Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

Thobani, Sunera

Making the Links: South Asian Women and the Struggle for Reproductive Rights

Bannett, Nina

20 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
about the guest editors…
Miglena S. Todorova is Assistant Professor in the 
Department of Social Justice Education at the On-
tario Institute for Studies in Education, University of 
Toronto. She is an international scholar with extensive 
experience in designing curriculum and pedagogies 
that support feminist and gender-based analysis and 
advance equality and social justice. Her current re-
search includes a book project examining how global 
raciality, socialist state policies, work, and violence 
have shaped the encounters and relations between 
women in and from the so called “Second World” 
and “Third World.”
Njoki Nathani Wane’s areas of focus include Black 
Canadian feminisms, African Indigenous knowledg-
es, and spirituality. She has published several books 
including: Indigenous African Knowledge Production: 
Food Processing Practices Among Kenyan Rural Women. 
She is a recipient of the Harry Jerome Professional 
Excellence Award (2008); David Hunt Excellence 
Award in Graduate Education (2016); and President 
of the University of Toronto Teaching Award (2017).
Jacqueline Benn-John is a PhD candidate in the 
Department of Social Justice Education at Ontario 
Institute for Studies in Education, University of To-
ronto. Jacqueline’s research examines the intersection 
of womanhood and Blackness in and upon rape crisis 
centre work.  Jacqueline’s knowledge of trauma from 
sexual violence and harassment contributes to the 
learning of others through delivering post-secondary 
diploma and degree courses at George Brown and 
Humber College, conference presentations, keynote 
addresses, and co-authoring professional develop-
ment/educational resources.
Tanya (Toni) De Mello is a PhD Candidate in the 
Department of Social Justice Education at Ontario 
Institute for Studies in Education, University of To-
ronto. Tanya’s research examines the “fit interview” 
technique used in recruitment. Tanya works as the 
Director of Human Rights at Ryerson University 
where she manages discrimination, harassment and 
sexual violence cases on the campus. She has worked at 
University of Waterloo, Princeton University, McGill 
University. and the University of Toronto, where she 
worked in residences and administration, dealing with 
sexual violence on campuses.
NINA BANNETT
Sandpaper
Roughness.
My skin shrugs,
takes the blame.
Friendly protection coming
between the grains.
Chains will grind me 
a new surface,
efface my chrysalis. 
You make me over,
particle for particle,
devise a process,
voluntary. Leisurely.
Refine my stumbles,
take off my shy face,
exchange it for what suits.
Hewn to a method,
I am complicit,
imaginary. 
This gift,
pleasing, gentle,
porous. Gradual.   
Nina Bannett’s poetry has appeared in journals such 
as Open Minds Quarterly, Bellevue Literary Re-
view, CALYX, and online at Topology, the fem, 
Snapdragon, Amygdala, and Broad!. Her chap-
book Lithium Witness, was published in 2011, and 
her first full-length poetry collection, These Acts of 
Water, was published in 2015. She is professor of En-
glish and department chairperson at New York City 
College of Technology, City University of New York. 
UPCOMING ISSUES:
• Women’s Human Rights: 
Changing the World
• Feminist Gift Economy: Theorizing 
and Practice
• Women’s Land Rights
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
www.cwscf.ca


Sandpaper

Marsden, Lorna

The Senate Report on Child Poverty

Ritchie, Elisavietta

Safe Keeping
ELISAVIETTA RITCHIE
Defensive Measures
It's for your good, the guard
insists, your own good
we protect you from each other
and the world from you.
Our fingernails are filed,
hair cut like nuns'.
Who needs forks or knives
for soup and stew and bread.
As if a spoon
could not gouge eyes.
As if a handle, snapped,
would not cut veins.
Deidre Scherer, Magnitude, 1990. Fabric and Thread. 10" x 8.5"
VOLUME 12, NUMBER 4
Chili still burns my mouth
like the twisted scythe
of peppers redder than blood
or the brick lace of the bruise
on my cheek. To kill
if you have no weapons:
maintain surprise,
find two sharp rocks,
swing them like cymbals
in a curve toward the temples-
your target will squash
like a frog.
You can also hug-break ribs,
bite the neck, shark-kiss
the throat, slice skin,
smother in mud. But here
mud is frozen in snow,
all stones removed
to landscape the entrance.
As in Aesop's cave
where creatures came
to call on the lion,
more footprints point in
than out. And I am five
feet tall, a gnarled
nanny goat of a crone
trying to fight a war.
No more guitar for a shield,
only a song for my sword.
Wait until I get outside.
Elisavietta Ritchie is a writer, editor, photographer and
translator. In addition to seven collections ofpoetry, she has
written Flying Time: Stories & Half-Stories (Signal Books,
1992).
59


