Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Steele, Cassie Premo

Book Reviews 
organ has been removedwith a dull razor, and without anaesthetic. Behind her, 
the female "buankisa," or circurnciser, washes the girls' blood from the area. In 
this photo, Kadi's formerly open, easy stance has closed. Her arms wind a piece 
of dark fabric tightly around her naked frame, and her facial features are newly 
marked with pain, mistrust, and despair. Eyes narrowed, Kadi's feet stand 
slightly apart and unsteady on the hut's dirt floor. Bloody footprints mark the 
earth behind her. Blood from a chicken sacrificed before the mutilation spatters 
the walls. 
Like this final shot, earlier photographs of the weeping Kadi and her 
sisters underscore the girls' suffering. These photos depict the aftermath of 
what seems from the prefatory text to be a "sunna" circumcision entailing partial 
or total excision of the clitoris-the type of female genital mutilation most 
practiced in central Africa where the book's events apparently take place. A 
single drawback to this volume is its lack of specific context. There is only a 
partial indication of where Kadi lives, making it difficult to ascertain what 
country she is from or what kind of female genital mutilation typically is 
  er formed in her culture. It seems to be primarily a Muslim regron, though 
Rioja notes that Christians and animists in the area also practice the tradition. 
The country is called "sub-Saharan" and Rwanda is mentioned in Rioja's 
introduction, but this information is not given straightforwardly. The omission 
may be deliberate, as Rioja writes that the Ministry of Health in Kadi's country 
has "initiated one of the most significant anti-female circumcision campaigns 
in any African country." While powerful, the book would be stronger still with 
more precise information. 
Boundary Bay 
Rishma Dunlop 
Winnipeg: Staccato Chapbooks, 2000 
Reviewed by Cassie Premo Steele 
In the best of these poems, hawks and herons, wetlands and berries fade, and 
couples come into focus- a mother and daughter; a daughter and her potential 
lover; a husband and wife; a woman and her lover. These are intimate poems 
of love for our daughters'delicacy (even as they paint their fingernails blue); of 
longing for a husband's presence as the years, like tides, wash him away, of the 
need for grounding in the lives we have chosen, even as we remember those 
from whom we have walked away. 
192 1 Volume 3, Number 2 
Book Reviews 
In the stunning first poem, "Stories from Boundary Bay," the mother as 
artist presents herself: "the mother writing poems of girls / the art on white 
sheets like love." It is this love- of girls, of art- that grounds: "our children's 
needs / relentless magnets / anchoring us to earth." The book is dedicated to 
the poet's daughters, and in the first section, entitled "Slippage," the speaker 
watches carefully over her growing daughters, her dying mother, and her 
companion nature, and emerges a sensual, embodied but fragile and lonely 
woman. 
In the second section, "The Body ofMy Garden," the wife / lover /woman 
takes over. These poems, while not ostensibly about motherhood, invoke the 
melancholic question of where the marriage goes after children arrive. In  a 
geographic motif, the husband / lover / loved one takes off, like a heron over 
the bay, leaving the woman behind either metaphorically or literally as the one 
to care for the children, while she writes (in "Correspondence," "Variations of 
Blue: Foreign Correspondence," and "Autograph") and sings (in "Invocation," 
"Song of," and "Prelude") to those who are gone. 
This absence becomes a substitute for desire, a need tinged with anger, as 
in "Hunger": "the terrain of marriage 1 leaves me starving / mouth full of love." 
Sometimes such longing turns beautiful, as it does in the best poem in the 
collection, "Valentine." At other times, emotion in the face of long absence 
simply sustains us, as in these lines, from "Variations of Blue: Foreign 
Correspondence": 
when you write of this blue intensity of tears 
I know that such a response to blue 
will survive the passing of years, 
the crumbling of bones, our distances and silences 
such a response to blue 
wraps a lyric shawl around my throat, 
close to the pulse of blood 
I will always know your presence 
as an alphabet; it spells my name. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 193 


English

Boundary Bay

Turnbull, Lorna A.

The Legal Characterization of Pregnancy and Mothering: Does Mother Know Best?

