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Log on to www.herizons.ca to subscribe or fill in the handy reply form in the envelope enclosed. table of contents SPRING 2007 / VOLUME 20 NO. 4

News SHOULD THE AGE OF CONSENT BE RAISED? 6 by Kaj Hasselriis HUMAN RIGHTS WORKER AIDS NEWCOMERS 8 by Reuel S. Amdur HARPER SLAMS DOOR TO EQUALITY 9 by Penni Mitchell KENYAN ACTIVIST WINS V-DAY SUPPORT 14: Dove —awash in feminist message. 12 by Maggie Ziegler CAMPAIGN UPDATES 14 Daycare hope, soap and hormones

Features SPITFIRE 18 Ani Difranco on why she hasn’t given up on the American left. by Cindy Filipenko

FEMINIST INK 24 The Toronto Women’s Bookstore put women of colour front and centre, and the store’s financial growth is just one of the results. 24: Feminist Ink by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

A RADICAL MEDITATION ON RECOVERY 28 In this intimate conversation, poet Betsy Warland talks about the process of recovering from cancer and how it has altered her outlook. by Di Brandt

WHO CARES FOR CHILD-CARE WORKERS? 32 With a new study showing early childhood education improves children’s academic performance, the working conditions of daycare workers are a growing feminist concern. by Danielle Harder

NOT A DISABILITY STORY 36 Bonnie Klein’s latest film rocks. by Emma Kivisild 36: Not a Disability Story

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 1 table of contents SPRING 2007 / VOLUME 20 NO. 4 Kick-ass women in a world that needs its ass kicked

MANAGING EDITOR: Penni Mitchell FULFILLMENT AND OFFICE MANAGER: Phil Koch ACCOUNTANT: Sharon Pchajek BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Ghislaine Alleyne, Phil Koch, Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhard, Valerie Regehr EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Ghislaine Alleyne, Gio Guzzi, Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhand ADVERTISING SALES: Penni Mitchell (204) 774-6225 DESIGN: inkubator.ca WEB MISTRESS: Rachel Thompson/BlueMuse RETAIL INQUIRIES: Disticor (905) 619-6565 PROOFREADER: Phil Koch 51: The truth about lying COVER PHOTO: Danny Clinch

HERIZONS is published four times per year by HERIZONS Inc. in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. One-year subscription price: $27.50 (includes GST) in Canada. Two-year subscription is $43.92 in Arts & Ideas Canada. Subscriptions to US: add $6.00. International MUSIC MUST-HAVES subscriptions: add $8.00. Cheques or money orders are payable to: HERIZONS, PO Box 128, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA R3C 2G1. The Indigo Girls, Kate Reid, Ursula Rucker, 40 Ph (204) 774-6225. Kim Beggs, Theresa Sokyra SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES: [email protected] EDITORIAL INQUIRIES: [email protected] BOOK REVIEWS ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: [email protected] 42 Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil, The WEBSITE: www.herizons.ca Mommy Brain, Madwoman in the Academy, HERIZONS is indexed in the Canadian Periodical Index. Thin … just for starters GST #R131089187. ISSN 0711-7485. The purpose of HERIZONS is to empower women; to inspire hope FILM and foster a state of wellness that enriches women’s lives; to build 49 Forest for the Trees awareness of issues as they affect women; to promote the strength, wisdom and creativity of women; to broaden the THE TRUTH ABOUT LYING boundaries of feminism to include building coalitions and support among other marginalized people; to foster peace and ecological 51 by Lisa Foad awareness; and to expand the influence of feminist principles in the world. HERIZONS aims to reflect a feminist philosophy that is diverse, understandable and relevant to women’s daily lives. Views expressed in HERIZONS are those of the writers and do not Columns necessarily reflect HERIZONS’ editorial policy. No material may be reprinted without permission. Due to limited resources, HERIZONS PENNI MITCHELL does not accept poetry or fiction submissions. 5 Choice Words HERIZONS is a member of the Manitoba Magazine Publishers Association. LISA RUNDLE 17 Food for Thought HERIZONS acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publication Assistance Program (PAP) and the Canada Magazine MARIKO TAMAKI Fund our toward mailing and editorial costs. The Epilady Cometh 39 HERIZONS gratefully acknowledges the support of the Manitoba Arts Council. SUSAN G. COLE Publications Mail Agreement No. 40008866, PAP Registration No. 55 Pass the Lipstick 07944. Return Undeliverable Addresses to: PO Box 128, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3C 2G1, Email: [email protected] LYN COCKBURN Herizons is proudly printed on Forest Stewardship Council- 56 Dicking Around on Equality certified paper that is 50 % recycled, including 25% post- consumer, acid-free and chlorine-free.

2 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS letters

Embargo challenged.

Rozena Maart: Interview on white consciousness a joy. Tokyo trafficking article corrected.

KUDOS ON WHITE shambles, despite decades of massive that affects innumerable women and men. CONSCIOUSNESS subsidies from fellow socialist regimes. In 1986, I bored myself into sobriety, for Congratulations! Herizons’ Winter 2007 issue Unrest is punished. The Cuban army has which I am tremendously grateful, and since was especially satisfying from cover to cover. standing orders to shoot any Cuban citizens 1989 I have been in recovery from the effects It was a joy to read the interview with Rozena trying to escape. Repeat that last sentence a of growing up in a family in which alcohol was Maart. At times singularly, within Canadian few times out loud, because they prove it a problem. I continue to be a member of a white domination, she has determinedly every day. The bodies wash up on the recovering community because the tentacles refused to minimize her awareness. shores of all of Cuba’s neighbours. I’ve seen of this disease are relentlessly rooted. To RENEE SAGEBEAR ALBRECHT them personally. They are mingled with the those who believe that 12-step programs are Hamilton, ON bodies of Cubans trying daily to escape on politically regressive, let me say that my flimsy little rafts, logs or rowboats, and who feminist credentials are finely honed. BUSTED ON BLOCKADE have run afoul of sharks or the nightly Recovery circles helped me to grow up, Today I was doing one of my favourite things, tropical thunderstorms on the open teaching me how to take full responsibility for browsing a magazine rack, and I saw your Caribbean Sea. my health and happiness. The trick is, you magazine, which is new to me. I was perusing North Korea is the other remaining true- “gonna wanna.” it with pleasure, and then I saw your article on believer communist regime. By wild Lyn, you did the only and best thing you Cuba (Winter 2007 issue). I was floored to see coincidence, the economy is a shambles and could do: You showed your daughter you loved you raise that tired old canard about the the country survives only through massive her when she couldn’t love herself enough to United States being the source of Cuba’s subsidies from other [similar] regimes. North get well. Bless you for bringing this disease economic woes. Korea also shoots its own citizens trying to out of the feminist closet. Let’s run through this again. The United escape, on a nightly basis. CY-THEA SAND States has enacted an embargo, barring The United States is not even remotely Montreal, QC American citizens from trading with Cuba. Cuba’s biggest problem, no matter how That’s all. They are not blockading Cuba; Cuba petulant and disruptive it can be. Cuba’s WHAT GIVES ON OTHER CANCERS? is free to trade with all 178 other countries biggest problem is entirely homegrown, and I certainly agree with Penni Mitchell’s article around the world. That means that Cuba has will not have any chance to improve until the “Pink to Green” in Herizons’ Summer 2006 trade access to all the goods in existence. Castros are gone. issue. Many socialist countries over the years since BRUCE GRANT I have nothing against the cause of breast 1961 have bent over backwards trying to prop Toronto, ON cancer, I just wonder why there is no Walk for up Castro’s oppressive regime. the Cure for colon cancer, or, for that matter, What is keeping Cubans poor is the CONDOLENCES TO COCKBURN other cancers. Colon cancer is not considered Castro brothers, Raul and Fidel, who have I am deeply saddened that Lyn Cockburn lost sexy, that’s why. Yet colorectal cancer ranks ruled the country with a homegrown Marxist her daughter to alcoholism. I am also moved as the second most common cancer philosophy since 1961. The economy is a that Lyn chose to publicly expose a disease diagnosed in women, ranked second in the

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 3 letters

number of deaths behind lung Alternative Livelihood project. cancer. That would be Mary Joy I am a two-time survivor. At the Barcelona, also a former time of my diagnosis, my doctor entertainer in Japan, who was said: “Why don’t you try to get the also interviewed by Devine. Gina public to talk about colon is in charge of quality control for cancer?” our sewing project. I had already taken on the Best regards, and more power legal system for victims of sexual to your magazine! and physical abuse. I had no CARMELITA G. NUQUI strength or money to take on the Manila, Philippines medical system. My chemo was called 5FU. WE’RE GREEN! Believe me, there were a lot of Herizons is now printed on Forest great jokes about that. It has been Stewardship Council-certified the gold standard in treatment for paper. The certification means that over 40 years. My first tumour was raw materials originate in forests in December 1996, the second 18 run according to principles that months later, so I guess it is the respect the environment, at all gold standard, because I am still stages of production. here. We’re proud to report that by Please let us focus on a cure for printing on a paper that contains all cancers. and one of our members, Gina. However, the 25 percent post-consumer fibre, Herizons is NORMA CHRISTIE caption on the picture on page 19 identified saving 10 trees, or two-and-a-half tonnes of Fredericton, N.B. Keiko Tamai (at the podium). Actually, that is wood, four tonnes of water and 1,678 pounds my picture taken during the conference on of greenhouse gas emissions per year. This CORRECTION Migration and Trafficking in Persons paper is also elemental chlorine-free and Thank you very much for providing us with a organized by DAWN and Vital Voices Global acid-free. copy of Herizons’ latest issue, which featured Partnership in Manila in February 2006. Sure, it costs more, but we think the planet the interviews by Shannon Devine with me Second, Gina is not the coordinator of our is worth it. contributors

KEMLIN NEMBHARD MAUREEN MEDVED DI BRANDT Kemlin Nembhard is a community economic Maureen Medved’s novel The Tracey Di Brandt, an award-winning poet and critic, is development policy analyst with the province Fragments (1998, House of Anansi Press) has holder of a Canada Research Chair in English of Manitoba by day and hosts a radio show recently been made into a film by Bruce at Brandon University. She is also a former called Check Ca by night. She is also a McDonald. Maureen is an assistant professor contributing editor of Herizons. Her website is Herizons board member and sitson of the in the creative writing program at the www.dibrandt.ca. magazine’s editorial advisory committee. University of British Columbia, and is completing her second novel.

4 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS first word BY PENNI MITCHELL

Choosing our Words

For most feminists, an unequivocal pro-choice position is the comment still stung my pro-choice ears. Is May pro-choice line in the sand. It is the defended border that divides us from or not, I wondered. I decided to ask her. them, the measure by which we judge every politician’s “I strongly support legal access to abortions for any trustworthiness. You’re either with us or agin’ us. woman, under whatever circumstances, who chooses to have So naturally, when excerpts from Green party Leader one,” May said, hoping to quell her critics. May not only says Elizabeth May’s comments on abortion hit the e-mail circuit, that the Green Party is choice, but adds she is actively in battalions of feminists unsheathed their swords. “Elizabeth favour of increasing abortion access. The “frivolous” May’s election is a ‘feminist victory’?” scoffed one of the comment, in case you’re wondering, was a reference to a kinder reactions that hit my in-box. comment a nun made before the tape started running. (May May had been speaking to a group of nuns last November didn’t know she was being taped; the meeting wasn’t public. during a by-election bid in Ontario. Responding to a Still, she doesn’t disavow her remarks.) Her problem isn’t question on abortion, May was quoted as saying that she with a woman choosing abortion, but with choice as a slogan. would never have an abortion “in a million years,” and that To her, the term implies a certain frivolity, though she says she had “talked women out of having abortions.” She she doesn’t believe women who exercise it are being frivolous. sounded pretty waffley, alright. She was further quoted saying As a Christian and a feminist, May hoped to connect with “abortions are legal because they must be to avoid women the nuns. “I wanted the sisters to see how I feel that it is a dying. But nobody in their right mind is for abortions.” And moral position to ensure legal abortions, and [I wanted] to then there was the clencher: “If one group of people say, ‘A acknowledge the legitimacy of their concern.” In doing so, woman has a right to choose,’ I get queasy, because I’m she says she hoped to “shift it to a societal issue of—as Bill against abortion. I don’t think a woman has a frivolous right Clinton puts it—to keep abortion ‘safe, legal and rare.’” to choose.” In the end, May lost the by-election to Liberal Glen Frivolous? What on earth was she thinking? Pearson (May came second, with 9,864 votes, double the Still, I kept looking for the anti-choice part—the part votes of the NDP candidate). However, by trying to explain where she said she would support a law recriminalizing why she supports a woman’s right to choose even though she abortion, get in bed with Stephen Harper and the religious isn’t comfortable personally with abortion, May likely lost the right, the part where she let it slip that, if elected, she would support of many who didn’t bother to read the entire blog back MP Paul Steckle’s private member’s bill to make those transcript and chose to believe what they were told to think. who perform abortions guilty of a new form of manslaughter. And that is a shame because, as a feminist political leader, But it wasn’t there. May is a strong women’s ally. The Greens are not only pro- I kept looking. After all, Judy Rebick was so incensed that choice, but also support increased funding for organizations she wrote an opinion piece on rabble.ca describing how she like NAC, increased funding for women’s crisis centres and had a cheque made out to the Greens all ready to mail and shelters, and full pay equity in the civil service. The Greens ripped it up after she May’s comments. also want tackling institutional racism to be a priority at “You have questioned the most important victory of the Status of Women Canada and would support laws to women’s movement of my generation,” Rebick charged. “You guarantee a proportion of seats for women in Parliament. said that a woman’s right to choose, something tens of I haven’t made a choice about which political party I will thousands of Canadian women fought for for decades, was support in the next federal election, but May’s commitment trivializing an important issue. It felt like a slap in the face.” to the environmental and social issues on my radar mean I’ll Others went further, labelling May anti-choice and be watching the Greens closely.  declaring that feminists should just stick with the NDP. I To read the abortion blog and May’s views, log on to: found the partisan bit insulting. And yet, the “frivolous” http://politicsblog.ctv.ca/blog/_archives/2006/12/11/2566201.html

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 5 nelliegrams SHOULD THE AGE OF DAYCARE SMARTS Preschool is generally a CONSENT BE RAISED? better preparation for school than being at A Conservative bill proposing that the age of sexual home with a parent, according to a new consent be raised has feminists divided study by Katherine BY KAJ HASSELRIIS Magnuson of the University of Wisconsin. (WINNIPEG) Is it okay for adults to have sex cases of sexual predators luring young teens The study, published in Early Childhood with teens? online to know that 14-year-olds can be Research Quarterly, assessed the skills of Assuming there’s no federal election this vulnerable to exploitation. 7,748 children at school entry in 1998 and spring, that question will likely be put to While teen boys and men can be tested their academic progress in math and Parliament. Well, not that question exactly, aggressive, Ordonez says, so can teen girls reading in grades 1 and 3. but close: MPs are being asked to change and women. “We should be more open and The research team found that the higher Canada’s century-old age-of-consent law to thoughtful about power dynamics,” she says. achievement levels of preschool program make it tougher for adults to have sex with Ordonez believes efforts by the government participants increased between the first teenagers. to criminalize teenage relationships will only and third grades, suggesting the benefits A bill introduced in July 2006 is quietly drive them underground and discourage continue past third grade. making its way through House of Commons teens from seeking sexual advice. For this However, Magnuson also reports that committees. After all, not too many reason, she says: “I’m especially afraid for where there are enriched programs— politicians want to speak out about teen- young women living outside the city core.” classes with fewer than 20 students and 60 adult sex—especially not in favour. According to the 2003 Canadian Youth, to 90 minutes of reading instruction per Under current law, anyone 14 or over can Sexual Health and HIV/AIDS study, the day—there were no discernable learning consent to sex as long as the other person average age of “first sexual intercourse” is benefits for the daycare kids. isn’t in a position of trust. Stephen Harper’s 14.1 years for boys and 14.5 years for girls. Conservative government wants to raise the Often it’s with someone older. The fear that MUSLIMS AGAINST MACHOS age of consent to 16. If the bill is passed, raising the age of consent will discourage Muslim women from teens under 16 would be limited to legal sex teens from seeking sex information and birth around the world took with their close-in-age peers. The bill control is one reason the Age of Consent up the fight against a contains a close-in-age clause to allow a 14- Committee, a Toronto-based group of young macho interpretation or 15-year-old to consent with a sexual activists, opposes the bill. of the Quran at an partner who is not more than five years older. Prober believes the fear is unfounded. international conference on Islamic That means that a 20-year-old could not have Teens, she says, will continue going to the feminism in November. sex with a 14-year-old. sex ed source they’ve come to trust most: the “Islamic feminism is necessary for a The bill has sparked a debate over Internet. “How many children are phoning proper image of women, for their dignity and whether consensual sex between adults and Planned Parenthood for information?” Prober their place in culture and politics,” said young teens is ever possible. For Roz Prober, asks sceptically. Mansur Escurado, president of Spain’s co-founder of the anti-child pornography and In Ordonez’s view, Prober should stop Muslim organisation La Junta Islamica, anti-trafficking organization Beyond Borders, trying to criminalize sex and instead work to whose Catalan branch organised the event. the answer is definitely no. ensure kids of all ages get enough sex “It will come into full force when women are “Children have a right to a clear Criminal information, especially in schools, at home able to make choices in life with their own Code that tells them what’s wrong and what and inside youth shelters, to keep them from consent,” she said. The three-day isn’t,” says Prober, who maintains that sex being exploited. conference was called to support women between young teens and adults is clearly Prober has this advice for Ordonez: “Get who are fighting for recognition of their rights wrong. “A 14-year-old has ‘exploit me’ written yourself into a courtroom and listen to a in the Islamic world and rising up against the all over her forehead,” she says, “and must case. There are lawyers calling 12-year-olds long-established supremacy of men. be protected from making mistakes.” sexual aggressors. If you wanted to design a The Islamic feminist movement has Maria-Belen Ordonez, an anthropology system that’s worse for children, it would be slowly emerged in the Muslim world, which professor at York University and a member of impossible.” comprises some 29 countries with more Toronto’s Sex Laws Committee, doesn’t want Ordonez argues that girls are too often than one billion people. the law changed. Ordonez thinks Prober’s reduced to victims in court, especially when The Barcelona meeting drew over 400 attitude is harmful to girls and women, a the circumstance is an older boyfriend participants from Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, group she believes is too often presumed to accused of sexual misconduct. Sarah Inness, Tunisia, Algeria, Britain, France, Germany, the be made up of victims. Upping the age of a criminal lawyer in Prober’s hometown of Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Norway, Mexico consent would lead to “a complete removal Winnipeg, agrees. According to Inness, and the U.S. “Nothing can really begin until of agency from young people,” says Ordonez, consent cases typically involve “overzealous women start to talk to other women,” said who believes the draft bill is based on parents” trying to keep their daughters from Pilar Vallugera, director of the Department on attitudes that stereotype men as aggressors having sex with older boyfriends—even Women and Rights at city hall in Barcelona. and girls as helpless, “feeble-minded” prey. when it’s consensual. Prober argues that she has seen enough “I appreciate the concerns about

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According to delegate Sheija Amina Teslima al-Yerrahi: “We must rescue Islam, with all the richness of its spiritual legacy, from the control of reactionary clerics.” The conference also addressed discriminatory codes in sharia laws, polygamy and sexual rights, including abortion.