English

Defensive Measures

Di Placido, Sonia

VOLUME 32, NUMBERS 1,2 131
LAUNDRY LINES
Ann Elizabeth Carson
Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2015
reviewed by sonia di 
placido
In his/her work, every memoirist 
leaves behind a better or worse 
likeness of the people he knew, 
alongside two self-portraits. 
The first of these two is painted 
intentionally, while the second 
is unplanned, accidental. It goes 
without saying that the first is more 
flattering than the second, and the 
second is more faithful than the 
first. The better the writer, the 
the work that remains to be done to 
achieve genuine equality. Or read it 
backwards by skipping from the index 
to the pages of particular interest to 
you. Either way, Mitchell’s writing 
will pull you in. The end notes orga-
nized by chapter offer full references 
for the sources she used; in so doing, 
they provide the reader wanting more 
than this slim volume—it is just 206 
pages—can offer.
Mitchell’s book is like a well pre-
sented and inspiring survey course in 
women’s history: It dips the reader’s 
toe into the vast collective of women 
who, individually and together, faced 
hardship, isolation and ridicule and 
yet kept working to improve women’s 
lives by increasing the scope of their 
rights. About Canada: Women’s Rights 
is a must-read as either introduction 
to, or reminder of, the vital contribu-
tions women have made to Canada 
through the end of the 20th century. 
Amanda Le Rougetel teaches commu-
nication skills to college students in 
Winnipeg. She is a long-time feminist 
and has contributed locally and na-
tionally to improving abortion access 
for women in Canada. 
more attention we should pay to 
this discrepancy. 
—Wislawa Symborska, Poet
“Laundry Life,” the opening of three 
sections in Ann Elizabeth Carson’s 
memoir, Laundry Lines, combines 
both poetry and prose. Beginning 
with poetry, the effect of two written 
genres makes for a dynamic and al-
lows for a reader to approach memoir 
with varied narrative perceptions. 
Most effective, is the (song) poem 
prior to prose:
to speak 
before the light goes out...
Hear the faint, waiting hums 
that heed 
disembodied stories strung juicy 
deep, ours to be born into 
when we gaze in wonder at the 
little we have come to know.
…pulley squeaks
as my mother hangs clothes on 
two steel lines, 
strung garden-length;
wooden pegs in a pouch on the
line, the next peg
in her mouth—she could even
talk around it.
Socks line up just so, toes point 
in one direction
the days the heels and toes face
each other is a sure sign of trouble 
brewing.
Beyond “Laundry Life,” the 
longest narrative poem in the book, 
Carson moves into prose. This sets 
up an emotive flow that allows for a 
gentler entry into one woman’s story. 
A succinct feminine approach? Rath-
er, let’s engage feminism and how that 
exhibits itself in the book not only as 
Carson writes her memoir celebrating 
and questioning the women who 
have been and remain of influence 
to her life’s narrative. The feminism 
also manifests through intrinsic 
approaches to a combination of the 
two genres. A playful, yet, a birth-like 
approach, a duality that invites the 
blending into one. As the genre of 
two lovers melding to become one 
in a memoir of story and song. 
It’s a supreme act of control to 
understand a life as a story that 
resonates with others. It’s not a 
diary. It’s taking this chaos and 
making a story out of it, attempt-
ing to make art out of it. When 
you’re a writer, what else is there 
to do? …It’s like stitching to-
gether a quilt, creating order that 
isn’t chronological order—it’s 
emotional, psychological order.
—Dani Shapiro, Still Writing
Shapiro’s image of the quilt fits 
in perfectly well with Carson’s own 
inclusion of specific memory to the 
women of her childhood and how 
they stitched, used, and kept quilts. 
A vital aspect of her upbringing, 
which through memoir she is able 
to shape into sharing its personal 
and culturally symbolic influence on 
her life. A fluid uncertainty moves 
moodily through the memoir as 
to whether the ‘quilting’ is both a 
memoir technique between two 
genres and something that Carson 
has conscientiously researched or 
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME132
pockets,
suburban women chat across 
fences, laundry placed neat
on roundabouts
Always I write. Words are in 
spaces
between soak and churn, 
laundry, tears
laughter and weary bones, 
between
hang out in every weather. 
Places found
to dry, fold and sort once more...
What is dry memory? What 
is wet memory? Dry land, wet 
water—moving between the two 
elements constantly awash in 
