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

Keeney, Patricia

32 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
possessions. Except for a large painting of fireflies that 
hung above Jenny’s bed, the room could have belonged 
to anyone. Walking back out to the hallway, she softly 
closed the bedroom door.
Several months later a parcel from overseas addressed to 
Jenny arrived at the retirement home. Having just returned 
from her brother’s in England, Jenny assumed it was the 
books she had shipped from a delightful antiques store 
they had found in the countryside just before her depar-
ture. But when she opened the box there were no books. 
Instead, a collection of photographs spilled out into her 
lap along with Cassie’s picture and a small pink envelope. 
Jenny crossed the room and settled before the fire before 
opening the letter. Her eyes lit up with excitement when 
she saw the fine gold chain with a delicate firefly made of 
diamonds lying among the pages and she began to read. 
“Dear Jenny…”
Living with her dog in rural Northwestern Ontario, Linda 
Kmet is a writer and hopes one day to inspire others with 
her voice. Her extensive work as a crisis counselor for women 
and children has influenced her stories about the triumphant 
survival of the human spirit.
PaTRICIa KeeneY
The art of Friends
I know them best, these lifelong friends
in their late incarnations
long after children and men.
Melissa of the sad song
falling line dropped
like a plunged hook
from sky to sea
letting the sharpness
ferret and grab, tug at her
never looking down
never taking dark
bird eyes and streaming hair off
the far horizon, a dance
of flute and drum.
The foreign feast she craves
waiting for her, always
out of reach
and only now admitting
her joy in the going
knowing it can never be
except in dream, ringing
the bell of herself, soaring
from sight and sound
making music with those
who can
finally free of the lie
living in the flight she takes
after soap opera and self-delusion
hovering in new air
feather-tipped, quick
as a humming bird
aerodynamic miracle
a fin around the globe
a streak of beginnings.
CWS/CF
Upcoming issues include:
Women and Water
Women and the 
Gift Economy
Women’s Human Rights
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VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 33
 *
Tough and tender
Katia finds herself
in paint
white birch
and blue lake, the burn
of autumn leaves
rosy colour storming
rough water.
All the ferocious fighting
and loving alive in this
without pain.
A personal mirror pulsing with light.
Fine bones fleeing up, sunk
firmly in mulch, her nature
buried and free.
And AH sunflower
boldness on a stalk
gold with an earthy heart
her own tournesol
back-blocked when fed up.
Azure islands in mist and fading light
she sits magnanimous among her scenes
face forward, a sheen of satisfaction
rounding her out, in age, the flaxen hair
of a careless child
that says: here
I am.
 *
Marti, poet princess
a flare of hair
the fate that crowns her
writing into and out of love
flying underwater
swimming through stars
moonwalk and sunburst
partnered with desire
tethered to the dialogue
of love
where I glimpse
her other lives.
Tantalizing, this new Niagara
grand expanse of lake
spilling south
walking through the house
(past Italian rococo
gothic with grapes)
into waves and sky
girl-shaped pure light
landing me back at Simcoe
sculpted white
watching the huts rise
way out on cloudy snow
feathered pink, stained purple
packed and pale
fishing with the icemen
far and coldly down
the only way I’ve left to go
 *
meeting them all
in deep space
where the words
hold us
up.
Patricia Keeney is the author of nine books of poetry and 
a picaresque novel entitled The Incredible Shrinking 
Wife. Her Selected Poems, published in 1996, contains 
an introduction by the distinguished Russian poet Yevgeny 
Yevtushenko. Her poetry has been translated into French 
(winning the Prix Jean Paris in 2003), Spanish, Bulgarian, 
Chinese, and Hindi. Her latest poetry collection, Frist 
Woman was published by Inanna in 2011. Keeney is a 
professor of English and Creative Writing at Toronto’s 
York University and makes her home in a 160-year old 
log heritage house near Lake Simcoe, north of Toronto.


English

The Art of Friends

Williams, Jocelyn

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 127
Scholars, intellectuals, students came from Harvard 
and New York by train and tram to the Farm (there was 
even a tram stop at the end of the lane). Hazel made 
bloomers for all the young women so that they would 
not be hampered by their skirts; they wore their hair long 
and free. !ey all hayed, chopped wood, and read poetry 
to one another. Walter Lippmann came to the Farm and 
eventually married Faye Albertson, Hazel’s step-daughter. 
Yes, it did seem that this utopia might actually be a reality. 
But of course these new folk were privileged, wealthy, 
and young. !ey were ardent, politically enlightened. But 
in most cases they ended up back in the lap of their own 
class, the establishment. Hazel’s husband decamped, for 
greener female pastures, though he always maintained an 
interest in the Farm. At some point the Farm’s economies 
declined to the point that they had to operate as a bed-and-
breakfast, which was, of course, to our great advantage. 
Kitty and I have had a creative, nurturing relationship 
over the past many decades, and I believe that much 
of this can be attributed to our time at the Farm. We 
learned about sharing, about the wonders of the land. 
Our peace-loving and ecological views converge. What 
greater gift could there be for two sisters than to have 
bonded through the inspiration of the Farm: Marnie and 
her cottage in the woods, the old mare Dolly, the books, 
the earth, the dish-washing assembly-line?
Frances Beer is a  Professor Emerita of English, York University; 
her BA is from Harvard, MA from Columbia, and Ph.D. 
from the University of Toronto. Her teaching has included 
graduate and undergraduate courses on medievel and chil-
dren’s literature, and nineteenth-century women novelists. 
Her publications include !e Juvenilia of Jane Austen and 
Charlotte Brontë, Women and Mystical Experience in the 
Middle Ages, a translation of Julian of Nowich’s Revelations, 
and a novel, Pilgrims in Love.
JOCELYN WILLIAMS
Then
When I wear this once scarlet scarf I feel
\RXUZD[HGOLSVDQG\RXUQRVHWLS
DJDLQVWWKHSLQNRIP\FKHHNDQGDPÀOOHG
with age seventeen.
Jocelyn Williams’s poetry appears earlier in this volume. 
MADELINE SONIK
Bad news
When I turned thirteen
my father called
all my friends
“bad news”
as if upon their faces
he could  read the headline
      “DISASTER”
OLNHSODQHVH[SORGLQJLQWREXLOGLQJV
and plagues swallowing up vistas of earth
 famine, fascism, fanaticism 
competed with the “F” words rolling 
from their teen-aged tongues
in everything they said and did
they announced annihilations
and the eye make-up
and cigarettes
KHH[DPLQHGPHIRU
(a witch-hunter combing 
intimate parts for moles
and multiple nipples)
all signs of the wicked
VH[XDOLW\
he could neither keep
for himself
or prevent me from growing
Madeline Sonik’s poetry appears earlier in this volme.


