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

Norman, Renee

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 111
above the mango tree, above the hydro lines, ducking and 
weaving from side to side like a drunk trying to walk a 
straight line. “It’s dancing too much,” said Gilbert. “I’ll 
put some more tail on.” I realized that the kite needed 
to be stabilized and for me, that was no problem. There 
was plenty more tail where the first set came from, even 
if it meant tying on a piece of the cane trash to the odd 
assortment of rags. I had seen the bigger boys do that when 
they were flying their kites too far away from home to get 
more tail for their kites.
Gilbert began to reel in the kite and it continued its 
drunken dance, weaving dangerously close to the hydro 
lines. Suddenly my heart lurched with fear and appre-
hension, for as I looked, the tip of the tail was getting 
even nearer to the hydro lines; then, in a flash, the drunk 
paused for breath, clinging to the lines. My fear turned 
to horror and pain for Gilbert was tugging harder, and 
the more he tugged, the faster the kite stuck. It did not 
take long for me to realize that the kite would never let 
go of the hydro line.
The pain was tearing at my insides—my heart, my head, 
my eyes. The tears were rolling down my cheeks, blurring 
the picture of the kite stuck there forever. Jesus nailed to 
the cross could not have felt the intense pain that was 
consuming my whole being.
There was now no need for me to break my freshly laid 
egg to see what my future held. The future was now rolled 
into the present and staring me in the face in the form of 
an aeroplane kite wrecked on its maiden flight.
Janet Tyrell is a retired librarian and is currently enjoying 
the courses offered at the Academy for Lifelong Learning in 
Toronto. This piece is the result of an exercise for her “Memoirs” 
class at the Academy.
RENEE NORMAN
Last Summer of Childhood
we are watching What Not to Wear
in pyjamas and old shorts
this her last summer of childhood
before university begins
soon enough she will be writing papers,
walking on campus in the rain,
wondering where summer went
and holding her damp coat close
to keep warm
this is my last baby
the one I rocked slowly
savouring, savouring
her faded cotton sleepers
smelling of sisters,
old milk
when we shopped at the mall
our own episode of What Not to Wear
again and again she emerged:
a white eyelet skirt,
a rust tunic
my eyes on her becoming
the transformation taking place
behind a curtain of clothes
we are watching What Not to Wear
this our last summer of childhood
Renee Norman’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
“And Neither Have I Wings to Fly”: 
Labelled and Locked Up in Canada’s Oldest Institution
by Thelma Wheatley
A powerful exposé of a part of Canadian history kept secret — 
this book exposes the role of psychiatrists and leading eugenicists 
in Canada in the abuse of intellectual and physically handicapped 
children’s civil rights in Canada.
www.inanna.ca
inanna.publications@inanna.ca.
Smart books for people who want to read and think about real women’s lives. 
spring 2013                                 inanna publications


