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

Pflug-Back, Kelly Rose

Untitled

Donovan, Jennie

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 89
Il y aura bientôt onze ans ce printemps, 
quand je fus admise à l’hôpital bourrée 
de médicaments et soumise aux électro-
chocs. J’avais dix-sept ans à l’époque, 
depuis, j’ai composé mon histoire à 
partir des bribes de souvenirs qui me 
sont restées en tête au cours de ces années 
jusqu’à maintenant. 
I need sleep. It has been months since 
I really slept. I wake up at school, 
at work, but I’ve not been sleeping. 
I wake from violence and gore, a 
woman with purple snakes under the 
skin on her neck that throb as she 
turns to show me empty eye sockets. 
I wake with the realization that the 
layers that form different stages of 
enlightenment are overcrowded and 
there’s nowhere for me to go. The 
world is ending here and now without 
any space for billions of people to go 
next. So I am stuck here, awake.
The drugs they give me keep my 
eyes closed and make me a prisoner 
inside my own body. That’s not what 
I need; I need to get out of here and 
away from artificial sleep. I can’t 
believe people who love me leave me 
here. How do they know there’s a dif-
ference between dreams and reality? 
How can they tell I can’t comprehend 
11 Years Later
jennie donovan
that difference? The only test they’ve 
done had multiple choice answers 
that didn’t really apply to me. I need 
a cigarette, but they said there is no 
escort available to take me outside 
and watch me so I won’t hurt myself. 
I live in a ward separate from the rest 
of the hospital. I guess crazy people 
depress sick people? Sometimes one 
of the nurses will take us for a walk to 
the vending machines in the cafeteria. 
Some of the other people have more 
privileges, like they can go down 
and smoke in front of the hospital. 
They told me I’d probably be able to 
sometime, when my body adjusts to 
the meds and I don’t feel so weak. 
The beds here aren’t built for 
comfort, but they are the one thing 
we don’t have to share with someone 
else, so I spend a lot of time in mine. 
I pushed the dresser over so I can 
reach my drawers from bed. I keep 
candy in there that my friends bring 
me when they come to visit. I mostly 
want candy made out of marshmal-
low. My vision is always blurry, and 
my whole body shakes so I can’t even 
read anymore. I wonder how the 
needles they poke us with can put us 
to sleep for eight hours but not stop 
the nightmares.  
This is what I get for doing what I 
was supposed to do— tell someone 
how I felt. The “help” I’m getting is 
designed to keep my energy levels too 
low for the act of suicide, to keep my 
mind so clouded that I can’t remember 
why I’m so dissatisfied with the world. 
***
It’s been eleven years this spring. 
I entered the hospital in the middle 
of a night in which I found myself 
torn between two families: the one 
I lived with and the one I visited in 
dreams who asked me to stay. My 
Mom drove me there and stayed 
with me in a “quiet room” until the 
psychiatrist arrived in the morning to 
admit me. I brought a book, a journal 
and pen, and cigarettes. I remember 
the process: get some stuff, drive to the 
hospital, wait, and hope that someone 
could stop me from being crushed by 
all the invisible walls closing in on me, 
forcing me to contort my body and 
become as small as possible. Hold my 
breath and believe I am invisible. Sep-
tember eleventh, the death of Ernie 
Coombs, and my repeated desperate 
attempts to get out of a frightening 
and oppressive relationship are three 
events that I know happened in the 
months before my hospitalization.
90 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
Being admitted to a psychiatric 
ward meant surrendering my rights 
and submitting my mind and body to 
medicine and people more powerful 
than me. I was stripped of my clothes 
and my identity no longer mattered. I 
was just another broken girl. I entered 
a bare room with a bed and a board 
that served as a table. The stark envi-
ronment is a reminder that there are 
construction.
I don’t remember a lot about the 
hospital. Colours and smells (sterile 
gloves can still make me panic), a pool 
table, a woman who sang to me, cream 
of mushroom soup, fake stained glass 
I painted, the place we could smoke 
outside that was completely closed 
in by windows, pills, Scrabble that I 
couldn’t play because spelling became 
twist knowledge of horrors until they 
look like something more palatable. 
Treatment can undermine rebellion 
and kill passion.
Shock therapy. I had no idea what 
that was. My psychiatrist said that 
pills weren’t working fast enough 
and electroconvulsive therapy was 
an effective treatment with few side 
effects. Memory loss was temporary. 
no other options left. Why else would 
I be here? At first, my few belongings 
were searched and held hostage, except 
when someone was available to observe 
me using them. I was in one of four 
rooms behind the nurses’ station, 
separate from the rest of the ward. 
These rooms are designed to allow for 
easier surveillance of people who may 
be more likely to harm themselves, 
though everyone on the ward is closely 
monitored. In this concentrated care 
area, there was a rule about keeping 
the shared bathroom door open at all 
times for safety reasons, and it made 
me anxious. After a night or two, I was 
able to stay in a regular room, with a 
roommate and my own clothes and a 
bathroom in the room. My personal 
items were returned after being judged 
acceptable.
The hospital reinforced that I was 
different from other people. I liked 
when friends visited me, but was 
disturbed when I was allowed out 