Then

McLauchlan, Laura

74 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
ILONA MARTONFI
Irises in Fire
35 rue Lépine,
Saint-Calixte
Lanaudière
wild raspberries
an oak tree
red trillium
meadow grass
irises in fire —
blue sky
sound of bullfrogs
wood cabin
under the pines
cerises sauvages
choke cherries,
cement steps remain
land 100 by 200 feet
ten minutes from the village
that day in October,
six houses burned down,
gravel road
Lac des Artistes
remember,
a man beats his wife,
children haul
spring water
running from the mountain
by a boulder
raccoons
sifting through rubble and ashes
acrid smell of timber —
Ilona Martonfi is the author of two poetry books, Blue 
Poppy (Coracle Press, 2009) and Black Grass, (Broken 
Rules Press, 2012). She is producer of the Yellow Door 
& Visual Arts Centre Readings, co-founder of Lovers & 
Others and winner of a qwf 2010 Community Award.
LAURA MCLAUCHLAN
So We Try Again
For a long time we talk about men:
“I have met Leonard Cohen,” says D.,
who calls, with a drink, late at night
“. . . a small man until he speaks.”
She says that the out of print Norman Levine
was a sad man with a very sick wife.” He wrote
Canada Made Me and then lived in England
writing while his family (near) starved.
My white gloves are well trimmed with black
I soak them attempting to wash off the dirt
with sloughed skin. My own
stories escape and run
Yarmouth Road.
How I love/hate the grief
that I keep.
In this dark we seem
braided in dream
where our stories turn to fine ash and
buried bone. We need      hope
so we try again
we sit      with spring rumoured
inside fragrant steam. We are two women
leaning into a table for coffee
and whatever our own words can do. Speaking 
now
of ourselves, we laugh    drawing our breath.
Your eyes catch mine. You speak as a sister
of that other country
you forbid me to name in this poem.
For two decades Laura McLauchlan worked as a sessional 
instructor in the English Department at York University. 
She is currently writing a murder mystery set on the South 
Shore of Nova Scotia.


So We Try Again

McCaslin, Susan

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 65
hair and the visit to the bathroom 
hasn’t changed how she looks. She 
is still perfect. She is St. Cecelia and 
the Queen of Peter Street rolled into 
one beautiful lady and it doesn’t 
matter one bit if she learns to drive. 
Where would she go, even if she could 
drive? She belongs here sitting on the 
couch beside me—her daughter, the 
princess. Together we will hold hands 
and read stories to each other and 
drink tea with sugar. And my brothers 
and sisters can all go live with Auntie 
Dee. Because Auntie Dee knows just 
what to do with bothersome children.
Eleanor Albanese's plays for young 
audiences have toured nationally 
from coast to coast. Recent productions 
include Under the Moon with Aunt 
Birdie with Thunder Bay Symphony 
Orchestra, an adaptation of the folk tale 
East of the Sun; West of the Moon 
with Motus O, and Dancing on Salt 
'n Snow with Broken Moons Collective. 
A. MArY MUrPhY
my mother would put ribbons
my mother would put ribbons
bows of bright red ribbons
in my tightly braided hair
and I hated those red ribbons
bigger than my head
pulled them out on the school bus
stuffed them in my lunch kit
before I got to school grade one
grade two grade three
and now for the touch
of my mother’s hands
I would tolerate those ribbons
I promise you I would
A. Mary Murphy is a Canadian poet. She has a Ph.D. in English, specializing 
in Life Writing. Her poems have been placed in numerous journals in Canada 
and also in the United States, France, England, Wales, Australia, and New 
Zealand. Her first book, Shattered Fanatics, was published by BuschekBooks 
in 2007. Her second collection of poetry, The Hungry Grass, is forthcoming 
from Inanna Publications in 2014.
JOCelYn WilliAMS
like Mother
Until my nights felt
like days, I believed her
less for asking
about him.
Until I dreamed
of the boy from twenty
years ago that left me
blushing, no, bruising,
I knew
lies.
Jocelyn Williams is a professor in 
Calgary who writes about women 
and trauma and teaches about poetry 
and prose. Her novel, Pillow Talk 
and Other Files, is forthcoming.
SUSAn MCCASlin
enna
I meet my daughter in a field
and know she is thinner
gather her in my arms, weeping.
Burden of light,
light load sifting through my fingers
falls to a scale, suspended
balance, where Maat weighs
the dead against a feather.
O, give the soul its lightness and levity,
the body its heft of flesh.
Susan McCaslin’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