Last Summer of Childhood

Young, Lélia

VOLUME 30,  NUMBER 1 143
Book Reviews
Cette anthologie de voix féminines 
francophones contemporaines est 
une rencontre de 156 auteures qui 
parlent de thèmes touchant à des 
préoccupations diverses et actu-
elles. Elles entretiennent par l’écrit 
poétique un dialogue transfrontalier 
qui a l’avantage de rapprocher les 
cultures par un croisement littéraire 
des plus riches. Dialogue qui présente 
l’intérêt de faire entendre des voix 
de femmes saluées qui traversent 
les frontières de leur pays respectifs 
afin de diffuser une quête de nature 
personnelle, nationale ou universelle. 
De plus, ces voix alimentent l’intérêt 
des lectrices et lecteurs en apportant à 
notre chevet des textes inédits.
Ces textes tissent la toile culturelle 
géographique sur laquelle ils se 
détachent de manière syntagma-
tique et paradigmatique. Le langage 
poétique sous-jacent à la structure 
de nos langues francophones établit 
des liens cohésifs et des schémas 
de cohérence qui communiquent 
de façon particulière sur les axes 
du langage exposés par Roman Ja-
kobson. Le discours, qui parcourt 
les 223 textes d’une francophonie 
plurielle, communique au moyen 
de signes alternatifs qui véhiculent 
un bagage sémantique au moyens de 
procédés stylistiques dont la fonction 
primordiale est de suggérer en signi-
fiant, de briser la rigidité du langage 
pour permettre de communiquer 
des formes et des sens nouveaux, 
une aventure euristique qui permet 
de libérer de l’emprise sclérosée des 
mots afin de faire prévaloir le message 
poétique. Cependant, les poèmes de 
cette anthologie révèlent les préoc-
cupations profondes de notre siècle. 
Le mouvement de rapprochement 
effectué par ces poèmes découvre de 
nouvelles frontières, une exploration 
temporelle qui dévoile la distance 
spatiale. Comme l’écrit Anne Penders 
« L’espace comme plaqué sur l’œil. 
Comme aplati, ramené sous mon 
nez. / L’envers : vivre à l’intérieur, 
de l’intérieur / – ce que jusqu’alors 
on n’avait fait qu’observer de loin, » 
habiter une distance, habiter un cri, 
habiter l’envers ?  « Quel habit pour le 
poème [… ] ? / Mon bon roi Dagobert 
.... » L’espace est en transformation, 
l’envers fait un pied de nez à l’endroit.
Cet ouvrage est divisé en 7 parties. 
La plus copieuse est la première, 
Sous les cieux de l’errance, qui com-
prend 45 poèmes. Le beau poème 
d’Agnès Schnell, intitulé Démesure, 
débute cette section. Entre les lignes 
de ce texte d’ouverture se dessine 
un appel à l’équilibre pour éviter 
l’absence, l’errance, « le filet lancé 
… et ramené vide. » Ce texte est 
suivi du poème sans titre d’Angèle 
Bassolé-Ouédraogo qui reprend le 
thème de l’errance mais cette fois-ci 
imprégné par l’exil des déplacés, des 
identités rompues. Déconnecté de 
son monde de référence, l’être perd ses 
repères. Tout impact semble perdre sa 
raison d’être. Que faire ? Où aller ? 
Et pour devenir quoi ? La poète nous 
le dis : « Je serai toujours / L’exil », 
déclaration alarmante qui pique au vif 
et qui fait écho à l’indignation faite 
à l’identité féminine un peu partout 
dans le monde d’aujourd’hui. Dans 
Mouvance, Danielle Schaub souligne 
l’importance des blancs, ces silences 
qui « donne   un   sens / à   l’ ê t r 
e   du   discours / en hébreu » et 
qui permettent l’interprétation. Le 
poème devient un miroir de notre 
siècle, il fait partie de la mosaïque 
qui réunit et qui paradoxalement 
projette hors de soi.
La seconde partie, intitulée Dans 
les flots du temps, est constituée de 
36 poèmes exprimant une variété de 
thèmes. De la mythologie à la réalité, 
il y a tout un voyage qui se fait. Le 
