid of it
and ge t hold of a Multilith 1250 , and most of the books-we've produced 20--that you've seen from the press collec tive were produced on that . Fairly recently, we've acquired a bigger press and a lot of equipment, but for
years the only equipment at our disposal was the 1250 .
Wh a t kept the press going, however ; was not equipment but
thousands of hours of woman labor--hand collating, handstapling , women caring enough to put in hours and hoursof time with no pay in order to get the word out . To alarge extent we still rely on that kind of caring- -either
in the form of voluntary labor or donations--women belie v120

ing in the writing and also in thealot of emphasis on graphics.

~raphics .

We've put

H: Could you talk about the framework of the press colle c tive?
M: We started off being a collective because that was thething to be, but we ended up as a collection because everyone's got different political points-of-view. We're nottrying to reach a consensus where everyone thinks alike .
We now have five working members , but it's varied over
the years.
It began with eleven and at one point there
were thirteen, but it doesn't take that many to make theplace go.
H:

If there is political diversity, what is the framework
you sh.are?

M: The framework we share is that we're all committed tofeminism--whatever that means these days--that we're all
lesbians, although originally there were two straightwomen in the collective, and that's about it.
None ofus is committed to getting rich.
H: Are you committed to supporting yourselves off the press?
Is that a priority? ·M: We're committed to supporting ourselves somehow; if we
can do it jrom the press, great, and we're working toward
that, but the primary commitment is to getting out theword because if the primary commitment were to anythingelse I think the work would suffer.
We're trying to get
out new images of women both verbally and visually andany other way w~ can--musically, too.
We work with Olivia
Records: Judy Grahn and Pat Parker are doing a record
for Olivia, and we printed the cover for one of theirrecords, "High Risk." So what we are trying to produce
is new images of women--images of strength, images ofrebellion.
We're trying to encourage women to see ourselves in different ways . And that can go pretty far,like . the new book by Alice Mulloy, In Other Words.
It'sabout all sorts of things in the realm of perception: theway the brain works and different layers of language within our own language, and relationships--could be lesbian
relationships, could be any relationships--how all thesethings are connected.
It's making alot of scientificmaterial accessible for the first time to ordinary women.
We're trying to put out a whole lot of information that
we feel is useful to women .
H : Do you define yourselves as a lesbian press?
M: No, we don't because, although we're all working together
as lesbians, we put out books that aren't written bylesbians--for instance, The Rape J o urnal and Sin g a Bat t leSong by women of the Weather underground.
And we don ~ t121want to r eac h just lesbians.
We don't want to have thisexc lusive club that's defined by whom you sleep with .
We ' re mor e interested in defining politically what we're
doing and how we're a cti ng.
We're fighting against thepatriarchy, we're also fighting against capitalism, we
see a battl e going on many fronts.

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR--beth hodges~

Friday , October 1 , 1976 : I try to explain to her how
dull I was before 1974.
"She" is my landlady , aged si xty or so , a widow, a mother.
She may not be a native of the town, but to me, who's more
fo reign than any , her life is indistinguishable from that .
of the usual German-Russian Catholic citizen of Hays, Kansas.
Today she is standing in .the yard when I come home fromthe college. We talk together.
"You're writing, aren'tyou?" I am startled. How does she know what is preoccupying me?!
Two minutes earlier and a half a block away, I
was crossing the street , thinking that I had a commitment
to write for Sinister Wisdom and wondering how soon I could
abandon this "career" as editor.
Now this woman asks, a propos of nothing , "You're writ ing, aren't you?" I tell her that yes, in fact, I · have afast-approaching deadline .
I tell her more, that I havebeen free-lance editing for a couple of years and generally
what my projects are . She says something about talent.
I
try to explain that in the old world I had no talent. 1
tell her I was asleep until women became visible to me .
How do I write this piece? If I'd written a week ago,
I would have begun , "I understand how women become paralyzed." I didn't tell my landlady the other side. But I
want to tell you the truth, the whole story - or rather, mywhole story.
While I praise the movement to her, sayingthat now I have a passion and passion makes ~e able- - thetruth is, now I find myself disable.
Crossing the street, I was wondering how soon I could
abandon the editing career.
That's not accurate .
I waswondering how long I could last. Before that moment, it
had not been clear to me that I couldn't last.
I'd beensaying that I was ready for another career - but I didn't
mean it. Then, as I was crossing the street, a conversationfrom last . week came back.
I was in a restaurant in NYC withthree of my good friends .
I was telling them that I'd had
it, that I couldn't be the mediator forever, that I couldn't
take the pressure of explaining everyone to everyone, ofgetting each one published where she wanted to be published,of being "correct" politically .
(I feel other pressures,
but this is what I was saying then.) And even while I was
telling them I coul?n't take it, one of my friends was ask-122