memory. Among all the laundry of 
a ‘certain’ adult and new mother she 
moves briskly through time, fast and 
mobile. There’s little emotion here, 
rather a brisk unending song so swift, 
longer than a sparrow’s whistle and 
squeak. It’s not a mating call. It’s a 
sure song of knowing, without won-
der, without despair, a descriptive 
matter of facts sorted and strung 
together like never-ending clothes 
gathered to ‘come out’ of the (a)
wash that is Carson’s memories, 
some dripping and some almost 
dry, is there a need for clipping 
all these pieces of wear along her 
laundry line? Here, the laundry is 
hard, sometimes difficult as insects 
appear, movement among space to 
hang out laundry beckons at more 
poems reminiscing with relief.
Carson’s prose in this section reads 
fast, unflinching, specific. As she 
speaks about the death of her aunt, 
Of course, I am crying, just as I 
am now. She turns at me, blue 
eyes clear and alive. ‘I love you, 
Ann.’ ‘I love you too, Getty.’ and 
I lean forward to tuck my head 
into her shoulder.
She describes road travel ac-
companied by family as repetitive 
dances—her polka-like skipping 
between Southern Ontario’s Toronto 
and Cheltenham at a young vibrant 
age. The men in her youth, much 
like neighbours, are elusive, women, 
aunts, and mothers are a tone to be 
reckoned with, their voices clear, 
bossy, and strong. An undertow 
persists, a voice questioning what 
lies beneath these ‘formed’ women 
of Carson’s before. Before war time, 
what exists? For the bigger women, 
the stern sensation of a youth that 
expects to keep them as role mod-
els. Carson’s prose boasts of familial 
pride—tasks on a farm, cooking 
techniques, teaching women, men in 
the background. Fathers and uncles 
linger in darkened shadow—poverty, 
warning, doubt, and death. Is this 
the first hint of Carson’s claim to 
‘feminism’ or fear? The discovering 
of silence in the swift? 
Where preparations for food are 
found, the languishing of eating, 
there’s less apprehension. Carson 
offers lists of who shares their 
specialized dishes, both men and 
women, during seasons and cele-
brations in a prosaic chronology to 
each stage of her stories. She arrives 
to greet her own children at festive 
gatherings with gratitude. However, 
in the second section, the suggestive 
quality of her section title ‘Border 
Lines,’ Carson’s voice seems to read 
less excitedly, the tone steeps the 
reader in a more emotionally binary 
approach. Less fluid. The contents 
split apart decidedly. It lacks soft-
ness and persists in formality. The 
approaches to endings and begin-
nings are formal, unflinching. This 
central body of Carson’s memoir is 
its most challenging. Here we are 
invited into her struggle by its most 
apparent view. The element of water 
becomes Ice and her ground sways as 
the voice goes from Fire to a sombre 
sobriety of visiting memory through 
disappointment, loss, struggle, un-
an intuitive understanding by way 
of her introduction to the reader. 
There’s a comfort in discovering the 
assimilation of ‘stitching,’ Carson’s 
weaving toward some reconciliation, 
her inclination [perhaps] toward 
mending the abstract mind over 
memory using two genres. The book 
is presented, both in its introduction 
and three sections with a clarity that 
is sometimes missed, unless the reader 
makes a strident effort to understand 
Carson’s need to claim [her] memory 
as solid. There’s a distinct record 
at a found attempt at presenting 
each section, rather than chapter 
by chapter. Could this be the effect 
of this [one] memoirist’s passionate 
exposure to psychology as study and 
its relationship to bridge its formulaic 
with creative writing? She declares to 
her reader(s), in her introduction, 
“Perhaps you will hang out some of 
your own laundry one day.”
Time is shelved in chronology in 
memories of hanging laundry—
Waitressing to earn my 
university fees
between meals, I help the 
laundress string
long rows of flopping sheets
behind Monhegan’s Inn.
Newly wed, our below ground 
city apartment boasts no green
A tangle of ropes stretched on 
a wooden frame in the bathtub
collapses...under the weight 
of dripping hand-wrung 
garments...
I learned to drive ... baby buckled 
beside laundry heaped high
in the back seat.” I rattle up 
Spadina’s red cobbles to new 
machines
...wash three loads, hang out, 
take in, hang out, fold and fold 
and fold
A hot little house down- 
payment-boosted from parental 
VOLUME 32, NUMBERS 1,2 133
certainty, and a further stretch into 
solitude, “to get (a)head just enough 
to feel secure.” Her spirits move into 
a slower more awakened voice. She 
conscientiously continues a complex 