Dunlop, Rishma

Rishma Dunlop 
Copper Moon 
For Matthew Shepard (1 9 76-1 998) 
andfor his mother and father, June and Dennis Shepard 
i 
Child 
of our time, our times have robbed your cradle. 
Sleep in a world your final sleep has woken. 
Eavan Boland, "Child of Our Time" 
In the wake of a thousand years, 
your body a scarecrow 
battered silhouette against the starlight 
of a grave sky 
death arrives in a pick-up truck 
steals your shoes and $20 for coke and cigarettes 
wraps your wallet in a dirty diaper 
in a garbage pail 
for this and for love 
you are lashed to your crucifuc 
your blood a bitter stain 
on the place that cradled you 
your face 
a scarlet mask 
but for the clean white tracks 
of your tears 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 197 
Rishma DunIop 
and the air around us is a knife 
and the taste of death is like rust 
in our mouths 
and a hundred years closes 
a savage end to your journey 
What hope for a new century 
unless your brief shining will be 
an ecclesiastes 
unless in this broken place 
some aurora of promise is born 
unless your tears cleanse 
the skin of the earth 
unless our children, 
born of this time and the next 
learn from your severed wings 
and fly 
follow you out of this geography 
this darkest heart 
I imagine you there 
in the primal glow 
of a copper moon 
the earth curving its shadow 
across the lunar surface 
There will be a season for you 
when the trees and air and sky are singing 
and light will begin in the roses opening, 
in the apples falling from trees 
and there will be a time for you 
when the crows will disappear 
mourning doves will vanish, 
when faith will rise up 
with the songbirds of dawn 
May your breath be resurrected 
by the human cantos of mercy. 
May you dance beyond these years, 
your heart breaking loose 
in cathedrals of winds. 
198 1 Volume 3, Number 1 
Copper Moon 
May this new century 
hold you, 
tender as a fontanel. 
You, Mr. McKinney, with yourfiiend Mr. Henderson, killed my son.. . . 
You left him out there by himself, but he wasn't alone.. . he had the 
beautiful night sky with the same stars and moon that we used to look at 
through a telescope. Then he had the daylight and the sun to shine on him one 
more time-one more cool, wonderful day in Wyoming. His last day in 
Wyoming. And through it all he was breathing in for the last time the smell of 
sagebrush and the scent of pine trees from the snowy range. He heard the 
wind-the ever-present Wyoming wind-for the last time. 
Dennis Shepard's statements to the court, November 4, 1999 
In the wake of a thousand years 
I drift back on the bent neck of time 
to the infant clasp of my firstborn 
nursing her on an autumn night 
her eyes reflecting 
the milky net of stars 
the earth curves its shadow 
across the lunar surface 
a copper moon glows over the foothills 
and in this primal light 
I give her to the tidal pulls of sleep and dreams, 
my hand cupped beneath her heart 
I remember her flight 
through my cave of bones 
her life spreading open 
the beginning of music and light 
an aperture of hope 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 199 
Rishma Dunlop 
in the folds of clean white linen 
my child so new 
all around her lightens and rises 
claims me 
the distillation of her breath 
a universe, 
an infinite refrain that enters me 
Baby boy 
If anything stood out, it was the fragileness of Shepard 
Fireside Lounge employees cited by Prosecutor Cal Rerucha 
Outside your funeral at the Redemption Chapel 
Reverend Phelps marches 
with his cronies from Kansas 
their signs God Hates Fags 
a full-color image of you says 
Matthew in Hell 
and it is a time to mourn 
and a time to weep 
a time to remember your father 
teaching you songs of childhood 
Frkre Jacques, 
Row, Row, Row Your Boat 
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star 
how I wonder what you are 
up above the world so high 
like a diamond in the sky 
the hatemongers at the temple 
are surrounded 
a parade of people dressed as "Angels of Peace" 
white angels for you 
seven feet high with eight foot wingspans 
and the crowd cheers them on 
I remember 
that October night 
200 1 Volume 3, Number 1 
Copper Moon 
at the Fireside Lounge, 
how death courted you 
beer bottle and pool cue in hand 
discussing your politics 
wrapping the syllables 
of a serpent's coil 
around your open heart 
your smile shining 
like your patent leather shoes 
this was someone's child 
Melissa Ethridge, "Scarecrow" 
and I remember 
another mother's voice 
in a Laramie, Wyoming courtroom 
claiming mercy for the murderers of her firstborn 
Matthew stoodfor something 
mercy for those who could not show mercy 
and a father speaks to his son's killers: 
I give you life in the memory 
of one who no longer lives. 
May you have a long life, 
and may you thank Matthew 
every day for it. 
and I want the sanctity of scriptures 
to conjure spells upon my tongue 
to pray that this season too shall pass 
as if the words might chant 
a new scene into being 
perhaps those farm fields 
filled with wildflowers 
the choirs of weeping 
hushed in the opiate of poppies 
but I see your pistol-whipped body 
blood seeping into a nation 
I remember the officer who cut you free 
spealung of the braces on your teeth, 
Journaloftbe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 201 
Rishma Dunlop 
your school ID in the dust 
she whispers to you in the ambulance 
words of comfort, Baby boy 
and the sound of mothers and fathers 
through endless years 
is a wailing of sirens in my ear 
and I wonder, as I touch 
the memory of my sleeping child 
her tender fontanel, 
as I watch her now 
running fleet-footed 
through corridors of time, 
my anthem, my bloodline calling, 
I wonder, if I could cast away stones, 
if I could be so merciful 
to those who would crush her 
I wonder, if this new century 
will hold her, 
will her mother's faith in 
memory's insistence, 
be enough 
for a millennium of mercy 
202 1 Volume 3, Number 1 