on evening and weekend passes. My 
Mom has told me I used to make her 
take me back to the hospital early. I 
remember this happening one night 
after I yelled at a friend in a restaurant. 
It was completely out of character, 
but my personality was under (re)
too difficult. I recognize that it has 
been a while, but this is different than 
normal forgetting. It’s the erasure of 
both really important and mundane 
things, including good things that 
I knew had happened when people 
brought them up later, but I could 
not conjure any images of the event 
in my mind. And it was gone all at 
once. More importantly, I no longer 
had any understanding of myself. I 
had to entirely rebuild a shattered 
system of values and beliefs. I never 
got to choose what I forgot, and I am 
still haunted by what remains. 
This loss extended back over most 
of my high school years. I returned to 
finish my last semester before gradu-
ation with strangers who seemed to 
know me (and my story, thanks to 
the inappropriate actions of a faculty 
member who told students why I 
was missing from class). I blame the 
memory loss in part on drugs, but 
especially on shock therapy—pre-
scribed while I was still too young 
to consent to treatment without my 
parents’ permission—to treat my 
confused, hurt, developing brain. 
I’m sure my psychiatrist would blame 
depression or post-traumatic stress 
or some other word. Diagnoses can 
He said something about electricity 
stimulating neurotransmitters, mak-
ing them shoot out serotonin. That I 
would have a headache afterwards. I 
was in awe that my brain could with-
stand the application of electricity, 
and that induced seizures might be 
able to make it so my parents could 
stop worrying.
There are few images that I associate 
with the days around this treatment: 
lying on my bed as I am wheeled into 
a giant elevator, counting down from 
ten as that garlic taste from the anaes-
thesia rises in my throat. Afterwards, I 
am tired, sore and disoriented in a way 
I’d never known possible. My mind 
grasps at names of people with vaguely 
familiar faces that I am supposed to 
know. My lips are cracked, bloody, 
dehydrated and I have a sense that 
my jaw isn’t moving properly.
I will never be able to satisfactorily 
articulate the terror of shock, but the 
knowledge that this experience is more 
traumatic than anything else I’ve en-
countered marks my body and soul. I 
relive the fear of shock. I am completely 
alone in my knowledge. I read stories 
by other survivors and cry because they 
understand, but they are so far and 
so untouchable. I appreciate how fast 
Being admitted meant surrendering my rights and submitting my mind and 
body to medicine and people more powerful than me. I was stripped of 
my clothes and my identity no longer mattered. I was just another broken 
girl. I entered a bare room with a bed and a board that served as a table. 
The stark environment is a reminder that there are no other options left. 
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 91
everything I know can be destroyed if 
I fail to manage my emotions. I won’t 
talk to mental health professionals 
about my problems any more.
An alarming number of people have 
told me that I am lucky to forget that 
time of my life. Some even see me as 
a successful outcome of the “mental 
health system.” I’m sure my doctors 
do; I mean, I haven’t been hospitalized 
again. I am enraged when I think that 
people give credit to the treatment that 
wrecked me for years. While medicat-
ed, the drugs kept me too doped up 
to get to work on time. Fortunately, 
the manager at my fast food job was 
an incredibly understanding and for-
giving woman. When I got a second 
job, she would let me sleep, curled up 
on the grease-covered floor of the coat 
closet, in the hour before my evening 
shift. I guess this counts as success?
Going to university has been my 
lifelong goal. As a kid, I would snap 
wishbones while imagining a schol-
arship. I know that the main reason 
I am in school now is because I am 
lucky enough to be surrounded by 
so many compassionate people who 
loved me until I could do it myself. 
In hospital, I was told that I would 
be on medication for the rest of my 
life. I am not on medication. I was 
told that writing wasn’t helping me 
get better, and that school would be 
hard for me. 
For the first few years outside of 
the hospital, I could retain very little 
information or form new memories. It 
was discouraging to not be able to tell 
people what happened in a book I had 
just finished reading, or what a movie 
was about. It was hard to establish new 
friendships since I introduced myself 
to people multiple times and forgot 
valuable conversations. When I finally 
began university, I was increasingly 
frustrated by how many times I would 
have to read the same sentence. I 
needed to develop new learning strat-
egies when previously I was able to 
acquire knowledge quickly. Frequent 
re-reading, extensive note-taking, a 
conscious effort to concentrate and 
improved listening skills have all 
helped me in my academic career.
When I was seventeen, what I 
needed most was a place to stay where 
I could safely extract myself from a 
dangerous situation and receive sup-
port to help me evaluate and clearly 
express my thoughts, and explain 
my behaviours that were interpreted 
as not normal. What if instead of 
infantilization, drugs and shock, I 
had experienced empathy, warmth, 
and validation? 
Jennie Donovan is writing her Master’s 
thesis in the Women and Gender Studies 
program at Saint Mary’s University in 
Halifax. Her research explores the doc-
tor/patient relationship and highlights 
the gendered aspects of shock therapy. 