ing that I say where I would publish each of the eightarti c l e s they had an interest in.
She was right.
And today I got the message: I c an't last--I answer to too many.
It was a ll inevitable; th e mom e nt I said yes to Sini s ter
Wisdom , everything would follow.
This story is not about
me e ven; in this itory , the star is the politics of publishing .
Saturday , Octobe r 2 , 197 6: I'm experiencing a great dealof anxiety in writing this.
Except that Harriet andCatherine asked me to, I would not write it.
I don't find
it interesting.
But I think my resistance to writing has
another explanation: I don't like being vulnerable.

*

*

*

The first time · I edited, everything was so simple.
My
range of choices was limited in the extreme.
I just did
what I could within the narrow bounds I had . There were nopolitics. · Ma r g i n s discovered me via the not-me-but-I-knowsomeone - who-knows - someone route.
I didn't have a choice ofp u blications; my c h oice was to say yes or no to Ma r g ins.
When I accepted the editing I . had met exactly two of thewomen who were the final contributors to the issue.
So forseven months, I asked every woman I could meet or could
reach by mail, "Will you .write?" When the time came to as semble the issue, I used every article I could--that is, .
could in good conscience.
The issue appeared and it was
praised universally.
(Well, three or four women said they
didn't much like the issue, but no one trashed me for doingit. )This time nothing is simple.
When I decided to do theissue with S i ni s t er Wis dom rather than with Margin s, I already displeased half the world.
For some, the essential
is not the biological sex of the publisher, but how avail able the publication will be to women (its distribution
and its cost); t h ey regretted my decision. Whereas lasttime I ran out of articles before I ran out of space, thistime I have three times the number of articles and a format
which offers a fourth less space.
How do I answer to theother three - fourths of my contributors? When I did the
Ma r gi ns issue I was the editor; Tom's function was to carryout my directives.
But S i ni s te r Wi s do m is Catherine andHarriet's spanking - new baby.
When we are three amazons wholove literature and the issue is the criticism of literatureand the issue is o n ly their second ... impossible that we not
be working together.
Th is time I'm not the autonomous editor.
~ can't help but be responsive to Harriet and Catherine
and the decisions ·about what goes in the issue are finallydecisions the three of us make together.

*

*

*

Kansas is lovely.
I'm sitting at the edge of a field at
the end of a grove.
The only sound is of the wind throughthe cottonwoods.
It's beautiful, but I won't stay.
The
difficulty I have in living here is this: my conversations
are long distance .
I write this in your absence; I hope123

that Catherine and Harriet will tell me if my voice doesn't
carry.

*

*

*

*

*

'*

*

*

These kinds of insecurities. My caring too much. Will
they like it? Will Harriet and Catherine be pleased? And
you: contributors, authors, readers--will 'you like ,it?
I've been insecure before--but not like this.
The othertime the situation was not complex; it was critical, but
resolvable. The reversal came in June .
I h~d been miserable for four long months.
I had assumed they were right,
the women who told me it was shitty to publish except witha woman.
And I was miserable because, while I believed
they must be right, I did not see that they were right.
I
did not see a principle; nor could I understand why, if
there was a principle, they chose to bully rather than to
explain; but still I believed they had to be right. So I
was intimidated, and I agonized for four m9nths--until
Catherine and Harriet told me they wanted to see me . Th~yfelt I had lost my self-confidence and they were concerned .
Their therapy was to give me this assignment.
"Write about
your two years," they said . So I went to Florida and I did
write, as an exorcism, and in Jacksonville I found the first(non-paper) community I've known .. And I recovered my selfconfidence.
This one is more difficult--wanting to please women I
love.
Later.
I experience so much anxiety writing this. Why?
Because I'm sworn to tell the truth.
The truth is my anger
is still alive.
Dear Catherine and Harriet,

Sunday ,October 3, 19'16

I don't want to write this--it is too painful. Yesterday I sat near the Smoky Hill River and the wind blew
through the cottonwoods and I wrote and I was bored. Then
my anger came back with a force that surprised me.
In June, you'd asked each other, "What if Beth can't do
the November issue?" I was a wreck then an.d you knew it.
You insisted that I drive to North Carolina and you,
Catherine, sat me down . You said, "You've lost your selfconfidence, Beth . " I didn't like hearing it but I loved
you for caring enough to tell the hard truth. Before I
left North Carolina, both of you told me to write about my
two years--for the November Sinister Wisdom, you said, but
I suspected you thought writing would be good therapy.
Whatever--I wrote; and it was excellent therapy.
But now it's time to write for publication and now writing is not therapy, it's a source of intolerable anxiety.
I wasn't anxious at first--at first my memories bored me so,
I couldn't stand to record them.
That was, until the past
revived.
Those feelings have not been exorcised, I discovered. And the boredom I experienced was my refuge fromthe pain.
124