Copper Moon

Cassie Premo Steele 
Walking on the Backs of Whales 
The night you were born I dreamt 
I saw whales in the ocean, large humps 
of backs rising out of the sea, grey 
like your hands, and lingering there, 
in the air, skin full of urchins and 
moss. The sight was wondrous, like 
your eyes, the first time you looked 
at us, into the blue of me, the hazel 
of your father, your gaze a miraculous 
mix of us both. And when I was done, 
with the whales and your birthing, 
I began to walk back to the land, 
and the water was shallow, the pain 
was not bad, I was still amazed 
at what I had seen, and I realized 
I'd been walking on the backs of whales 
the whole time. What I'd taken for earth 
was the wet of their bodies, hovering firm 
beneath the surface ofwater, providing 
a path over ocean, allowing me to meet you 
half way, between that world and this, 
taking me gently back home to the shore 
where I never before had been. 
54 / Volume 3, Number 2 


Walking on the Backs of Whales

Meyer, Sabine

Book Reviews 
The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians: 
Tips and Techniques from Conception to Birth-How 
to Stay Sane and Care for Yourself 
Rachel Pepper 
Sand Francisco: Cleis Press, 1999 
Reviewed by Sabine Meyer 
"How-to" guides-especially those that claim to be "the ultimatew-have 
always turned me off. Hence, when the bright cover of Rachel Pepper's book 
caught my eye during a recent visit to my local feminist bookstore, my first 
impulse was to discard it as yet another attempt to say it all. I quicklymoved on, 
to browse through new fiction, feminist theory, used books, and the children's 
corner which my two-year-old was already in the process of dismantling. I did 
return, however to the table that displayed an assortment of titles on mother- 
ing/motherhood. And when I ventured beyond the "baby-colored" bracelets, 
bottles, spoons, pacifiers, chew toys, and pink socks of Pepper's cover, I found 
an abundance of detailed and well-presented information. Moreover, I en- 
countered a tone of support and encouragement for a spectrum of voices and 
choices surrounding the issue of lesbians becoming mothers which I had not 
expected from The Ultimate Guide. 
A new lesbian parent herself, Pepper bases her "guide" on information she 
has gathered during her own journey toward motherhood. An introductory 
chapter on projecting and planning for pregnancy briefly considers profes- 
sional, financial, emotionaVpsychological, social, sexual and other demands 
and changes that having and raising children-especially as a single or 
partnered lesbian-are likely to raise. The chapters that follow offer detailed 
information on the logistical aspects of becoming a mother without a male 
partner: understanding/monitoring fertility, choosing sperm banks and/or 
donours, insemination, infertility treatment, pregnancy, labour, delivery, the 
impact of pregnancy on desire/sex/self-esteem, welcoming baby, and a list of 
resources and support networks. Taking a wholistic approach to her subject, 
Pepper includes the importance of understanding one's desire to have a child, 
ofestablishing social-emotional support systems, of taking care of oneself, and 
connecting with others riding the "conception roller coaster". By establishing 