English

11 Years Later

Patriarca, Gianna

54 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
GiAnnA 
PAtriArCA
Disorder
how do I speak the words
to the woman who
looks at my face
and sees the angel
she is certain I am
what will I gain 
with my truth
will I live better 
with myself
my freedom
if I confuse the love
at home in her dry 
old eyes
will she see less 
of a woman
less of a man
less of the child
nonna
I’m gay
do you still love me?
Gianna Patriarca’s poetry 
and prose appears earlier in 
this volume. 
linDA MArtin
the Choice of listening
My mother is ninety-four and hard of hearing.
 She says, I can’t hear what you are saying.
I can hear everyone but you.
She puts in her hearing aids
but she still wants me to shout.
In the past, she would have shouted first, 
followed by my shouting, then her crying, then my crying.
We don’t cry together anymore.
Sometimes when I visit her in the retirement home,
or take her to the drug store for the adult diapers,
she cries a little.
Long ago I gave up talking with my mother,
I held an interior conversation
not giving her the choice of listening.
There are moments now when I almost speak.
My mother sits on the living room couch in her senior’s 
apartment,
sometimes I sit in a chair slightly to the side of her,
we can see each other’s faces,
other times I am beside her, holding her hand.
I think, This might be the day when I am able to tell her who I am.
I start a sentence and she will interrupt.
It could be as simple as What?
Linda Martin is a researcher, writer, librarian, and documentary filmmaker. 
The Healthsharing Reader: Women Speak About Health was published 
by Pandora Press in 1990. Hands on Farms, 2009, a documentary film 
about ten organic farmers in Ontario won the Green Apple Award at the 
Los Angeles Green Lifestyles film festival and Behind the Light, 2011, won 
second prize in the short documentary category at the 8th AnnualReelHeart 
International Film Festival in Toronto 2012.