I didn't want to bring up thos e four months.
I am angry
that I took seriously wome n who respected neither me nor
their position enough to represent the position to me.
Iam angry that although my taking them seriously cost me myself-confidence , I still don't know why I shouldn't edit
wi th Tom Montag. ·1 am angry that I said " Sini s te r Wi s dom "and the matter was ended for them; I was at last a feminist
editor--editing for Sini s te r Wi s dom made me that, right?-so who cared that I wasn't a believer or that I was too
wrecked to function? I am angry to have suffered a broken
spirit for no purpose and for no principle.
I don't want to write the article, friends -- I feel too
much anxiety.
Fri da y, Oct o b e r 8 , 19 76: Sunday was the third day of mywriting notes for the article.
I had been holding back-from the beginning.
Sunday I realized I would continue tohold back--for as long as I was writing for publication .
So I wrote a letter which I knew would n o t b e pubZ i sh ed .
Then I read it through from the beginning, my three daysof notes.
And I saw that the - process of the writing wasitself a story.
Since Sunday I haven't been making notes.
I've been doing all the things one does when it's midterm
and all the things one does when it's time to get an issue
to its publishers. But what started on Sunday did not stop.
Once I began feeling anger, I was a ngry--and for the next
two days I was angry with everyone in turn. Then my anger
was exorcized .
In between the classes and the exams and the last minuteediting, I was rewriting. Monday I worked on what I'd writ ten Friday; Tuesday on what I'd written Saturday; and Wednesday, Sunday. From Monday through Wednesday my emotions
were so intense and their progress so drastic, that rewriting was difficult. The temptation was always to add towhat I'd written three days earlier . Rewriting, I was al ways three days more experienced emotionally than I'd been
when I had written and I was usually more interested in mypresent perspective than in the partial insights of myyounger self.
I had to try not to write anything in.
Now I'll tell you about the anger and its exorcism.
I
was feeling quite sorry for myself that my editing career
had to end .
I can't edit, I said, unless I have autonomy.
And there is no way to have autonomy in a publication put
out by radical feminists.
Finding women publishers is in evitably to en d my e diting.
So I was angry with the women
who pressured me to find women publishers.
I found it impossible to answer to my reviewers . So I
was angry with them.
The responsibility I had to the women of Sinist e r Wisdom
was in conflict with the responsibility I felt I had to thereviewers.
I had answered to the women of Sinister Wisdom
before I had answered to my reviewers.
So I was angry withHarriet and Catherine.

125Tu es day ni g ht I was working on the writing I ' d done
Saturd ay . Wh e n I came to co ntrast working with Tom andwo rk i n g wi t h Ha rri e t a nd Ca th e rine, I had to think (my notesa id o n l y : I c.H.re H. & C. approv e ).
I was suddenly wonder s tru c k.
I f I h a d st a rt e d a magazine I know what it would
mea n t o me . And I would no t readily trust someone else toe dit, mo s t es p ec i a lly a t f irst.
So how came these woment o 1 t me s h a r e in th e ir c r e ation? I didn't know; the won d e r o f it wa s too g r e at; I was overwhelmed.

*

*

*

I h a v e n't co nc lud e d anythin g . Tuesday night I was filled
wi t h l ove fo r Cat h e rin e and Harriet again . And Wednesday,ve n r e wo rk i n g t h e sec tion that had been so threatening, I
r e l t in vul n e r a bl e : I would not be brought down again.
IAnd
wo uld ma ke my o wn d ec ision s about where I'd publish.
I'd La u g h at t r as h e rs.
I was quite pleased ' to have resolved
a ll my f ee lin gs . Now I wa s s trong and fr ee of the past.
Th e n I r e m mb e r e d ... Tu es day.
Tuesday was th e day my anger
e nd e d , t il ' mom e nt I was wo nd e rstruck.
Tuesday was also t h ed ay I b ega n my pe riod.