YES YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL So much for the success penalty— professional women are no less likely to marry than other women. In 2005, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd claimed that there was “an epidemic of professional women missing out on husbands and kids,” presumably because men were unwilling to enter equal relationships with women. For women born since 1960, however, it’s no longer true. As late as the 1980s, according to economist Elaina Rose, women with Ph.D.s or the equivalent were According to criminal lawyer Sarah Innes, consent cases typically involve “overzealous parents” trying to keep less likely to marry than women with a high their daughters from having sex with older boyfriends. (Photo by Getty Images) school degree. Today, women with university degrees are more likely to marry exploitation,” says Inness, “but the laws are Court of Appeal and the Quebec Court of than women with less education and lower designed to prevent exploitation. No matter Appeal have struck down those sections of earning potentials. what age, if you don’t consent, it’s a criminal the Criminal Code, but the law has not been Women with a high degree of education act.” Inness doesn’t see the point in raising changed. are also now as likely to have children as the age of consent, since the current law One thing Prober and Ordonez have in their less-educated counterparts. In fact, prohibits authority figures (no matter what common is that they are both worried. “So economically successful women are the age) from having sex with minors. The few people have a clear understanding of the fastest-growing segment of women who, if Canadian Federation for Sexual Health adversarial nature of the justice system,” they are not in relationships, choose to (formerly Planned Parenthood) supports the Prober says. Ordonez figures her side is have children. current age of consent. doomed, since more and more MPs seem to Sources: Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women, by “There’s just not a problem that needs to be lining up behind the bill to raise the age of Christine B. Whelan, and Single by Chance, Mothers be solved,” Inness says, which is why she consent, including members of the Liberal by Choice, by Rosanna Hertz. believes the current age of 14 is fine. party and NDP. Under existing law, consensual activity And if the bill does pass, what next? Beyond BURQA ROCK with those 12 and 13 is not an offence if the Borders’ website says an age of consent of 18 The Burqa Band, the accused is under 16 and less than two years is really the ideal, but the organization is only first known girl band in older than the complainant. The exception is going for 16 because it’s a “reachable goal.” Afghanistan, has anal intercourse, to which no person under Ordonez sighs. “I’m afraid it is the next become a cult hit in 18 can legally consent. Both the Ontario step.” Europe, especially in Germany, where the band’s single “Burqa Blue” climbed to the top of the playlists in dance clubs. In the context of so much contortionism ABORTION FEES over the meaning of the veil, the mystery band, begun in 2003, offers a glimpse from inside a giant blue burqa. In their video the trio is seen TO BE REPAID playing in what appears to be a dingy apartment; later, MTV-style, they appear doing THE QUEBEC government has been ordered to to pay towards the cost of the procedures, as synchronized dance movements from a repay more than $13 million to women who abortions are covered under the Quebec mountain overlooking Kabul. At all times they underwent authorized abortions in women’s Health Insurance Act. are, of course, completely hidden in burqas. health centres and private clinics from 1999 The award could apply to up to 45,000 Against a stubborn drumbeat, the to 2006. women who paid $200 to $300 in vocalist chants in choppy English: In response to a class-action lawsuit, supplementary fees to have abortions not “My mother wears a burqa/ my father Quebec Superior Court Justice Nicole performed in a hospital or a community wears it too/ I have to wear a burqa too/ the Benard said the women should not have had health clinic.—Penni Mitchell

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 7 nelliegrams HUMAN RIGHTS WORKER burqa it is blue/ When you wear a burqa/ you don’t know who is who.” AIDS NEWCOMERS The story of the Burqa Band is bittersweet. BY REUEL S. AMDUR The burqa not only was their source of inspiration but was a vital necessity to protect (OTTAWA) In Buddhism, Tara is an important counsels new Canadians, and through the group’s members from religious fanatics. bodhisattva, a person who attains Buddha- another job with Child Haven International, Under the Taliban, playing and listening to pop hood. A bodhisattva is motivated by she assists people appearing before the music were strictly prohibited. Despite media compassion and the search for Immigration and Refugee Board who want to attention from the West, the Burqa Band enlightenment for herself and others. obtain permission to stay in Canada. remains shrouded in secrecy and no longer Tara Upreti is a Nepalese-born woman Upreti, who, in addition to English, speaks actively plays music. In one interview the who was raised Hindu in an area where the Nepalese, Hindi and Urdu, helps clients band’s drummer, known as Nargiz, says she two faiths are closely intertwined. Upreti understand Canadian cultural norms that will believes it will take another decade before it’s received her master’s degree in sociology help them at refugee hearings. safe to be a female musician in Kabul. and anthropology at university in Katmandu. “Many people from overseas think it is an Source: Salon However, her real education took place in attack on the dignity of an official to look her community. them in the face,” she says, “so they bow PAKISTAN IMPROVES RAPE LAWS It began when she and a group of students their heads. But the immigration judge sees Pakistan has voted to learned of a doctor who was trying to bring a that as trying to hide the truth. I tell them to amend the country’s nine-year-old girl, taken in under the guise of look at them in the eyes.” strict sharia laws on being his house servant, to India as a Upreti sometimes appears as a witness. rape and adultery. prostitute. The students stormed the hospital During one examination, she was asked how Rape used to be dealt and confronted the doctor, and the girl was she knew that a claimant had been raped. “I with in sharia courts returned her to her family. The organization told him that I was counseling her and that where victims had to they founded, the Women’s Foundation of she was suffering post-traumatic stress have four male Nepal, operates today as a women’s shelter disorder,” she recalls. “I also told him that I witnesses to the crime—if not, they faced and works to end discrimination and violence often encounter women who have been prosecution for adultery. against women and girls. raped by soldiers and police.” Under the new law approved in In 2001, there was a massacre in Nepal’s Upreti reports that when she intervenes at December, judges can opt for a criminal royal palace, and in the turmoil that followed, the start of the process her clients are more trial where the four-witness rule would not Upreti, a human rights worker, left the likely to be successful obtaining refugee apply. The new law also drops the death country. Now a Canadian citizen, Upreti status. penalty for sex outside of marriage. continues to work for human rights. In a part- Like her namesake, she is motivated by The Protection of Women Bill is intended time job with the Ottawa Community compassion and brings enlightenment to the to soften the country’s hardline Islamic Immigrant Service Organization, she lives of newcomers. image and appease moderates and human rights groups. The reform is seen as a test of President Musharraf’s commitment to moderate Islamic laws. “It is a historic bill because it will give rights to women and help end excesses against them,” said Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Religious parties protested, saying the bill encouraged “free sex.” Calls for change intensified after the 2002 gang rape of a woman who was assaulted after a tribal council in her Punjab village ordered her rape as punishment for her 13- year-old brother’s alleged affair with a woman of a higher caste.

DAD CONVICTED An Ethiopian immigrant to the U.S. was convicted in November for female genital mutilation in what is believed to be the first criminal prosecution of its kind in the country, the Associated Press reported. In 2001, Khalid Adem circumcised his two-year- old daughter with a pair of scissors. In 2006 Tara Upreti helps newcomers understand Canadian cultural norms and supports them at refugee hearings. (Photo by Bharat Chudal)

8 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS nelliegrams

he received a sentence of 10 years in prison. Since 2001, an estimated 130 million girls and women worldwide have been mutilated, according to the U.S. State Department.

ROE VS. WAVES In December, Kristin Roe became the first Canadian to swim from Robben Island to Cape Town, South Africa. The swim was used as a fundraiser for the Treatment Action Campaign and dedicated to women living Hundreds took to the streets across Canada to protest dosing status of women offices. with HIV and AIDS in South Africa. The 26- (Photo by David-James Fernandes) year-old raised funds for the Treatment Action Campaign of South Africa (seen at www.tac.org.za). HARPER SLAMS DOOR Roe, who works for the Canadian International Development Agency and the Atlantic Centre of Excellence for Women’s TO EQUALITY Health is working as a researcher on BY PENNI MITCHELL gender and HIV/AIDS at the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. (OTTAWA) Stephen Harper has managed to Harper’s equality attacks have also helped Roe made the eight-kilometre stretch in do what feminists have not been able to boost support for the Liberals. Newly-elected three hours and nine minutes. accomplish in years: re-energize the Liberal Leader Stephane Dion’s first question “I had a great swim—not as fast as I Canadian feminist movement. as leader in Parliament attacked the Status would have liked, but the water was just so Cutting the Status of Women departmental of Women cuts. cold (average temperatures of 12 C) it made budget by 40 percent, or $5 million, was the “When the government is posting my arms stiffen up quite quickly,” Roe said first signal that the year-old Conservative multibillion-dollar budget surpluses, why on in a phone interview from South Africa. government would not take steps to advance Earth is the Prime Minister closing 12 of the Roe grew up as a competitive swimmer women’s equality. The announcement that 16 Status of Women offices across Canada if in Hamilton, Ontario. She swam the fastest women’s groups that lobby as part of their it is not to cripple those who dare challenge crossing of the Northumberland Strait on work would be ineligible for departmental his government’s neoconservative ideology?” Canada’s East Coast in 2005 to raise funds grants came next, after the cancellation of Dion asked. and awareness for the Stephen Lewis the Charter-driven Court Challenges As a result of the changes, groups that Foundation. Program. But it was Harper’s closure of 12 of conduct research on behalf of women will no Robben Island houses the prison where 16 Status of Women offices that drove longer be funded. anti-apartheid prisoners were held, thousands of women into the streets in “With less than a year in power, the including Nelson Mandela. December. Conservatives have gutted and muzzled the In Moncton, N.B., Ginette Petitpas-Taylor, federal Status of Women agency, taken away GAP CLOSING FOR PROFS chairperson of the Advisory Council on the an important avenue to help women appeal More women are teaching full-time in Status of Women, told a crowd of 300 human rights’ violations and undermined Canadian universities and the wage gap protesters: “We are being told: ‘Take care of women’s economic standing in their between men’s and women’s wages has victims but don’t try to change what makes communities by cancelling the $1.2-billion narrowed, according to a new study. them victims.’ We are being told: ‘Take care federal child-care program and refusing to Among full-time professors who began of children, but don’t advocate for quality improve pay-equity legislation,” Alex their jobs in the 1960s, men earn $10,000 to child care.’” Atamanenko, MP for B.C. Southern Interior $15,000 more per year than women. Among In Winnipeg, 150 protestors held a mock (NDP) told a Penticton, B.C., protest. more recent cohorts starting work since the funeral to mark the end of government Status of Women minister Bev Oda mid-1980s, men still earn approximately equality initiatives after 30 years. Women in defended the cuts to her department, saying $5,000 more than women. Yellowsknife held a 1960s-style bra-burning. Status of Women isn’t the only department The study observed that female professors “We feel like we’ve been kicked back in fighting for women’s rights in the Canadian gained ground primarily because new male time. So we decided to have a good, old- government. faculty members were earning less when fashioned bra burning,” said Kerry King, one “We don’t necessarily say that women’s their entry salaries were adjusted for inflation. of the organizers. issues only have one minister and one door The study also found that the male- Protests were held in Halifax, Toronto, to go through,” she said in a CBC interview. female differences were smaller in schools Victoria and Ottawa, where more than a A good thing, since the minister has shut thousand marked on Parliament Hill. 75 percent of her doors. HERIZONS SPRING 2007 9 Join the Growing Community of

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Catherine Macaulay Paula Philp nelliegrams KENYAN ACTIVIST with seniority-based pay systems than in those with merit-based pay systems. WINS V-DAY SUPPORT Between 1970 and 2001, the percentage of women teaching full-time at Canadian Eve Ensler’s organization facilitated the purchase universities more than doubled, from 13 percent to 29 percent. of a jeep to help Agnes Pareyio combat FGM The study, The evolution of male-female BY MAGGIE ZIEGLER wage differentials in Canadian universities: 1970 to 2001, is part of the New Realities of Gender in Canadian Society project, organized by the Family and Labour Studies (KENYA) Agnes Pareyio’s journey began as a founder (www.vday.org). Ensler’s organization Division at Queen’s and is available online child rebelling against the practice of female allowed for the purchase of a jeep, enabling at: www.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/ genital mutilation. Pareyio to reach more villages and more girls. papers/qed_wp_1099.pdf. “I didn’t want FGM, but my mother insisted. Two years later, again supported by V-Day, ‘What will I call you,’ she asked? ‘Will I call Pareyio opened a safe house and non-profit QUOTE UNQUOTE you a woman?’ People came to see the village organization, Tasaru “Notomomok” (Tasaru “If people are ripping coward. Finally, I gave in under the pressure, Girls Rescue Centre) for girls fleeing ritual FGM. your face off, you have but I promised myself to speak out about this.” Understanding that the girls need both to to rip their face off.” Tribal tradition demanded a display of maintain their tribal identity and to not be cut, —Nancy Pelosi of courage in this ceremony of cutting; tears lead Parieyo developed a five-day alternative rite California, the first to a beating from your mother. Pareyio didn’t cry, of passage into womanhood. During these female speaker of the not even during the long healing accompanied days of seclusion, the girls are taught and U.S. House of Representatives (D), speaking by constant pain and only a regular washing of supported by elder women, culminating in a in November. the wound with urine for treatment. ritual ceremony that does not involve cutting. “It’s women who suffer,” she says. “And Tasaru “Notmomok” also facilitates a process “I’m not the leader of it’s the women who do it.” of family reconciliation whenever possible. anything or anybody. I Married at 14, Pareyio later became involved Pareyio has now trained peer educators. can’t even get people with a small group of women who set up a “We teach communication skills, about FGM, to put their dishes in revolving fund of money to help each other. family planning, STDs, HIV/AIDS and what our the dishwasher.” “We began to rotate going to each other’s traditions are.” —Meryl Streep, houses. Every day we took firewood to one The safe house with 40 beds continues to accepting the Sherry woman’s home, had tea together and then be a refuge for girls and a support for girls’ Lansing Leadership shared the work in her garden. The next day education. In Narok, Kenya, discussion of Award at a December event honouring the we would go to another home. We did things FGM is no longer taboo and FGM is being most powerful women in Hollywood. together we couldn’t do alone, selling milk and reduced. “It’s still going on, but we know the eggs, knitting projects. The women asked me messages are getting out because the girls CHANGE APPARENT to teach them to read.” come to the house from all over.” An Ontario child can legally have three “I couldn’t talk about FGM openly at first. In 2001, the Kenyan government passed parents. The taboo was too strong,” she explains. “I the Children’s Act, making FGM illegal, and in The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in began by talking about the need for January that the biological mother of a five- education, and then approached FGM.” The year-old boy and her same-sex partner can link, obvious to Pareyio, was supported by a both be legally recognized as mothers of small survey in the mid-1990’s showing that the child. The boy’s biological father will still many girls did not return to school after FGM recognized as his father. All three will be and early marriage. listed on the child’s birth certificate. It was difficult to talk about something for “If the biological parent is away, and the which she had no words. “People said I was child gets sick and they have to go to the crazy,” she recalls. “‘No, look,’ I said to them, hospital, and the doctor wants the parent to showing them wooden models of female sign a consent, there has to be the ability to genitalia in their natural state and distorted by do that,” said lawyer Alf Mamo. circumcision. ‘Do you want this?’ I asked. ‘Let Formerly, a father would have had to me tell you about the purpose of the clitoris.’” relinquish parental status if a child were Pareyio believes it is possible to reject FGM adopted, if he were named on the birth and still be Masai. Other tribal practices have certificate. The boy’s mother and her partner changed or disappeared, so why keep this decided to begin a family with help from a one? She kept talking, determined to tell the friend, who became the sperm donor and is truth despite criticisms that she was involved in the boy’s life. Both the women and undermining tribal culture. the donor believed it would be in the child’s In 2000, Pareyio met Eve Ensler, creator of the Vagina Monologues and V-Day campaign Agnes Pareyio has helped create new cultural rituals for girls in Kenya.