a dialogue between her own experiences with "the wacky world of lesbian 
conception and pregnancy" (ix) and those ofother lesbian moms/moms-to-be, 
Pepper creates a much needed sense of connection and reassurance for those of 
- - 
us who anticipate pregnancybut do not see ourselves addressed by conventional 
pregnancy books, most of which address the needs of the straight, coupled 
mainstream. 
Unfortunately, The Ultimate Guide falls short of by-passing the rather 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 235 
Book Reviews 
common equation of being able to "pay-for-it" with a license to "go-for-itn- 
a highly problematic class (and perhaps also race-) specific presumption. In 
fact, having sex with or accepting a "direct" donation from a male friend or 
acquaintance might be the only choice for some of us who could not afford to 
conceive through medical intervention. Why not "go against the lesbian party 
line" (39) and explore further the diversity ofchoices made by lesbians who want 
to become mothers and the socio-political ramifications of these choices? 
Moreover, the talk about "boy spermJ' and "girl sperm" leaves me wondering 
what it is that spurs our desire to be(come) mothers. The hope or desire of 
parents-to-be fo; a child ofone or the other sex is an important issue in any book 
that deals with pregnancy and becoming a parent. However, when we "design" 
a child should we not keep in mind the very questionable nature of traditional 
efforts at gender assignment and the normative expectations that such efforts 
serve to enforce? Shouldwe not strive to promote frameworks within which our 
children can reach beyond preconfigured, binary formulae of who they ought 
to be(come) and empower them to exceed those formulae? 
In spite short-comings, T h e  Ultimate Guide to  Pregnancy for Lesbians fills 
an obvious gap by providing queer-friendly and queer-specific information on 
how to overcome obstacles we often face when we contemplate, map out, and 
pursue the process of becoming lesbian, bisexual, andt'or single mothers. I 
highly recommend this resourceful and up-to-date compendium of "tips and 
techniques," alongside other wholistic guides to women's bodiedhealth and in 
lieu of the more traditional volumes that continue to refuse us a place in the 
realm of mothering/motherhood. 
Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon 
England 
Mary Dockray-Miller 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000 
Reviewed by Donna C. Woodford 
"Motherhood is becoming respectable, finally, in feminist circles," notes Mary 
Dockray-Miller at the beginning ofMotberboodandMotbering in Anglo-Saxon 
England (1). Nevertheless, she notes that this respectability has been a long 
time in coming: "For years [motherhood] was something to be ignored, 
embarrassed about, or evaded as feminists defined themselves as daughters 
rather than as mothers" (1). In academia, motherhood often has been viewed 
as a trivial subject, not worthy of serious intellectual inquiry. Dockray-Miller's 
236 1 Volume 3, Number l 


The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians: Tips and Techniques from Conception to Birth - How to Stay Sane and Care for Yourself