beau poème de Denise Le Dantec 
intitulé Poète, marque ce passage à 
l’histoire vécue. Elle écrit : « Poète, / 
mon âme est juive / et je suis / sans 
racines / […] / L’insupportable / a eu 
lieu / […] / Je reviens à la pierre. » Le 
poème sans titre de France Burghelle 
Rey abonde dans le même sens tout 
en clamant le privilège de vivre dans 
un présent qui côtoie les rivages de 
la mer : « … les galets sont autant de 
babels / Tant pis si l’avenir promet des 
ruines / Les portes du présent sont 
une merveille / du monde et j’y écris 
mon nom .» Le passé hurle, le futur 
s’annonce mal mais il y a quand même 
des merveilles au carrefour de la vie, 
le bonheur de vivre dépasse toute 
contrainte. Ce qui abonde dans le sens 
de la citation de Charles Dobzynski 
transmise par Sabine Huynh dans 
son introduction : « Je viens d’un 
océan qui n’a pas de limites » et cette 
ouverture vers l’infini n’accepte ni le 
désespoir ni le renoncement. La con-
dition de la femme de par le monde 
laisse à désirer, sa situation fait la une 
des journaux, mais peu importe les 
obstacles, la femme fait entendre sa 
voix, ô combien importante et rec-
tifiante. La belle image dans le court 
Pas d’ici, Pas 
d’ailleurs: 
anthologie 
PoÉtique 
francoPhone de 
voix fÉMININES 
conteMPoraines
Huynh, Sabine, Andrée Lacelle, An-
gèle Paoli, et Aurélie Tourniaire, dirs.
Montélimar: Voix d’encre, 2012
reviewed by lélia 
young
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME144
poème sans titre de Nicole Brossard 
éternise la femme par un procédé 
métaphorique, le rose renversant les 
données propre à l’attente « … un 
sexe / caché dans le rose versatile qui 
avale / le temps les pétales.»
La troisième section de cet ouvrage 
intitulé Au royaume des ombres est 
composée de 29 poèmes qui ar-
pentent la relation homme femme. 
Aïcha Arnaout dans Le treize estival 
s’écrit : « … chauffons la conscience 
jusqu’au blanc,» et Anne Mulpas dans 
un poème sans titre: « je laisse mes 
voix dire le sous-sol sur mes paumes.» 
Diane Léger usera de diplomatie pour 
émettre l’exaspération perceptible: 
« Toujours de plus en plus charmant 
/ le regard de celui / qui appelé à 
devenir prince / redeviendra cra-
paud. » Plus tranchante, Linda Maria 
Baros dévoile carrément, dans Je sors 
dans la rue avec l’ange, son rejet de 
l’homme qui la recherche: « Je n’ai 
aucune pitié / pour les hommes qui 
m’aiment. / Ma chaîne a ouvert sur 
leur dos / des pupilles de serpents. » 
Tanella Boni écrit dans son poème 
sans titre : « Nous avons quitté ce 
pays / Sur la pointe des pieds / […] 
/ Comme si les hommes / Avaient 
perdu / La juste vue des choses / […] 
/ La relation humaine / Et le souffle 
de l’amour / ».
Sur l’île de la nitescence contient 13 
poèmes imprégnés par la luminosité 
de l’amour et de l’espoir. La joie 
écrit Anne Mounic « est cette force 
de subversive rigueur / qui sait dire 
non aux impositions, / aux futilités, 
pour dire oui à ce qui compte – ». 
Plusieurs poèmes appartenant à cette 
section célèbre la lumière, le soleil, 
l’air matinal, les chants de la nature, 
etc. Ici, la femme, être terrestre, 
communique l’énergie qui l’anime 
sur tous les plans de la vie.
Dans les contrées de l’intime, est une 
section composée de 19 poèmes. Le 
texte d’Angela Serna commence cette 
section et l’on est touché par l’uni-
versel de la quête de l’être. Attente 
et découverte au sein d’un infini 
véhiculé par un nom que l’on ne 
saurait dire sans se surprendre face à 
soi-même et aux autres car il est « écho 
d’autres temps / d’autres lieux ». 
Dans d’autres poèmes, l’accomplisse-
ment du désir de la femme semble 
irrésolu. Anissa Mohammedi écrit, 