Enna

Vincent, Esther

70 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
Une femme raconte une journée typique 
quand son mari rentre du travail, trouve 
mille choses à redire et qui enchaîne sur 
une scène de rage. Elle se rend compte 
qu’elle s’est habituée à cette situation 
parce que dans sa famille on a toujours 
subi en silence la rage de leur père. Elle 
se demande si le temps n’est pas venu de 
quitter son mari.
Jake stormed in the kitchen door, 
almost pulling the screen off its 
hinges. In an outstretched hand he 
held a large, lopsided garbage bag. 
He was in mid-scream. “That’s twice 
now! Jesus. Why the fuck can’t you 
ever do anything right?”
Sitting at the table with her coffee 
poised in her hand, Mona’s back 
stiffened. She was ready for this. She 
pursed her lips and reassured herself 
that he was only just home from work, 
still keyed-up from the office. Best not 
to say anything—just wait until his 
tirade was over, withstand the insults, 
let him storm off, and then go ahead 
and make dinner.
Before they married, Mona had 
no idea about Jake’s temper. Noth-
ing anyone could have said would 
have made her believe it was in him. 
Nothing in their two years of dating 
Cyclone
esther vincent
even hinted at it. Nothing could have 
prepared her. Little had she known 
that it was one of his favourite things. 
He didn’t even try to control it. Why 
would he?
Eventually Mona came to realize he 
was proud of his anger. He cherished 
it. He brought it forth to show her 
how powerful he was.
Jake’s rage first appeared to Mona 
the day after they were married just 
short of two years ago. The shocking 
tone of his voice from that afternoon 
still rings through her even when he’s 
not around. There had been some 
reprimand about her behaviour at 
the wedding party, a comment about 
how there were certain expectations 
now that they were married. In that 
first fight, she had naively objected 
to his criticism. He responded with 
such a rain of sound and fury that 
she could do nothing but stand 
back, eyes wide, mouth agape, tears 
welling in her burning lids. She 
couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. 
She couldn’t even look away. She 
could only stand there in the sparsely 
decorated honeymoon hotel room 
and wait for it to end.
Now, when she thought about 
it, she realized she shouldn’t have 
been surprised that Jake would 
have bellowing tantrums. It made 
a certain kind of sense. In fact, she 
was strangely comforted by it. She 
had known rage all her life. She 
had grown up falling asleep to the 
sound of shrieking voices and flying 
epithets. Maybe this was why explo-
sive displays of anger always made 
her sleepy. Her family had orbited 
around the gravity of her father’s rage. 
It was a constant in her life from her 
first memories. Mona felt it was her 
place—her lot—to live with rage and 
to struggle to stay above it.
Jake knew that Mona thought this, 
and it infuriated him. When she got 
that patient look, that waiting look, 
he thought she was just cultivating 
her long-suffering wife act to make 
him feel like a child. As though she 
was perfect. As though she had never 
in her life so much as raised her voice. 
But she didn’t understand—he knew 
he was right. He wasn’t going to give 
in. It wasn’t his fault. His days were 
filled with provocation. Someone 
was always doing something stupid 
and he’d have to deal with it. What 
was he supposed to do? If he didn’t 
stand up for himself, who would? 
The world had treated Jake badly and 
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 71
he was owed a little peace of mind. 
He had to blow off steam, he had to 
get it out of his system, or it might 
come out at the wrong time, in front 
of the wrong person. The last thing 
he wanted was to get caught talking 
back to the boss.
Jake wanted to tell Mr. Stephenson 
where to go, tell him exactly what he 
thought. Wouldn’t that be great: to 
stinking garbage sitting here for a 
week, collecting flies and maggots.”
“Here!” he hollered as he grabbed 
the bottom of the bag and turned it 
upside down. Upended, the flapping 
mouth of the big bag opened spilling 
garbage all over the kitchen floor. 
“Now maybe you’ll remember when 
I tell you to do something, it has to 
be done.”
the sensation that he was one of those 
fantasy people he watched on tv.
She gave him the tray.
“What’s this?” he asked, staring 
at the tray.
“It’s your dinner, honey,” she said, 
shyly.
“What the hell is in this glass?”
She became cautious, sending each 
word out with care, “It’s milk. You like 
see the look on the boss’s face, to see 
the look on everyone’s face when Jake 
finally said out loud what everybody 
had been thinking for so long. And he 
knew they were thinking it. They all 
agreed with him. He knew everyone 
hated Stephenson as much as he did. 
But no one would say anything. And 
neither would he. What with the bills 
his wife was always racking up, there 
was no way he could afford to lose 
his job. At work he was all smiles 
and handshakes. The only words 
Stephenson ever heard out of Jake’s 
mouth were, “Yes, sir.”
Standing in the doorway with the 
trash bag, his arm starting to feel 
the weight, he shouted, “You’re not 
even answering me. You don’t have 
anything to say, do you? Because you 
messed up and you know I’m right and 
you know I have every reason to be 
angry. All I asked was that you put the 
garbage out before ten so they could 
come and take it away. And what did 
you do? Where did you put it? You 
didn’t put it anywhere. You didn’t 
even pick it up, did you?
“You lazy bitch. I don’t even know 
what to say. I can’t believe you’re too 
stupid to do this goddamn, simple 
thing. And now we’re going to have 
He stormed out of the room and 
stomped up the stairs to the tv room.
Mona sighed, looked up at the 
ceiling, stood slowly, and gathered 
the things to start dinner. She tried 
carefully to avoid the spilled trash but 
it was everywhere. After a few passes 
she started to walk right on it, feeling 
it slide around beneath her slippers. 
Squish, squish, squish.
Boil the water and find a cup of rice. 
Get the fry pan. Unwrap the two pork 
chops she had thawed that morning. 
Mona was moving on muscle memory 
alone. Every day was like this. Every 
day it was something. Today it was 
the garbage. She ambled about the 
kitchen, garbage squelching under her 
feet while she worked. Squish, squish, 
squish. Maybe she could just learn to 
accept living this way. Garbage on the 
floor, garbage in the air, garbage in her 
head, and garbage sitting in front of 
the tv upstairs. Squish, squish, squish. 
It all went around in her head until 
dinner was ready.
She placed a chop on a plate with 
some rice, just the way he liked it, 
nothing fancy. She put it on a tray 
with a glass of milk, a napkin, and 
cutlery, and took it upstairs to where 
he slothed in half slumber, sucking up 
milk.” She recognized the opening 
salvo. He was looking for things to 
pick on. She was only just learning 
how to dodge the volleys, hadn’t 
perfected the defensive manoeuvres.
“Yes, I like milk,” he said, his 
sarcasm poking at her, pushing her 
away. “I don’t want milk today. I want 
apple juice. I told you that. I told you 
that downstairs. Why don’t you ever 
listen to me when I speak to you?”
“I’ll go get you some juice,” she 
said as she reached to pick the glass 
up off the tray.
“Just leave it alone. You brought 
it up here, I might as well drink it.”
She turned to leave, hoping to es-
cape the escalation, her head bowed, 
her shoulders slightly raised to ward 
off the words. His voice changed 
and was suddenly pleasant and soft, 
almost pleading. He asked, “You 
gonna watch tv with me tonight?”
She paused.
“I was gonna go over and play crib 
with Sarah,” she said. She didn’t want 
to provoke him, but it was true. She 
had made plans that afternoon, on 
the phone. Sarah had tried in her 
concerned friend kind of way, the 
way she always did, to get Mona to 
realize that it would be okay to walk 
Every day it was something. Today it was the garbage. She ambled 
about the kitchen, garbage squelching under her feet while she worked. 
Squish, squish, squish. Maybe she could just learn to accept living this 
way. Garbage on the floor, garbage in the air, garbage in her head, 
and garbage sitting in front of the tv upstairs. Squish, squish, squish. 