Panofsky, Ruth

Book Reviews 
attempt to share Ben's experiences? Did Rosenzweig feel that the lines of 
communication could only be reestablished through personal contact? My 
sense is that her relationship with Ben is somewhat flawed, not unlike many 
relationships between parents and adult sons and daughters. And the author 
may have felt that the onlyway she could reach her elusive son would be through 
her physical presence and direct conversation with him in a location of his 
choosing. 
A Jewish Mother in Shangri-fa doesn't reveal how or why Ben becomes a 
Buddhist. I t  does describe the successful rapprochement between mother and 
son. Rosenzweig does not become, as Rodger Kamenetz writes in The Jew in 
the Lotus, a mu (a Jewish Buddhist), although she does attempt to integrate 
Buddhist meditation rituals into her own Judaic practices. However, Rosenzweig 
did not have to travel to Nepal to learn about meditation and spirituality in 
Judaism. Structured, externally directed meditation, (hitbonenut in Hebrew) 
and inner-directed meditation, (hitbodedut in Hebrew) are integral to the 
practice of Judaic mysticism. 
Rosennveig's narrative is a marvellous travelogqe about a trek to the 
Himalayas, but it is also much more than that. I t  is the narrative of the more 
perilous and rewarding journey of a mother's relationship with her son. 
The Bat Had Blue Eyes 
Betsy Warland 
Toronto: Women's Press, 1993 
Reviewed by Ruth Panofsky 
In this powerful collection of prose and poetry, Betsy Warland excavates the 
eviscerating landscape of incest. She writes as a survivor who is determined not 
so much to lay blame-although she does evoke the tragedy that is incest. 
Instead, she writes toward reconciliation with her mother and the otherwomen 
in her family who have been victims of incest themselves. Driven to unearth 
this terrible "family secret," Warland rightly questions whether memorycan be 
"translated into words" (14). This is her dilemma: as a poet she knows that 
language cannot fully articulate the experience of incest. Yet, Warland recog- 
nizes the personal and politicalvalue that resides in language, and The Bat Had 
Blue Eyes is as much an effort to reclaim the self as it is a poetic rendering oflived 
experience. 
In fact, the abuse at the heart of the collection and the speaker's world is 
not described in detail. Warland's focus on the emotional trauma engendered 
by incest positions the victim at the centre of her volume. The perpetrator is 
Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 1 243 
Book Reviews 
a shadowy presence, a threat lurking on the periphery of each poem. The 
ominous power he wields in life is mastered in poems that explore the damaging 
legacy ofincest across generations. Warland posits the need to claim that legacy 
as an unfortunate but inevitable link with the women in her family and, 
ironically and tragically, traces her matrilineage through incest. 
At the core of the work is an interest in mothering: the nurture of a 
grandmother; the emotional distance of a mother; and the healing power of 
words. In fact, to write is to mother the self, and Warland undertakes to write 
her poems in a self-conscious effort to examine her past and explore her pain: 
"a woman alone. . . /making her own text / . . . words so urgent she must stop 
/like a rock/ give herself to them" (27). The desire for actual mothering is felt 
across the volime. Feeling her body dominated by the male, the speaker seeks 
spiritual solace from women. Her therapist (unidentified but likely female) 
recognizes the "[s]udden pungent smell of semen on the web of my/ hand, so 
strong, precise" (14); she claims her grandmother "was the one person i had 
trusted" (36); and finally, she holds her mother "in the circle of my arms" (96). 
The "invisible" crime of incest has the power to devastate and isolate women. 
Feeling herself riven-in body and in spirit-the speaker tries to reconnect 
with her mother, only to learn her mother was herself a victim ofincest: "in my 
family -7 generations, a healer said (89). 
The act ofwriting assists inloosening the shackles ofincest on the speaker's 
life. As she struggles to render memory through language, knowing that 
"[wlith words we begin our forgetting (14), she moves toward celebration of 
that same language, source ofhealing and pleasure. By the end of the collection, 
she has found her way through a shared past to a present where she joins her 
lover, herself 
a lover of words, 
renders me speechless 
drives me down to earth's opening sound 
000000000 
& I  let her o let / her 
return me to 
mother letter. (97) 
244 1 Volume 3, Number l 