12 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS nelliegrams

best interests for all three parents to be the boy’s legal parents. “Perhaps one of the greatest fears faced by lesbian mothers is the death of the birth mother. Without a declaration of parentage or some other order, the surviving partner would be unable to make decisions for their minor child, such as critical decisions about health care,” Mamo said. The Appeal Court ruled that a “gap in the legislation has been revealed” and the statute does not reflect the best interests of the child in this case.

TUNE IN TO WOMEN WiredBerries contains the first online community dedicated exclusively to women. It features a database of 4.3 million playlists and songs. WiredBerries users can create and share playlists—brief music memoirs that are virtual soundtracks to their multi- dimensional, multi-faceted lives. “Women are incredibly passionate about Agnes Pareyio took on a tribal tradition that demanded the cutting of girls. She is creating new customs in Kenya, music, and to that end they love sharing it along with a little help from Eve Ensler and a lot of support from her community, writes Maggie Ziegler (bottom with others,” says Ann Landi, editor-in-chief row, centre). (Photo by Phil Vernon) of WiredBerries. Check out: www.wiredberries.com 2003 the Kenyan government signed the elected to Narok County council, where she is Maputo Protocol, an Africa-wide agreement the only woman among 43 men. Today, she is WOMEN’S CENTRE CLOSES on human rights. In 2004, the government deputy mayor. FGM still continues, but thanks After 27 years, the Kamloops Women’s ratified the agreement, deepening its to Agnes Pareyio, UN Person of the Year in Resource Centre closed on November 1, commitment to the ending of the female Kenya in 2005, there has been a shift in one 2006, the latest victim of B.C. Liberal genital mutilation. part of Africa, an earthquake that has sent government cuts. The centre provided Pareyio went on to become the first woman tremors around the world. service to nearly 3,000 women and girls per year, but the province cut 100 percent of women’s centres’ operating funding three years ago. The cut represented $47,174, the only source of provincial operating funding available to women’s centres in B.C. CHOICE LEADER CHOSEN This cut, along with many other cuts and policy changes by the B.C. government, BY PENNI MITCHELL represents a dramatic shift away from equality and justice in B.C. Even the United Nations (NEW YORK) Faye chair and CEO of de Passe Entertainment; has criticized B.C. for its downgrading of Wattleton, who made Judith Jamison, artistic director of Alvin Ailey women’s and girls’ equality rights. history as the youngest American Dance Theater; Ruth Simmons, president of the Planned president of Brown University. de Passe is an BOOBY PRIZE Parenthood Federation of Emmy Award and NAACP Image Award- Despite new research indicating a higher America during her tenure winning television, film and record label rate of suicide among breast implant users, from 1978-92, was one of executive. Jamison is a renowned dancer, Health Canada put silicone breast implants three African American women chosen to choreographer, author and arts advocate. back on the market in October. The devices receive a Women of Power Legacy Award in Simmons became the first black woman to commonly leak after a decade in the body February. Wattleton, a noted spokesperson on lead an Ivy League U.S. institution in 2001. and are associated with multiple immunity- reproductive rights and family planning policy, “The Women of Power Legacy Award related disorders. was also the first African American president honours women whose accomplishments Dr. Diana Zuckerman president of the of the Center for the Advancement of Women. have helped redefine the standards of National Research Center for Women & The award ceremony kicked off a four-day success for women of colour in the Families, says: “This shocking and leadership conference for women of colour. workforce today,” said Allison Jones unfortunate decision will jeopardize Other recipients of the 2007 Women of Power Maitlandt, vice-president of marketing and women’s health for many years to come.” Legacy Award included Suzanne de Passe, events for Black Enterprise.

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 13 campaign update

AND CHILD CARE FOR ALL A group of widely prescribed 1999. Three months after Celebrex was first If passed, a private member’s bill introduced antidepressants, SSRIs have been linked to approved, The Wall Street Journal published by MP Denise Savoie (NDP-Victoria) would birth defects. Popular SSRIs include Paxil, an article about heart attacks and the drug create standards for child care much like the Zoloft, Prozac, Lexapro and Celexa. which linked 10 deaths and 11 other cases of Canada Health Act does for medicare. One study found that women who stopped serious gastrointestinal complications to The bill, voted by the House of Commons to their medication were more prone to a relapse Celebrex. Of the 10 deaths, two were caused be sent to committee for review, received the of depression. As a result, the FDA by heart attacks, five by gastrointestinal unanimous support of all NDP, Liberal and Bloc recommended that pregnant women not hemorrhaging, one by kidney complications Quebecois MPs. Conservative MPs all voted discontinue antidepressant use unless first and one by drug interaction problems, while against it. consulting with a physician. Another study the other cause was unknown. Stephen Harper’s Conservative government showed that SSRI use after the 20th week of A U.S. National Cancer Institute study found intends to create 25,000 new child-care pregnancy increased the risk of a life- that people taking Celebrex had a heart attack spaces a year by giving businesses and non- threatening birth defect, known as persistent risk 3.4 times greater for patients taking 800 profit organizations financial incentives. pulmonary hypertension, sixfold. milligrams compared to the control group. Daycare advocates prefer to see standards Other studies have linked third-trimester Celebrex is commonly prescribed to treat the set to ensure quality of care. The child-care antidepressant use to infant irritability as well severe pain associated with osteoarthritis, umbrella group Code Blue for Child Care as feeding and breathing difficulties. The label rheumatoid arthritis and primary dysmenorrhea. hopes the bill may see a third and final vote on Paxil has been revised to include the Its primary consumers are women. this spring. increased risk of heart problems for children Celebrex puts $3 billion a year into the Code Blue continues to push Parliament to born to women who take the drug during their pockets of Pfizer. With more than two million restore in the next federal budget the annual first trimester of pregnancy. prescriptions written in Canada in 2005 (27 $1.2 billion transfers to the provinces and million in the U.S.), Celebrex remains one of territories for child-care services. NICARAGUA BANS ABORTION the most popular drugs prescribed to treat The Nicaraguan National Assembly voted arthritis pain. ABREAST OF RESEARCH unanimously to outlaw therapeutic abortion. Meanwhile, Merck & Co. recalled its Women who eat more than one-and-a-half While abortion in Nicaragua was already arthritis drug Vioxx because a study showed servings of red meat per day are almost twice illegal in most cases, therapeutic abortions that it doubled the risk of heart attacks and as likely to develop hormone-related breast were permitted when a woman’s life or health strokes in patients taking the drug for 18 cancer as those who eat fewer than three was at risk. months or more. After Vioxx was pulled, portions per week, an observational study Nicaragua is now the third country in the Celebrex sales skyrocketed, despite the fact has found. Western Hemisphere to completely outlaw that stroke and heart attack risks were similar The Nurses’ Health Study tracked the diets abortion, joining Chile and El Salvador. to those linked to Celebrex. Despite Celebrex’s and health of more than 90,000 women who Evangelical and Catholic clergy pushed for a stroke and heart attack risks, Pfizer has made were 26 to 46 years old when they enrolled vote before Nicaragua’s national elections on no indication that it plans to recall its roughly two decades ago. November 5. blockbuster painkiller. They filled out diet questionnaires in 1991, Prescriptions for all categories of COX-2 1995 and 1999, and were divided into five REPRODUCTIVE CRISIS drugs have, nonetheless, declined 30 percent groups based on how much red meat they said More than half a million women die as a result since 2004. they ate. Meat consumption was linked to a of complications in pregnancy and childbirth risk of developing tumours whose growth was every year, and 19 million unsafe abortions DOVE AWASH IN FEMINISM fuelled by estrogen or progesterone—the are carried out annually, resulting in nearly Dove soap’s campaign to promote its Dove most common type—but not to tumours that 68,000 deaths. self-esteem workshop uses time-lapse grow independently of these hormones. The World Health Organization’s November photography to show how marketers can The women who ate more red meat were reproductive health study was published in the transform an average woman into a billboard more likely to smoke and be overweight, but British journal the Lancet. “This survey sounds model through makeup, lighting and major when the researchers took those factors into an urgent alarm that if we do not address digital photo editing—what used to be called account they still saw that red meat was sexual and reproductive health openly and airbrushing. linked with an increased risk of breast cancer. directly the toll of death and disability will Art director Tim Piper used his friend remain with us for many years to come,” said Stephanie Betts for the shoot. “We wanted to DEPRESSING NEWS Dr. Paul Van Look, the WHO’s director of show someone that would require a bit of ON PREGNANCY reproductive health and research. makeup to look the model type,” Piper said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Unlike buying a television or newspaper ad, released a public health advisory in November HAVE A HEART it’s free to post a video on YouTube, where the that tells doctors to weigh the risks and The link between the pain medication ad has been viewed about four million times. benefits of prescribing selective serotonin Celebrex and heart attacks has been the “This is better return on investment than we reuptake inhibitors before prescribing them to subject of concern in medical circles ever could have ever expected,” said Alison Leung, pregnant women. since the drug was first made available in Dove marketing manager at Unilever Canada.

14 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS A TASTE FOR JUSTICE If you love chocolate, consider switching to organic fair-trade chocolate. Why? Because 70 percent of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa, where nearly 300,000 children under the age of 14 toil in dangerous conditions on cocoa plantations. In the Ivory Coast, where more than half of the region’s cocoa is produced, more than 100,000 children work in near slavery, subject to both injury from the machetes used to harvest the plant and from toxic pesticides that are banned in the United States and Europe. Fair-trade-certified cocoa comes from farms that employ only adults and use legal pesticides. The price is equivalent to that of gourmet chocolate. If you can’t find fair-trade chocolate, look for products from Cadbury. The British company buys 90 percent of its cocoa from Ghana, where trafficking of child workers is prohibited. Dove awash with feminist message

WAVES OF EQUALITY IN AFGHANISTAN Over 90 percent of women in Afghanistan cannot read or write. This is one reason why Jamila Mujahed, the chief editor at radio station Sada-ye Zane Afghan (The voice of the Afghan woman) chose radio. Afghanistan’s first radio station for women offers music and entertainment to attract a large group of listeners. Mujahed, a well- And child care for all Hormones halved known women’s rights activist in Afghanistan, gets anonymous threatening letters and telephone calls every day for participating in WITH THIS RING… supplies and fish stocks are commonly the radio station. It started with campaigns encouraging polluted by companies in countries where “In our country,” she says, “young girls consumers to buy non-conflict diamonds, environmental-protection laws are not burn themselves to death because marriages popularized by the recent movie Blood Diamond. stringent enough. have been arranged for them.” The radio Now, Oxfam America and Earthworks are The best option is to buy jewelry from gold station for women can be used to overcome pushing a No Dirty Gold campaign for that has been recycled. The bad news is that this social imbalance, she says. jewellers who demand responsible mining without independent third-party verification, it Sada-ye Zane Afghan also wants to help practices. A dozen high-end industry leaders is difficult to ensure that your gold is clean. men better understand their wives, sisters and such as Tiffany & Co. and Zale Corp. have www.nodirtygold.org daughters. “We want to highlight marital signed on, but mass retailers including Target violence and show them that men and women and Wal-Mart have not. Oxfam and HORMONE USE HALVED can live peacefully.” Earthworks also encourage consumers to sign The number of prescriptions for hormone Mujahed and her team of nine women a pledge supporting responsible mining. replacement therapy in Canada has dropped consciously chose radio for their project. Gold ore is an environmental nightmare. It is by 50 percent since the 2002 Women’s Health “Everyone in our country has a radio. They are sprayed with cyanide after extraction to Initiative study reported that long-term use of inexpensive and can be operated without separate the gold from the host minerals. The HRT is associated with deadly thrombosis and electricity.” Previous attempts to set up a cyanide-contaminated leftovers are often an increased rate of breast cancer. radio station for women faltered due to a lack abandoned or dumped in nearby water In Canada, prescriptions totalled 12 million of funding. Now, thanks to assistance from the sources. Moreover, gold mines from Indonesia in 2001. As of 2006, there were just under six German Development Service, Sada-ye Zane to the Democratic Republic of the Congo have million prescriptions filled, according to IMS Afghan is on-air and can be heard in Kabul notoriously poor labour standards. Fresh water Health Canada, the organization that tracks and five neighbouring cities. prescription drug sales in Canada.

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16 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS out of bounds BY LISA B. RUNDLE

Food for Thought

I have a recurring worry involving the end of the world as we dangerous dependence and allow ourselves, in this pre- know it. You might think the worry is about the world ending calamity state, to remain wilfully ignorant of the conditions as we know it—cause for some concern, no doubt. But what under which our food—not to mention almost every keeps bothering me is what happens next, how well could I accoutrement of daily Western life—is produced. carry my weight were I to end up, fortunately or I focus on food not just because it’s bound to be among the unfortunately, among the straggling survivors. Sure, I’ve got first concerns for us survivors, but because there’s an gravel in my gut and spit in my eye; it’s not my capacity for extremely hopeful, not-so-apocalyptic movement taking off fortitude in the face of utter disaster that bothers me. At least that’s all about becoming more connected to the food we eat I have some related experience in that area, as most of us do. and the people who grow it. It’s a step any of us can take that The problem is how very little I know. not only results in fresher, healthier food, but also provides It’s scary to think about how little we, as individuals, carry support for farmers and small businesses and takes a big bite of the world’s knowledge. Those of us who live in the out of greenhouse-gas emissions. overdeveloped world (likely the ones to blame for whatever And it’s as simple as picking an apple off a tree—local calamities have befallen the planet) eating. Only, in this world of know more and more about less and everything imported (we don’t blink less as the generations go on. “The root of this worry is an eye when we’re presented at our Whereas my grandmother knew likely obvious—my near local grocer’s with products that have how to administer home remedies, travelled from every corner of the grow vegetables and preserve total disconnection from Earth) could an idea this old be new peaches, I’d be fumbling. And while most of the things that keep again, and so revolutionary feeling. It my grandfather, a farmer and me alive and sheltered, and simply means thinking about where tradesman, could fix just about your food comes from and how long anything, I can fix almost nothing. healthy and warm.” it travels to hit your plate. Not to put too fine a point on it, but The pair who best embody the things that I don’t know include: exactly how wheat gets spirit and the resolve behind the local eating movement are turned into flour; the salient differences between varieties of Vancouver’s Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, who trees; how to kill or butcher anything; which berries are challenged themselves to what they dubbed a 100-mile diet, poisonous; how electricity works; and the basic functioning of eating food and drink only from within a 100-mile radius of any kind of machine and most plants. (Try making your own their home for an entire year, and documented their journey list: Use a large piece of paper!) (out this spring in book form). Smith and MacKinnon say The root of this worry is likely obvious—my near total they’ve never eaten food that tasted so good, nor felt so good disconnection from most of the things that keep me alive and about the food they were eating. That daily connection to your sheltered, and healthy and warm. You can go through your community, the Earth, the seasons, is a power-healing thing, whole life in urban Canada and never have the slightest clue and now’s a great time to start thinking about joining in on all how most of the food you consume on a daily basis actually that goodness. Their website (www.100milediet.org) can get gets to your table. Eating food you don’t know is like you started and help connect you to local-eating resources. intimacy with strangers. Not only is it hollow and If we all get on-board, maybe we’ll avert that disaster after unsatisfying, but you know it could be so much better. And all. And if not, I hope you don’t get stuck with me in your there’s an element of risk. It also means we practise a lifeboat. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 17 Spitre WHY THERE IS HOPE FOR THE AMERICAN LEFT  Ani DiFranco’s commitment to being a free agent is inspiring. While the indie musician is definitely concerned about the state of her country, she’s not particularly worried about the impact George W. Bush’s administration has had on civil liberties—not on hers, anyway.

BY CINDY FILIPENKO | PHOTOS BY DANNY CLINCH

As Utah Phillips would say, ‘The amount you resist is the amount you are free. And I think I will always resist this basic encroachment on my human rights, so I will always feel free. “It’s much more compelling for me to be concerned about what my country is doing in other places, or to other people. I’m fine. Go ahead and tap my phone. I’m sure my file is nice and fat—whatever.” At 36, the small-framed DiFranco is still a political and musical spitfire. “For nearly half her life, she has operated the most successful independent label in the U.S. Started with $50 in 1989, Righteous Babe Records has grown from DiFranco’s production and distribution vehicle to an esteemed boutique label credited with revitalizing Utah Phillips’, career and introducing incredible acts such as Toshi Reagon to a larger audience. The Buffalo, N.Y.-based label is undergoing some changes these days, but DiFranco remains optimistic.