textile—her quilt full of description, 
a slow breeze of nuance where the 
familiar revisits familial personas, no 
longer the inquisitive child.
I own one, appliqued pink and 
mauve tulips
cupped by green leaves. 
Different patterns
for each of my children. 
Wedding gifts
to last lifetimes and beyond. 
The quilts
must be hand-stitched, no 
machine shortcuts allowed.
Carson shares her experience of 
the Second World War, the fragility 
of her sentiments is apparent among 
her dishevelled surroundings. Food 
and prose meet in the remembrance 
of rations. Prayer and a relationship 
to faith are expressed strung togeth-
er in a prose description tight and 
compact. Knowledge is keen, the 
events of world news, family and 
relatives on the move is pointedly 
recorded in memory, an impressive 
disclosure of detail in prose. Carson 
eloquently sews her thoughts in a 
continuous manner here, makes her 
comparisons to the present, revisits 
the past and questions her thoughts 
of the future from a past point of view. 
She begins to offer an analysis with 
the reader of a life lived and living 
in clipped experiential words and 
phrases. “Looking back,” “Hope,” 
“We don’t see much of each other for 
many years,” “Serendipity,” “The war 
began for me with a personal marker 
event.” Here is place[s] of time found 
in markers, dates—the memoirist 
attempt to recall her experience of 
traumatic days, nights, years into 
prose. The poems uniquely fit into 
the section in a determined manner. 
Ann strives to combine the two genres, 
which reveal her precise capacity for 
literary technique that struggles to 
reach for her “ought to” relish mem-
ory. Ironically, what is expected: parts 
and places become sparse.
In “Life Lines,” food, herbs, lush 
outdoor garden life among the 
laundry that hangs for all to share 
provides rhythms where Carson’s 
point of view by memoir, bubbles 
in poetry—songs at the finale of 
this section. There is a larger sense 
of combined poems and prose to 
express “Memoria” of glee, awe and 
wonder as her existing stasis among a 
surreal notion of time—asking what 
is Age or Aging?
In “Manitoulin Laundry lines,” the 
book presents precepts of writing, 
workshops, and ideas as these tasks 
circle among her outdoor hanging of 
laundry. An inner journey into the 
experience of writing, the excitement 
and wonder shuffles itself through a 
poem once again. Lakes, birds, min-
nows, disrupting the fauna. Nature’s 
subtle nuances with a human pres-
ence as if wanting to ghost one’s way 
through the island and its Manitou 
Spirit. There’s a distinct description of 
what it is to be home and away among 
these poems—skinny dipping, lake 
escape, foreplay—nature’s sexuality 
explored with the revival of Carson’s 
youth returns among poems, which 
are dominant here as she embodies 
The World is Young. “How will she 
grow in summer heat?” Though the 
question is literal, the effect lingers 
providing more of Carson’s own story 
as somewhat unfinished. She requires 
a continued growth among Island 
friends to discover herself further. As 
the woman within subscribes to “Bees 
move and hum, become fat before 
my eyes.” Again her story is grown, 
plumb, and fully rounded, “wide 
cradled in warm stone ravished by 
smooth silky folds of roseate granite 
old as time.”—The Fox Islands, 
Manitoulin.
water bubbles fur my skin
Need I care for other than lake 
cover
to caress my glistening
folds?
Carson shares her seasons in 
Ontario’s north, differentiates rocks 
from stones, how to stay warm in 
Winter, managing Ice—a return to 
the familiar of Ice Storm that has 
melted into the return and growth 
of Goldenrod, Queen Anne’s Lace, 
crayfish crabs among the settling ice 
that melts to become a summer dock 
to the first days of geese beginning Au-
tumn’s migration. Carson’s memories 
beckon to migrate in tandem flying— 
A flock of geese circles the lake 
crying
“One last look?” as I do, in stages,
these last September days.
Ann’s consistent return to attempt 
understandings of a life lived, living 
and disembodied through her process 
of taking a highly personal approach 
to descriptive language among two 
literary genres of her poet’s song and 
the [never] forbidden tales, which she 
earnestly works to weave and mend 
through memoir, is a heartening yet 
heavy testament to a strong and proud 
Canadian woman’s inner story now 
ripened as she has [always] known. 
The narrator begins her beckon-
ing both to herself and the reader, 
throughout the entire memoir toward 
a final female quest.
For years I’ve been waiting for 
old woman
feeling lost and so alone, I’ve 
been watching.
Now I find her weaving, gath-