72 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
away. Sarah had said Jake and Mona 
were only just married; there were no 
kids to worry about. Now is the time 
to do it. Now was the time to get out.
Mona didn’t want to listen, made 
a date for cribbage instead.
“Why do you spend time with that 
crazy bitch? You know she’s so full of 
shit you can smell her coming.” He 
laughed at his own joke and flipped 
don’t even want to look at you right 
now.” He started to eat, his focus 
never really straying from the tv. 
His eyes went glassy and he chewed 
distractedly.
She wasn’t sure if he was even 
aware that she was still in the room. 
She went back down to the kitchen. 
Squish, squish, squish. She realized 
she had tracked the stains of garbage 
sampled, rejected, and left in the 
fridge until she had thrown it out only 
just the day before, was now spilled 
with the rest of the trash. Watery 
yogurt ooze was spreading across the 
floor and pooling under the fridge.
She stood up slowly and pressed 
her palm into the small of her back. 
She held the dripping, empty yogurt 
container aloft, her fingers curled 
through the channels, always stop-
ping if the image was a man with a 
gun or a woman with big boobs. All 
other images were cast aside with the 
mere move of his thumb.
“You should stay here with me. 
tv is way more interesting than that 
stupid woman. I really don’t know 
why you bother with her at all. 
Aren’t I enough to keep you happy? 
We’re married, aren’t we? You made a 
promise. You promised that you were 
mine for ever.”
He added with unnecessary empha-
sis, “‘Until death do we part,’ that’s 
what the priest said. And now you 
always want to go play stupid cards 
with some stupid woman.”
Here it came. She could feel the 
building intensity. She was trying 
her best to think of something to say, 
something to do to stop up the barrel 
of his building temper. “It’s okay,” 
she said in as friendly a voice as she 
could muster, “I’ll stay. Let me go get 
my dinner, and I’ll be back up.” She 
thought this was the best thing to do, 
call Sarah, cancel the date. It’d be easier.
“Goddammit. Don’t just stay be-
cause I told you to. For Christ sakes, 
if you want to go, then get the fuck 
out of here. I don’t need you here. I 
through the house. She stood at the 
fry pan, picked up the remaining pork 
chop with a fork and took a bite and 
chewed. The meat was dry, plain, 
tasteless. She stood there, paralyzed, 
except for her jaw—ruminating.
If she cleaned up now, it’d be too late 
to visit Sarah. If she went to Sarah’s first, 
it would be dark when she got home 
and she’d be up all night cleaning. 
If she didn’t clean up until the next 
morning, she wouldn’t get out to do 
the grocery shopping in time. If she 
didn’t get the grocery shopping done in 
time, she wouldn’t have his Thursday 
night supper ready. If she didn’t have 
his Thursday night supper ready...
Besides, the longer she left the 
garbage on the floor, the harder it 
was going to be to clean up.
She dropped the now cold chop 
back in the pan and bent to gather 
the drier bits of trash. She noticed, 
once down at garbage level, how ex-
tensive the mess really was. Tea bags 
and damp coffee filters leaked black 
liquid into the crevices between the 
linoleum tiles. Mouldy slices of bread 
were erupting in clouds of powdery 
spores. An overturned, half-eaten 
container of fruit-flavoured yogurt 
she had bought three months ago, 
away from where she pinched the 
rim between forefinger and thumb as 
if her fingers weren’t already stained 
and sticky from the trash. She stared 
at the spill as it continued to seep into 
the warm darkness under the fridge.
Could she move the fridge by her-
self? Could she do it without alerting, 
and thus provoking, Jake? Could she 
just clean up the visible floor without 
the whole kitchen starting to smell 
like rancid dairy in three days? She 
heard the toilet flush upstairs. He’d 
be coming down for his post-meal 
drink. And look at the floor … brace 
yourself…
“What the hell is this mess still 
doing here? You’re not expecting me 
to clean this up are you? I’m a busy 
man. I’ve got work to do. I’ve got a 
job. I don’t sit around the house all 
day not taking out the garbage. Get 
this shit off the floor. Off my floor. 
I pay for this floor. This is my floor. 
And when I tell you to clean up my 
floor, I don’t mean wait for someone 
else to come and do it. You want to 
go play cards with your little friend, 
you get this cleaned up first.” He 
stumbled around mixing his drink, 
casually kicking trash into hard to 
reach places.
“You should stay here with me. tv is way more interesting than that
 stupid woman. I really don’t know why you bother with her at all. 
Aren’t I enough to keep you happy? We’re married, aren’t we? You made 
a promise. You promised that you were mine for ever.” He added 
with unnecessary emphasis, “Until death do we part.” 
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 73
“I can’t move the fridge,” she 
mumbled meekly.
“You can’t move the fridge?! Why 
in God’s name do you have to move 
the fridge?”
“To clean under it.”
“Oh, jeezus— You have to rope me 
into this somehow, don’t you. I can’t 
just come home at night and relax; 
you’ve always got something you want 
me to do. Something you couldn’t 
do by yourself because you were too 
weak, or you didn’t have the car, or 
you had your head up your ass and 
you couldn’t get it back out.
“Well, you got it figured wrong, 
missy. I’m not moving no fridge. Not 
tonight. You clean everything else up 
and I’ll move it tomorrow morning. 
You can clean under it then.”
He lumbered back up to his den. 
“Christ, it’s all through the house. 
What the fuck were you thinking? 
Can’t even wipe your feet….” His 
voice trailed away up the stairs.
She paused. She dropped the yogurt 
MARION MUTALA
It was really nothing
Was it the remote thrown through the tv that did it?
Naw, too drastic
Was it my birthday present concert ticket that you gave away to 
a brother you dislike?
Nope, too unbelievable
How about the hole in the bathroom wall or in the bedroom door?
Never, much too crazy
Or the constant fighting and bickering with my children?
No, way too childish
Or, how about my 11 year old calling 911
when you and my 13 year old
were fighting over what tv show to watch?
Never, too stupid
Tell me, what was it you asked?
Why are we divorcing?
After ten long years
What was it?
Really, do you need to ask?
Come on now, get real
Do you really need to fricking ask, hey?
The answer is quite explicitly obvious, you jerk
You figure it out,
I told my lawyer
It was nothing, really nothing
Nothing at all
Marion Mutala has a Masters degree in education administration and taught 
for 30 years. With a mad passion for the arts, she loves to write, folkdance, 
sing, play guitar, flower garden, travel, and read. Her two bestselling, award-
winning books, Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Christmas and 
Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Easter are followed by the soon to 
be released Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Wedding.
container back on the floor. She poked 
the pooling liquid with the mop. She 
pushed one of the mouldy pieces of 
bread into to it and watched the bread 
soak up the goo. Then, changing from 
her slippers to her shoes, she left the 
house to go to Sarah’s. She didn’t 
even stop to check her hair in the 
little mirror. She grabbed her purse 
and started moving. She walked out 
the screen door and off the porch. 
She walked down the steps, down 
the side path, across the yard. She 
turned up the sidewalk and walked 
away from the house.
What was it Sarah had said about 
walking away?
Esther Vincent likes to tell stories. She 
does so using photography, theatre and 
the written word. Her stories, photo-
graphs, articles and essays have been 
published in magazines, journals and 
anthologies. She has had eleven plays 
and three movement works produced 
for stage. One of her plays, Shafted, was 
published by Ordinary Press.
LISA DE NIKOLITS
SILENCE
your
silence
unnerves
me
have you
left me
again?
how many
times
can you
leave?
Lisa de Nikolits is the award-
winning author of The Hungry 
Mirror and West Of Wawa. 
Her third novel with Inanna, A 
Glittering Chaos, was released in 
Spring of 2013.