18 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS Ani DiFranco’s latest album, Reprieve, charted in Billboard’s Top 50 for 2006. (Photo by Danny Clinch)

“There’s a little problem: People don’t buy records anymore. And while sales may be down, DiFranco’s career remains It’s all iPods and downloads—it’s a new world and we’re still intact. Her latest album, Reprieve, charted in Billboard’s Top standing in the old world going ‘wait, what just happened’?’ 50 for 2006. In fact, every studio album she has produced “It’s hard. It’s been a big shift,” DiFranco says. “We’re a since 1996’s Dilate has charted on the venerable music little company that made little indie records. All the indie industry chart. The fact that an independent artist can have record stores are gone. It’s all major labels. The basic scenario this level of success is impressive. Another equally impressive at Righteous Babe was that my records paid the bills, aspect of DiFranco’s career is her prodigious output. Since everything else lost money, but great artists made the records. 1990, she has released 16 full-length studio albums, 12 live We’ve been seat-of-our-pants. My record sales are way down. albums and a handful of EPs. Additionally, she has Do the downloads compensate? I don’t know yet. continuously added new artists to Righteous Babe, produced “Today it’s all about music placement, and advertisement, a documentary concert road film, married and divorced one and online marketing. We don’t do that. We’re definitely producer and conceived a child with another. downscaling.” Many fans were shocked when the openly bisexual singer

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20 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS wed long-time musical associate Andrew “Goatboy” Gilchrist in 1998 (they divorced in 2003) on the heels of Little Plastic Castle. Around that time, DiFranco made a conscious decision to quit reading anything written about her or her music. “It was such a weight of opinion, definition and stereotyping, and this claustrophobic feeling you get when you become so self-conscious,” she explains. Along the way, there’s been things like, “‘Oooh, you got married and alienated all your dyke fans.’ And it’s like, ‘Well, I could focus on people I don’t know who want me to be something for them, or I could focus on becoming myself and not worry about that. “I think it would be a whole lot safer to read about myself now than it was 10 years ago, when people had no idea what they were talking about. I would read anything about me and go, ‘what!?’ It would compel me to respond, saying, ‘no, I’m not that, I’m this.’ It was an inward spiral that was going nowhere,” she says.

“We have much more meaningful conversations than back when it was, ‘so what’s with the hair?’”

“I’m divorced from all that media feedback, but I do feel, when I talk to people to do interviews, that we have much more meaningful conversations than back when it was, ‘hey, so what’s with the hair?’” Difranco has definitely come a long way from the indie-alterna girl with dreads who once blasted Ms. magazine for including her in its 25th anniversary issue based on her business venture. The feisty DiFranco signed off her missive with: “Thanks for including me, Ms., really. But just promise me one thing: If I drop dead tomorrow, tell me my gravestone won’t read: ‘Ani D. CEO.’ Please let it read: ‘songwriter, music maker, storyteller, freak.’” Today, the music-making, storytelling, songwriting freak is living in The Big Easy and exhibiting the rarest of commodities on the American left these days: hope. After four years of spending progressively more time in New Orleans, DiFranco decided to put down some roots in one of American music’s most fertile (Photo courtesy Righteous Babe Records)

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 21 cities. While the city continues to be rebuilt at a snail’s pace, complex featuring a 1,200-seat theatre. the post-flood population half of what it was, Difranco is “We’re just about ready to move the Righteous Babe offices optimistic about the its future. into the office space in the church. There’s a gallery, a black “It’s starting to feel really hopeful. It feels weird to say that, box theatre and Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center is open because of course a lot of people are still out on their ass. New in the building. The venue is pretty much done, but we’re Orleans has such a spirit, a will to fucking persevere, tricking it out acoustically now—right now it still sounds like transcend and party, despite the worst. The year anniversary a church, which isn’t so good for most music.” [of hurricane Katrina] felt like New Year’s around here. It was Performing since the age of nine, DiFranco clearly knows like we’re starting over.” what makes good music, and the critics agree. The august In her new home, iconic restaurants and bars are quarterly music journal Paste had this to say about her in continuing to tear down the boards from their windows and reference to a glowing review of Reprieve: get back in the game. “DiFranco’s ability to at once be both righteous and self- “Driving around, it’s like, hey—King Rogers Seafood is skewering is so weirdly empowering, so honest and human back open! Look! They have coon meat again! People are and flawed, it’s almost impossible not to be compelled to slowing coming back and putting the pieces back to together, action by her wit.” with no help from above.” She laughs when the quote is read to her. Asked whether a rebuilt New Orleans will be the “I love that—honest, human and flawed—that’s the world equivalent of a Disneyfied Bayou jazz experience, she pauses I love, and I guess that’s the one I live in and write about. My to consider why she believes it won’t. quest in music is to be as present and open and loving as I “There’s too much spirit for it to be squelched by money, can, with myself and the world around me. People have speculators and developers. This town is so deep, spiritually, commented a lot about the fervent passion my audience that it can’t even be described.” brings to my music, and I think that makes sense, because I

“Hey, King Rogers Seafood is back open! Look! They have coon meat again! People are slowly coming back and putting the pieces back to together, with no help from above.”

Yes, a lot of people have been displaced. The communities bring that fervent passion to it. If you throw all that love out, where the brass bands spring from took really hard hits. it all comes back; and when you feel inspired, other people “There’s a shift, for sure, but New Orleans has come back feel inspired. It’s the kind of energy I revel in.” from all kinds of horrible, awful things. If you live here, you By deciding to remain on the outside, Difranco has see there’s still tons happening, musically and culturally.” developed a perspective that is rare in an industry rife with The strength of the city’s culture is what initially drew insecurity born of competition. DiFranco from her home in Upper New York state. “The state of music is pretty much like the state of “You come to visit and you fall in love. New Orleans is its everything else, which is to say: massive corporate control. It’s own culture; it’s unique, powerful and really beautiful. There’s incessant marketing and inescapable commercialism standing something about a place where history is still alive and active. in for much more meaningful paths to connection, “I grew up in a town with lots of old buildings, but they are community, enlightenment and art. It’s not getting any easier all being torn down. Buffalo was a beautiful city—it still is— for young people to find connection, find alternative culture, but it’s been devastated by the march of development. Here affirmation and experimentation.” it’s like nothing happened. The freight trains still hoot by the Asked about the impact the great American marketing shotgun houses, the ships are booming up the river, horse- machine has had on the selling of the Iraq War, she says its drawn carriages are clopping by your window and there are power is subsiding. kids with trombones running around the streets continuing “They have honed the craft of propaganda so acutely that the musical traditions. There’s such a feeling of connection to disseminate truth or organize around an alternative is a here, I can’t leave.” daunting task. For people who were not as politicized, I think While New Orleans may be her new home, she’s given a there is a slow awakening. Thank God. It’s long overdue, gift that celebrates cultural heritage to her old stomping excruciatingly overdue. You’re just beginning to see, in the grounds. Righteous Babe has almost completed the mainstream media, people beginning to stand up and talk.” renovation of a 19th-century church into a multi-use arts What DiFranco doesn’t understand is how George W.

22 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS Bush can be president. “The election was stolen—S-T-O-L-E-N. I was stunned that the American people allowed that to happen twice—after the first one and the namby-pamby voting machine and ballots, the fact that we allowed all of these electronic voting machines to be installed in these crucial states. “You saw coverage from the exit polls, it was Kerry, Kerry, Kerry—he’s a shoo-in. And then, huh, at the last hour, Bush? It’s amazing the abuses of what’s known, not to mention the unknown like the jerry-rigged machines that aren’t exactly traceable. The fact that we are living with that and not in an uproar is shocking.” DiFranco recalls being depressed when Bush moving in to the White House was only an idea. “Before 2000, I remember standing on the stage in Rome and saying: ‘If Bush gets in, I’m moving here.’ I was there a year or two later and people where like: ‘Well, did you move?’” Difranco reflects. “It’s tempting to jump ship; it’s a sinking monolith that’s bringing a whole

“The election was stolen— S-T-O-L-E-N.”

lot of the world down with it. How can you leave when there’s so much work to be done? It’s one part love for my home and one part the need to address what’s wrong.” The need to help fix what’s wrong may come in part from the fact that DiFranco is expecting a baby any day, along with Reprieve producer Mike Napolitano. “I was talking to an activist friend of mine who is really tireless and brilliant, and she was talking about feeling really weighted down. It was the fifth anniversary of 9/11. She lives in New York and she was down at Ground Zero witnessing the circus. The anniversary of Katrina was right in there, and she was watching it on the news and she was feeling just debilitated by the state of the country. “Then she went out and hung out with a couple of friends who just had a baby. Playing with the baby, she found herself laughing. It proved to her that there is more to life than this bullshit.”  (Photo courtesy Righteous Babe Records)

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 23 When the Toronto Women’s Bookstore put women of colour front and centre, it changed more than the face of the store. Browngirlworld events are just one of the ways the store has diversified. (Photo by Melanya Liwanag Aguila) Feminist Ink In an era where feminist bookstores in North America are on the wane, TWB has found a new way not only to stay alive, but to thrive

BY LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA

Browngirlworld 6 at the Gladstone Hotel in Palestinian drag, while D-lishus offers queer Jamaican high Toronto, the crowd shimmers. Maybe it’s femme dub. Then everyone parties til 2 a.m. to DJ Jola, the At because I’m so exhausted. Or maybe it’s because, hypest Filipina boi DJ in town who is spinning while as the producer, I feel proud. But I think it’s something wearing her Justice for Jeoffrey Reodica T-shirt. more: something about how magic it is when you pack a club Browngirlworld isn’t necessarily what you’d expect from an full of queer and trans people of colour and friends to hear event series run by a traditional feminist bookstore. But then badass spoken word, drag and performance done by same. again, the Toronto Women’s Bookstore isn’t a traditional Over 200 people are giving their full attention to Alec feminist bookstore. In an era where feminist bookstores in Butler’s stories of a trans, native childhood in North America are on the wane, the store has found a new Newfoundland; Lengua Latina is feisty and brilliant way to not only stay alive, but thrive. It has moved from queering salsa, and Osama Bin Thuggin is doing political margin to centre by centring the visions, culture and politics

24 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS of many women of colour and indigenous women in the work survive financially and to subsidize activities like five-dollar the bookstore does. queer of colour poetry nights and free child care at big events. And it’s working. At the store’s annual customer- When Gogia came on-board, the store carried books for 10 appreciation barbecue, there’s free veggie and meat burgers courses. Now it stocks books for 130, and coursebook revenue and a healthy crowd. As you look around the room, you makes up almost 65 percent of the store’s income. “I notice something else: Eighty percent of the staff rocking aggressively courted professors when I came on,” says Gogia. their Bookstore Babes T-shirts (with a reworked Charlie’s “You could see what was happening with the big-box stores Angels pose featuring three women with natural hair holding and I knew we had to be ready. You have to have politics, but books, megaphones and mics) are women of colour. Instead you also have to be pragmatic about how to fund them.” of a Women of Colour shelf, the bookstore has a wall—a big Staff like Rosina Kazi, lead singer for the South Asian one—neatly divided into brimming shelves labelled African- underground band Lal and a mainstay of the local activist Canadian, Caribbean, South Asian, First Nations, Latina and music community, Janet Romero, who works with the Latina Arab. The store manages to pull off 1,200-person events with women’s writing circle Lengua Latina, and Lorraine Hewitt, sliding-scale tickets and free child care. Staff start at $12 an a fashionista and Black burlesque dancer who performs with hour and get health benefits, and the Toronto Women’s the Skin Tight Outta Sight! troupe, have expanded the Bookstore was recently voted best bookstore in Toronto by communities coming into the store. Kazi has worked to NOW, the city’s free weekly. establish the store as a venue for hip hop poetry nights that The store’s success is no small feat for any women’s are all-ages and accessible to youth; Hewitt has looked at how bookstore, not to mention one that’s already survived one the bookstore can be more relevant to women who are turned firebombing (back when it was below an abortion clinic) and off by academia; Romero has organized queer Latina and faced down an attempted boycott post 9/11 because the store Caribbean readings at the store and, as the store’s events co- carries End the Occupation of Palestine buttons. ordinator, manages a crazy beautiful events calendar. Last fall Since 1997, more than one-third of feminist bookstores in it featured Written in Colour (a two-day conference for North America have closed, according to Feminist Bookstore Aboriginal writers and writers of colour) and book launches News, which itself went under in 2001. More have shut down that included Jean Bobby Nobel, Ella Shohat, Chimamanda since, including many across Canada. And it’s not just the Ngozi Adichie and queer native science-fiction writer Daniel bookstores—presses have suffered, too. When I was coming Heath-Justice. of age in the mid-’90s, independent feminist and queer “White women still walk into the store with entitlement. presses were publishing lots of new books a year, many by Women of colour are more cautious. But when they walk in queer women of colour. I assumed that when I was ready to and they see that there are a couple of women of colour publish, it would be with Sister Vision, Press Gang, behind the counter, not just one token, they relax,” says Lui. Firebrand or Kitchen Table. By 2001, all four had closed “We wanted it to be different from some feminist bookstores shop. (Firebrand has since reopened with a new owner.) where when you walk in and there’s all white women working Toronto Women’s Bookstore was in the red—a lot of there, Naomi Wolf and Gloria Steinem on the posters and red—a few years into the big-box store trend. After almost maybe a dreamcatcher or something,” she laughs. closing during the recession of the early ’90s, May Lui and When asked why so many feminist bookstores are Anjula Gogia were hired in 1996 and ’97 and assumed closing, Lui says it’s more complicated than just pointing managerial positions soon after. Both women were searching the finger at Amazon and Chapters/Indigo. “If the whole for what they wanted to do with their lives. They never thing about feminism is for white women to access what dreamed they’d end up running a feminist bookstore, but white men had, a lot of that happened,” Lui says. “So they had a talent for the business and loved it. While the successful white women will go to the chain bookstores store had had a commitment to anti-racist politics before, because they don’t care. And a lot of ’70s white feminist Lui and Gogia were among the first people of colour to work culture is outdated—not even young white feminists grab in managerial positions, and they went on to carefully select on to that old-school stuff.” and hire many more staff of colour from diverse Gogia also thinks having a woman-of-colour definition of communities. The shift in staffing and the shift in vision feminism affects everything, from what books they stock to that came with it has included a hugely expanded customer the atmosphere of the store. “When women of colour are in base and ramping up the store’s profile by producing large- a critical mass of leadership, the way we define feminism scale events featuring bell hooks, Angela Davis, Alice changes,” says Gogia. “We don’t just stock old-school Walker and Dorothy Allison, among others. It’s what staff women’s politics. We have one of the best sections on say got the store back in the black. globalization and Middle East issues in the city. We’ll do From smart moves like grabbing womensbookstore.com as events for Octavia Butler and Dorothy Allison, but we also a domain name to creating a 4,000-person e-mail list, do the ticket sales and book tables when Tariq Ali or Noam creating a new business savvy has allowed them both to Chomsky come to town.”

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 25 Made in Canada MattersMatters

Buy C ana di an

ue en v e r For jobs and a x

a

T healthy Canadian economy.

ns Jobs for Canadia

sing public money to buy That’s why the federal and provin- The Americans and others Canadian made products and cial governments must implement already have laws like these. services is a smart investment in the modern rules to: By reinvesting tax dollars in future of our country. It keeps good Canada we’re not only creating jobs in Canada. It supports research, ensure all levels of government opportunities today, we’re helping builds technological know-how and purchase Canadian made products to secure a stronger future for our strengthens Canadian industry. and services whenever possible; children. Now that’s spending our Federal and provincial tax dollars ensure these procurement policies tax dollars wisely. spent on Canadian-made products establish minimum levels of Tell your MP, MPP and local “Made in — whether it's for subway cars, Canadian content; elected officials that trucks, ships, buses, aircraft, autos Canada Matters.” or the Canadarm — puts our tax ensure equivalent spending on dollars to work at home. value-added work in Canada, if a Canadian product isn't available. Backstage at Browngirlworld in 2006, fans Lisa Valencia-Svensson and V Manabat with Mango Tribe members Lani T. Montreal and Marian Yalini Thambynayagam. (Photo by Melanya Liwanag Aguila)

Continues Gogia: “If feminism is really for everyone, that continues to build, expanding Written in Colour, its annual means welcoming everyone who comes in: men of colour, conference for writers of colour and indigenous writers, from white men, people you don’t know. When I first started one day to a full weekend. coming to the bookstore in the early ’90s, there were women So instead of just mourning the passing of second-wave of colour working here but they wouldn’t give me the time of feminist bookstores, why not create more non-profit day because I wasn’t cool enough. Feminist bookstores can bookstores that focus on feminism, and people of colour, and become cliques if people don’t watch it. And then people workers rights, and LGBT issues. Come on: Throw a benefit! don’t come.” Max out your overdraft! Go after grants and take a business The bottom line is that women need to keep stepping up course, and make that beautiful women of colour-led to replace what’s been lost, and that in doing so we can make bookstore/community center/lending library/performance it better. “Women’s bookstores need to get smarter if they space of your dreams.  want to survive,” says Gogia. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Toronto-based queer Sri Lankan writer and After 10 years managing store, Gogia and Lui both spoken word artist whose first book, Consensual Genocide, launched in April 2006. recently decided to move on to new work. But the changes Full disclosure: She thinks Toronto Women’s Bookstore is one of the best damn bookstores on the planet. This article is adapted from an article that appeared in they helped usher in didn’t end with them: The store Colourlines.

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 27 A Meditation on Radical Recovery

28 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS BETSY WARLAND’S LATEST BOOK, ONLY THIS BLUE, IS A MEDITATION ON THE BODY, ILLNESS AND HEALING IN THE CONTEXT OF AN AESTHETIC AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICE.

INTERVIEW BY DI BRANDT | PHOTOS BY DIANE FELSKE

Herizons: You propose a holistic interpretation of recovery and transformation that includes both surgical and spiritual/artistic dimensions. Can you talk a little about how the book came into being? Betsy Warland: I’d love to. I wrote it initially in four suites, each generated by a colour. I eventually moved it into the long poem form because it is one continuous poetic narrative. The suites were like symphonic movements. Unlike my other books, the physical form and design of this book came to me as a complete vision early on. Its size (it fits in your back pocket), its cover colour field (the azure of Montreal’s night sky in November), its cover image (a photo of me holding a box of four Japanese tea mugs), and its blank left-hand pages (which signify the presence of the unknowable, the lost, the unspeakable), these comprised its given body.