The Bat Had Blue Eyes

Forcey, Linda Rennie

Feminist Perspectives on Mothering and Peace

Kruk, Laurie

Book Reviews 
Two Women in a Birth 
Daphne Marlatt and Betsy Warland 
Toronto: Guernica (Collection Essential Poets 58), 1994 
Reviewed by Laurie Kruk 
The title of this book by Canadians Daphne Marlatt and Betsy Warland may 
be misleading to ARM members: it is not concerned with pregnancy, childbirth 
or mothering in the usual sense. Instead, these poets who define themselves as 
lesbians and feminists tackle their partnership, and how they "give birth to" 
their relationship together. Divided into five parts, this dual-voiced book 
questions the (hetero)sexist foundations of our society by probing the cultural 
freight of English. Lesbian desire is essential to their poetic experimentation, 
for as Marlatt and Warland demand space for their relationship, they simulta- 
neously push the language, through word-play, puns, and etymological specu- 
lation, to make room for "the third body," their collaboration in life, love, and 
literature. 
Marlatt's "Touch to MyTongue9' opens the dialogue, introducing lesbian 
love texts that blend prose with poetry, often eschewing capitalization or 
punctuation in dense, packed lines that reflect back on each other, on language 
and on the creative process itself. Both "Touch to My Tongue" and Warland's 
"Open Is Broken," part two, address the absent lover, revealing language's 
paradoxical ability to call up the presence, but also the absence, ofthe addressed 
other. Yet this post-structuralist, postmodernist yearning for an out-of-reach 
connection does not demand a denial of the female/feminine. Marlatt and 
Warland are well-read in feminist criticism and the questions of feminine 
"difference." Marlatt includes as epigraph to "Touch to My Tongue" poet 
H.D.'s comment that "The brain and the womb are both centers of conscious- 
ness, equally important." Marlatt's often-anthologized poem/essay (generic 
boundaries are fluid here) "Musing with Mothertongue" declares language to 
be "a living bodywe enter at birth.. .our mothertongue. It  bears us as we are born 
in it, into cognition" (25). So rather than viewing contemporary English as 
sterile, male-defined, alien, these two poets prefer to uncover--as have feminist 
anthropologists-the feminine substrata, the suppressed "mothertongue" that 
starts with the pre-verbal experience within the womb and is still hidden, they 
insist, in the unarticulated feminine experiences of menstruation, childbirth, 
breastfeeding, and, of course, lesbian desire. As Marlatt puts it, women writers 
involved with this new language-centered feminist poetry are "shoving out the 
walls of taboo and propriety, kichng syntax, discovering life in old roots" (29). 
Both women explore "old roots" of language by creating playful, provocative 
chains of meaning like this one: "labia . . . labilir, labour, belabour, collaborate, 
elaborate" (135). Here the genital lips literally "speak" the "birth process" of the 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 245 
Book Reviews 
two poets, whetherwriting to each other or with each other. "Double Negativen 
is their attempt to capture, in collaboration, a train journey across Australia, 
Marlatt's birthplace. Frank Davey calls it a "long-poem/journal about two 
lesbians crossing Australia's Nullarbor Desert that draws comparisons between 
the theft ofAboriginallands and the denial of space to women who are lesbians" 
(742) The pun on "birthherth [train sleeping compartment]" offers another 
seemingly innocent example of this denied, or unacknowledged, space. An 
interview conducted by the pair follows, in which they interrogate their own 
preconceptions about how best to be "in the landscape." This interrogation 
continues and is heightened in thelast two parts, authored by both Marlatt and 
Warland. "Reading and Writing Between the Lines" melds the two voices into 
shared meditations on how they "interwrite." But it is "Subject to Change," 
which concludes the books, that seems the most risk-taking, as the project of 
writing a poem each per day, presented on opposite pages, breaks down into a 
maze of hurt feelings, distrust, doubt, and anxiety. For March 7th, Warland 
writes: %e talk angrily. you accuse me of leaving the collaboration because it isn't 
going the way I want it to. I accuseyou ofjudgemen when you say I'm getting too 
theoretical' (159). In "Afterthoughts" both acknowledge the "difficultycollabo- 
rating on such a microscopic level . . .we've had to give up individual control." 
But as this piece concludes wryly, "giving each other the gears we are s t d  
engaged." (160). In their sophisticated questioning of the links between 
gender, sexual desire and language, Betsy Warland and Daphne Marlatt 
challenge patriarchal and homophobic cultural codes. And in their collabora- 
tive efforts at honouring one another's needs as well as their own, they revisit 
women's wisdom oflabour and birth throughout the ages: giving up individual 
control to find a greater wonder. 
Work Cited 
Davey, Frank. 1997. "Marlatt, Daphne." OxfordCompanion to Can. Lit. Second 
edition. Gen. eds. Eugene Benson and William Toye. Toronto: Oxford 
University Press, 741-742. 
Talisman 
Afaa M. Weaver 
Chicago: Tia Chucha Press, 1998 
Reviewed by Rishma Dunlop 
This collection of poems explores the speaker's relationships with five women 
in his life. Weaver devotes the sections of his book to Bessie, his mother; 
Eleanora, his first wife with whom he had two children; Ronetta, his second 
246 1 Volume 3, Number I 