« J’habite l’éternité du cri / lorsque 
le ciel quitte ses aurores / je t’invite 
à ma nuit / pour faire irruption / 
dans les méduses du désir ». Ariane 
Dreyfus communique l’amour par 
instantanés. « Sur l’oreiller la joue 
fait commencer le visage / C’est si 
calme d’aimer. » Cette sérénité n’est 
pas sans tourment car « Quelqu’un 
chauffe la terre de son corps […] 
s’arrêtant de lire pour garder ouverte 
la page / Où c’est écrit : « Les rues de 
Vienne sont pleines de Juifs qui ne 
sont pas là « […] L’arbre assombri est 
plus large que le jour mourant ». Le 
poème de Béatrice Brérot, intitulé De 
l’autre côté, crée un pont avec la partie 
précédente en ramenant délicatement 
les thèmes de l’amour et de la lu-
mière : « ... mais l’amour est comme 
la lumière / jamais vide / jamais hors 
champ / d’une bulle éclatée / brille le 
pollen / poudroie les baies / de nos 
quartiers / et parsème l’univers ». Les 
poèmes de Danielle Fournier [« je 
me souviens de cet attachement à 
être au monde … un lointain amour 
monte et grossit en moi, se loge là 
où la peau est tendre »] et d’Hélène 
Dorion raccordent le personnel à la 
nature dans une mélancolie ou une 
description du moment [« … dans 
l’immense paysage, refaire une vie / 
où nous ne faisons que vivre »].
Vers les caps de l’imaginaire contient 
27 poèmes ou le réel dépasse l’irréel. 
Ici, la femme « déroule l’écorce de 
bouleau ». Sourcière rapailleuse, elle 
« sonde sol ciel » (Andrée Lacelle,). 
Avec l’autre, elle projette de creuser 
« de nouveaux sillons » et de voir 
« mourir le vent qui charrie l’ou-
bli » (Aurélia Lassaque). Elle incite 
l’autre femme à être enceinte « du 
huitième jour de chaque semaine / 
du rire de toute larme / de la mer qui 
commence dans chaque ruisseau » 
(Cécile Cloutier) et elle combat le 
désespoir « femme enrobée de soleil 
[…] elle sème des herbes / de toutes 
espèces » (Claudine Bertrand, la no-
made). La femme dépasse sa propre 
souffrance et élève sa voix contre la 
cruauté qui s’abat sur les innocents. 
« Les hurlements du Chat chinois / 
Corps scalpé / Sont le cri des enfants 
détruits / de la terre » (Le chat de Lélia 
Young), elle voit venir « le temps de 
marcher à rebours de la haine. » Un 
temps où, elle réinventera l’homme 
(Claudine Helf, Métamorphoses de 
l’ombre). « Fille femme/ elle pousse 
haut et dru / par les rues de l’univers » 
(Collette Nys-Mazure, De l’aube à 
l’aube). À Lise Gaboury-Diallo de 
dire « je descends remonte / tangue 
dans le roulis de l’espoir / mes doutes 
muselés / […] / je brasse mes trésors 
ensablés/ […] / j’ai l’âme de voilière 
/ il me faut le vent / pour imaginer 
l’avenir » et à Marie Sunahara de 
recevoir le témoin en disant « Ma 
demeure n’est rien d’autre que les 
mots / Qui respirent parmi les conti-
nents » mettant l’accent sur la distance 
rapatriée par et dans l’écriture.
Le recueil est clos par un appel à 
l’expression. La dernière et septième 
section de cette anthologie poétique 
présentent 32 poèmes abrités par 
la parole et l‘écriture. Cet espace 
protecteur s’intitule Sous la voûte de 
voix et d’encre, lecteurs et lectrices 
savoureront ces textes poétiques qui 
affirment et confirment ce qu’énonce 
clairement dès l’ouverture Ana Rossi 
dans son poème intitulé voix 1 : « et 
dans le lointain / si présent / je suis 
celle qui est / suis celle qui reste / celle 
qui respire / au-delà des trahisons / 
[…] / je ne suis plus muette de moi-
même ». Cette section se termine par 
les poèmes de Sylvie Fabre G., Dis-
moi son nom et de Sylvie-E. Saliceti, 
L’oiseau de cendres, qui chacun à sa 
manière exprime « une mémoire qui 
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.”