Cyclone

Greene, Elizabeth

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 117
MADELINE SONIK
Stained Door
Last night I dreamed 
of a childhood home
I had lived in all my life
I wanted to spend time
with my mother
to walk with her 
around the lake
I wanted her to hear 
and see me
but she was brushing stain
over a door, chatting
to my brother
the house was undergoing renovations
and I made no secret
of my rage
for forty-eight years
I had lived 
in this ugly service
my mother had died 
never seeing me
“who needs her anyway?”
my child voice sobbed
Madeline Sonik’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
ELIZABETH GREENE
Inheritance
Long before she died, the mother
who put me to bed, made up stories,
came running when I woke with
nightmares--wolves chasing at my heels,
dangling skeletons blocking my path--
had vanished into ripping criticism,
chilling scorn.
I’ve set up an interview with a publisher;
don’t think you’ll get the job
Then she was furious that I didn’t go.
I didn’t fulfill her life—no way!
But then I didn’t stay
a well-dressed doll, a fantasy,
no trouble.
What if she’d said: You may not 
get the job, but you’ll enjoy the meeting.
You can learn a lot, and you can always
try again.
That was her unintended legacy to me.
I’d do it wrong, get tangled, try again.
Now, sitting at the Wolfe Island Bakery,
spending an hour with my son’s photos,
dancing tulips, the reddest starlet roses,
opera singer orange lily, white irises.
I wonder if my  mother would recognize
the mingling of her husband’s talent,
her own unerring gift for perfect beauty.
Would she feel her life complete
at longest last?
Elizabeth Greene’s has published two collections of 
poetry, The Iron Shoe (2007) and Moving (2010). Her 
third volume of poetry, Understories, is forthcoming 
from Inanna Publications in 2014. She lives in Kingston.