Can you tell us something about how the experience of illness and recovery changed you, and what role the writing of this book played in that transformation? I hadn’t written poetry for four years. I had been writing prose—Bloodroot and a series of essays—but no poetry. When I was able to have three days alone midway through the year of surgeries and treatments, I began to write the green section of the long poem. I wept with gratitude. I let myself feel how much I had missed writing poetry and how I had become afraid I might never write it again. I also crossed over the line separating each of us from people who are ill and may be dying. We’re all afraid of this line and we invest tremendous effort into maintaining it. After the shock and dread of crossing the line, it was a relief not to be in the grips of that fear anymore. It is a weird process to have your body become another body. It is disorienting for yourself and others. When I am naked, my torso looks like a hot cross bun gone awry, with its double mastectomy scars and, below them, a vertical scar from a surgery years ago. Now, I actually feel very

Photo: Diane Felske HERIZONS SPRING 2007 29 comfortable in my body, at ease. My new body suits me. With exuberance/unusual ease” and realizing your body is remembering this kind of a profound change, few people can deeply what it was like to be in a prepubescent body, “before/i had companion you. Nature, one’s spiritual practice and writing breasts.” This is the most positive image for double mastectomy I absolutely can. have seen! Can you talk about the iconography of women’s breasts? They have become sites of great cultural revisionism, with so many Traditional views of medicine as a spiritual practice and modern women trying to make their breasts bigger or smaller through approaches to medicine as a materialist practice are often seen as elective surgery. They are also one of the most rampant cancer sites oppositional. Can you say something about how you brought them in women’s bodies. together in your life and in this book? Breasts! Our culture has such enduring ambivalence about I quickly discovered that my life depended upon bringing them, yet is so preoccupied with them. They are seldom them together. I realize that many people think positively of perceived or experienced as right, whether it is in regard to their experiences of conventional cancer treatments. But for size, shape or presentation, and now our breasts have become me, the conventional medical methods I participated in were major suspect sites for cancer. I confess I do sometimes miss often deeply troubling. I’ve never spoken about this publicly my nipples! They were enthusiastic erotic zones, but I am before because it is quite contentious. happy to not be struggling with breasts anymore. The irony Cancer is weird because it calls forth intense judgments far is that after decades of resisting the expectation that I conceal more than any other illness. There is a strong tendency the details of my breasts in a bra, the expectation now is to among people to blame and disassociate: (“If you did X, you conceal that I don’t have them! wouldn’t have.…”) and to be harsh to those who do not idealize conventional medicine. There are two beautiful, haunting images in the poem I want to My concern about conventional medicine is the almost ask you about: “body as porous as water air leaf,” followed by an entirely pharmaceutical-funded research on cancer and the image of water plunging “two hundred and eleven feet from earth domination of pharmaceutically determined treatment—it is to earth.” The first suggests disintegration, the second is a very disturbingly monopolistic—and cancer is a runaway highly bracing sort of bungee jump from one existential dimension to profitable industry when it is corporatized. Slogans like another. And yet they both adhere to the language of physics. Would “beating,” “winning” and “battle” are the vocabulary of a war- you agree this is a sort of physics of the spirit you’re enacting here? economy agenda. The pharmaceutical industrial project could I like that—physics of the spirit! “body as porous as water air be likened to a corporate form of global chemical warfare. leaf ” suggests how my reliance on boundaries to establish a Conventional medicine demands that you comply—there hierarchy of meaning disintegrated. I experienced my body as is no real option of choosing which of its treatments you water air leaf. My body boundaries seemed so violated by sense are right for you and which ones are not. If you don’t cancer, treatments, surgery and things people said who were comply, you are considered obstreperous and it is suggested unaware of their fear. Resisting this violation was useless, so that you walk out the door. I decided, rather, to give myself to it and see what it had to For me, because my son was only two when I was teach me. diagnosed, I wanted to do the optimum. So I combined. The natural world seems to have retained its openness to Sometimes I took supplements and herbal remedies to [the] violation of boundaries. It happens all the time, and is bolster my body during harsh conventional treatments. often observable; the boundaries of nature are always shifting, Sometimes I did alternate treatments believed to address the retreating, reasserting, reforming. This interdependence and cancer. Some were gentle, balancing and clearing supports, sense of an inherent state of change comforted me during that such as Reiki. What I came to understand is that year of treatment and surgeries. It held me. Maybe it conventional and alternate are not all that oppositional, in the reconnected me to my childhood ways, in which nature was my sense that each is difficult to precisely track and assess. They main companion and teacher. Nature exhibited no fear of me, both impact the body in ways that are hard to measure, they no aversion. People exhibited considerable fear, though most both set off chains of other physiological shifts in the body often they were not very conscious of it. Physics and the that are not intended or even realized. Our bodies are spiritual are possibly dialects of the same language. We think complex and nuanced and still a mystery to us. we are separate and that we can organize our lives to protect Most crucial for me was a contemplative spiritual ourselves, yet when the water falls off the edge it is really falling practice—for me it is Buddhism—that locates you deep back to earth—it is the same and also changed by its fall. inside what is happening and opens you up to the possibility Your essay on poetics at the end of the book, “Nose to Nose,” traces of learning important things from vain attempts to reject an unusual lineage for poetry. “The structure of poem is before, difficult experiences. after, inside and outside of words.” You seem to argue for a deep There is an oblique reference to a double mastectomy in the passage poetic structure that underlies language in the way we usually where you describe running to meet the bus with “surprising think of it, a system of words. You claim a molecular energy for

30 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS “After decades of resisting the expectation that I conceal the details of my breasts in a bra, the expectation now is to conceal that I don’t have them!” poetry that goes down into the very essence of what is, and a alternate language that helped me make decisions as to what spiritual dimension that reaches toward the sacred. These to do and what not to do. Perhaps I was experiencing colour challenge the basic tenets of postmodernism in both its scientific as we do when we are infants. All I know is that it is one of and cultural aspects. Are you suggesting a kind of Platonism here, our most powerful modes of perception and communication a world of forms that precedes the world of material being? And a and that we’ve lost this awareness—we’ve reduced colour to sort of deep grammar of poetic form as well? Yet elsewhere you say consumer trends. “poem embodies resilient inventiveness” and is “change in the act The shift in perception I experienced was like a trap door of ”—that is to say, a process that is continually evolving. suddenly opening beneath my feet, dropping me into a whole I do sense that form likely precedes material being. new narrative. Serious illness is completely disorienting for you Everything has memory. Form is a kind of memory. Form and everyone else in your life: Everyone loses their narrative abides yet also adapts, and even mutates—this is its aptitude bearings. You have to find your own way in the experience. for change, inventiveness and survival. Yet I suspect that form This is why you don’t necessarily have a lot in common with never forgets itself, even when it is extinct, or hybridized, or other people with cancer. Each of us must find our own way. modified. Another way to think about it is pattern: You suggest that learning to face the fear of debilitation and death, Everything is combinations of pattern. Also, everything is which is part of the experience of serious illness, is an enlightening narrative. Poetry’s particular set of linguistic elements is practice. Can you say a little more about that? deeply at ease with form, pattern, memory, narrative and, There are countless causes for fear, but the people most perhaps most importantly, the unknown. What we call the interested in reading Only This Blue so far have been those unknown quite likely still has form. Poetry’s form always who have faced into some form of being profoundly inscribes the unknown blank space, and maybe it is this threatened. They are people who are curious about this state affinity with the unknown that enables its deep structure. of disorientation and defamiliarization with the ordinary bp Nichol liked to say, citing an ancient Hopi creation myth, that things of daily life, about how they can become so altered— the rhythms of poetry are intimately connected to the rhythms of the like Ezra Pound said, “made new.” cosmos, that poetry is how we contribute to the harmonic balance of When we get stuck in a state of fear, it creates a whole the earth. Physicists are now arguing that the primary building bunch of other problems that make everything harder. Then block of matter is not the atom after all, but rather a little string of disarray or rigidity takes hold of our mind. The impulse to vibratory energy. If this is so, then perhaps poetry is connected with fortify oneself is very strong. As women writers, particularly nature in much more literal ways than the way we usually think of as feminist-informed writers, we often write narratives that it, though surely in a very open-ended fashion. men and women are resistant to reading. We can write a Absolutely. I believe that rhythm may be the basis of all life. narrative that confronts these resistances; we can attempt to Certainly, in the womb it is sound and rhythm that are deconstruct them as our narrative unfolds; or we can write detectable first. It may be that visual patterns replicate sound narratives “at a slant,” as Emily Dickenson said. I work with patterns, in both the natural world and our writing. scored space at a slant. I write my narratives in ways that resemble the bits and pieces of thought, observation, The title, Only This Blue, repeats the last phrase of the book, “there silence, and dialogue that we are sporadically aware of, tune is no outcome/only this blue.” And yet the poems are filled with in to when we are eavesdropping. This allows the reader to many colours! Can you talk about the role of colour in the book? have a closeness, but also a sense of safety and anonymity. I Colour became my guide. It became a visceral, sacred often say to writers I work with that we are given our presence. It spoke to me through my observation and creative material, whether we like it or not. The choice is sensations of it, and in my dreams. It offered me an encoded, what to do with it. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 31 Who Cares? They’re underpaid, undervalued and mostly women. And with recent studies showing preschool is a better preparation for kindergarten than being in the care of a stay-at-home parent, making sure child-care workers are paid a decent wage is a critical feminist issue.

BY DANIELLE HARDER

he calls it her dream job. But the reality is that while per hour; the hourly rate is only about $11 per hour in the Shari Robicheau spends 40 hours a week caring for Maritimes. Few child-care workers have health benefits, even Sother people’s children, she could never afford the fewer have a pension plan and paid professional development service for herself. At 25, she’s still living at her parents’ is nearly unheard of. Robicheau says there seems to be little because she can’t afford both rent and a car payment. And she of the respect that’s shown to other predominantly female spends her evenings and weekends babysitting to top up what “helping” professions. she earns working at a private daycare. “‘Glorified babysitters’ is usually what we’re called,” she It’s not the lifestyle you would expect for someone with a says. “Even parents will say to us: ‘Oh, your job is not that two-year college diploma and five years experience. Yet, even hard.’ Yeah? You do it. It’s not easy.” as the assistant director of Grace Note Child Care Centre in That is especially so in an age where daycares are coping Halifax, Robicheau still earns just under $11 an hour, with no with children’s behaviour and family problems in addition to pension plan or health benefits. providing care and safety for children. Robicheau, for And this is her dream job? example, is expected to teach curriculum—yes to infants. “Three years ago, when I knew I had to quit the job I was Rachel Langford has seen the progression from the role of at, I seriously considered leaving child care because the pay is babysitter to childhood educator. As the director of the so bad,” she says, “But I just couldn’t do it.” School of Childhood Education at Ryerson University in Thousands do, though, every year. According to one study, Toronto, Langford’s goal is to train child-care workers to do only about 42 percent of early childhood educators are still more than teach sharing or wipe dirty bottoms. The working in the industry five years after they graduate. curriculum she teaches these days has more to do with child It’s no wonder, when serving coffee and donuts pays more development theories, literacy and programming for children and often includes benefits. The average wage of a child- with special needs, for example. But she says those skills don’t careworker in Canada is $22,500—about 40 percent lower seem to translate into respect and recognition. than the average wage in Canada. In 2004, the highest-paid “It’s something about working with young children itself that, child-care workers in Quebec earned slightly more than $18 because the education is not content-based or subject-based—

32 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS Until access to publicly funded child care is universally accessible, wages will not likely improve significantly, experts predict. (Photo by Getty Images)

you’re not teaching math or science—you somehow don’t need universal daycare itself. the same qualifications as you do to teach older children.” On one side sit feminist experts like Susan Prentice, a Langford sees that stereotyping start even before the sociology professor at the University of Manitoba who has students arrive in her classroom. “We still see a number of written extensively on child care in Canada. Manitoba is female high school students to an extent socialized, or considered by many to have the best child-care system in directed, into early childhood education, because they love English-speaking Canada, but Prentice says even that’s a children,” she explains. She says young women who may not stretch. Although child-care workers earn roughly $13 an be strong academically are often pushed into child care hour, access to publicly funded space is not province-wide. because some see it as a soft profession. And Prentice believes that until that happens, working Some say the answer to gaining recognition for child-care conditions will not improve for those who provide the workers, and with it higher wages and better working service. conditions, lies within the Holy Grail of daycare advocates: a “At one time, teachers were very poorly paid and very universal child-care plan. Those crusaders point to the poorly trained. What made a big difference was a Quebec model as an almost shining example of how child- commitment to a universal public education system where care workers should be treated. teachers became public employees, and children had In a province where parents pay just $7 a day for child care, entitlement, and teachers unionized, and everybody started more than a third of all child-care workers are unionized. paying for education, instead of just the families that used it.” They earn more, have better benefits and have access to a Several studies appear to support the argument for a pension plan. They made their first significant gain in 1999, publicly funded system, including one authored by Prentice following a two-day strike which rewarded them with up to called For-Profit Child Care: Past, Present and Future.She a 40 percent wage increase. found workers in publicly funded or parent-run daycares So where does this put the public-versus-private debate, earned at least two dollars an hour more, which is reflected in and which would best serve Canada’s 136,000 child-care better-quality care. workers? It’s an issue that’s as divisive as the concept of Few commercial daycare operators would argue with the

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34 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS fact that they pay less than their not-for-profit competitors, then your wages will go up?” but Greg Humphreys says it’s not because private daycares Child care in Canada is fragmented and staff levels vary, are seeing high profits. Humphreys operates two daycares in depending on provincial child-staff ratios. Some daycares are Brampton, Ontario. He’s also president of the Association of large; others are small. Certification takes a lot of union time Day Care Operators in Ontario. He says the problem lies and resources because they have to go centre by centre. But with the inequitable distribution of money from all levels of Kass says there’s another dimension. government. “Somehow unions aren’t ‘nice,’ and they like to be nice,” she In Ontario, municipalities are handed a portion of the says. “Child-care workers look at wages and working provincial dollars allotted to child care. It’s up to local conditions and know that it’s a problem, but they’d like to do politicians to decide how that’s spent, whether it is to open it in a way that doesn’t ruffle a lot of feathers.” new daycares or top up wages. Humphreys says while his There have been some recent union successes. In company is eligible to receive thousands of dollars in wage Manitoba, the Manitoba Government Employees Union enhancements, it’s not getting that money. But at the same now represents centre-based child-care workers at a table time, he’s required to make a business case once a year to with daycare directors and the provincial governments. In justify fee hikes. Prince Edward Island, more than half of all child-care centres “How can the municipality not give me my wage grant and are now represented by the PEI Union of Public Sector yet control my fees?” asks Humphreys, who declines to say Employees. Kass says now, more than ever, unions need to be how much his business earns. a pressuring force on this social policy. Trying to point the financial finger of blame—to At the core of it, workers’ wages and working conditions municipal, provincial or federal sources—is like trying to hinge on how much Canadians are willing to spend on child determine who had the toy truck first. Everyone has their care, and what kind of system they can create or negotiate. At version of how the fight started and who’s to blame. And the end of the day the money has to come from somewhere and there is such a maze of regulations, subsidies and wage there are only two main options: governments or parent fees. enhancements that it’s difficult to know where the money is Susan Elson, director of Davar Child Care, a non-profit coming from. centre in Calgary, estimates that the true cost of labour at her Under most provincial systems, daycare centers—private centre would see parents pay $1,000 a month for infants and and non-profit—have access to some provincial money. The $950 a month for three- to six-year-olds. amount depends on the type of program, its location and the She sees universal child care as the solution. focus of the province’s early childhood program. The five- Two years ago, an Organization for Economic Co- billion-dollar program announced by the federal Liberal operation and Development report on 20 countries’ child- government before it fell in 2005 would have given each care systems noted that Canada’s system was chronically province additional money to enhance its own child-care under-funded compared to successful public programs in strategy. Presumably, workers would have benefited from the Europe; it suggests parents pay 20 percent of the costs; across-the-board injection of funds—but there are no taxpayers the rest. guarantees. “Salaries will continue to subsidize parent fees until we It’s a moot point, since as of March 31, 2007, the have the guts to stand up and say, ‘Okay, now we’re going to Conservative government will scrap the remains of the charge you what our service is really worth’,” she says. “But existing daycare funding arrangement with the provinces. our economy cannot survive without women in the Although Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vowed to workforce. Understanding that, what do we provide for those create 25,000 new child-care spaces a year for five years, there families, those women and their children to succeed? That’s will be no additional funds directed at improving wages or where we have to invest in child care.” working conditions. Shari Robicheau agrees. Canadians have to decide what With this date in mind, union leaders are setting their sites they’re willing to invest in child care. Do we want glorified on certifying child-care workers. One of the foremost leaders babysitters who don’t stick around because the pay is low or on this issue is Jamie Kass, national co-coordinator of the early childhood educators who provide quality and continuity Canadian Union of Postal Workers Child Care Fund. More of care for our kids? She guesses even the people who control than 25 years after the first child-care workers unionized, the public purse in Canada would want the latter for their only about 30 percent belong to unions. children. “I always think of it as the chicken and egg thing with the “My biggest beef, and I say this to anyone who will listen, nurses. Do you increase your wages and then get recognized is that those politicians couldn’t work unless we looked after as professionals? Or do you get professional recognition and their children.” 