Pas d’ici, pas d’ailleurs: Anthologie poétiques francophone de voix féminines contemporaines

Driedger, Diane

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.


I Have a Dream

Murphy, A. Mary

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.


my mother would put ribbons

Soutar-Hynes, Mary Lou

68 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
MArY lOU SOUtAr-hYneS
Variations
     Take note of turbulence
    the way a collar frames her face,     blouse  
    loosely falling —   
      irruptions 
    of red admirals,     jewels on the wing      
    Claim all lands     between high and low tide
        create ordinances 
    then a guard around 
      your heart’s perimeter —
     a chain-link fence
    Safer    to rough it on the margins,     rocked 
      by lines of poetry               
    dreaming icebergs,     edges sharp,     a lucent 
        greening — 
      all dues paid             
Mind over Matter
       Today the air is still,
    a raw sienna     settling ash —
     mists curl between conifers
    in the ravine,    
    the lake     all curves,     undulations  
   
     Spanning the river,     
    the bridge recedes,     languid,     alert,        
      arcing — 
    invitation’s  quiet utterance
    
     All those unbridgeable 
    reaches across the years,     striving for closure
    Just kiss the rock, 
      she said, move on 
    while memories breach the levees —     tattered, 
      whisper-thin
Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


English

Mind over Matter

92 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
DIANE DRIEDGER
Devils and Saints
it’s a red devil
the nurse said
as she fed chemo into my veins
I think   is that
Dirt Devil
Tasmanian Devil
Devil in the deep blue sea
devil’s food cake
the devil that fooled Eve
I am a one and two thirds
breasted woman
infused with the devil
eating me from within
that’s definitely not
cake
or maybe it is
most chocolate has soy lecithin
feeds tumors
the nutritionist says
don’t eat it
later I’m in the grocery store
soy in every processed food
salad dressings
chocolate
candy
crackers
soups
granola bars
I thought soy
was a vegetarian saint
but it’s a devil
wrapped in sweetness
Diane Driedger is a poet, visual artist, 
editor, and educator. Her most recent 
book is Living the Edges: A Disabled 
Women’s Reader (Inanna, 2010).
KATERINA FRETWELL
Clinic A, Exam Room 7
 Tears pool as I watch you in profile, stark,
backlit, angel wings poised for takeoff,
hair and goatee flowing silvered,
blue-eyed-gaze, hollowed out
warrior of war waged
within, while ninety
minutes ticktock,
Doc Crusher’s
phone for
facts. 
Weird, 
he says,
could be 2
cancers or IV
staged incurable.  
O fuck projectiles up,
out my mouth into cyto- 
toxic silence to the doc’s grin.
Inanna Publications and Education Inc. published Katerina Fretwell’s 
sixth poetry collection, Angelic Scintillations, in 2011 and will publish 
her seventh, Class Acts, in Fall 2013. Her poems have appeared in two 
Welsh magazines: Scintilla #16 and The Seventh Quarry. One of 
her poems was shortlisted for Descant Magazine’s Winston Collins 
Poetry Prize, 2012. The above poem is from a manuscript called The 
Cancer Letters.