Inheritance

60 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
But—how to forgive someone who 
won’t apologize?
But then I consider that every little 
forgiveness I’ve managed for the small 
wrongs—the receptionist’s rudeness, 
the nurse’s unkindness, the lover’s 
betrayal—they’ve all built to this. To 
forgive my mother. And send her on 
her way. And perhaps in forgiving her, 
I might glimpse what her apology 
could have been.
“Mummy, what are you doing?”
“I’m thinking about Grannie.”
“My Grannie?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your mum?”
“Yes. Do you remember her name?”
A careful pause, then a proud smile. 
“Christine!”
Forgive. Yes. For her, for my chil-
dren. For myself.
Jenny Morrow is a writer, mother, and 
consultant who lives in Sioux Lookout, 
Ontario.
renee nOrMAn
Spill of trees
Morning. Bare limbs on trees. Grey skies with a hint of light to come. The promise of
Spring. The circle of ice on the outdoor table melted for now. A shine of windows across
the creek. Two fat squirrels heavy with maple nuts waddle across the fallen leaves now
more mulch than foliage. Houses, rooftops form the backdrop for skeletal branches, criss-
crossing in patterns that speak of paint spillage: random, beautiful, permanent. Here and
there a hair gnarl of knotted branch. A last leaf bereft of its original shape. Still the grey
light entices, reminder that winter too has more than darkness.
Last night I could not sleep, thought of daughters. How content I am they swirl around
me still. In and out between their work, projects, concerns, cups and wineglasses left
for parental pickup, stray underwear strewn by bathrooms, clothes left hanging to dry, the
basement pantry their shop-at-home-free store (the price is right). And I would not trade
one unmade bed from a sleepover, nor the blueberries that find their way under the depths
of the fridge, nor the opened wine, or the cranky hurricane takeover of my bathroom, for
anything else.
That promise of Spring is not for bargaining. The Jackson Pollack spill of trees is only
one canvas I love.
Renee Norman’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
SUSAn MCCASlin
Demeter’s epic Smile
Like a spar suddenly rising
from the depths of a turbulent sea
to offer itself as a raft
for a swimmer who has heaved
her last breath after hours
and relinquished her limbs
to the downward pull of the waves
so to me the image of my daughter
advancing toward me
in the full flesh and flower
of her womanhood.
Susan McCaslin’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