Disorder

Przybylo, Ela

44 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
.
sur la société. De son côté la jupe, essayez de le nier, est 
une pierre d’achoppement, sinon un empêchement de 
danser en rond. Ce n’est plus « pardessus le moulin » C’est 
la tunique de Nessus qui adhère à la peau mais qu’il faut 
arracher à tout prix même si elle emporte avec elle des 
lambeaux de chair. Et on parle d’allonger les robes pour 
qu’elles remplacent les balais de la Corporation et nettoient 
les rues de leurs immondices et propagent les microbes! …
Quand érigera-t-on en principe qu’à « même peine, il faut 
même salaire »? Ce serait trop simple, trop honnête, trop 
juste. Il faut toujours faire des subtilités, des distinguos 
spécieux, sans cesse la femme sur un plan d’infériorité.…
Ces pharisiens qui essaient de nous faire croire qu’ils 
ont brisé les chaines de l’esclavage où languissait le beau 
sexe, qu’ils ont rendu à la femme la dignité de son sexe! 
…On a voulu la mettre sur un piédestal pour l’empêcher 
de s’asseoir sur un rond de cuir, sur une chaise tournante, 
I. (slime and other discrepancies) 
—after Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on the 
Wall”
slime and other discrepancies
when my foot touches down upon the life of 
a snail
and that little life is pressed into my shoe
this must be a day for mourning
on the wall, on the stairs, a speck or dent
or curved shadow
a pause or sprint
snail imagines – who knows what?
the sorry landscape
after a night of rain
and perhaps the lunching of a bird or two
an indefinable smear
between this mess and yesterday’s crunch
I am jarred awake
by the massive space of the still clouds
the brief cachinnations of the winded trees
II. (to know death, impossible)
To know death (impossible)
is to drag out our hair
along our bodies
and to rub our feet with sleep
as cicadas
to know death (impossible)
is to stare into the night
till only breath
and in the black new silhouettes
to know death (impossible)
is to drift with the wind
with eyes that follow a winded scarf
with breath that is lost in warming air
to breathe into the night
dense, polluted
to know death (impossible)
is only through hushed hands
through longing
through stories of extermination
dans une stalle de député, dans un fauteuil de sénateur, 
sur un trône, comme c’est malin! Qu’ils sont généreux nos 
législateurs! Quel respect, quelle vénération pour celle qui 
les a portés dans son sein, qui les a nourris de son sang, 
qui les a bercés sur ses genoux, qui les a soignés, dorlotés 
et élevés! Cette jupe qui devrait être comme un drapeau 
et solliciter des hommages et des saluts, on en a fait une 
entrave, presqu’un opprobre. 
This article was orginally published in 1937 in Le monde 
ouvrier. Eva Circé-Côté (1871-1949) was an iconoclast 
journalist who wrote more than a thousand articles for 
Montreal newspapers and magazines at the beginning of the 
century. She rarely used her name, preferring instead male 
pseudonyms (such as Julien Saint-Michel). She was appointed 
first librarian at the Montreal Municipal Library in 1903, a 
fact rarely acknowledged, and was also the author of four plays.
ela PRZYBYlo
Ela Przybylo is a Ph.D. student in t he Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies Program at York University. She is 
the author of the collection of poetry, Threats of Intimacy (2008), and more recently her poetry has been available in 
Branch. Haunted by times once present, now fading, she assembles words to remember and anticipate personal, familial, 
and collective traumas and joys.


I. (slime and other discrepancies)

Damioli, Carol

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 77
KELLY ROSE PFLUG-BACK
I remember the day,
alone in the bathrooms
you lifted the uniform’s tattered hem above your breasts
and showed me the roses tattooed on your chest
dark whorls unfurling around the puckered scars of entry wounds
where bullets sang through flesh, once
and sank themselves in bone
stopped shot by some blind fate from silencing, forever
the heart’s sharp tongue
to know prison is to know a world
too small to hold love’s absence
in the solvent light of perating theatres
of interrogation rooms
you wept behind the mask of a stranger’s face
as all that you once owned was peeled away
corrective excisions
invasive procedures 
the grand striptease that comes
at the end of it all.
When snow’s greyed lip pulls back from city sidewalks
I will return from this place
changed and heavy
shuffling like a sleepwalker in the sallow warmth of winter sun
while the bark and rattle of automatic guns
still echoes in the dark
behind your eyelids
every time the cell doors slam
freedom, my tenuous concession
I would give it all away
To see you turn to smoke in their hands
a gust of torn paper eaten to lace by flames
carried high above the razor wire’s clawed coils
houses, castles, roads, stone walls
all swept away
in the wake of your passing and swallowed back
into the blessed, healing night
Kelly Pflug-Back’s poetry, fiction, and journalism have appeared in a number 
of North American journals. Her first compilation of poems, These Burning 
Streets, was published in 2012. The above poem was written while she was in jail 
for G20-related charges. For more, please see http://kellypflugback.wordpress.com.
CAROL DAMIOLI
Crater of Her Absence
She had thick wavy hair
past the shoulders,
a dark-chestnut crown
only trickled by gray
when chemicals rudely gripped 
it all
and it fell.
It used to banner out behind her
on footrace courses
where, legs pistoning,
she’d overtake men
who would then accelerate
and return the favor,
to salvage their self-esteem.
A ribbon she won
declares in gold:
Goddess of Speed.
Artist, fellow traveler,
restorer of the wounded,
lover of wild creatures.
Deer now leave their tracks
in the snow beside her name-
stone.
Born 17 months apart,
the gap between us,
the crater of her absence,
now a score-plus years
going on infinity.
I watch it widen and deepen.
I reach for solace
in scattered kindnesses I 
extended
and wish
there had been more.
Carol Damioli has worked as a reporter 
and editor for newspapers, international 
radio, and trade magazines. Her second 
novel, Portrait in Black and Gold, will 
be published by Inanna Publications in 
the fall of 2013.