Devils and Saints

Teixeria, Robert

VOLUME 30,  NUMBER 1 151
real capacity to ripple through life, in 
all of its various shapes and forms. As 
the writer St. John Fox and his muse 
Mary Foxe play out a narrative back-
and-forth over nine different scenes, 
it is the capacity of these narrative 
forays to increasingly bubble over and 
spill into the everyday landscape of St. 
John and his wife, Daphne’s domestic 
life which finally forces the three to 
openly face one another. Through 
the character of Mary—character in 
a dual sense, as she is both a character 
for *us*, the reader, and questionably 
one for St. John and Daphne—each 
are able to examine what it means to 
be with one another. 
The challenge becomes whether 
we, as readers, are able to follow 
Oyeyemi and her cast of characters 
in their processes of unravelling. By 
pushing the boundaries of relation-
ships, by having them change—from 
love, to dependence, to aloofness, to 
harm, to name but a few states—her 
characters test the limits of how we 
conceive of being-with another. In 
many ways, Mr. Fox is a tale about 
“knowing”; how we uncover the 
knowledge that we have of others, of 
those with whom we find ourselves 
in relationships, and how we come 
to know ourselves in the process of 
relating to another. How, oftentimes, 
it takes the act of being with someone 
else to finally begin to know ourselves. 
By the end of one’s reading journey, 
it is clear that Oyeyemi has affectively 
moved her reader to reconsider the 
boundaries between fact/fiction and 
real/make-believe. As the character of 
Mary Foxe so aptly portrays, these 
divisions cannot be so easily made 
or steadfastly upheld. Abiding too 
rigidly to preconceived notions or 
perspectives—such as how one un-
derstands “reality” or, quite simply, 
the nature of relating to others—only 
guarantees that one’s sense of the 
world will be rather limited. 
For any reader that has been 
touched by a book, the ending is a 
complicated matter; it is the slow 
working down of pages, and the 
culmination of events having passed, 
which mark the reality that those 
still-yet-to-come are dwindling. The 
reader, so touched, hopes that pages 
in some magical way do not corre-
spond to an ending, or a closing, or 
anything which will signal that the 
finale is slowly creeping closer. It 
speaks volumes of Helen Oyeyemi’s 
abilities as a storyteller and writer 
that she is able to affect her readers 
so deeply. While she taps into a wide 
genre of writing that speaks to the 
relationship between imagination 
and the experience of unbearable 
events, it is her ability to carry her 
reader into an “openness-towards” 
that marks her abilities as an artist; 
to be open to the potential that 
anything is possible. It is her gift of 
weaving-between, of folding stories, 
characters, and ways of knowing and 
perceiving the world together that 
affectively moves those who read 
her work. It reminds each of us to 
be wary of the rigid and inflexible 
borders that oftentimes shape how 
we know and what we can know; 
for it is these same borders which 
contain the ability to close us off 
from experiencing that which is truly 
extraordinary.
I almost forgot to mention another 
fox I know of—a very wicked 
fox indeed. But you are tired of 
hearing about foxes now, so I 
won’t go on. 
I for one hope that there will be 
more foxes. 
Kathryn Travis is a third-year Ph.D. 
student in the Gender, Feminist, and 
Women’s Studies program at York 
University. Her research focuses on 
how multiple forms of cultural pro-
duction work collectively to reconfig-
ure the Paris ‘banlieues’ in representa-
tion and experience.
To many in the lgbt social justice 
and aids movement circles, Sarah 
Schulman is a well known figure, 
whose earlier works, for example 
the 1990 novel, People in Trouble, 
describes the turbulent lives and loves 
of queer women and men living and 
struggling with aids. It highlights 
how important queer women were 
(and still are) to a complex array of 
resistance and community-building 
that was necessary to save lives and 
to help dignify a complex terrain of 
emotional and health crises where 
activists responded to the murderous 
indifference governments displayed 
toward phas at the time. 
A prolific author and activist, 
Schulman holds a position as Distin-
guished Professor of English at City 
University of New York, College of 
Staten Island. During the Reagan 
era in the US, which witnessed a 
juggernaut of anti-gay backlash in 
the midst of the aids crisis, Schul-
man participated in act-up’s many 
creative actions and was one of the 
co-founders of the Lesbian Avengers. 
These two radical queer organizations 
were responsible for advancing di-
rect-action resistance with a queerly 
theatrical twist to the annals of radical 
resistance movements well before 
such tactics were more popularly 
taken up by the anti-globalization 
demos a decade later. 
In her 2011 novel, The Mere Future, 
her first foray into the science-fiction 
genre, we are treated to startlingly 
angular prose where descriptions 
slightly off the mark of recognizable 
reality are yet all to often transpos-
able to the over-familiar lexicon of 
marketing lingo and ad copy. In 
ThE MErE FuTurE
Sarah Schulman
Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011
reviewed by robert 
teixeira
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


The Mere Future

Sonik, Madeline

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.