Demeter's Epic Smile

Roemer, Marjorie

VOLUME 30,  NUMBER 1 145
ThE GooSE GIrl, ThE 
rabbI aNd ThE NEw 
York TEachErS: a 
FaMIlY MEMoIr
Deborah Heller
Bloomington: iUniverse, Inc., 2013
reviewed by marjorie 
roemer
Eva Hoffman once remarked “All 
acts of memory are to some extent 
imaginative.” So, of course, it is 
here. Deborah Heller reconstructs 
a history of generations from great 
demande à être / […] / / pour habiter 
la lumière ». Sur l’avenue qui s’élance 
vers l’horizon impénétrable de nos 
désirs à vivre dans la liberté d’être 
pour comprendre notre condition 
humaine et participer à son amélio-
ration, je passe le flambeau à S. E. 
Saliceti qui exprime viscéralement cet 
état d’esprit: « Mon désir devant la 
cheminée, par l’entrebâillement des 
nuages, regarde sortir les étoiles de la 
mer. […] Je ne me souviens que de toi, 
frère humain aux visages pluriels. »
Lélia Young détient en doctorat en 
linguistique et enseigne à l’université 
York où elle est professeure agrégée. Ses 
travaux portent sur l’analyse et l’in-
terprétation de textes littéraires et sont 
inspirés entre autres par la méthode 
d’analyse cohésive des linguistes Hal-
liday M. et Hasan R. Lélia Young est 
aussi écrivaine: Nouvelliste et poète. 
Elle a à son acquis plusieurs recue-
ils de poèmes et des nouvelles pub-
liés dont Entre l’outil et la matière 
(1993) aux éditions du gref de 
Toronto, Si loin des cyprès (1999) 
aux éditions du cidhica de Mon-
tréal, Aquarelles. La paix comme un 
poème (2006) et Réverbère (2007) 
aux Éditions du Marais de Montréal 
de Montréal. 
great grandparents, through her 
parents and, finally, to herself. We 
learn of the goose girl who refused to 
shave her head and wear the sheitel 
(wig) as Jewish tradition demand-
ed in her German village in the 
mid-nineteenth century and of the 
illustrious rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann 
Heller who wrote a commentary on 
the Mishnah, the ancient rabbinic 
code of Jewish law, in the early 
seventeenth century. These are the 
forbears. We see their legacies: on 
the maternal side, independent, 
strong women; on the paternal 
side, scholars and linguists. Heller, 
herself, is both. This text, built as it 
is on meticulous scholarship, is still 
“a family story,” the story we tell to 
place ourselves, to identify who we 
are. Dedicated to the succeeding 
generations and to the memory of 
her parents, the text chronicles the 
histories as they can be researched 
(through a rich selection of public 
documents, scholarly studies, letters, 
oral histories, and photographs). 
Still, its opening lines are: “This 
is the story my mother told.” And 
while Heller doesn’t dwell on her 
own story in great detail, her sensi-
bility is everywhere evident in the 
work. She is the product of this rich 
set of traditions (and rebellions), and 
her scholarship, her sophistication, 
her feminist consciousness, and her 
critical wit shape this work.
I recommend the book to any 
number of audiences. The early 
chapters give insight into life in the 
shtetl, here the Russian town of Koid-
anov, near Minsk in Belarus, where 
Heller’s father was born in 1902. 
This part of the chronicle paints a 
detailed and personal picture of the 
great wave of east European Jewish 
immigration to America. We hear, 
first-hand, as it were, of the tensions 
between German Jews who arrived 
in America earlier (mid-nineteenth 
century) and the Russian, or eastern 
European Jews, who arrived in the 
great migration that took place in 
the late nineteenth century and the 
beginning of the twentieth. We learn 
of the rivalry between Litvaks and 
Galitzianers, and the struggles of 
immigrants to assimilate and learn 
the language of their new home. 
The author’s father comments 
on the Yiddish-English coinages: 
nezdoriger and opsteziger for next 
door and upstairs neighbors. All of 
this is rendered with records from 
Ellis Island, stories recounted in the 
family, memories, supplemented 
by the writings of Abraham Reisen, 
Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe, Moses 
Rischin, Anzia Yezierska, and others. 
The particular appeal here lies in 
the easy connections between the 
personal recollections of visits to 
the grandmother in Jamaica and her 
white cake with sticky sweet icing and 
the panoramic view of these stories 
in a larger history. As the author says 
in her preface: it is not about how 
these particular people mattered to 
History, but how history mattered 
to them. 
For me, one of the great delights 
here is the charm of the letters from 
the author’s father, Isaiah, to his 
daughter. Here is just one example.
Ever since I recovered from my 
“viral pleuritis” (a polite name 
for old fashioned pleurisy), I 
have had rather mild colds off 
and on, colds which I wouldn’t 
have noticed in the past but 
which I find annoying and debil-
itating—I’ve been in and out of 
school, so often that everybody, 
teachers, administrators, pupils 
and I are getting a little confused 
as to whether I am in or out of 
school My youthful, pleasant 
principal met me in the corridor 
the other day and somewhat 
bewildered said, “I thought 
you were out today.” To which 
I responded, “Oh no, I am here; 
you appear to be absent.”
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME146
in 1985), Lucy Maud’s entries weren’t 
in any kind of order or categorized 
or organized. Of course not, for they 
were a woman’s journal—a writing 
space. Her friend. Her confidante. 
Her solace. Her sounding board. And 
like Virginia Woolf, she too needed 
a room of her own, and the right to 
write. Journals have long provided 
this space for women. Audre Lorde’s 
cancer journals provided a candid 
and profound lens on her life and 
on the experience of being viewed 
as a patient and as a diagnosis. And 
of course the diary of Anne Frank 
gave the world an unobstructed view 
of a hidden existence during one of 
the worst atrocities ever known to 
our world. 
Rubio and Waterston reviewed 
and catalogued thousands of lm’s 
entries and presented them for us in 
what at the time felt like a coherent 
way. But in so doing, they felt forced 
to make decisions regarding what 
to include and what to leave out. 
Oxford University Press explains 
on the back cover of The pei Years, 
that editing decisions had as much 
to do with space as with ensuring 
the collection was “easily-digestible.” 
And so the decision was to leave out 
lm’s “darker, more reflective moods 
and her religious and philosophical 
speculations.” I don’t know about 
you, but leaving out these reflections 
and assertions  …  left Lucy Maud 
out. I’m not sure what “easily-digest-
ible” was to mean, but a journal is an 
exceptionally private space to whom 
a woman (in this case) can express 
that which she may never otherwise. 
If you take pause, you will see that 
Lucy Maud wrote directly to her 
reader… It’s not directionless reflec-
tions, but rather noticings, assertions 
and descriptions for. Notice it in this 
passage: “ And I speak of this so that 
you may realize the straights to which 
I am reduced.” Lucy Maud is writing 
to us. She is communicating directly 
with her imagined readers and in 
These are some letters! And the ur-
bane wit they transmit is clear.
The section of the book that seems 
to me most valuable from the perspec-
tive of historical study is the section 
that deals with Heller’s parents as 
left-wing Jewish schoolteachers 
during the McCarthy period. She 
details what it was like to live in the 
expectation of a letter that might call 
her parents up to testify and “name 
names” in this extraordinary period 
when the New York State Feinberg 
Loyalty Law was established for the 
“elimination of subversive persons 
from the public school system.” Up-
held by the Supreme Court in March 
1952, over the dissenting arguments 
of William O. Douglas and Hugo 
Black, the law was part of the appa-
ratus assembled to dismiss teachers 
on grounds of “insubordination” and 
“conduct unbecoming a teacher” if 
they refused to answer any of the in-
vestigator’s questions. Heller’s sharing 
of some information from these files 
(made available to the public only 
recently) is spellbinding. One item 
in the indictment concerns a person 
also named Heller who lived some five 
blocks away from the author’s father. 
This Stephen Heller is (erroneously) 
judged to be a relative and, there-
fore, his signing petitions involving 
Communist Party members is used 
as evidence against Isaiah. The entire 
conduct of this investigation is illu-
minating and terrifying, a chastening 
example of witch hunts and hysteria. 
Again, Heller broadens the scope 
with citations from a host of other 
scholars of the period, but it is her 
own dramatic recital of the personal 
that reverberates for the reader. 
These are some of the high points 
in the history, but it is the cumulative 
effect of generation growing from 
generation and the artful reading of 
the traces of this history that is most 
compelling.
Marjorie Roemer is a retired pro-
I am going to begin a new kind 
of diary. I have kept one of a kind 
for years – ever since I was a tot 
of nine. But I burned it to-day. 
It was so silly. I was ashamed 
of it. And it was also very dull.
—Sept 21, 1889 Cavendish, 
p.e. Island.
I wonder if she knew. Or hoped. I 
wonder if she knew or hoped on any 
level, that so many women would 
be interested in her thoughts, her 
dreams, her life?
I hope so. In fact, some literary 
scholars propose that she returned 
to her journals and adjusted them in 
the hopes that they would be pub-
lished posthumously. And thanks to 
scholars Mary Rubio and Elizabeth 
Waterston, they have been. These two 
literary women have worked tirelessly 
to bring to us the gift that is Lucy 
Maud’s journal. This has been no 
small task, to say the least. According 
to the publisher of The pei Years, as 
well as the earlier collection named 
The Selected Journals (first published 
ThE coMplETE 
JourNalS oF l.M. 
MoNTGoMErY: ThE 
pEI YEarS, 1889-1900
 
Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth 
Hillman Waterston, Eds.
Don Mills, on: Oxford University 
Press, 2012
reviewed by c. van 
daalen-smith
fessor of English from Rhode Island 
College, where she directed the Rhode 
Island Writing Project. Dr. Roemer 
now teaches memoir writing at the 
Brandeis Osher LifeLong Learning 
Institute.