ering the colours
Now I find her in myself.
Sonia Di Placido is a published poet, 
writer, and performer. She is currently 
part of the mfa Program in Creative 
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME134
ASPECTS OF NATURE
Rhoda Rabinowitz Green
Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2016
reviewed by matthew 
corrigan
Though born in Philadelphia, the 
author of this volume speaks with 
an international and multi-cultural 
voice. Stories in this collection take 
place in California, England, Florida, 
the Warsaw Ghetto, Buchenwald, 
and, of course, Canada, where the 
author has resided for over forty years. 
The themes are timeless, human ones: 
the aggravations and humiliations 
of old age, memory loss, familial 
discord, the joys and tribulations of 
marriage, and man’s inhuman treat-
ment of man. These stories show a 
rare and sympathetic nature at work. 
Each carves out its own world in 
language—the mordant humour 
omnipresent but never intrusive, the 
imagery memorable, the dialogue at 
times pitch perfect (a rare gift), the 
rhythms finely tuned and seductive. 
Many have a musical identity or 
musical theme at their centres, like 
the memoir of the renowned Polish 
pianist Maryan Filar, an immigrant 
to the United States after his incar-
ceration at Buchenwald during the 
war. The author, an accomplished 
classical pianist herself, studied with 
transcendent level. Consider this 
passage when the narrator recalls her 
decision to become a concert pianist: 
One evening, no longer a child 
but a young woman of sixteen, 
she’d climbed, breathless, to the 
uppermost heights of Philadel-
phia’s Academy of Music to hear 
the great Gieseking. Schumann, 
Arabesque … a sound, simple, 
hushed, serene, floated upward, 
reached with, oh, such effortless 
clarity and resonance her insides 
trembled. Debussy, Chopin … 
at the Steinway, he brushed the 
keys with fine, elongated fingers 
(spanning an octave), causing 
a spontaneous, unteachable 
thing to happen not simply to 
the notes, but between, some-
thing rhythmic and sonoric, 
moving forward and holding 
back, cheating and robbing, 
giving and adding, something 
called beauty and genius. All, 
liquid, each tone, phrase, shift 
in sentiment, flowed one from 
the other without jarring or 
angularity, the keyboard an 
orchestra. When he’d finished, 
gauzy tone-clusters lingered, co-
cooned in a profound silence no 
one was willing to break, dying 
their own death. She knew then 
what path she must take.
Stories are memorable for the 
insights, imaginative detail, beauty 
that they capture and convey in 
words—and for the memorability 
of their characters. These are hu-
man stories—the shadows of aging 
and the finality of death are never 
very far from any of the character’s 
thoughts—with perhaps memory, 
mutability, mortality, the most 
central of their preoccupations. At 
times the language simply leaves the 
page and soars heavenward, such as 
in this closing section from the Filar 
memoir, after the author has visited 
Writing at University of British Colum-
bia. Sonia is a member of the League of 
Canadian Poets and Canadian Women 
in the Literary Arts. Published works 
such as chapbooks, poetry, essays, book 
reviews, and interviews can be found 
in various journals. Her first book of 
poetry, Exaltation in Cadmium Red, 
was published in 2012. Her second 
full-length book of poetry is forthcoming 
in 2018. 
the maestro when he first arrived in 
America in the early fifties and tells 
his life story with poignancy and 
compassion. Filar, a child prodigy, 
had had his hand smashed by a cruel 
guard at Buchenwald, yet had gone 
on in the post war decades to become 
one of the world’s great pianists. 
Rhoda Rabinowitz Green captures 
poignantly the twenty-five year old 
pianist’s ordeal when, returning to 
his home in the Warsaw Ghetto 
after living underground with the 
partisans, he finds the rest of his 
family gone, disappeared, never to 
be heard from again:
“Only imagine the anguish Mary-
an felt when he returned home, 
January 1943, to finds his mother 
Ester, and Helen, his sister, vanished, 
like his father (two years before). 
Vanished: a faded space; a cupboard 
once cram-packed, now empty, a 
phantom presence, lingering odour 
of cigar, toilet water, shampoo. That 
day, the day that his mother and 
sister disappeared, he came home to 
the sound of hollow, all the human 
spiritual energy siphoned off from 
the home that had once vibrated with 
sounds from the piano, guitar, violin, 
singing and laughter, of family argu-
ments and chastisements and tears.” 
But a deeper music at times 
permeates the prose, raising it to a 