Two Women in a Birth

Jetter, Alexis

Patsy Ruth Oliver: A Mother's Battle for Environmental Justice

Gold, Marion Stichman

Book Review3 
the most provocative ideas in Eichler's model since, as she points out, the 
heterosexual union of marriage is a legally privileged relationship. In Australia, 
at a time when it is being proposed by the Federal government that health 
rebates for IVF be limited to married women, and exclude single and lesbian 
women, it is clear that this principle can represent a huge ideological stumbling 
block. Eichler's social responsibility model represents a promising vision, but 
it is also worth remembering that family shifts can oscillate. Social responsi- 
bility is not a guaranteed progression, but a goal that will require vigilance and 
effort. 
'Bacchi, C. 1999. Women, Policy andPolitics: The Construction ofPolicy Problems. 
London: Sage. 
A Jewish Mother in Shangri-la 
Rosie Rosenzweig 
Boston: Shambhala, 1998 
Reviewed by Marion Stichman Gold 
Rosie Rosenzweig accepts her son Ben's invitation to learn about Buddhism 
first-hand rather than asking him to return home - to her and to the faith of 
his birth, Judaism. However, after reading Rosenzweig's adventures in Shangri- 
la, I was reminded of a mother's familiar admonition to a child, "and if your 
friends were to jump off a bridge, would you follow?" Rosenzweig, in her quest 
to understand her son's choice to become a practicing Buddhist, visits retreats 
in Europe and Asia where she speaks to clerics and laity in her search for 
answers. Her attempts to recreate her son's experiences reveal that she is able 
to find common ground between Buddhism and Judaism. However, 
Rosenzweig's description of these experiences reveal more about her own 
association with Judaism than answer any questions we may have about her 
son's change of religion. Why Ben becomes a Buddhist is not definitively 
answered. 
Rosenzweig's narrative of her journey to Paris and Nepal in search of Ben's 
truth, as well as her own, leads her to analyses of past events that link mother 
and son. Her reflections on past experiences are sometimes painful and the 
seeming alienation between mother and son, husband and wife which emerge 
from time to time serve as a template for the patterns of living together for so 
many of us. Nevertheless, the reason for undertaking the search for Ben's 
religious identity through a concrete reenactment of his spiritual journey 
remains a mystery. 
Was it necessary for Rosenzweig to travel halfway around the world in an 
242 1 Vo/ume 3, Number 1 
Book Reviews 
attempt to share Ben's experiences? Did Rosenzweig feel that the lines of 
communication could only be reestablished through personal contact? My 
sense is that her relationship with Ben is somewhat flawed, not unlike many 
relationships between parents and adult sons and daughters. And the author 
may have felt that the onlyway she could reach her elusive son would be through 
her physical presence and direct conversation with him in a location of his 
choosing. 
A Jewish Mother in Shangri-fa doesn't reveal how or why Ben becomes a 
Buddhist. I t  does describe the successful rapprochement between mother and 
son. Rosenzweig does not become, as Rodger Kamenetz writes in The Jew in 
the Lotus, a mu (a Jewish Buddhist), although she does attempt to integrate 
Buddhist meditation rituals into her own Judaic practices. However, Rosenzweig 
did not have to travel to Nepal to learn about meditation and spirituality in 
Judaism. Structured, externally directed meditation, (hitbonenut in Hebrew) 
and inner-directed meditation, (hitbodedut in Hebrew) are integral to the 
practice of Judaic mysticism. 
Rosennveig's narrative is a marvellous travelogqe about a trek to the 
Himalayas, but it is also much more than that. I t  is the narrative of the more 
perilous and rewarding journey of a mother's relationship with her son. 
The Bat Had Blue Eyes 
Betsy Warland 
Toronto: Women's Press, 1993 
Reviewed by Ruth Panofsky 
In this powerful collection of prose and poetry, Betsy Warland excavates the 
eviscerating landscape of incest. She writes as a survivor who is determined not 
so much to lay blame-although she does evoke the tragedy that is incest. 
Instead, she writes toward reconciliation with her mother and the otherwomen 
in her family who have been victims of incest themselves. Driven to unearth 
this terrible "family secret," Warland rightly questions whether memorycan be 
"translated into words" (14). This is her dilemma: as a poet she knows that 
language cannot fully articulate the experience of incest. Yet, Warland recog- 
nizes the personal and politicalvalue that resides in language, and The Bat Had 
Blue Eyes is as much an effort to reclaim the self as it is a poetic rendering oflived 
experience. 
In fact, the abuse at the heart of the collection and the speaker's world is 
not described in detail. Warland's focus on the emotional trauma engendered 
by incest positions the victim at the centre of her volume. The perpetrator is 
Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 1 243 