Dear Oerh,"

Sunday ,Octobe r 17 ,19 76

Any way yo u loo k at it, publishing is bad business -wh e th e r e ng age d in by multinational capitalist conglomerateso r by mas oc h istic . l e sbians.
Conglomerates have' taken overpatriar c hal p ubl is hing because publishing is bad business.
It may b e a tax writ e - off for Gulf and Western, but that's
not th e mo s t pr ess ing r e ason they publish.
Corporate America
c ontrols e stabli s hm e nt publishin'g because c ontrol of commu nic ations e nsur e s co ntrol of politics and industry . Feed thep e opl e what you want th e m to think; for that minority ofth e populati o n wh o r e ads, f ee d th e m books that- -with sop histi c ati o n , with s ome subtl e ty -- t e ll them wh at to think (andb es t o f a ll, f ee d th e m enough radicalism so th e y believet h e y'r e not b e ing manipulat e d).
If you c ontrol the intell ec tual lif e of th e nation , you kill r e volution because
r evo luti o n b e gins in th e mind.
You publish books and jour nal s th a t c ontinu e, th e c rippling pro ce ss begun in the schools.
Yo ur goal: a satiated , cynical, pseudo-sophisticated populace.
Wh a t Jun e Arnold ( Quest , Summer , 1976) called "the finis hingpr es s" (b e (~ause it intends to finish our movement) and "thehardcov r of corporate Ame rica" exists primarily to killr e volution.
Th e l e ?bi a n pr e ss e s exist primarily to make revolution.
Th ey don't e xist to c reate an alternate e c onomy (a chain ofl e sbian laundries would make more money); they don't exista s mo d e ls f o r what-it -w ill-look-l ike - after-the-revolution(how COULD they?); t~ey don't exist as romantic lesbian en c la ve s (any woman who publishes commits herself to communi c ating, no t to isolating herself with her friends); and they126

don't exist primar ily to make the l esbian writers they publish feel good.
Th e re may b e side -b e ne fit s: some of us will
make subsdstence sal a ri es someday; some of us will develop
ways of working together that are less patriarchal than before ; some of us will spend most of our days with like-minded
lesbians; some of us may feel so good we'll get orgasmic
thinking on that 1250 Multilith that's running off our work .
But the point remains the point: eve ry genuinely feminist
work of art is a blow at t he heart of patriarchal reality .
When lesbians control our own publishing and our own printing
and our own distributing of our own words, we're directing
those blows to the target.
Nothing gets done without a great passion in the doingof it.
Lukewarm lesbian prose and lukewarm support of lesbian publishing has the same effect--it means we will failbecause we've already been absorbed.
What word we want to
say here badly enough to overcome ,our fear of saying it, is .. .
fanatical~
We love women who are fanatical in the pursuitof anti-patriarchal revolution (give us another word for it;.
we need a new word, one of our words, not that old word
'revolution' that connotes death, when women have died enough,when we've hardly ever begun to live without falling into
self-sacrifice . ) You know as well as we know that inertia
and cowardice are our most insidious enemies because they're
the weapons we use against ourselves . We fight ineffectually
because somewhere ··in us we want to fail; ·we want to be beaten
so we can give up the task, an intolerable task, of sustaining
a reality that is counter to everything we've been taught
is real.
Lesbian literature is central to sustaining thereality we create together ; when we fail our words, we failour new selves ... and we'll die for those failures.
You said that you were made to suffer for no purpose andfor no principle.
But there is . a political principle underlying an independent feminist lesbian press that 'we treat
and regard and work for as the real press: power . You wrote
in Margins: "Men pretend that lesbian sexuality is a threat
to society . Lesbian sexuality is not threatening . Men
claim that in order to mask their real fear, their fear of
woman's power . Man is afraid of the woman in touch with her
power, the woman claiming her power.
The woman-identified
woman is frightening- - she knows man's secret, that he fears
and hates her, and that he has structured an entire system
to keep · knowledge of her tremendous power from herself andto prevent her from actualizing her power ."A lesbian is by definition a woman with women, and women
togeth~r generate power.
The quintessential form of feminist
power is not what men have called "power"--heirarchical andviolent relationships in which the "powerful" dominate the"weak"--but rather what Mary Daly called "power of presence
to each other and power of absence to the oppressor."
Elizabeth Janeway talks about the effects of our "absence"on patriarchal powercenters: " . . . the powerful are as ambivalent about the weak as the weak are about power and theirrelation to it.
On the one hand, the powerful regard theweak with contempt, as a population of suckers and boobs ,
127

'.