Stained Door

76 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
know this seems a tad hypocritical of 
me, especially considering my track 
record of motherhood shows striking 
similarities to hers. Yet, although I do 
not touch or look at my children, I 
would give anything to be with them, 
unlike Mrs. Tayard.
In the Philippines I was subjected 
to the daily abuse of my husband, but 
in the States I have felt abuse on an 
entirely different level. In Chicago, I 
have noticed a hierarchy of women 
who have no compassion or sympathy 
for their sisters who are suffering. 
Women in my country are united 
by the common experiences we have 
shared, but on this side of the world 
it is not the men I am afraid of, it 
is the women. While Mr. Tayard is 
tolerable, partly because he is always 
working and I never see him, his wife 
is the exact opposite. Mrs. Tayard does 
not see me as a woman like herself 
and she certainly does not consider 
me as an equal. She takes in how I 
dress and how I speak and judges me 
for it, never considering what I have 
been through. I do not even think she 
knows I have children of my own and 
why would she? I am her subordinate. 
I work 80 hours a week with no 
days off. I clean, I cook, and I take 
care of the house and do everything 
for Mrs. Tayard’s children. Her twins 
are six years old and I have grown to 
love them very much. I hold them 
and care for them like they were my 
own but that often makes my situa-
tion worse. What kind of person am 
I that gives so much love to another 
woman’s children when her own go 
through life alone?
Being a nanny breaks my heart as it 
has replaced the one job I cannot live 
without. Perhaps one day my children 
will understand why I left and forgive 
me, but I will never understand how 
I could sacrifice my life with them for 
the life I have now and I will never be 
able to forgive myself for it. 
Alexa Bernabo currently lives in Otta-
wa, Ontario.
MARY LOU SOUTAR-HYNES
The way light
         falls
      reveals a darker side
   to landscape’s pastoral symmetry
    behind the scenic veil
      A trail of severed
   marigolds across the field,     river’s shrewd
    insistence —     the slivered
     face of rock
      Yet today is summer
   unmistakably —     only the kayak’s silvered silence
    a single breath of cloud     
     sky powder-blue  
      Our journey
   worn by weight of moist air,     fabric’s slight texture
                 on skin — 
    light falling     between image
     and knowing
Note: Line 4, source of image “scenic veil” see: Recovering Landscapes: Essays in Contemporary Architecture, 
James Corner, Ed., Princetown Architectural Press, 1999, p. 12.
Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


The way light falls

Stewart, Sheila

42 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
he would put on his cap, throw 
the cat outside to catch a mouse 
and take a walk before dinner.
What did Rejlander do to keep his cat still?
Did he slip a small morsel between her paws? 
But I’ve never had a cat respond to such a bribe.
A dog, on the other hand, will sit still for hours
if you hold a liver treat to your cheek,
his long strings of drool dripping. 
Perhaps the cat just wanted to watch  
too full to mouse, too tired 
to jump down from the chair. Perhaps 
posing in the sun was her only quiet 
moment in the day.
I don’t know how Geraldine judged exposure
in her studio with blinds on the windows
a solid tripod for her camera and a steady hand 
with magnesium powder. But I do know 
she placed a blue vase of pink peonies 
upon a table flooded in prairie light. 
1Oscar Gustave Rejlander born in Sweden in 1813 
was a pioneering art photographer and an expert 
in photo montage. He collaborated with Charles 
Darwin on The Expressions of the Emotions in Man 
and Animals. He died in London in 1875. 
Rebecca Luce-Kapler is Associate Dean of Graduate Studies 
and Research in the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University. 
Her research interests focus on the integral role of literary 
practices, particularly writing, in the development of human 
consciousness and identity. Her most recent research involves 
senior-aged women reading and writing literary memoirs, 
investigating how literary practices can deepen learning and 
interpretation of experience. She published a collection of 
poetry in 2003, The gardens where she dreams.
SHeIla STeWaRT
Wash up as far as
   possible and 
down as far as possible and give
possible a lick too,
Mum and Aunt Ena chortled
in the hall between the bathroom
and bedrooms at Ena’s house,
Ballyaughlis, Drumbo Road,
Country Antrim, Northern
Ireland. No time for a bath or
shower, stand at the sink, wash up.
   Down the garden
with a bowl, pick raspberries, red
currants. Lunch of courgettes
fried in butter, wheaton and soda
bread from the oven. Whipped
cream sliding into berries, tart and tangy,
meets sweet and savage, everything
melts. As far as we can go in con-
versation, a poem, as far as the flight
from here to Belfast, as far as Ena
still alive,
   giving possibility
a lick too.
Sheila Stewart has two poetry collections: The Shape 
of a Throat (Signature Editions, 2012) and A Hat 
to Stop a Train (Wolsak and Wynn, 2003). She co-
edited The Art of Poetic Inquiry (Backalong Books, 
2012). Sheila is completing her Ph.D. at oise/ut.


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