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 35 Shameless INTERVIEW BY EMMA KIVISILD

Last year Bonnie Klein released Shameless, a documentary portrait of five artists living with disabilities: Persimmon Blackbridge, Catherine Frazee, Geoff McMurchy, David Roche and Klein herself. (Photo by Diane Mitten)

36 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS FOR MANY, BONNIE KLEIN’S FILMS MARK MILESTONES IN THEIR LIVES. HER 1981 FILM NOT A LOVE STORY IS AN ESSENTIAL FEMINIST INVESTIGATION OF PORNOGRAPHY.

Herizons: What were the motivations behind Shameless? What was it like to reveal yourself in the film? Bonnie Klein: It’s a film about five individuals with Well, I have been in my films before, but I don’t like it. I disabilities who are expressing that experience in art. It hated being in Not a Love Story. An earlier cut of Shameless turned out to be not about disability, and not about art, but had little of me in it. I was a glib, dispassionate narrator. about being human. It’s about different ways of being human. People who saw that cut felt I was distancing myself from the People assume disability is tragic, and I wanted to share the film and convinced me to put myself in, so I invited Anne finding that disability is not a tragedy. When I had my stroke, Wheeler out to direct Michael and me. I still cringe, but it everyone thought it was tragic. People assume [my partner] seems to work. It’s chastening to realize that people who Michael is some kind of fabulous hero. He is a hero, but it’s allow themselves to be filmed do that all the time. not because I am a tragic figure. The relationships are what I What else is the film about? love about the film: among us, between us. It’s an exploration The film is a picture of what is possible for people with of each other, a chance to be proud. disabilities when we have the conditions to thrive— You know, it’s not us and them, it’s all of us. Everyone will relationships, or financial considerations, or both. be disabled, eventually. People live with the fear of disability. With the brain injury, I had lost a sense of confidence and The book, the radio programs, the film—I did all of those to competence. I was not engaged in the wide world. I was help people not to be afraid. learning about managing, but I was not engaging my whole Is there a connection between this film and Not a Love Story? self. Disability gives some kind of perspective—that projects There are connections about body and self-image. I think are not all there is to our lives. that pornography teaches us to hate our bodies, and I felt very incompetent, and being able to make the film stereotypes about disabilities teach that, too. was huge—empowering. Shameless was a very giant leap in There is also the question of who’s making the picture. In my own growth. I realized that I enjoyed making the film, Shameless, I love the bubble bath scene (with Catherine but I didn’t need the label of filmmaking again—it’s Frazee and her partner). I love the idea of the hoist as important not to need those kinds of things. foreplay…. There are people who draw the line, who say, “If As Shameless goes out, how has it been finding accessible venues I ever can’t self-transfer, I want to die.” Or, “If I ever have to for screenings? use a chair….” This scene challenges that. It’s very hard to find a venue. Most venues have spaces for How did you decide who to film? one or two wheelchairs and no stage spaces. At the premiere, We’re not typical of people with disabilities—we’re all white, I hear it cost money to get seats removed from the theatre for middle-aged and middle-class. It’s not statistically the screening. [Seat removal and replacement cost the representative of the community. We all knew each other DOXA festival $1,800. Klein and McMurchy sat in their before the film. As the director, I was feeling the stress of chairs on the floor to take questions.] At the Hot Docs “this must be the definitive film about disability,” and I festival in Toronto, it showed at the Bloor—people using couldn’t do that. chairs could get in, but they couldn’t use the bathroom. There

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 37 This is not a film that people know they want to see, though afterwards they always say that they want everybody to see it.

aren’t places. You can’t just rent a banquet hall or a church basement.

Are you going to make another film? Right now, I have no desire to make another film. I just want to be physically and psychically available to my family, and especially to my granddaughter. I have to learn how to live without external deadlines, collaborators, responsibilities. I want to be able to go with the flow, and be spontaneous. I am happy to go out with the film and see audience reactions. This is not a film that people know they want to see, though afterwards they always say that they want everybody to see it. It is important to stay connected, and I am available for Shameless: The Art of Disability was directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein and produced by mentoring. To other filmmakers with disabilities, I say: “Do Tracey Friesen. (Photo by Tracey Friesen) it!” There are opportunities, and there are challenges, and there are many more films to be made. We have our own learn problem-solving and pacing. I don’t mean to get stories, and people are hungry. We have to show what we essentialist. We’re not better than everyone else, but there are actually contribute, and show that we’re not just needy. From things that our lives give us.  people with disabilities we can all learn to deal with diversity, Emma Kivisild is a Vancouver artist and writer living with multiple sclerosis.

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38 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS body politic BY MARIKO TAMAKI

The Epilady Cometh

Of all the jobs I have ever worked, none yielded more stories comparison with what you’ll find at your local YMCA. than the year I spent selling sex toys. My favourite story Beyond this, I should add that I think a little bit of fur can be occurred one sunny afternoon when a particularly perky sexy, so my own treasure trail doesn’t bother me. woman waltzed through the door. She was on a brief vacation As we continued our conversation, I noticed that this and was trying to put an orgy together with an excess of woman had absolutely no body hair. Her arms and legs were enthusiasm and one day’s notice. Good luck, I told her. This uniformly golden brown from the tips of her fingers to even is Toronto; the only things that happen on a day’s notice here the fine skin under her arms. They were almost shiny, like are large purchases and bank loans. Torontonians talk big but Barbie arms. it's mostly a city of tall buildings and big hype. Even really “Oh, it’s all gone,” she chuckled, noticing my stare. “Every good-looking people have trouble getting things done here, single dirty hair. I get rid of it all every week with my especially in the winter. Epilady.” This woman was from Italy, with tall black hair that looked She held out her arm for me to feel. It felt a little like like two gloved hands poking out either side of her skull. She touching the underside of a frog’s belly. was appropriately long and thin, dressed in an unwrinkled For those of you who don’t know, an Epilady is one of white linen dress sprinkled with black dots like a really the most innocuous-looking and yet deadly inventions expensive domino. Her arms were loaded down with two ever to grace the Sears catalog. Basically, it’s a hair- great paper wings of shopping bags that she was scattering removal system that consists of a mechanical twisting around as she hunted for the perfect butt plug and other metal coil that RIPS the hair out by the root. Once, accessories. She wasn’t even looking at the price tags as she ONCE, I let someone go at me with one of these things piled up her potential purchases and chatted about her dream at summer camp. It felt like someone was twisting hot orgy. I was, I admit, completely obsessed with the bracelets I metal screws into my thigh. had noticed on this woman’s arms. They were like tiny little I was kind of expecting her to leave me alone. But, tiaras. Incredible. apparently, the hairless woman was not exactly done with me. I took a moment to ponder whether or not it would be “All of it,” she whispered, leaning in to me a bit, “even got worth participating in this little orgy, if only so that I could rid of the hair back there.” wake up early in the morning and snag her bracelets as she “On your back?” I asked. lay sleeping. Sleeping with strangers for souvenirs is “Oh no, no, no,” she chuckled. “No, I mean IN back there, immature, but it can also be profitable. around my anus.” Before I could even bat my eyelashes, she had me sized up. Now, I have only worked in the sex-toy business for awhile As we stood in front of the S/M section, she grabbed my arm and I have heard a lot of different things. I once painted some and cooed at me. “Oh, you know,” she said, “I love Asians— guy’s ass with a million little happy faces in a bar as part of a so beautiful and exotic. The only thing I don’t like is the hairy fundraiser. But the thought of this woman reaching back to Asians.” As she said this, she gave me a long look up and yank the hairs out of her asshole with her Epilady got me this down and quietly shook her head. close to passing out right there on the floor of the store. I did Now, I have been turned down in the past. I have also had my very best to keep a pleasant smile on my face as I rang up the experience of being turned down before I even get a her purchases. chance to show the slightest bit of interest. But I have never, In the end, the woman did invite me to her orgy, suggesting in my life, been called a hairy Asian. that I let her take a go at the hair on my arms with her Epilady. I’m not going to be defensive here, but I am not exactly Instead, I gave the number to a bunch of hairy field-hockey excessively hairy. I have seen my share of fuzzy legs and bushy lesbians I knew, none of whom I’ve heard from since.  pits, and I can tell you that my own crop of hair pales in © True Lies, Mariko Tamaki, Women’s Press

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 39 arts culture MUSIC

Kate Reid: No ambiguous pronouns, no potential breakout singles, just a collection of 12 highly personal songs that offer her take on the universal human condition.

KATE REID In the song “Starving Artist,” she asks: (the name refers to the Egyptian goddess of COMIN’ ALIVE “How will I get on the radio when I cuss and truth and balance) Rucker remains tough yet Independent swear and sing about women?” Tongue-in- compassionate and refuses to soften or self- cheek, she knows that the price for play censor the direct rawness of her urgent REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO outside the confines of co-op radio, or maybe messages (the CD cover has a parental Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Kate Reid CBC on a good day, would be integrity. Reid advisory: explicit content sticker on it). is one witty chick. She nails the lesbian doesn’t sound like she’s up for the On “Children’s Poem” she warns: “You experience with songs like “Everyone’s compromise. better get out there and go pull your sweet Fucked But Me,” with its references to uptight little 12-year-old up off her knees/ tell her she straight women trying fit in at women’s events, Your local music store probably won’t have this one. Log on to www.katereid.net for information. don’t have to suck no boy’s dick to/ keep him/ two-year relationships and going to therapy to fuck that.” support local women in business. Whether URSULA RUCKER “Rant (Hot in Here)” peels away the illusory she’s singing about having crushes on “Co-op MA’AT MAMA layers of democracy as it reveals the Girlz,” or living in a town midway to nowhere !K7 manipulative tactics of corporate empires that on “Small Town,” Reid is uncompromisingly delude people into complacent conformity: queer. No ambiguous pronouns, no potential REVIEW BY SHEILA NOPPER “poverty/ pharmaceutical companies/ breakout singles, just a collection of 12 highly Ever since Ursula Rucker emerged as a poet industrial prison complex/ not enough love, too personal songs that offer her take on the and performance artist in 1994 at an open-mic much sex/ pornography/ music is now universal human condition. event in Philadelphia, she’s been arousing industry, suffering from lack of /artistry /gun Reid’s guitar style—basic pop-folk— audiences at home and abroad with her culture/ capitalism/ sexism/ racism/ clear provides a nice accompaniment for her truly rhythmically diverse and compelling rapid-fire channel/ war/ war/ war.” Rucker then urges impressive voice. Produced by former Mollies’ word bullets. She knows where to aim and us to “Resist, pump a fist, break up the static/ Revenge frontwoman Yvette Narlock, Comin’ rarely misses her target. all this plastic to bits/ become a pro at being Alive sounds great. The vocals are exactly As with her previous CDs, Supa Sista (2001) anti to dis—bull.” where they need to be—forefront and centre. and Silver or Lead (2003), with Ma’at Mama Yet she also sensuously exposes a quick

40 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS glimpse inside “Black Erotica,” declares her performers who are more her contemporaries. self-defined dignity: “I am somebody/ not just Her songwriting expertise is firmly someone’s mama or carpet or main-/ squeeze” entrenched in the familiar: love, losing love, on “I Ain’t (Yo Punk Ass Bitch),” respectfully finding love and being suspicious of love. The pays tribute to her rebel ancestors on single and opening track, “The Waiting Song,” “Libation,” and closes the CD with a poem is indicative of the rest of the CD. What she about the transformative power of love. offers is what the market wants: hooky, Containing a variety of musical genres smooth pop songs, the kind that often catapult which effectively complement and enhance artists from obscurity into heavy radio rotation. the mood of each selection, Ma’at Mama Produced by Cowboy Junkie Michael brings Ursula Rucker’s poetry distinctly into Timmins and New Pornographers’ John Collins the forefront and is guaranteed to agitate, and David Carswell, this is a fine, mellow invigorate and liberate. album. With a voice reminiscent of a pre- promiscuous Nelly Furtado, Sokyrka is KIM BEGGS definitely poised to be a big deal. WANDERER’S PAEAN Independent INDIGO GIRLS DESPITE OUR DIFFERENCES REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO Hollywood Records There’s something groovy happening up in the Yukon, and Kim Beggs is part of it. Like fellow REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO northerners Anne Louise Genest and Kim Despite Our Differences dramatically Barlow, Beggs sings compelling tunes about illustrates the differences between the Indigo hard lives lived in towns frozen in time. Her Girls as songwriters. Amy Ray continues to sophomore effort, Wanderer’s Paean, move in the direction of becoming a demonstrates a roots purity that is seldom postmodern, female version of Woody Guthrie, found in similar efforts produced closer to the while Emily Sailers seems firmly entrenched 49th Parallel. as the troubadour for lesbo romance. “Lips Stained Red with Wine” or “Feel a Unfortunately, the territory she covers here Little Glum” could have been written by Dolly is as tired as a pair of Birkenstocks after a Parton or Loretta Lynn in their barely outta- decade on a folk-festival circuit. Take this line the-holler days. Like many roots players, from Sailers’ “I Believe in Love”: “I still Beggs takes traditional songs, including “Ain’t believe despite our differences that what we Gonna Work Tomorrow” and “All the Good have’s enough, I believe in you and I believe in love.” While she is the more adept guitar Times are Past and Gone,” and puts a new player of the two, Sailers seems to have slid spin on them. back to the use of arpeggios and minor Bass player Bob Hamilton’s production is chords to convey emotion. outstanding. He is particularly adept at After an edgy and surprisingly optimistic capturing the intensity of the string second solo album, Prom, Amy Ray is back arrangements without clouding Beggs’ sweet and as depressing as ever. The girls’ first post- alto. Sony release finds Ray exploring the territory Beggs picks up where the Be Good Tanyas of economically depressed towns, the leave off, but with a more uplifting overall hypocrisy of the religious right and desperate sound. Wanderer’s Paean deserves to be at lives lived in desperate times. For example, on the top of the CD rack. “Dirt and Dead Ends” she sings: “They found THERESA SOKYRKA the meth and the scales, and the wife that made your life Hell.” While it is pretty much SOMETHING IS EXPECTED impossible to dance to, the tune certainly MapleMusic packs an emotional wallop. REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO Ray’s songs are reminiscent of Bruce Something is Expected is the second album by Springsteen circa The River. Sadly, there’s not Theresa Sokyrka, runner-up to Kalan Porter on a “Cadillac Ranch” among the bunch. The only the second season of Canadian Idol. It is her song here that would make a second best-of first handled by MapleMusic, the label that collection is “Last Tears,” the CD’s closer; it’s represents Martha Wainright, Kinnie Starr and a sweet ode to moving on after your heart has Jann Arden. Sokyrka, who penned all 12 songs been removed, stomped on, wrung out and on Something is Expected, has more in thrown in the trash—classic Indigos. Maybe common with Arden than with the other two next time they’ll look at their similarities.

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 41 arts culture SPRING READING

humans extol is devastating and insightful. Lest the Western reader feel gleeful about the Third World maelstrom, Desai offers a parallel story of Biju, an illegal immigrant whose bewildering and humiliating journey in the underbelly of New York’s kitchens gives an unflattering view of the First World. This portrayal will not cheer you up, but there is no denying that Desai conjures a compelling and memorable story. Desai’s elegiac prose makes for a compelling read.

SOMETHING TO PET THE CAT ABOUT ELISABETH BELLIVEAU Conundrum Press JOYLAND for—humour, humility and unconventional girl REVIEW BY LISA FOAD EMILY SCHULTZ heroines. Read it once if you love a good story; An ornately jewelled tiara. Strings of ILLUSTRATED BY NATE POWELL read it a second time if you love words. It’s excessive beadwork trail off the crown and ECW Press articulate, rich with the good, the bad and the make their way down the page. In the midst of very bad of the 1980s, and beautifully it all, this inscription: “Standing up alone is a REVIEW BY TARA-MICHELLE ZINIUK illustrated. Simply put, Joyland is a joy. miracle with all this gravity.” One could become a Toronto lit-culture junkie Something to Pet the Cat About, the debut based on Emily Schultz’s contributions alone. THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS graphic novel from Montreal-based artist and Though Joyland is her first novel, Schultz has KIRAN DESAI writer Elisabeth Belliveau, compiles the art already released a short story collection Penguin zines that generated much buzz when she (Black Coffee Nights, Insomniac), a biography began circulating them in Montreal. REVIEW BY IRENE D’SOUZA (Michael Moore: a Biography, ECW) and an Divided into five segments—Country Music, In this illuminating and luminous novel, Kiran anthology (Outskirts: Women Writing from Love, September Album, February and After Desai assumes the literary baton from her Small Places, Sumach), played the part of Horses—Something to Pet the Cat About is a mother, novelist Anita Desai. Kiran won the editor for magazines THIS and Broken Pencil richly textured world. It is rendered via lush 2006 Man Booker Prize. and created The Pocket Cannon series. sketches and pencilled notations—lists, diary Schultz’s Joyland touches on an ignored Set in the late 20th century at the foothills of entries, queries, assertions, meditations and past—coming of age in the era of Cheez Whiz Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, and in laments—that complexly traverse the turbulent and Donkey Kong. It is a familiar Grade 8: New York, this evocative novel intersperses, in arc of coming into oneself in a new city. terrific awkwardness, small-town measured bursts of humour and compassion, Belliveau poignantly notes the ambivalence inescapability. Told in the language of video what happens to an orphan girl, Sai, as she accompanying this arc: “We spent all our game, at a time in the protagonists’ lives comes of age. The 16-year-old Sai is sent from money on phone cards, so now we have to where the arcade served as the church, her convent school to live with her anglophile live here. Thank goodness.” Joyland is the story of Player 1 and Player 2, grandfather, who has shut himself off from all From the cleverly simple question asked by brother and sister Tammy and Chris Lane. human contact, giving all his love to his dog, two flying birds—“What has indie rock done Joyland is thick and quick in the story it tells, Mutt. He has no time for Sai, who must rely on for you lately?”—to more complicated turning the reader through mazes and scoring others for emotional fulfillment and soon falls yearnings—“Please drive me far away from points in secret chambers, slowing down only to in love with her Nepali tutor, Gyan. my job. So I can see myself,” Belliveau’s pick up coins and cherries. But it’s no mindless Globalization, fundamentalism and sectarian sketchbook diary artworks are heaped high in princess-saving, beginning-middle-game-over and terrorist violence unravel Sai’s passion for beauty. This is precisely because they straddle kind of game. Schultz has carefully selected her Gyan. Her adolescent passion is intertwined our fleeting internal dialogues and our words and pours obvious intellect into her with a sense of danger and tinged with both physical interactions with external spaces. pages. The references are precise, perfectly wonder and darkness. Sai learns that class The result? Belliveau makes tangible the ways timed and colourful (Space Invaders, Christie envy and jealousy always trump love. in which anxious uncertainties and hopeful Brinkley, Hulk Hogan). Schultz sets the bar high, Desai acknowledges the fragile yet complex anticipations materialize: They exist alongside attempting what may have been too much for a nature of everyday living, deftly showing how the kitchen table in notes on the fridge, in book so laden with themes. But Joyland is not a the ties that bind a community can unravel seashells, cityscapes and seascapes. concept book and Schultz pulls off all she sets instantly. When Nepalese insurgents take over Belliveau’s world is full of possibility. Where out to achieve without seeming contrived. the town, the aftermath creates a chaos that else can a girl sit silently on a couch and And one cannot comment on Schultz’s work pits lovers against each other. Desai’s watch her forearms morph into birds, wings without mentioning what it is most recognized portrayal of all the imaginary differences flapping, ready to soar?