easily fooled and manipulated. This seems highly rational,
on the face of it. But the powerful are also afraid of theweak.
Why should they be , if power is nothing but dominanceand submission? If the world model of power as dominanceand submission is true , one possible answer is that thepowerful are crazy. They should have nothing real to fear,
since they are already dominant .. . But what if . the powerful
do in fact have reaso n fo r fearing the weak? What if we
li ve in a not-absurd world and the guilt of the powerful is
not merely neurotic but based on the existence of some realcapacity which is in the possession of the weak? What, then ,do they want fro m us? . . They want not to be crazy. They
want to escape from guilt.
They want the legitimization of
their power by our consent either in se c ular or mythic terms .
absence of response frightens the powerful , for it tells
them that the power relationship has dissolved. Whether
they ever consciously were aware that it existed, they know
on the nerve ends when it is gone."( Sig ns, Vol . I, No. , 1,
p . 105.).
When we treat our presses as the real press and we fightfor them with every weapon we have and we give our best work
to them, we refuse legitimacy to the patriarchal press .
Even supposing that our real goal was to take over thatpress--or to perform a kind of politi ca l karate, using theweight of the patriarchal press to destroy the patriarchalpress--our base for doing this is the independent feminist
press.
If the boycott against Moth e r Jones su~ceeds, itwill be because feminist writers read the feminist press,
according legitimacy to the words of the women calling fora boycott, and because those same feminist writers have an
outlet for their own words in the feminist press .
The feminist movement is being absorbed from the rightand from the left; the absorption happens by way of a combined seduction and betrayal, tactics that are 5000 years
old. SEDUCTION: Susan Brownmiller got $250,000 for thepaperback rights to Again st Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.
She's the carrot; the Barbara Walters.
(Never mind that it
won't happen again or that Brownmiller would never have been
one of Time's dozen "Women of the Year" if she hadn't softened
the book's conclusions.) And BETRAYAL: harassment by thepost office and the IRS, Big Mama Rag's office burglarized,
the theft of San Diego's Center for Women's Studies and Services subscription files.
There's a reason why we need tothrow our weight behind the lesbian presses now.
In five
years we may not have the choice .
We think that ' the women who put pressure on you to publish with women were operating on a sound principle: "powerof absence to the oppressor." But power of absence doesn't
work unless it's effected by a "power of presence to eachother."
Talk about pain, Beth. There's no way for it to be easy,
working with lesbians. We mean too much to each other , andthe margin we operate on is so narrow--a tenth-story ledge
above careening traffic (and the crowds below chanting "jump!
jump! jump!") But what choices do we have? You can publish
128

again with Montag, but what will you learn? We could print
again witt a cheap non-union white male shop in Clover, South
Carolina, but our strength depends finally on the strengthof the feminist publishing and printing and distributing
n e twork, and so we print with Leslie and Nancy in Durham.
We need them and they need us.
There's a time lag, but by
k eeping this issue in feminist hands from mindflash to bookstore, we gain all these things: we solidify our ties witheach other; we learn the whole time we're doing; we recycle
our money; we reach more lesbians with a journal written justfor them; we strengthen the chain that will make this possible in the future; and, most importantly, we c reate breakthroughs in the content, in the vision BECAUSE we are soclear about this: we are not justifying our lives before theworld, we are talking to women. We have something to say,and the women we struggle with all along the process of writing, editing, printing, distributing, keep us honest andto-the-point.
They also give us a great deal of anxiety .
But so would the men and the non-feminist women, and forless good reasons .
Our failures in staying really pr e s e nt to each other are
the source of our pain . .. and of the cynicism that's an aftermath of pain . We hardly know how to begin overcoming ourseparations except to keep talking and to keep sharing thattalk in print.
And to keep in front of our eyes what we can do if we
do it together : with income and skill-sharing, with a very
political passion," with our own labor and vision, we canc reate a press that breaks down the patriarchal elitism ofprint. We can create black lesbian presses; we can salvage
writing time for women with childr e n; we can distribute tocloset lesbians in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; we can create acommunications bond between women that works and that speaksin the voice of the resistance.
None of this is possible
with the patriarchal press . The literary-industrial establishment exists to make equal communication impossible.
And not only what we can do but what we are going to donow: distribute this issue to more lesbians than ever saw
Marg ins.

129

QUESTIONNAIRE
There is unfeminine, (but oh, so Female)sureness in my hands,
checking "No." to every questionin the Harris poll, Reader's Digest,
Mademoiselle,
I am an outlaw, so none of that applies to me:
I do not vote in primaries, do not wish to increase
my spending power, do not take birth control
pills.
_
I do not have a legal residence, cannot tell you
my given name or how (sometimes very) old
I really am.
I do not travel abroad, see no humor in uniforms,
and my lips are good enough for my loveras they are.
Beyond that, no one heads my household, I would notsave my marriage if I had one, or anybody ~lse's
if I could.
I do not believe that politicians need me, that Jesus
loves me, or that short men are particularly sexy.
Nor do I want a penis.
What else do you have to offer?

© Susan Saxe

Philadelphia, )975

"Quest ionnaire " is part two of a poem entitZed"No tes from the First Year."

'.