Laundry Lines. Ann Elizabeth Carson. Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2015.

Palmer, Patrice

The Empowerment of Women in Rural Bangladesh

Harman, Lesley D.

The Feminization of Poverty: An Old Problem With a New Name

Bannerji, Kaushayla

Lusting for Life
A Few Thoughts on HIV/AIDS
by Kaushalya Bannerji
L'article traite de la question de 1'infection des femmes de la communaute de l'Asie du Sud par le VIR et le SIDA.
When I frrst thought of writing a piece on HIV/AIDS, I thought I would focus on information and awareness issues in a straight-forward,
conventional manner. As I started writing, however, I felt it important to raise some issues around AIDS as a taboo subject in many
communities.
When I was finishing high school in the mid 1980s, AIDS and HIV were perceived as issues distant from our lives. We were not touched
by them as we saw ourselves as young and immortal, and generally belonged to categories considered "low risk." When I entered high
school, safe sex for girls referred to birth control.
When I went to University, I began to hang out in the lesbian feminist communities. I was immersed in another world. Here, I felt
we were part of a low risk group of women loving women. At that time, virtually no research had been done on woman- to-woman
transmission.
Slowly the statistics and informationon HIV transmission began to change. Over the lastcoupleofyears, we have seen the rapid spread
ofHIV and AIDS in the heterosexual world. Large scale populations have been affected- in the main, non-Europeans who were weighed
down already with colonial histories and a legacy of poverty. The solution of white advanced capitalism was to resort to racism,
equating "loose morals" with the sexual conduct of non-Europeans, particularly Africans and Haitians.
In the lesbian community, it seemed there was a false sense of security. We were "good" girls; we did not sleep with men, stopped
making loveduring our periods, andstayedaway from N drugs and one-nightstands. Many lesbians refused topractise safersex, seeing
it as an obstacle to spontaneity, a gesture to be interpreted as insulting or mistrustful.
Working for the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention, Icameinto contactwith my"other" community ofCanadians, immigrants
and refugees sharing something known as a "South Asian" identity. "Our" community was also "good." Young people didn't even
have straightpre-marital sex, letalone gay and lesbian relations. Married men didn'tgocruisingfor male lovers in secrecy; others never
sought out prostitutes or had female lovers. Wives were never raped or had affairs. Children, of course, were never abused.
Ours was a perfect community. Then there was AIDS, exposing secrets, unearthing repressions perhaps, and breaking silences.
Nonetheless, the common position taken in the two communities, lesbian and South Asian, may be described as burying one's head
in the sand-the ostrich position.
Why has it been so hard for us to confront our vulnerabilities with regards to HIV transmission? As South Asians, as lesbians, often
both at once, could it be we are afflicted with that tired old cliche, "nice girls don't talk about sex"? It may be so.
As a lesbian of Indian origin, I find that my "multiple identities" share a common factor in the silencing of our female sexuality in
lived terms. It can mean that talking about ourselves in relation to AIDS/HIV can lead to social ostracism because it represents a breaking
ofour socially constructed silence, an acknowledgment that the old morality hangs loose on us. We may not be seen as the "good girls"
we have tried to be.
If we were to begin addressing our denials and the fears that have created them, the implications for us as "South Asian" lesbians
would be enormous. Patriarchies feed on our silences, at home, at work, at school, and in bed. We need honesty and courage to begin
examining our strengths and vulnerabilities. At the same time, we must be aware that unsafe sexual penetration or exchange ofbodily
fluids is not the only mode of transmission. There are high risks involved in sharing unsterilized needles, whether it be for medical
or drug use. There are also high risks in unscreened blood transfusions, particularly in the South Asian region.
Women's AIDS related symptoms are often different from those of men. Researchers have only recently begun to document and
monitor infections and immune disorders specific to women. But scientific research is only the tip of the iceberg.
The real work has to be done by us. Talking with friends, lovers, and younger siblings about safersex can be a basis ofa new morality
in our communities. A morality which does not equate desire with being "bad," but with playing it safe. A morality which lusts for
life.
Kaushalya Bannerji is a lesbian living in Toronto.
Reprinted with permission from DNA 3.3 (Sept./Dec. 1992).
VOLUME 13, NUMBER 1 23