The Goose Girl,The Rabbi and the New York Teachers: A Family Memoir

Ezer, Özlem

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 35
Cet article nous présente la biographie de Sirin Tekeli , une 
importante femmes de lettres de Turquie, une féministe et 
activiste que la narratrice a rencontrée récemment en France. 
L’auteure conteste la pratique habituelle des biographies 
posthumes des femmes notoires alors qu’elle favorise plutôt 
des extraits de leur biographie.
Wrestling with worn-out metaphors used for women in 
literature is not the aim of this essay. But I am bound to 
begin with this because of the photograph. I have been 
staring at this picture that I took on January 26, 2013, at a 
flower market in Nice (Cours Saleya), before venturing my 
first lines. I can close my eyes and tell you all the colours, 
the order and the shapes of the flowers that accompany her 
smile and red leather gloves. The “flowery” background of 
an intellectual and activist feminist whose life journey took 
her temporarily from Turkey to France, only to relieve her 
soul that has refused to belong to one nation or culture. 
Moving is good for the restless.
Men’s love for women can be like a “red red rose” but 
some women are better off when they are likened to mi-
mosas or snowdrops since their achievements in society 
herald new eras and ideas and they challenge the status 
quo. The life story I am going tell you is destined to be 
incomplete. Still, it is worth taking the risk because Şirin 
Tekeli, a famous and highly respected feminist scholar 
from Turkey, should also be introduced to a non-Turkish 
feminist community. Especially because Tekeli believes in 
the power of global support and network among feminists 
regardless of the differences and culture-specific issues 
we have to focus on from time to time. This may sound 
second-wave and this is fine with me. She is capable of 
From Shy Feminist to World Citizen
özlem ezer
being critical of her own generation to the extent that she 
can sometimes be cruel to herself and cannot enjoy the 
long-deserved prestige and the compliments she receives 
from others. I have witnessed this more than once.
After meeting Tekeli at the International Multidisci-
plinary Women’s Congress in Izmir in 2009, where she 
delivered a speech as one of the plenary speakers, I prom-
ised myself I would write her life story one day. Not in an 
obsessed way but only if she agreed to talk to me about 
her life over the years, and only if we could develop a rela-
tionship based on mutual trust and understanding. After 
all, I could be her daughter. She does not have children 
and I haven’t yet asked her whether this was intentional or 
not. I am almost forty years old and have been “recruiting” 
family members who are not born out of blood-ties. That 
is intentional. If I were Cours Saleya in my next life, they 
would all be my flowers except that they would not be 
for sale. I enjoy this international spiritual family made 
up of multiple mothers, dozens of sisters, lovers, dead 
or alive. Tekeli doesn’t know that I am dedicating this 
mini-biography to her as one of my mothers. If she gets 
upset because I haven’t asked her permission like a “good 
daughter” should, I know how to fix it. Because she told 
me about her favourite flower as we were sharing stories 
of love and life over grappa. 
It is usually only after someone dies and when it is too 
late for the subject matter to contribute  (be it a milestone 
figure in Turkish feminist history or not) that most of us 
begin to compose works of praise or introductory texts 
for the person. I am also one of these: I like archival work 
and excavating feminist ghosts from their buried and 
forgotten spots. Now I have to lay my concerns aside 
36 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
about what Tekeli is going to think or how inadequate 
and embarrassed I might feel after this piece of life writ-
ing is published. I have confidence in her that she will be 
supportive of me. Because she has been. Each time I have 
attempted to write something … anything … to express 
my feelings as a woman and expose my research she has 
told me to go for it. 
Let us return to the photograph taken in the flower 
market. Just by looking at it, you cannot tell much about 
Şirin Tekeli except that she is elegant and charismatic. And 
yet she doesn’t want to be in the center. Well, I could have 
told you more about her if there was no code of honour. 
However, for her generation in Turkey, she told me, it was 
not easy to talk about personal stuff regardless of how well 
you are known. In other words, in contemporary Turkish 
literature, we do not have Anais Nïns. The reasons for this 
can be speculated in another project. My apologies for not 
decorating this introductory life writing with some gentle 
or titillating stories of love or romantic escapades. Blame 
it on our cultural background. I do. The “honour” issue is 
deeply ingrained in our genes as women even as we fight 
against it and claim that we should not care. 
Şirin Tekeli is one of the most powerful voices in Turkish 
feminism. If you type her name in the Bogazici University 
Library catalogue, you will encounter 23 titles of the books 
she has written, (co)edited and (co)translated. If only you 
had met her during her years of feminist activism in the 
1980s, you would wonder how on earth it was possible 
to organize people, attend all those meetings, publish 
feminist ’zines and other magazines before the Internet era 
and still have this strong presence in print in the richest 
library of Turkey. Discipline combined with intelligence 
and dedication to a cause (or causes) would be my guess. 
Yet, she is humble and acts as if she hasn’t lived a culturally 
and politically flourishing life. As she pronounced in an 
interview, she began as a mahcup feminist, which means 
“shy” in Turkish. How could a woman like Tekeli feel 
mahcup in the midst of seemingly progressive left-wing 
groups whose male members were educated at university 
halls in Turkey, if not in Europe or England? To answer 
this question, we need to take a quick look at the political 
background of the times and at the personal (the family, 
etc.). In Turkey, as feminist activists and scholars, we also 
love to combine and study these two terms together: the 
personal and the political.
Born in 1944, Tekeli’s childhood witnessed the strug-
gles between westernization of the Turkish Republic and 
the traditions of Islam and her Ottoman heritage. Her 
father was an intellectual educator and administrator, who 
became engaged in politics through chp (the center-left 
party in the Turkish politics founded in 1923). He was 
soon discarded as he suffered from the slander of “being 
a communist” and was exiled to a small town in Anatolia 
as a consequence. The separation from her father, Tekeli 
says, was traumatic for her as an only child and she actually 
rebelled against God after his death when she was only 
thirteen years old. Her mother, a philosophy teacher, and 
her grandmother, whose preferences about how to raise her 
reflected more than a generational gap, were influential in 
her formative years. The grandmother saw nothing wrong 
in listening to regional folk songs with Şirin whereas the 
assigned (!) daily music by her mother included a com-
Sirin Tekeli at Cours Saleya, the flower market in Nice where the mimosa can be found.
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 37
pletely different repertoire ranging from Mozart to Bach. 
This small anecdote from the 1950s is indeed symptomatic 
of the struggle between westernization and old customs 
and also reflects the paradoxes of Turkish nationalism and 
the construction of an identity for the citizens of a new 
nation. Tekeli’s parents were adopting a positive stance in 
life that affected how they raised their only child, and they 
had likely become intolerant towards the religio-mystical 
traditions, distancing themselves from religious elements 
in the culture (unlike the grandmother). Thousands of 
France, Switzerland seemed like a paradise for her. The 
university was founded in 1537 and was boasting of a new 
and liberal faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the 
time of her arrival. Her eyes still shine when she refers to 
those years and names all her professors (Bridel, Zwahlen, 
Perrin, Rieben, Schaller, Aguet, Oulès) and their areas of 
expertise one by one. After she had graduated with this 
amazing intellectual arsenal and languages, she returned 
to Istanbul University, where she began to teach and work 
as a research assistant. She remembers rather sadly that in 
children then, who are now in their seventies. will tell you 
similar stories. It was also Şirin’s father who gave her the 
first taste of wine! An open-minded father with progressive 
ideas about education and a good library can shape his 
daughter’s identity even in a very short time. Tekeli became 
an avid reader of literature during her high school years, 
enjoying the novels of André Gide in particular. Gide’s 
fiction (Nourritures terrestres holding a special place),Tekeli 
says, probably laid the foundation for her being against all 
kinds of dogmatic thinking and strengthened her contin-
uous efforts to achieve intellectual honesty.
In 1960, when Tekeli was sixteen years old, the young 
Turkish Republic was hit by its first military coup, 
which inspired her to study political science. There was 
a competitive exam held by the government for talent-
ed students with the highest grades, giving them the 
opportunity to study abroad. Although the quota was 
very limited especially after the coup, Tekeli succeeded 
in earning a scholarship. Thanks to her mother’s support 
and permission, she left for Paris, to a brave new world… 
Not knowing a single word of French was not an issue for 
this bright woman who learned the language in two years 
at an advanced level so that she could follow university 
lectures in the Law School with hundreds of other young 
and restless students. When I say “young and restless,” I 
mean it. Despite the fact that she fell in love with Paris, 
Tekeli would soon realize that the violent demonstrations, 
in particular the Charonne Metro Station Massacre in 
February 1962, were too much for her, and she felt it 
would be better to continue her studies in a more peace-
ful place. She chose to enroll in University of Lausanne. 
After the tense political atmospheres of both Turkey and 
the Faculty of Political Science, she was treated as if she 
was an “absolutely ignorant person” only because the rest 
of the faculty was in great admiration of the American 
system and its educational methods. Inevitably, when it 
was time for her to choose a topic for her dissertation, it 
had to be on America. She wrote on the systems theory 
of David Easton.
You might still be wondering when feminism comes 
to the picture. It was in the year 1978. Tekeli wrote the 
first thesis (for her promotion to the associate professor 
rank) on women in her discipline and department in 
Turkey through a feminist perspective. Because of her 
research topic, there were some backhanded comments 
from most of the faculty in her department. She became 
even more aware of the discriminations against women 
that had been covered insidiously behind the discourses of 
Marxism or “the democracy” constructed by the founders 
of the Turkish Republic. Once she began to read French, 
Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe became one of her most-ref-
erenced books, but it was not until the United Nations 
meeting in 1975 that women’s issues were highlighted in 
her own agenda. Not having the conceptual tools was not 
a major problem when she decided to prioritize women 
in her research. She used what she refers to as an “eclectic 
methodology” in her studies. Participation of women in 
politics was the topic of her promotion thesis and after 
completing it, Tekeli says she was no longer “the shy 
feminist;” she proudly came out. However, soon after, 
she quit her position at the university in order to protest 
the 1980 military coup, which introduced a monitoring 
institution called yök (Council of Higher Education in 
Turkish), which restricted freedoms of speech and research 
How empowered I felt after spending only a few days with the woman with 
a mimosa-soul. She convinced me that it is not about the differences but 
the similarities that we need to focus on in our struggles as women. 
“Nation-states are collapsing,” were her final words before she wished 
me a good flight, “but feminism is becoming stronger.”
38 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
in many areas at the universities. Because offering courses 
on women and from a feminist perspective was frowned 
upon, she didn’t think that it would be possible for her 
to give the courses she really wanted to, regardless of the 
coup and its crippling outcomes. Her scholarly freedom, 
productivity, and feminism were strengthened (ironically, 
I guess!) after quitting her position in academia.
Tekeli had to make a living and understandably tried to 
remain in the social security system until her retirement. 
Thus, she began translating important feminist authors 
into Turkish such as Elisabeth Badinter (L’un est l’autre: 
Des Relations entre Hommes et Femmes), Diana Scully 
(Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted 
Rapists) and Germaine Tillion (Le harem et les cousins) 
among many others. However, one of her most important 
works is actually a collection of articles that she edited, 
1980’ler Türkiye’sinde Kadın Bakış Açısından Kadınlar. This 
collection was published in German and English as well, 
entitled Frauen in der Türkei der 80er Jahre and Women in 
Modern Turkish Society: A Reader respectively. This book is 
considered groundbreaking in women’s studies in Turkey, 
bringing twenty Turkish researchers and academics from 
different disciplines together with feminist viewpoints. 
It is still widely used as a reference book in gender and 
women’s studies courses, and social sciences in general. 
Beginning in the mid-eighties, Tekeli’s involvement with 
ngos increased. She is among the founding members of 
the Human Rights Association in Turkey, The Women’s 
Library and Information Center, Istanbul Purple Roof 
Women’s Shelter, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, ka.der 
(Association for the Support of Women Candidates) and 
Anakültür, most of which are still active and effective 
ngos. It is breathtaking, I know, and makes you wonder 
what kind of multivitamins she used! In a recent project 
application, I had a few phone conversations with women 
I haven’t met before for bureaucratic reasons and some 
paper work. When I mentioned Tekeli’s name as one of my 
referees, the tone on the other end of the receiver suddenly 
became friendly and helpful. I could not help but respect 
once again the positive impressions that she must have 
left on the people she cooperated with and administered 
in the ngos listed above. Some of the demonstrations she 
supported are ingrained in the public memory, such as 
the “purple needle campaign” against sexual harassment, 
especially in crowded buses run by the municipality or 
on the streets. It was really in May 1987 that feminists 
literally took to the streets; some 3000 women marched 
in Istanbul to protest against the physical abuse of women 
and in particular the battering of women. Tekeli was one 
of the organizers and the public speakers of this significant 
event in Turkish feminist history.
At the beginning of this essay, I wrote that moving is 
good for the restless. Well, Şirin Tekeli moved more than 
once. After she got tired of the political turmoil and the 
direction that that the Turkish government was heading 
towards, she decided that it was time to leave the fight 
(the hard-core activism) to the younger generation in the 
big cities, and move to a more peaceful location in Turkey. 
In Bodrum, she could focus more on her translations and 
articles for journals and newspapers. She is much closer 
to nature and the milder climate of the Aegean is a better 
option for her health problems, which got more serious 
as the years go by. Thanks to the Internet, she can stay in 
touch with the rest of the world, although she refuses most 
of the invitations to conferences and other events related 
to ngos or universities. She constantly reads, translates, 
follows certain programs on French tv channels, and 
keeps her languages and knowledge always fresh. Her 
small studio in Nice is a retreat for her body and soul, and 
she welcomes several friends and acquaintances around 
the world. She also corresponds by email or phone calls 
with many young women who take her as a role model. 
Her mimosa-like qualities have a memorable impact 
on those who meet her in person. In the same way that 
feminists spread around our lonely planet have to adapt 
themselves into the local realities of the daily lives, mimosas 
also differ in colour and size depending on geographies in 
which they grow. In the Mediterranean, be it Istanbul or 
Nice, they bloom in bright yellow and herald the coming of 
spring. Sometimes they blossom even in the middle of the 
winter, as we witnessed in Nice. The very last image of my 
trip to Nice was a stranger in her sixties pulling a carry-on 
suitcase in one hand and a big bouquet of mimosas in the 
other at the Nice Airport. Traveling mimosas, I thought; 
travelling feminists, crossing borders while pollinating ideas 
and emotions around the globe. How brightly they reflect 
their sunshine colour in that enclosed space, challenging 
all the artificial lights of the airport. How empowered I 
felt after spending only a few days with the woman with 
a mimosa-soul. She convinced me that it is not about the 
differences but the similarities that we need to focus on 
in our struggles as women. “Nation-states are collapsing,” 
were her final words before she wished me a good flight, 
“but feminism is becoming stronger.” I looked her in the 
eye. “You belong to a borderless nation,” she continued, 
“that is, of womanhood.” I smiled at her and nodded after 
she said: “Become a world citizen in your heart and don’t 
be a shy feminist!”
Özlem Ezer is currently an instructor of English and Com-
parative Literature at the Middle East Technical University in 
North Cyprus. She obtained her Ph.D. in Women’s Studies at 
York University. Her area of expertise is women’s life writing 
with a focus on travel literature. 


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