42 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS arts culture FEATURE BOOK

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BLUE-EYED DEVIL: MY LIFE AND TIMES IN A RACIST, IMPERIALIST SOCIETY INGA MUSCIO Seal Press REVIEW BY JENNIFER O’CONNOR Inga Muscio’s first response when asked how she would describe her book, Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil: My Life and Times in a Racist, Imperialist Society, is to say that it “is about white supremacist racism, and how it is enacted and sustained, from the perspective of a white woman who grew up in the post- civil rights movement U.S.A.” In the next minute, however, she adds: “It would be much more accurate to say that this book is a very difficult and exacting personality. It is blistering and relentless. At the same time, it’s a sucker for a good joke and sees humour in horror.” It’s a fitting way to sum up a book that is highly analytical and deeply personal. In Part One of Autobiography, Muscio looks at the history of white supremacist racism from the day Columbus came ashore to today. It is why, she explains, the areas most affected by environmental disease have the largest population of people of colour and poor communities. In Part Two, she looks at how racism permeates all of society. Take this example of “white normativity”: a white woman in her mid-fifties looked at Muscio’s lunch from a bento place and inquired: “What do they call that?” Muscio replied: “Who is ‘they’?” “I’d like for it to be like one of those You Are Here stickers you see on maps at an amusement park,” she says of Blue-eyed Devil. “It’s a map of white supremacist racism, and my intention is that any reader from any racial experience will be able to see Inga Muscio says Canadians suck too, when it comes to racism. themselves in there somewhere.” Muscio’s previous book, Cunt: A that to ‘discover’ actually involves being THE how to suck less. Declaration of Independence, was published FIRST to start a five-hundred-year campaign “In honesty,” she says, “I see a lot more in 1998. That book addressed topics including of spiritually and physically raping and killing involvement, question-asking and menstruation, masturbation and self-defense. all the people whom you can’t squeeze into accountability in Canada than I do in the U.S. Cuntfests—celebrations featuring a number of your perception of civilization.” And so therefore, I think Canadians are in a artists—have been held throughout North As for her impressions of racism and much better position to really understand America. imperialism in Canada, she says: “Well, the white supremacy than people in the U.S. If Like Cunt, Autobiography is written in U.S. is so barbaric, white Canadians get to there was a deeper understanding of white Muscio’s sassy, no-nonsense style, such as bask in the relativity…. How is the murder, supremacist racism in Canada, perhaps this passage from the chapter “Columbus and incarceration and displacement of First people in the U.S. could begin to develop a the New World Order”: “In school, I learned Nations people really any different than what frame of reference for accountability.” that Columbus discovered the Americas like the U.S. has done throughout its history? Sure, That last part, she says, is probably a maybe it was a quarter under his pillow that we suck more, but you all suck, too.” dream. Nonetheless, Autobiography of a Blue- the tooth fairy left. When I grew up, I found But she believes Canadians can figure out Eyed Devil is a must-read for white audiences.

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44 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS arts culture SPRING READING

SO LONG BEEN DREAMING POST-COLONIAL SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY NALO HOPKINSON & UPPINDER MEHAN, EDITORS Arsenal Pulp Press REVIEW BY GHISLAINE ALLEYNE So Long Been Dreaming has been a long time coming. Edited by writer Nalo Hopkinson and literature scholar Uppinder Mehan, it is a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories from post-colonial writers. Hopkinson writes that “one of the most familiar memes of science fiction is that of going to foreign countries and colonizing the natives … and for many of us, that is not a thrilling adventure can be a forum to challenge mainstream equality with their male counterparts, many of story; it’s non-fiction and we are on the wrong beliefs and social mores. At its worst, it is just the inequities within universities are indicative side of the strange-looking ship that appears another way to justify the status quo, to create of larger, structural inequalities brought about out of nowhere.” alternate realities that reinforce the current by male-oriented labour markets outside the Traditionally, race consciousness does not power structure—one that dreadlocked Uruk- academy. Universities survive on the backs of inhibit the domain of science fiction. So, how hai describes as large, dark orcs versus tall sessionals in the same way the Canadian does a postcolonial author write a world that blond elves in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. economy survives on part-time and casual does not recognize the writer? Hopinkson’s Mehan’s afterward calls for post-colonial labour, which, like non-tenured sessional answer is to use the master’s tools, not to writers “who have written insightfully about positions, consists mostly of women. In this dismantle massa’s house but to undertake our pasts and presents” to begin “creatively regard, job stability, sufficient child care, massive renovations to “build me a house of addressing our futures.” So Long Been flexible hours and living wages are needed in my own.” Dreaming is a good start. order to resist the feminization of poverty for If you love literature, you’ll enjoy this Ghislaine Alleyne is a Herizons board member and on all women, regardless of where they work. collection. This is not pop culture fluff. These staff at the Canadian Women’s Health Network. As someone who works in the academy, I stories are intricate, experimental and daring. appreciate the need to highlight the inequalities Imagine a future Canada where First Nations MADWOMAN IN THE ACADEMY that exist inside its walls. However, I believe it is peoples face an increasingly apartheid-like DEBORAH KEAHEY & DEBORAH also important to celebrate its successes. I fear life, or a past where escaped slaves live under SCHNITZER, EDITORS that without such a tribute, a young, aspiring the earth, sustained through the nutrients University of Calgary Press female academic may read through the pages absorbed by their long dreadlocked hair. REVIEW BY TRACEY PETER and be scared away from an occupation that, The collection is divided into five In recent years, several scholars have despite its flaws, does have many perks and categories: the body, future earth, allegory, addressed the issue of gender inequality privileges. I think of the group of women at my encounters with the alien and re-imaging the within university campuses. Deborah Keahey university who fought for, and won, greater past. The stories that concentrate on story and Deborah Schnitzer’s book adds to this maternity-leave benefits, or of my assigned rather than structure held my imagination growing body of work in large part because, mentor who, despite being a mother of two more than others—notably Nisi Shawl’s “Deep as the authors point out, it is a forum based on young children, has a Canada Research Chair. End,” Greg van Eekout’s “Native Aliens,” Opal private conversations about the professional Here, I hold on to the words of Keith Louise Palmer Adisa’s “The living Roots” and Maya trepidations of academic life. These Fulton, who wrote in the current collection: “We Khankhoje’s “Journey into the Vortex.” contributions represent the voices of remake the university each day as we walk Common themes of isolation, alienation, professors, sessional instructors, graduate through the doors and take up our work there”! helplessness and powerlessness abound. But students, support staff and retired faculty Tracey Peter is an assistant sociology professor at the there is also strength, love, beauty, members from across Canada. University of Manitoba. independence and the power of the collective Understandably, there is a predominance of consciousness. They challenge and motherhood-related issues; however, other THE MOMMY BRAIN: sometimes reflect the ugly underbelly of entries illustrate the intersections of racism, HOW MOTHERHOOD MAKES US SMARTER colonization. Tobias S. Buckell’s story cultural difference, ageism, disability and KATHERINE ELLISON “Necahual” asks what happens when the sexual assault. In their own way, all of the Basic Books ‘other’ does not need to be saved by invasion contributors agree that change is necessary if REVIEW BY WENDY ROBBINS forces. Although seemingly futuristic, some of we are to create healthy spaces for women in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine these tales are all too familiar. What I love the academy. Ellison writes that “the female brain about speculative fiction is that, at its best, it While female professors do not enjoy undergoes concrete and likely long-lasting

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 45 arts culture SPRING READING changes through the process of giving birth unflinching look at anger and forgiveness. A of society’s problems but that encourages and and raising children. It’s a transformation on reminiscence of rage, Gillespie argues that facilitates the active involvement of as grand a scale as puberty and menopause.” women shouldn’t make nice. Rather, they need individuals, corporations, foundations, What’s more: “Mommy brain gains aren’t to address this emotion, learning to forgive so charities, schools, hospitals, community limited to mothers: fathers, other caregivers it doesn’t take over their lives, using justified associations and so on in resolving these and everyday altruists can also partake of the fury to make change. problems.” advantages of caring proximity to children.” The book is neatly divided into three Pink Ribbons is relatively short, but densely The advantages of a baby-boosted brain sections. In part one, she writes about the roots packed. King explains how, beyond being an include enhanced creativity and skill at multi- of her anger—her abusive father, her all-too-frequent and still-too-lethal disease for tasking; improved emotional intelligence; a desperation that someone love her and her many women, breast cancer is a corporate more balanced life as parent-child bonds drinking problem. Gillespie then recounts eight dream come true. She explains how the reduce stress; and even an increased social “portraits of anger” from her life and the politics of philanthropy work, highlighting how and environmental conscience. “Care for lessons she took from them. Once, for instance, individual consumption (of things to raise others can be a potent way of being smart,” her screaming induced a panic attack in her funds “for the cure”) diverts attention from the Ellison writes, citing the contributions of teenage son. “The thinnest silver lining,” she political participation needed if there is to be mothers acting collectively, such as Mothers writes, “is that going through that experience prevention of this disease. of the Plaza de Mayo, those who fought over was a really effective way of learning that I King makes it clear that buying or wearing the Love Canal and Mothers Against Drunk never wanted to go through it again.” This some pink-ribbon-festooned product may do Driving (MADD). section also includes brief stories from other much less good—may even cause harm— The Mommy Brain synthesizes the research women, such as singer/songwriter/actor Ruth when these activities sideline attention to the of dozens of scientists, and Ellison, a mother of Gerson and Marissa Renee Laham, a high systemic and structural factors that shape the two, shares her interviews. Swedish school student. frequency and distribution of the disease. neuroendocrinologist Kerstin Uvnas-Mober Finally, Gillespie describes how she came to She is critical of “consumer-oriented breast explains how oxytocin, a hormone released forgive. (Her definition of forgiveness, by the cancer activism” and its implications for during childbirth and breast-feeding, helps way, is that of Buddhist monk and author individual women and for society. King also create the capacity for the deep bond that Thubten Chodron: It means letting go of anger describes how corporate philanthropy and the typically accompanies the birth of a child. and resentment, not saying that whatever “market for generosity” have positively “Scientists are finding evidence that inspired your rage is okay.) Gillespie’s advice contributed to reshaping breast cancer away whenever you establish a relationship of trust, for making this shift involves using justified from being a hidden, highly stigmatized your oxytocin goes up,” says Ellison. Hormone anger as a catalyst—she was finally so mad at disease. levels in fathers and adoptive parents have her manipulative, cheating boyfriend that she Clearly, philanthropy is not simply a sign of also been observed to change. got out of the relationship and got sober. good corporate citizenship. Rather, it is a The jury is still out, however, about negative Gillespie is a Texas-based writer who has business opportunity, whether a company (or changes, including “gestational memory penned two previous books as well as articles its foundations) makes outright donations to a impairment” (pregnancy brain). Some for the likes of the New York Times, BUST and breast cancer organization (thereby earning scientists, notes Ellison, hypothesize that Nerve. She also teaches anger contemplation tax credits) or sells some pink ribbon/breast childbirth, particularly a very difficult delivery, classes. Maybe this is what makes Pissed Off cancer-associated product (thereby making can lead to a form of post-traumatic stress so readable and relatable. For example, she straightforward profits). disorder, and hence depression and/or trouble writes: “The key is to use the anger for what Breast cancer is as rooted in the with concentration and memory. Ellison’s it’s good for, then get rid of it. You wouldn’t put machinations of commerce and the failings of provocative book adds new fuel to the a bloody tampon back in the box for future society as it in the mechanisms of biology and nature/culture debate and challenges use, would you?” The result is a self-help book the failings of the body’s defences against patriarchy’s long tradition of ridicule of the for people who hate self-help books but cellular change and damage. Would that our learned or “brainy” woman. nonetheless want to deal with whatever has efforts to detect lumps were matched by a made it onto their shit lists. vigilance to root out the growing influence of Wendy Robbins is a founder of women’s studies at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, and chair of corporate philanthropy that is displacing a the Women’s Committee at the Canadian Association of PINK RIBBONS INC. political and societal approach to this disease. University Teachers. SAMANTHA KING University of Minnesota Press THIN PISSED OFF: REVIEW BY ABBY LIPPMAN LAUREN GREENFIELD ON WOMEN AND ANGER Samantha King’s Pink Ribbons Inc. follows in Chronicle Books SPIKE GILLESPIE the tradition of Sharon Batt’s 1994 classic REVIEW BY KRIS ROTHSTEIN Seal Press Patient No More by examining the system that Lauren Greenfield is a documentary REVIEW BY JENNIFER O’CONNOR supports breast cancer. photographer and filmmaker whose work Patriarchy. The U.S. president. Personal ads. Pink Ribbons Inc. adds insights on the roles deals with how female identity is now All have made Spike Gillespie’s shit list. played by neo-liberalism, which fosters “a expressed primarily through the body. Her Pissed Off: On Women and Anger is her state that is no longer required to answer all previous book, Girl Culture, explored the

46 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS arts culture SPRING READING

cultural obsession with displaying the female Olsen and all the other girls skinnier than you.” and artists, the authors question and attempt to body; it depicted sweet-16 parties, baby prom While Thin interrogates the exploitative reshape their roles as facilitators. queens, awkward teens and a few images of ways in which images of women are often Leah Burns, in her essay “Seriously … Are women with eating disorders. This last topic displayed, it is worrying that Renfrew’s You Really an Artist,” reflects on a mural became the focus of her next project, Thin. treatment is sometimes infantilizing and, at project with a Toronto youth group. “Working Greenfield located herself at the Renfrew worst, ineffective. The book attempts to as a group, we encountered and interrogated Center, an eating disorder treatment clinic in consider the larger social and cultural issues many assumptions about identity and arts Florida, where many patients gave Greenfield that have encouraged obsessions with food, practice.” Burns faced challenges in fulfilling access to their lives during and after restriction and body size—those profound expectations of the mural’s aesthetics while treatment. These women shared everything by influences which explain why nearly all of the trying to respect the participants’ creative giving extensive interviews, providing their patients in Greenfield’s book relapse. process. personal journals and allowing the camera to The issue of the end product is a running document their public and private moments. WILD FIRE: ART AS ACTIVISM concern for these contributors who prefer to They are photographed next to their EDITED BY DEBORAH BARNDT emphasize process. As Barndt recounts: “At unrealistic drawings of themselves, being Sumach Press times it was a struggle for everyone to feel provoked to tears by a cupcake, wearing REVIEW BY LAURA BUCCI proud of our own product and not to see it as prescription hose and being weighed. Can academics go beyond their prescribed less than those whose work followed the The women include some in their 40s and roles as researchers? At the environmental larger, dominant global communication 50s, mothers and athletes—illustrating that studies program at York University, some trends.” Producing a radio show helped one eating disorders afflict a broad range of academics are indeed shifting their identities ethnic community in Nicaragua to raise women. The images are emotional and and blurring the boundaries between art, awareness and promote discussion on issues powerful and, like all good art, provoke a activism and academia. important to them. response both visceral and intellectual. They Wild Fire brings together 17 essays by Oona Padgham discusses her work with uncover our cultural belief that appearance is contributors from the program. Edited by detainees whose lives at a detention centre identity and that transformation happens in Deborah Barndt, an activist, community- are steeped in isolation, fear and despair. She physical ways, especially for women. The based educator and photographer, the relates how art can bring women together symptoms may look familiar, but these essays are grouped around four themes: Art socially and politically. Art here is not for photographs give the subjects a chance to tell in Social Movements, Art as Activism, Eco public consumption, but its display outside the their own stories. Art and Art Heals. centre serves as an outreach tool to allies and The book allows their stories to be Through their stories of community projects, activist communities. contextualized and understood as the contributors demonstrate how art can be an A valuable resource to community workers, manifestations of cultural attitudes towards effective tool for promoting social change. Art Wild Fire shows us what art, activism and the female body. Factors like the role of media, here encompasses many mediums, including academia can offer each other, and challenges medicalization and family pressures appear jamming, mural painting, street performance, us to reconsider how these are practised. clearly, while other issues remain difficult to interventionist art and radio shows. As they Laura Bucci is a Vancouver-based textile artist and crack. One girl doodles, “think of Mary-Kate confront stereotypes about academics, activists freelance writer.