Crater of Her Absence

Kainer, Tara

136 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
beautiful conspirators like Lola and Sonya, for their earthly 
sins? Was there room enough in heaven for Mr. and Mrs. 
Singer, Mr. Singer’s father, Sonya and their killers too?
Carol Lipszyc is currently an Assistant Professor at State 
University of New York, Plattsburgh, teaching English 
teacher education and writing arts. Her book of lyrical and 
autobiographical poems, Singing Me Home, was published 
by Inanna Publications in 2010. Her short stories and poems 
have appeared in Room, Parchment, Midstream and on 
jewishfiction.net. Her collection of short stories, The Saviour’s 
Shoes and Other Stories is forthcoming from Inanna Pub-
lications in 2014.
1Open up quickly.
2Open up. Did you not understand?
3Low four-wheeled open carriage.
TARA KAINER
Late Bloomer
You took all summer.
Potted flowers I bought
in the spring sat
dormant on the fire escape
through gentle rains
and hot, hazy days while
all around trees burst
into leaf, and below,
in the garden, tulips
and daffodils, peonies and
cosmos rushed headlong
to glory.
You sat still
unperturbed,
your ragged foliage
upturned and smiling
while fruits withered
on the vine, leaves
browned and curled,
you emerged, round
tight buds at first,
then a steady unfolding:
tiny white petals,
luminous centers, a
plethora of suns
fringed by a blazing corona.
Now grey day crowds in
around you, punishing wind
rises. You hold on. Wintry
nights press close,
time is short, but oh!
so precious, you
white queen of the moonlight
bearing your white chrysanthemum
truth ancient as Confucius
ubiquitous as the wind
are rooted to your place
high above the garden
of those blackened, impassioned
flowers.
Tara Kainer’s poetry appears earlier in this volume. This 
poem appeared in her poetry collection, When I Think 
On Your Lives (Hidden Book Press, 2011). Reprinted 
with permission of the author.
NEW FROM 
INANNA
Spring 2013
THE LONG 
WHITE SICKNESS
 
a novel by
CECELIA FREY
“This fast-moving, original novel is full of sur-
prises and good  laughs, while at the same time 
tackling serious issues about  relationships, espe-
cially, mother-daughter dynamics, and the way 
we all revise the past to suit ourselves. It’s an 
engrossing read,  as well as beautifully-written.” 
—SHARON BUTALA
isbn 978-1-926708-90-4
June 2013 / 192 pp / $22.95
www.inanna.ca