Lusting for Life: A Few Thoughts on HIV/AIDS

Mandell, Nancy

Children, Poverty and Schooling
By Nancy Mandell
La relation entre l'education et la pauvrete est complexe mais importante dans la fagon dont elle influe sur la vie
des enfants pauvres, qui courent un plus grand risque en ce qui concerne les nombreux problemes physiques,
psychologiques, sociaux et culturels.
Poverty-Induced Dropping Out
The relationship between education and poverty is complex but important in the way it affects the lives
of children. Compared to non-poor children, poor children are at great risk for a multitude of problems,
including physical, psychological, social, cultural, and educational.
• In 1990, the total number of children under 16 living in poverty was approximately 953,000. The
majority of these poor children lived in two-parent (two adult) families.
• Twenty-seven to thirty per cent of Canadian youth drop out and do not complete high school.
• Forty-five per cent of children from poor families are likely to drop out of high school.
• Poor families &ccount for only 13 per cent of all Canadian families with children but they account
for 23 per cent of all dropouts in the 16- and 17-year age group.
• Over the next 20 years, approximately 187,000 students will leave school. About 11,000 of these
dropouts each year are due to poverty alone.
• The overall rate of functional illiteracy in Canada was 24 per cent in 1987. Only 25 per cent of
functionally illiterate women are in the paid labour force in 1986, compared with 50 per cent of women
as a whole in that year. Illiteracy is related to income-earning. Women with less than grade eight
education earn on average only 59 per cent of what men earn.
Educational attainment is a very reliable indicator of upward
social mobility, employment stability, and higher income. Some-
one without a high school education is four times more likely to
be poor than a university graduate. (National Council ofWelfare)
The elevated school dropout rate of children from poor families
means these adolescents end up more frequently as low-produc-
tivity and intermittentlyemployedworkers. (Ross and Shillington)
Why do children raised in poverty perform poorly at school?
Poor dropouts tend to come from urban areas and live in families
which hold less than 49 weeks of employment each year. (Ross
and Shillington) A deprived material environment leads to unmet
needs and alienation. (Ross and Shillington) The poor physical
and mental health resulting from being raised in poverty makes
learning difficult. Evidence exists that children are now more
frequently kept from school because of poverty. More children
are likely to arrive at school hungry and leave still hungry. (leffs)
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Hungry children and malnourished children cannot perform to
their full potential in the classroom. They have trouble paying
attention and concentrating. As one report notes,
The physical symptoms displayed by hungry children in-
clude crying, throwing up water, pale skin, weakness, stom-
ach cramping, headaches, dizziness and fatigue. Children
may also appear disgruntled, antagonistic, irritable, restless,
dizzy, unable to concentrate, and less inclined to learn.
(Canadian Teacher's Federation)
The Ontario Child Health Study (1983) demonstrates that the
odds of a poor child failing a grade or attending special education
classes full or part-time are three times those of non-poor chil-
dren. (Ross and Shillington) Rates of poor school performance
are also much higher for girls than for boys. For example,
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
according to Ross and Shillington, for young girls between the
ages of six and eleven years living in families on social assist-
ance, the rate of poor school performance is 28 per cent, com-
pared to six per cent for those families not on social assistance.
Are poor children being pushed out of school?
According to a report by the Canadian Teacher's Federation
(crF) entitled, "Children, Schools and Poverty" (1989), many low
income children experience lower achievement, less participa-
tion in extra-curricular activities, less motivation to learn, de-
layed cognitive development, different types of teacher-student
interactions, negative effects of streaming, lower career aspira-
tions and expectations, interrupted school attendance, lower
university attendance, increased risk of illiteracy, and higher
dropout rates. Poor children tend to experience difficulties in
schools and have limited prospects for higher education. An OEDe
survey of 19 countries found social differences in educational
participation a pervasive and constant characteristic ofall educa-
tional structures. Poor children around the world are being
pushed out of school.
Among the most alarming of the finding from various studies:
• There is a persistent tendency for middle-class children to
receive greater teacher attention, praise, and other rewards, while