130

RECENT LESBIAN TITLES FROM FEMINIST PRESSES- annethracevirginiaruffulo(This is a list , as compLete as we could make it,o f lesbian literature issued i n late 1 9 75 and 1976
by the independent f eminist presse s.
All titles
may be ordered directly ; press addresse s a r e given
at the end of the li stin gs . )LESBIAN LITERATURE: THE HERITAGE--Elly Bulkin & Joan Larkin , e ds. Ama z on Poetry (OUT AND
OUT) 110 pp. $2.00 .
-- Gina Covina & Laurel Galana , eds. The Lesbian Reader : An
Amazon Qua rt erly Ant h ology (AUAZON) 247 pp . $4 .50 postpaid .
- - Gene Qamon, Jan Watson, Robin Jordan The Lesbian in Lit erature : A Bibliography 2nd e dition , 1975 , 2500 e n t ri es
co ded and annotated (NAIAD) 96 pp. $ 7.00 .
- -Gene Damon Lesbiana : Book Reviews from The Ladder 1966 - 72
introd: Ann Leeson (NAIAD) 330 pp. index e ~$5.00.
--Ge ne Damon (Barbara Gri e r) The possibilities are Staggeringspeech befor e 2nd Annu a l Lesbian Writ e r s' Conference, Chicago,1975 (WOMANPRESS) 16 pp. $.65.
- -Jeannett e Fost er Sex Variant Women in Literature re-issueof 1955 pioneer study wi afterword by Barbara Gri e r (DIANA)
420 pp. indexed , $8.00.

13 1

--Coletta Reid & Barbara Grier , eds. Le sbi an Li v e s: Bi og raph ie s of Wo men from The Ladder ; The Le s bian Home Jo urnal :Sto r ie s f rom The Ladde r; and Th e Lavender He r ring : Es s ay s
fr om Th e Ladder-(DIANA) $5.00 each .
--Valerie Taylor For My Gr anddaug ht e rs speech before 1st
Annual Lesbian Writers' Conference, Chicago, 1974 (WOMANPRESS)
16 pp. lP.50 .
--Wome n Lo v i n g , Women Wr iting anthology o f poetry and prosefrom 2nd Annual Lesbian Writers' Conference (WOMANPRESS)
128 pp. $3.95.
--Renee Vivien A Woman Appea r ed t o Me 1904 French novel;transl . Jeannette Foster, introd. Gayle Rubin (NAIAD) 135
pp. ~3.50.
FICTION:--Sarah Aldrid~e Cy t her ea ' s Breat h (NAIAD) 240 pp. $5.00.
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--Elana Dykewoma.n They Will Kno w Me By My Tee t h: Stor ies &Poem s of Le s bian ' Str u ggle , Cele b'ra '{ io n a n d SUY'v i v al ~.~egaera
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f4 pp . $3.25.
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80 pp. photos, $3 . 50.
.
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- - d pat mattie No Lie s , No MOY' e , Not Now from 6] Di a mo nd St . .
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bra ss b oo k o f lo we r - cla ss t Y' a sh (ATHENA) 32 pp. $2.00,- - Susan Saxe Ta l k Among t he Wo me nfol k from Susan Saxe Defense
Fund, c/o Philadelphia Nat'l. Lawyers' Guild , 1427 Walnut
St . , Philadelphia, Pa. 19102 , $2.00 postpaid .
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Washington, D . C. 20016 , 32 pp. $1.50.
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c/o Big Mama Rag, 1724 Gaylord St . , Denver, Co . 80206, 45 pp .
graphics, $3.05 postpaid .
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--F ran Winant Dyke Jacket (VIOLET) 64 pp. $3.00.
--Wri ting -On Collective Image c / o Douglas, 36 16 Conn. Ave.
N.W. #300 , Washingt o n , D.C. 20008 , $2.25 postpaid.
OF INTEREST:--M:F: Be~l Safe House : A Casebook St udy of Revolutio naryt he 1970 ' s --the SLA Six and a study of violenceand separatism as l egiti mat e tactics (NORTHWEST MATRIX)
154 pp. $4.00.
--Rita Mae Brown A Plain Brown Rappe r--essays since 1969
(DIANA) 200 pp. $5.00.
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postpaid.
--Gorgons The Lesbian Anti - Rape Packet P . O. Box 4094, Seattle ,Wa. 98104, $1.00 .· To be sold to and shared by women only .
--Roberta Gregory Dynamite Damsels --comics , P.O. Box 4192,
Lo ng Beach, Ca. 90804, $1.35 postpaid.
--Alice Molloy In Other Words . _ "This book may turn you into
a lesbian anarchist paranoid schizophrenic witch." (WOMEN'S
PRESS COLLECTIVE). Write for price .
--Juanita Weaver, ed. Companions for the Journey: Wome n andSpirituality 1710-19th St . N.W . Washington , D . C . 20009, $4 , 50.
--Mary Wings Come ~ ut Commix (distr . AMAZON REALITY) 32 pp.
$1.00 postpaid.
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--S ex uality titles : see pag e 72.
PRESSES AND DISTRIBUTORS
Fem~n~sm ~n~MAZON