Late Bloomer

Secrieru, Oana

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME152
this sharply satirical and humorous 
novel, the near future of New York 
City is depicted as a place where 
citizens have ostensibly been freed 
from pressing everyday material 
concerns, where rents are very low, 
food is available to all and the city’s 
homeless population have become 
housed. This is a landscape of a new 
citizenship where the evacuation of 
risk from democracy is nearly com-
plete as it secures populations for a 
managed life where human needs and 
desires become mere effluents of the 
media empire, known as the Media 
Hub, which is the only corporation 
that everyone, it seems, works for in 
some capacity.
The novel highlights an unnamed 
female narrator and her lover Nadine 
as they wrestle with the vicissitudes 
of love and companionship amidst 
a soul-sucking social order that is as 
deceptive as it is alluring. Schulman 
has managed to weave her characters’ 
personal lives into a story about the 
social and economic order that asks 
implicit questions about the nature 
of social justice activism and inter-
personal relations. Schulman, true to 
form, mines her vast experiences as 
a social activist, weaving together in 
an uncertain tapestry an emotional 
recognition of love, sex and sociality, 
the uncertain rhythmic pacing of 
the lovers’ personal lives coalesced 
into indistinguishable form with 
the public life of work and the new 
social and economic order. Her 
characters are swept along with a 
visceral sense of uncertainty, the 
shimmer of unreality where what 
appears as new institutional arrange-
ments in social and political life is, 
at one and the same time, creating 
desires and meeting needs ahead of 
the characters’ anticipation of them; 
the super corporation organizes lives, 
language, and desires commensurate 
with the bottom line—the cultural, 
social economic and political totality 
that the Marketing super hegemony 
that the Media Hub has become. 
The characters face a familiar horror 
of the banal, highlighting the way 
individuals become inducted into 
inhuman circumstances and modes 
of living that are deeply alienating, as 
the murder, taking place late in the 
book, seems to underscore. 
The novel soars when it details the 
intricate emotional, verbal and ges-
tural qualities of the uncertainties and 
sweetness of love and lusts, of being 
together and forging a life in the midst 
of an unforgiving context of work and 
survival. However, The Mere Future 
is less than satisfying when it tries, 
perhaps too hard, to be “futuristic” 
by naming new objects and practices 
without an accompanying context or 
narrative development, reminiscent 
of a geek-gadgetry obsession that 
one is more likely to find in sci-fi 
undertaken by a less than expert hand. 
Here, it seems to come as a surprise, 
yet it is not too flagrant as to detract 
from a complex narrative arc and the 
fullness of character that Schulman 
employs to drive the narrative. 
This is a novel of biting satire and 
sharp humour which presents us with 
the dreadfully recognizable scenario 
of how lives are lived under the reign 
of a corporate behemoth that has 
reached deep into the consciousness 
and desires of its characters’ lives, 
revealing an highly ambivalent state 
of “corporate citizens” in this mere 
future of New York City. 
Robert Teixeira is completing his 
dissertation in the Sociology Depart-
ment at York. His scholarly foci in-
clude governmentality studies, critical 
sexualities and gender studies/queer 
theory and critical child and youth 
studies. His research takes a critical 
look at contemporary child protection 
legislation analyzing the regulation 
of young people’s sexuality and legal 
reform in Canada. He loves to listen 
to experimental electronic and noise 
musicians.
Sorensen’s first novel is a year in the 
life of the protagonist, Dr. Janet 
Erlickson or Janey, as she’s known 
to close friends. Janey is a university 
English professor at an unnamed 
university in Winnipeg, mother to 
three-year old Little Max, and wife to 
Hector Des Roches, a music professor 
at the same university. Sorensen’s 
funny and witty style follows Janey 
as she juggles career, motherhood, 
self-doubt and depression. 
The novel begins in April, in the 
last week of classes, when Janey’s 
depression typically hits as she 
contemplates the summer ahead 
struggling to pin down an ever-elusive 
research project. Janey muses over 
writing about female characters in 
Robertson Davies, bad mothers in 
children’s literature, writing a murder 
novel in which her mother-in-law 
is the victim, or starting an online 
academic journal, none of which gets 
too far off the ground since Janey gets 
easily side-tracked.
Deeply in love with her sexy 
husband, Hector, Janey needlessly 
worries that he’s in love with his 
research assistant, Chantal. Janey’s 
insecurities also seep through her 
role as the mother of a rambunctious 
toddler. Despite Janey having it all, 
something is weighing her down.
I examine my life and wonder 
what is the matter. All I can see 
is what ought to be health and 