lower-class children receive criticism and punishment. Students
perceive teacher encouragement to play a highly significant role
in bolstering their self-esteem and keeping them in school.
• Lower-class children are often labelled early in their educa-
tional careers as potential failures. Poor children are dispropor-
tionately placed in basic-level or vocational programmes. A 1983
Toronto Board of Education study reported that middle-class
children were almost twice as likely (88 per cent) as working-
class children (46 per cent) to be placed in advanced university-
bound high school courses. (Wright and Tsuji)
• Is it any wonder that poor children are more likely than non-
poor children to report disliking their teachers, feeling bored with
and disliking school, and feeling rejected and ignored by the
school system?
• Poor children cannot afford the expensive "free education"
they are receiving. They participate less in extra-curricular ac-
tivities, less in school-based sports and recreational activity, and
receive one-third to one-half the rate of instruction in music,
hockey, and swimming due to the costs and difficulties associ-
ated with transportation, fees, equipment, child care, and human
energy. (Offord, Last, and Barrette) Studies of dropouts note that
they are often alienated or unattached to any aspect of the
school-without emphasizing that lack of financial encourage-
ment or subsidization remains the root cause of student disaffec-
tion. Poor students are literally pushed out of extra-curricular
school activities.
Educational equity
Educational equity aims to develop mechanisms to expand
access to schooling and to implement strategies to improve
student experiences both inside and outside the classroom. There
are numerous suggestions. Only a few are mentioned here.
VOLUME 12, NUMBER 4
School-Based Initiatives
Food programmes: Numerous cities in Canada, including
Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Win-
nipeg, Saskatoon, Vancouver, and Regina are now providing
school breakfasts and snacks. How many other teachers also
bring food themselves to their classes? Breakfast is the most
important meal of the day. While many non-hungry children
often skip breakfast, when missing this meal is combined with
missing lunch, or eating a nutritionally inadequate meal, student
performance deteriorates.
Curriculum: Resource units have been developed to bring the
issue of poverty into the classroom. The crF report lists a range
of student activities including role-playing life on welfare or on
the minimum wage; analyzing social inequality in Canada;
making a video about living in poverty; playing the Poverty
Game (a monopoly-like board game designed to sensitize players
to life below the poverty line); fasting for a few days; visiting a
food bank; organizing a youth advocacy group.
Teachers: Eleven Winnipeg schools have introduced full-
time migrancy teachers and aides to deal with student mobility
and retention to maintain academic enrollment. Their goal is to
monitor the students who transfer to new schools in order to
ensure a successful transition.
Schools have increasing and multiple demands placed on
them. No one expects schools to solve all of the problems that
children bring with them to school. Yet schools must recognize
their role in contributing to, and exacerbating, children's disad-
vantage through curricula and programmes, performance stand-
ards, geographical location, facilites, sources of funding, and
staff. Our school children are our future. Endowing them with
material and intellectual success represents an investment in
Canada's well-being.
References
Wright, E. N. and G. K. Tsuji. The Grade Nine Student Survey:
Fall 1983. Toronto: Toronto Board of Education, 1983.
National Council of Welfare. Child Care: A Better Alternative.
A Report by theNational Council ofWelfare. Ottawa: Ministry
of Supply and Services, 1988.
Canadian Teacher's Federation. Children, Schools andPoverty.
Ottawa, 1989.
leffs, Tony. "Children's Rights at School." In The Rights of
Children. Ed. Bob Franklin. New York: BasilBlackwell, 1986.
Standing Senate Committee on Social Mfairs, Science and
Technology. Children in Poverty: Toward a Better Future.
Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1991.
Ross, David P. and Richard Shillington. "Child Poverty and Poor
Educational Attainment: The Economic Costs and Implica-
tions for Society." In Children in Poverty, op cit.
Nancy Mandell is Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-
ordinatoroftheFacuItyofArts Undergraduate Women's Studies
programme atYork University. She has writtenfeminist critiques
ofthe family, women and work, and childhoodsocialization. She
is currently co-authoring a book on poverty.
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Children, Poverty and Schooling

George, Usha

Poverty: The South Asian Woman's Experience in Canada

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