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In The Forest for the Trees, director Maren Ade (right) portrays a schoolteacher who suffers the consequences of her inability to decipher social cues.

THE FOREST FOR THE TREES character that is rare in today’s cinema of Melanie as an emotional support the night DIRECTED BY MAREN ADE special effects and over-dedication to Tina has a fight with her boyfriend. Melanie’s Mongrel Media predictable plot twists. Ade can easily be futile pursuit of this friendship, while forgiven the poor-quality resolution of her film, struggling to appear competent at her new REVIEW BY MAUREEN MEDVED since it was her grad school project, but this is job, leads to her inevitable disintegration. She There are films that feature an archetypal an amazing film by any standard. spirals into a deep vortex of social mistakes cinematic protagonist who recalls the Like Roman Polanski’s The Tenant, it and misunderstandings. Her inability to Persephone myth, the idea of the tragic female explores the psychological terrain of decipher blatant social cues is excruciating. character whose difficulties travelling through alienation and loneliness. The story is an Eva Lobau, who plays Melanie, is at once the underworld bring rejuvenation and growth unsentimental and painfully honest portrayal tragic and comic. Lobau is totally believable as to the rest of us. Such films include Fellini’s of a young woman who breaks up with her the socially awkward and uncompelling Nights of Cabiria or Seidelman’s Smithereens. boyfriend, moves to a new city and starts a Melanie. Even with the world stacked against Another film that falls into this category is new job as a schoolteacher. Immediately, her, she reminds us that life is neither fair nor Maren Ade’s The Forest for the Trees, a Melanie is ridiculed by her students and easy. But even within these painful limitations German film that won the Special Jury Award misunderstood by her middle-aged colleagues. there can be joy and meaning. And like at Sundance in 2005. The film is easy to miss The only other teacher close to her age is Cabiria, who rises from her real-life nightmare since it sorely lacks in production values, but it Thorsten, a music teacher on the make. into a cluster of singing children, Melanie fits squarely into the type of storytelling I’m Melanie soon grows intrigued by her shows us that within the moment of our talking about. Like her aforementioned neighbour, a relatively sophisticated and greatest sorrow and regret can be found that predecessors, Ade handles this film with snotty boutique manager, Tina, played tiny glint of truth and beauty that can crack precision, integrity and an authenticity of convincingly by Daniela Holtz, who uses the world wide open.

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50 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS arts culture WOMEN AND WORDS

The Truth About Lying BY LISA FOAD

’ve just come from the Greenwood Gun Club—a ramshackle shooting I range located right next to the White Oaks Holy Baptist Church, a clapboard affair, peeling paint and all—in small- town Texas. My target sheet’s not bad for a first-time attempt—a torrent of bullet holes litter the target’s periphery, and a few shots more sinister are punctuated by one perfect bull’s eye. I must admit, it wasn’t until I moved up—from 25 yards to 15— that I managed to fire with any success. Proximity? Key, really. Toronto-based cultural critic Lynn Crosbie agrees. The author of four books of poetry—Miss Pamela’s Mercy, VillainElle, Pearl and Queen Rat—and two critical fictions—1999’s Dorothy L’Amour, which takes on Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten (murdered in 1980 by her ex-husband) and 1997’s wildly contested Paul’s Case,a meditative masterpiece that explores the socio-political positioning of convicted murderer and sex offender Paul Bernardo knows a thing or two about weaponry. “The moment we let someone enter our lives, they come equipped/ with enough ammunition to destroy us,/ though the terms of the destruction are unclear,” she Author Lynn Crosbie’s latest book Liar, delicately and painfully parses the fine art of love, weaponry and writes in her latest book, Liar,a destruction. smouldering blaze of narrative poetry that, with meticulous precision, autopsies a seven-year It’s also Crosbie’s most autobiographically infused text yet. relationship besieged with betrayal. Its a particularly risky endeavour, blighted as it is with our Crosbie’s dissection, waged in the passionate aftermath of cultural inclinations towards that elusive thing called Truth, cataclysm, is a heartbreaker, for sure. But more than that, our attempts to source out the Real. Of course, conflations Liar takes to task the cult of romance—its hyperbolic of Crosbie’s “I” with that of Liar’s are moot, given the insistence on itself as a cultural beacon that, triangulated ostensible nature of confessional writing. Even so, Crosbie through desire and the One, promises everlasting fulfillment, has been hounded by a book club attempting to secure wholeness and security. names and photos.

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 51 Herizons Marketplace

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52 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS “Breakups generally occur as result of a system failure, so to speak, and are a long time coming, irrespective of the final act.”

“Confession is not like a diary or pure self-indulgence, “In a moment of churlishness, I wanted to tell Elizabeth though it can be, of course. No one writes diary entries that Smart: ‘I’ll give you something to weep about.’ Romance, in end in envois, or pay close attention to meter, line breaks and its capital-R form, is an imperative mixture of love and grief. slant rhymes,” says Crosbie, at home in Toronto’s Parkdale. Anyone in love knows this feeling, that the sensation is all the “And confession, in its best form, seeks to make plural the more powerful and treacherous because it is encoded with the extremely personal. I think some detractors are simply possibility of destruction, of loss.” impatient prigs, who feel as though the Ancient Mariner has Indeed, Crosbie’s textual lacerations yield a much deeper them by the arm and they have places to go, damn it! deception—wherein Liar’s “you” hails not only the betrayer, “Like all autobiographical narratives, Liar is filled with but the narrator herself. After all, the mythology of romance elisions and is tendentious. The book’s title pretty well ensures depends upon our testimony—love letters, pet names and the latter—though I hope that the book is not strictly personal, moments like this one: “I have, at times, held my head in my that the idea of lying is explored as a concept and fact. hands,/ and told myself it be alright./ A lie that I miss.” “My discomfort with non-fiction, which is a lie in and of She says: “I tried to examine my own culpability in the itself, is clear, I think, in the fragmented nature of the text, its relationship as well, as an act of atonement and as a way of rejection of chronology, that the incidents chosen support an interrogating the standard breakup line. Breakups generally image system.” occur as result of a system failure, so to speak, and are a long Narrative reconstruction and artistic licence aside, what time coming, irrespective of the final act. That said, if it was it like to write through such emotional volatility? “Once I takes two to tango, surely to God the one stepping on the found Liar’s voice and system, I was able to write at length. other’s feet all the time is at fault? The culpability I/the The hardest part is always finding a new voice/way of speaker feels is largely related to having helped create a co- speaking. It took two years, I think, maybe longer, and I was pathology to deny what was going on in front of me in lucky enough to have a close friend who would charge over exchange for all that comfort. Last night I dreamed I tore up and read dramatically from the work in progress. On another his old room and found plastered hiding places and like level, some of the things I remembered, wrote about, were that. I loved the man, and was gaslighted by him. This has very painful, and that was difficult, is difficult. made it almost impossible to look back without anger, “I’m thinking of a letter Anne Sexton wrote to her confusion and remorse. Lying is a virus, infecting everything daughter saying that she ‘wrote sad’ but ‘lived to the hilt.’ seen and unseen. I’ve always liked her cleverness as to the hilt (the highest, the “I feel that some traumas we experience form actual hold of the knife). My life was so chaotic during the years I neurological scars that ache, now and then, like the crass wrote the book, and in the middle of it, usually late at night, tattoo I got at a biker shack many, many years ago. Trauma is I would write sad without really feeling it. To this day, I a pile of Lego, waiting to be reassembled at all times into haven’t read the book. It’s a loosely organized scrapbook I different logics, shapes.” can’t seem to locate.” And Crosbie is particularly attentive to the ways in which For Liar’s narrator, “the hilt” is, like confessional writing, romance narratives take up space upon and within female ostensive: “The hilt is a smile, the hilt is an abject curve / bodies. Consider this: “I am tired of watching women who, in turning in and out of what you want and what you know: the terror of being left/ are changed also./ Large women as taste of steel, what emerges from its perforations.” And insistent as thunder, made small, their allure cast as Crosbie’s pen adeptly severs this duplicity—in particular, the repulsion,/ all of them looking for dust in the corners, sanctuary stakes that romance parlays. freezing sauces,/ probing themselves with sharp instruments./ “Liar is not a manifesto. That said, it does question our Like a lamb outfitted in the skin of its dead offspring, I chase/ quite poignant belief in not only the everlasting, but in life as the one who has the power to starve me.” a spike that keeps climbing. Yet I have no real cynicism of What’s Crosbie’s take on the limited perimeters of such sweet dreams: One does feel secure in love, wretched helplessness and collapsibility within which women are when it is seized away. asked to experience romance’s necessary failure? “I

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 53 “Trauma is a pile of Lego, waiting to be reassembled at all times into different logics, shapes.”

remember a casual friend asking me, ‘Are. You. Okay?’ very and last lines, feel the second coming on like a wave as I write slowly just afterwards. I said, ‘I’m not retarded, if that’s what and try not to turn my back. you mean.’ Pity is desired, I suppose, but not its larger “Writing is romantic, if solipsistically so, in its primary apparatuses—contempt, condescension and smugness. I objective—that is, to go out in the world and announce, à la resisted all that ‘poor her’ business by becoming highly Sylvia Plath, what immortality is. visible and snarly. People were convinced of my go-girl “I wrote [Liar] because I was trying to work on other resilience when I stopped eating and became tiny. things, but my life, as Wordsworth said, was too much with Appearances are all—never mind why and how you acquire me. I considered the events of this relationship and its demise them. I was so convincing, my ex came back, and we had a an artistic obstacle. I felt I needed to get through it to move long, torrid affair behind the back of the woman he left me along to other work. Yet, to date, I am only writing poems in for. The irony was hideous, and I ended it.” the voice of my dog, so I am not sure if the obstacle has been Interestingly, Liar’s narrator stops keeping a diary. fully moved… “Refuting a diary, for me, was a refutation of a narrative form I assume I will write when I feel compelled, or not write that never changes, that is inherited by millions of weepy, again—either way.” monomaniacal girls.” “I wish life was a romance novel, not the nightmare of So what now? “I write when I want to, when I have loneliness Richard Price evokes in Ladies’ Man. I want to something to say, and at no other time. I treat each poem like drive a truck past a lake every day and fire a gun at tin cans. a sonnet, structurally, with particular attention to the first Heaven,” she says. That and: “Save me that target sheet.” 

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54 SPRING 2007 HERIZONS cole’s notes BY SUSAN G. COLE

Hey Honey, Pass the Lipstick

Am I turning into a lipstick lesbian? In fact, I’ve never liked “What?” the term—it’s terribly dismissive of dykes who like a little “You’ve got half an eyebrow on each side.” gloss every now and then, and it sounds like any such woman I ran to the bathroom to look. She was right. Half my ought to be ejected from the feminist ranks. eyebrows don’t exist anymore. But so what? Any time I hear Besides, neither of us is applying lipstick—my partner and the word anti-aging applied to a product, I gag—I’m I, that is. We’re standing side by side at the mirror applying conscious, right? other cosmetics. Maybe. Assuring myself I’d only use makeup for television ”What’s that—rouge?” I ask, as Leslie brushes something appearances, I began my research. First stop—the home of a over her perfectly excellent cheekbones. colleague, whose bathroom counter and toilet tank are ”It’s called bronzer,”she corrects me, pointedly, priding herself covered in tiny little bottles and tubes. She uses different on not using dated terminology. “Molly showed it to me.” creams and foundation for the morning, afternoon and I can believe that. During the evening, tripling her quotient of holiday season, our daughter Molly products. And don’t even try came back from Montreal—she’s “‘Try this,’ counting the tubes of lipstick. Her studying at McGill—and I have to verdict? Buy a brush, not a pencil, say that the biggest impact of her she said, unpacking one and get some eyebrow powder. visit was on our bathroom. I could of those brushes that look Off to Shoppers Drug Mart, where hardly recognize it once she hit one of those cosmetic consultants town, what with the counter totally almost like the old-fashioned dove in to the task, trying various covered in I have no idea what. item men use to apply shades while I just sat there feeling Molly makes a point of painting unbelievably foolish. She couldn’t my two large toes whenever she gets shaving cream, starting to quite find one that satisfied her, a chance—my one concession to brush on the product.” forcing me to go to a cosmetics corporeal adornment. Only blues or specialty store where I once again greens, though, never pinks or reds. was subjected to the tryouts. Finally, I pride myself on not worrying about whether I’m complying a shade I could live with—one that matched my brows. with all those feminine norms. To the cashier. “Thirty-five dollars, please. Do you need a But here I am—brushing my eyebrows, side by side with brush with this?” my bronzing girlfriend. It turns out she’d complained once, Now, really. I am aware that cosmetic prices are inflated to quietly, about circles under her eyes and a pathetic pallor, and exploit women made insecure by a money-grubbing Molly just jumped right in. cosmetics industry. I’ve quoted Body Shop founder Anita “Try this,” she said, unpacking one of those brushes that Roddick extensively on how all creams are really the same and look almost like the old-fashioned item men use to apply none should cost over $20. shaving cream, starting to brush on the product. The Still, all I could say was: “Oh, right. How much is that?” demonstration was pretty convincing—it did give a little bit “Twenty-five dollars.” of a glow. I, of course, was still dubious and feared the Bless her. When she saw my face, she advised to me to go slippery slope that goes from bronzing to Botox. back to Shoppers, where I could get a generic brush for 10 Until a few weeks later. After taking a look at a quickie news bucks. spot I’d done on TV, I noticed that onscreen it was hard to Please be assured that, on this particular morning, I am appreciate the sweet blue colour of my eyes. preparing for another TV shoot. But if it looks good, I could Ever-so-slightly bronzed Leslie peered into my face. imagine applying the stuff for a big party. “You’re going bald in your eyebrows.” Am I losing my mind? 

HERIZONS SPRING 2007 55 on the edge BY LYN COCKBURN

Dicking Around on Equality

Who said the following? When? Where? election for the first time in April 2006. The IOC meeting “I hope the girls don’t waste their time and make this a took place in November 2006. So far, there has been no human rights issue. That’s silly, and all that will do is piss announcement as to whether Kuwaiti women will be allowed people off....” to ski jump if the IOC changes its mind. a) St. Paul. AD 19, in reference to women having to obey Which it won’t. Dick has said it is too late to revisit the their husbands and refrain from driving chariots. Damascus. issue. Nope, Dick, it ain’t. The Vancouver Olympics take place Road to. in 2010. This is 2007. Lotsa time. b) The Pope. Any year. Rome. Lotsa time to piss people off. And it is women who are willing c) Peter MacKay. 2006. In the House of Commons while to piss people off who have changed the course of history in glowering at Belinda. politics, sports, medicine and every other field you can mention. d) Dick Pound, Canada’s permanent member of the For example, Dr. Emily Stowe (1831-1903), Canada’s first International Olympic Committee. 2006 Vancouver. practising female doctor, pissed off a whole ton of people. She If you picked d, you pass. Now why would Dick Pound say applied to Canadian medical schools, which were mightily such a thing? Because women want to ski jump in the 2010 pissed at her audacity and refused her entry, of course. She Olympics. Because the IOC says went to the U.S., got her MD, came they can’t. Because women are back to Canada in 1867, practised considering filing a complaint with “Nope, Dick, it ain’t too late. medicine, but didn’t get her licence the Canadian Human Rights until 1880. Commission charging they are The Vancouver Olympics More recently, Belinda Stronach has being discriminated against on the take place in 2010. This is managed to piss off big bunches of basis of their gender. Canadians for being feminist, blond, Interestingly, ski jumping has 2007. Lotsa time.” brunette, attractive, intelligent, been an Olympic sport since 1927, mouthy, sexually active; for crossing but for men only. Yet today, tens of thousands of women the floor, dressing well, dumping Peter MacKay and worldwide are involved in the sport. In Canada, one-quarter romancing Tie Domi (about that last one, Belinda, the guy’s a of our 80 competition-level ski jumpers are women. dork). Oh well, never mind—your choice. And as any of us who has watched the Olympics knows, ski Incidentally, no amount of pissed-offedness can disguise jumping encompasses incredible leaps and downright hold- the fact that Stronach has evolved into an efficient, effective your-breath suspense. No wonder it is one of the most spokeswoman who is sure to rise in Canadian politics. watched events on TV during the Winter Games. These are but two on a long and illustrious list of Canadian What many, including me, did not know is that ski jumping women willing to annoy, irk, outrage and anger whomever, in is the one and only Olympic sport closed to women. We’re order to improve the rights of women. barred. We can’t even sit at the back of the ski jumping bus. Perhaps Katie Willis spoke for all of us when she said: “I Katie Willis, 15, Canada’s top female ski jumper, does not want to be able to represent my country and win a gold think much of the IOC decision. “We deserve to be there, and medal, that’s my ultimate dream. I want to be standing on the we should be there, because it’s the 21st century and women podium and hear my national anthem.” and men should have equal rights,” she said, mildly enough. Exactly. Kudos to women in Canada, in Kuwait, Speaking of the 21st century, it must be noted that the IOC everywhere, who are willing to piss people off. meeting which again barred women from competing in ski So there you are, Dick. You don’t mind if I call you Dick, do jumping took place in Kuwait, where women voted in an you? Seems appropriate, somehow. 

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