happiness. Lovely boy, hand-
some and caring husband, blah 
blah blah.
Unexpectedly, Janey turns to 
Jake, the minister at her church, 
a larGE harMoNIuM
Sue Sorensen
Coteau Books, 2011
reviewed by oana 
secrieru
VOLUME 30,  NUMBER 1 153
for counseling although we’re never 
quite clear what exactly it is that she’s 
troubled about. Through it all, Janey 
continues to go through the motions 
of parenting, teaching, interacting 
with colleagues, entertaining in-laws, 
and her relationship with Hector. 
Somehow, the whole episode of 
Janey’s depression and her turning to 
spirituality for comfort does not ring 
true to the character. One cannot help 
but feel that a different type of answer 
other than a spiritual one may have 
been truer to the character and the 
general theme of the novel. 
Sorensen does, however, an excel-
lent satire of the academic life, from 
portraits of Janey’s colleagues and 
the relationships among them, to 
meaningless meetings, and research 
projects and conferences with obscure 
and nonsensical titles. This culmi-
nates with a scene in which Janey has 
too much to drink at a conference on 
decadence and lets fly all the “witty 
little quips” that pop into her head. 
The large harmonium in the title 
is an organ that is “gathering dust in 
a Music Department practice room 
on the top floor of the university 
building.” The instrument in ques-
tion becomes the object of numerous 
jokes and even a plot to hijack the 
decadence conference.
Nevertheless, for Janey the phrase 
‘a large harmonium’ symbolizes the 
harmony of her domestic life:
It sounds like harmony and then 
some, harmony with all the stops 
pulled out. Hector has played 
the harmonium for me. It is a 
ridiculous instrument but makes 
a fabulous noise.
Secondary characters in the novel 
are less developed. The best delin-
eated ones are Jam and Blanche 
Grimm. Jam, short for James, has 
been Hector’s best friend since they 
were fourteen.
Jam plays the French horn and 
wanders around Canada, play-
ing with various quartets and 
doing workshops in schools. He 
has no ambition to own a house 
or have a steady job, and boasts 
that he has slept with women 
from all ten provinces.
When Jam falls for Blanche 
Grimm, a new lecturer in Janey’s 
English Department, and then they 
break up, Janey ends up playing the 
mediator between the two. 
This is overall a lighthearted, witty, 
and funny debut novel, a Bridget 
Jones’ Diary set up in the academic 
world. I look forward to her next 
novel. 
Oana Secrieru is an Assistant Profes-
sor of Economics at the Royal Mili-
tary College in Kingston, Ontario. 
She is an avid reader and, when she 
is not working, enjoys spending her 
time with her husband and their two 
daughters.
In her book, The New African Diaspo-
ra in Vancouver: Migration, Exclusion, 
and Belonging, Gillian Creese offers 
the first study to explore the relatively 
small population of Black sub-Sa-
haran Africans living in the Greater 
Vancouver area, comprising some 
one percent of the of the population. 
Creese provides the first substantial 
academic study of their immigrant ex-
ThE NEw aFrIcaN 
dIaSpora IN 
VaNcouVEr: 
MIGraTIoN, 
ExcluSIoN, aNd 
bEloNGING 
Gillian Creese
Toronto: University of Toronto 
Press, 2011
reviewed by sanja ivanov
perience. At the centre of her analysis 
are testimonies of sixty-one partici-
pants, both female and male, from 
twenty-one countries in Africa, who 
struggle to integrate into Canadian 
society. Two researchers—African 
im-migrants themselves—have col-
laborated with Creese on this project, 
with a goal to reinforce impartiality 
of the interviews. 
Creese’s case studies show that 
despite their desire for inclusion, 
immigrants are often racialized and 
perceived as the inferior “other” to 
the white Canadians. The author 
focuses on language issues of par-
ticipants from Commonwealth and 
non-Commonwealth countries and 
utilizes Pierre Bourdieu’s claims 
about erasure of linguistic capital 
of the immigrants, which shows the 
inextricable link between linguistic 
competence and power. Her study 
reveals that “African accent” func-
tions as a factor for the exclusion of 
immigrants, with female participants 
experiencing stronger alienation in 
terms of language. Moreover, the 
educational credentials of African 
immigrants are often not recognized, 
which results in a downward mobility 
on the Canadian labour market and 
leads them to feel betrayed by the 
Canadian promise of multicultural-
ism and equality. However, according 
to Creese’s results, this situation is 
improving for women, as they, unable 
to find any job, choose to take up 
post-secondary education in Canada, 
which often enables them to obtain 
better positions than the men. More-
over, once they obtain employment, 
the interviewees of both genders recall 
instances of marginalization, which 
further prevent them from complete 
integration. 
In addition to the issues of be-
longing in relation to language and 
employment, the following chapters 
address the adjustments a family 
must undergo to feel like a part of 
the Vancouver society. As Creese 