PRESS, 395-60th St., Oakland , Ca. 94618 .
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ATHENA PRESS, c / o Rensb erger, 4417 Westminst er, St . Louis ,Mo. 63108.
DAUGHTERS , INC., Plain fiel d , Vt. 05667.
(Add 35~ per booy.
postage & handling . )DIANA PRESS, 12 W. 25th St. , Baltimore, Md . 21218.
(Add
15% postage & hand li ng .)DRUID HEIGHTS BOOKS, 685 Camino d el Cany o n , Mill Valley,
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handfing.)
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(Add 25~ per book postage & handling.)
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WOMANPRE SS , Box 59 33 0 , Ch icago , Ill . 606 4 5.
THE WOMEN 'S PRESS COLLECTIVE, 5251 Broa dway, Oak land , Ca .
9461 8 .
(Add 15% p ostage & h a ndlin g. )Note : If t he list price i s not marked " postpaid " and thepress addr es s does not include:postage and handling .charges ,add 15% to the list price of the book you are o rder~ng .
FOR PRE-1975 TITLES :--K i rst e n Grims ta d & Susa n Re nni e, e d s . The New Woman ' s Sur vival Sourcebook 1975 . $5 . 00 f r om Knop f.
- - Bet h Ho d ges, g u est e d. Special Issue on Lesbi an Feminist
Writing and Pu blishing Au g u st, 1975. $1 . 00 f r om Margins,
c/o Tom Mo n tag, 2912 N. Hac K8 tt, Milwa u kee, Wi . 53211 .
FOR LISTI NG OF MAGAZINES:-- L e sbi an Connection , Ambi tious Am azo n s, Box 8 11 , E. Lan s in g,
Mi. 48823 . (Mo n t hl y n atio n al news l e tt er, do na ti o n r e qu es t e d .)- -Th e Lesbian Reader- -Th e Lesbian Tide, Ma r c h / Apr il 1976 , 1005B Ocean Av e . , San ta
Monica, Ca. 9 04 0 3, $.65 .

CONTRIBUTORS ' NOTE S"JUNE ARNOLD i s a co - fo unde r of Da u g h te r s, In c . and th e au t hor of The Cook and the Carpenter a nd Sister Gin .
SANDY BOUCHER is t he a uth o r of Assaults and Rituals, a b o ok
o f s ho rt st o ri e s publish e d by Ma ma 's Pr e s s, and is now
fi ni s hing a nove l abo u t wome n l iv in g a nd wo rkin g toget he r.
RITA MAE BROWN, b o rn 2 8 Novemb e r 1944 , Ha no ve r , Pe nns y l v ani a.
Her great es t sham e in li fe is b e ing b o rn on th e wr o ng
side o f th e Ma s o n-Di xo n lin e . He r gr ea t e st gl o ry is b e in gable to laugh about it.
PAT CALIFIA i s a po e t wh o cir c ulat e s c lit propaganda in San
Fran c is co . Sh e is c omp~e ting a bo o k a bout lesbi a n s ex uality. Th e whol e world will kn o w wh e n it is f inish e d because her lov e r Lo is will giv e a loud whoop of joy .
JAN CLAUSEN, author After Touch , e ditor Conditions . "Th e
Politics of Publishing " wa s c ompl e ted with th e gen e rous
assistan ce of th e De partme nt of Taxation and Finance,.
Unemployme nt Insurance Division.
DEBORAH CORE i s a l e sbian/feminist who lives and teach e s
in northern Ohi o .
TEE CORINNE is 33 , liv e s in San Francis c o, lov e s women,
dr a wing , ph o t o graphs. She do e s book illustrations: Cunt
Coloring Book , Joani Bl a nk's Playbooks and Good Vibra tions. He r graphi c s hav e appear e d in Womanspirit , Country
Women , Lesbian Voices , So ' s Your Old Lady .
LYNDALL COWAN is a f re e -l a n ce e ditor and critic currently
c o-t e a c hing a cours e in Le sbian lit e ratur e at San Fran c is c o St a t e. Sh e 's mostl y invol ved wi t h her two cats,wome n , plants , Aikido, and psy c hi c r e s e ar c h.
134

FRANCES DOUGHTY. "I saw a lot of trees, but no forest, while
straight and academic. Evolution to feminism and lesbianism gave me a place from which to begin dealing withwholes. I feel a growing pull to that which nourishes
inner life, curiosity about others', but shy about it."
PAMELLA FARLEY is a co-coordinator in the Women's Studies
Program at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She is working tobuild regional and national associations for those engaged in feminist education and ·work projects.
BARBARA GRIER (GENE DAMON) edited Th e L adde r~ compiled Th e
Lesbi an in Lite r atu r e (with help) , wrote many things
for bread and a few for love, but is first , last, andalways a reviewer. She has always tried to follow the
dictates of her conscience in this regard (see page 65) .
SUSAN GRIFFIN is 33. A feminist , lesbian, poet. Her collection .o f poetry , Like the Ir is of an Eye , is publishedby Harper and Row this month. She is currently writing
a long work: Wo man and Na tur e : Th e Roa ring Ins i de He r.
BERTHA HARRIS is the founder of a yet-unnamed feminist review of books and the author of Love r , just publishedby Daughters, Inc.
BETH HODGES. Last · year her motto was "Margaret . Anderson or
nothing." This year she would settle for a sailboat anda job in Florida.
RHEA JACOBS lives and writes in St. Louis, Missouri .
MELANIE KAYE. Her p'o etry collective "just published Na ming($2.25 postpaid from Olive Press, 333 ' S.E.' 3rd , Por tland,
Oregon 97214).
JACQUELINE LAPIDUS is a lesbian feminist poet living in
Paris. Her collection of poetry, S t a r t ing Ov e r, will beavailable in January from Out & Out Books.
JOAN LARKIN is a poet (H ou s e wor k ), founder of Out & Out
Books, co-editor of Amazo n Po etry. She is a lesbian
mother who lives in Brooklyn with her ·nine-year-old
daughter, Kate.
MARIANNE LIEBERMAN charlotte nco "I like the challenge offeminist imagery. To look for new visual experience keeps
me in touch with myself and with women."
AUDRE LORDE. Her most recent collection of poetry, Co al,
was published in May byW.W. Norton.
JUDITH MCDANIEL is a lesbian feminist writer and teacher
currently working at Skidmore College.
DEENA METZGER. "I am director of the Writing Program of the
Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building . In mywork, teaching, writing, I look to discovering and expressing the deepest most authentic woman's voice."
SUSAN SAXE. "These poems are a part of me, and if right now
I cannot walk with you under the stars and tell you,'This is who I am,' at least I can give you these fragments of myself and tell you, 'This is what I wrote. '"(from the foreword to Talk Among the Wome n f o lk)
MARTHA SHELLEY is a certified public hitchhiker. Her poems
Crossing the DMZ were published by The Women's Press
Collective.
135

SUSAN SHERMAN . "I think all my life I have loved women.
Have been in love with what I am, what I wanted to be.
With what I thought was b eautiful. Gentle. With what I
wanted, gently, beautifull y, to touch , to be."JULIA PENELOPE STANLEY has r ece ntly been described by acolleague as "bright but f i erce." When asked if she
would elaborate, she d ec lin e d to comment.
BEVERLY TANENHAUS . "Thr ee years ago, proclaiming myself Ms.
Tanenhaus won me the dubious title of radical feminist
on a conservative colleg e campus at the foothills of
the Catskills. Writing about , talking to , corresponding
with my sister poets kept me alive and well in thesebeautifu l, isolated hills."
JULIA WILLIS is in good health and having a fine time andwishes you the same.
BONNIE ZIMMERMAN has a Ph . D. in English and is now a freelanc e comp teacher and a "fellow" at the Newberry Library.
Among other movement work , sh e used to write for Lavende r .
Woman.

SINISTER WISDOM
Sinister Wisdom is published three times a year.
It contains essays, fiction, poetry, drama, reviews and graphics.
Its purpose is to develop
a lesbian imagination in politics and art.
Individual subscriptions are $4 . 50 for threeissues.
Single copies of Vol. I, No . 1 (July,1976) available for $2.00 . Vol. I, Np. 3 (Spring,1977): "A Sinister View of Humanism .. . and otherthings."Submissions are always welcome. (s.a.s.e . please)
Address subscriptions, submissions and correspondence to:Catherine & Harriet
3116 Country Club Drive
Charlotte, N.C. 28205
Bookstore orders from :Women in Distribution
Box 8858
Washington, D.C. 20003

136

Printed by Whole Women Press
Durham, N.C.
Bound by Diana Press
Baltimore, Md.

·50

"

Special Issue:
LESI3IAN WRITING. - & PUI3LISHING.

EDITED I3Y I3ETH HODGES