A Large Harmonium

Murphy, A. Mary

140 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
Colleen almost said, “I don’t want to be insular. I want 
to be loved. I want to love. I want to get married and 
have children, like normal people. Like you.” But she felt 
her throat seize up. Each sentence seemed shadowed as if 
a parade of perverse imps lurked behind them, refuting 
them. She’d bent to clip fulva lilies and false spirea, filling 
two silver bowls, her hands shaking in confusion.
Now, she walks back down the Gratton Street hill to 
still more music from Mama Mia. “Waterloo.” She can 
hear people singing along. She had a few boyfriends in 
university. She lived with Bruce Bonnycastle her entire 
final year. He was a great dancer but he was too big for 
the little apartment. He was always there: talking to her, 
including her, making plans, asking her opinion, trying 
to make her come up for air, to be present. She could not 
think, she could not read, she could not sketch or dream or 
design in her head. Her brain closed down. For two weeks 
that spring, she twisted in shame until she understood the 
extent of the waste, the travesty of the relationship. She was 
living with him because that’s what women did. Women 
had boyfriends. They moved in with the guy. They were 
together forever. The thought gave her the horrors and so 
did the shame at her dishonesty to herself but especially 
her dishonesty to him. 
She broke the news to him after the graduation dance.
Back inside, she slips on her heels, repairs her hair and 
lipstick. The dance floor is crowded. The single women 
are jiving up a storm. “Take a Chance on Me,” bellow the 
guests. The same men stand and watch. Why don’t they 
dance with each other, she thinks, get out on the floor 
and have some fun? It’s ludicrous, pitiful, laughable. Just 
as idiotic as she is. She walks over to her brother Guy on 
his wall.
“I’d like to dance with you before you go away,” she 
says ignoring his surprise. “Will you do me the favour?” 
They float out to “Unchained Melody.” Guy dances like 
he skies or plays hockey, with such grace he makes it look 
easy. Her apricot silk flares around her legs. Her feet in 
the expensive heels move like delicate leaves caught by the 
wind. The single women don’t dance to the slow music. 
Chatting and laughing, they head for the tables or the bar. 
The bride and groom are nowhere around. She hopes she’s 
missed the bouquet toss. 
“I caught the garter,” Guy says in her ear. “I’m taking 
it to Kosovo.” 
“I’ll miss you,” she says. “I hope the garter brings you 
a wonderful wife.” He laughs. The band segues, speeds 
into “Dancing Queen.” Her mother waves during a com-
plicated step. Colleen decides that later she’ll ask her new 
step-father for a dance.
“Do you want a drink?” Guy says.
“No, I’m going to dance with Posie and the other gals. 
Then I’ll come over and join you at your wall.” 
Later, at home in bed, watching the moon top up the 
garden, she remembers she almost said, with the other 
wallflowers. She’s glad she didn’t say it. Her body still feels 
energized but her mind is melting into sleep, forsaking 
her thoughts about men, about women, about herself. 
She thinks about her brother off to Kosovo, the bride’s 
garter tucked into his bag. And she has a new brother-
in-law, the handsome Alex. But he’s more than a single 
person, she realizes. Alex’s entire family is now linked to 
hers, tendrils emerging and merging , just as, a few years 
ago, the numerous kin of her new step-father were slowly 
grafted on. 
Sprawling vines of connections.
She turns over into a happy thought. Her Aunt Joyce 
is coming to tea tomorrow. She’ll pick a special bouquet 
for the tea table. 
The dark yellow lilies called Fata Morgana are just 
moving into bloom. 
Joan Baril lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
A. MARY MURPHY
words keep bursting out of books
words keep bursting out of books
birds startled into flight
butterflies clouding home from winter
keep the lids of all these books
closed to stop the words from getting out
like all flighted things they know secrets
the elaborate choreography of journey
they settle with their tissue-paper wings
their talons in my heart
A. Mary Murphy’s poetry appears earlier in 
this volume.


words keep bursting out of books

Sonik, Madeline

112 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
LINDA MARTIN
Wild Plunge
I accepted the harness, someone to control the 
rope,
I used the goggles, wore the helmet, had the 
parachute on my back
but it wouldn’t open and every return to earth 
was hard,
the way the soil came at me, came at my children
spraying us in the face, and making us spit.
There is still a longing for the wild plunge
riding the air, losing and catching my breath
mouth open wide to suck it all in.
I locked and unlocked the bracelets
click, click, click, one link to another,
applied the grease but the rust formed,
some things never left my throat
then the steely voice spoke.   
I know that demon lover
throwing me, each time, over the edge
arms up, hands wide, fingers grasping.
Shuffling, the unsteady gait, small steps inside 
the shackles
a hobbling run at tulips, spruce, boulders, river 
banks
kicking over the traces, but circumscribed
only a toe’s width, a nail’s worth, a tip
I’ve jumped the rope, leapt from the branch, 
flown from the swing
been chased, been hidden and found
that was when I wanted to be caught.
Linda Martin’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
DIANE DRIEDGER
I Have a Dream
I’m flying
loose from my barbell body
I now understand
why people had to invent airplanes
why I want to fly 
instead I walk
with plodding gait
pacing my energy
teaspoonfuls at a time
my mind is a lightning flash
away from the body
how will the two work together?
I will find my way
and this leap
                   will be flying
Diane Driedger’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
MADELINE SONIK
Reduction
Girls are the most difficult sex
all the adults agreed
especially when they flirt with boys,
grow breasts, and start to bleed.
Madeline Sonik is an eceletic award-winning author 
and anthologist. Her published book-length works 
include a novel, Arms, a collection of short fiction, 
Drying the Bones, a children’s novel, Belinda 
and the Dustbunnys, two poetry collection, Stone 
Sightings and The Book of Changes and a volume 
of personal essays, Afflictions & Departures, which 
was recently nominated for the bc National Award for 
Canadian Non-fiction, was a finalist for The Charles 
Taylor prize for literary non-fiction, and winner of the 
2012 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.


Not a member yet

Untitled

11 Years Later

Disorder

I. (slime and other discrepancies)

Crater of Her Absence

Disorder

Late Bloomer

A Large Harmonium

words keep bursting out of books

Reduction

3,838

6,018