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

Kotzin, Miriam N.

VOLUME 28,  NUMBERS 2,3 177
healing, and being present.
By way of separating the two col-
lections, First Day is a collection of 
poetry and prose with a sole titled 
author, Malca Litovitz. Slow Danc-
ing is a collection of collaborative 
writing: the first half of the collec-
tion is a duologue between the two 
titled authors, Malca Litovitz and 
Elena Wolff, and the second half 
is a collection of rengas, “a form of 
collaborative, linked poetry, similar 
in structure to haiku, with origins in 
medieval Japan.” In the spirit of navi-
gating this new collaboration they 
agreed to set aside the “formal renga 
rules” and “write line-by alternating-
line, and took turns at going first.” 
There was no discussion of subject 
matter and there was no condition 
about “syllabic count or line length. 
[Their] aim was simply to continue 
working together creatively” over 
the course of eight months prior to 
Malca Litovitz’s death.
Slow Dancing begins with a the-
matically expansive duologue in 
which Malca Litovitz speaks about 
the relationship to “her literary life.” 
In it there is a discussion about the 
themes in her poetry but much more 
significant is her reflection about the 
connection between writing poetry 
and life, living, healing, loving, be-
ing present. As a reflection about the 
significance and importance of the 
representation of beauty in her po-
etry, she states, “I want to experience 
beauty. I don’t want to ask why it’s 
beautiful,” grounding her relation-
ship to poetry in the experiential and 
the present.
In this review I will speak more 
visibly about Slow Dancing, largely to 
bear witness to the spiritually healing 
quality of this collaborative writing 
found in this collection. Elena Wolff 
reflects in the Forward on writing the 
rengas for the collection: “We experi-
enced the delight of surprise, the ex-
citement of discovery, the comfort of 
shared thought, and the closeness of 
slow dancing – preserved in words.” 
Slow Dancing makes significant the 
nearness of poetry to dance, the slow 
dance, the partnered dance, and the 
soft rhythmical movements of slow 
sensuality. The title calls the reader 
to the physical presence of bodies 
and flesh in the experience of, the 
taste of, the intimacy and nakedness 
of slow dancing; it is life-affirming, 
as is poetry. Malca Litovitz’s work is 
“prayerful,” states Elena Wolff. I read 
this to suggest not only is her poetry 
connected to God and the presence 
of God but that it is full of breath, 
fully in breath, present in breathing, 
an echo of Malca Litovitz’s connec-
tion with meditation and writing 
poetry as a practice. The proximity 
of the body, the nearness of the body 
is both in the act of writing and the 
word as flesh, “jazz riff in the morning 
– /silk stockings in your voice mail, 
/our cries in the garden.” 
This life-affirming quality of the 
writing does not overshadow the vis-
ibility of illness in the writing: “my 
bladder, fused to my uterus, ripped 
a little –.” Illness is debilitating and 
it affects her proximity to writing, to 
living and to being present, “Illness 
is a form of paralysis.” Illness also in-
vites collaboration and subsequently 
leads to the collaborative writing of 
the rengas; illness does not defeat 
her capacity to write: “Don’t let me 
be mad, let me pick up my paint 
instead.” 
There is no competition for the 
presence of life with that of illness 
in First Day or Slow Dancing. These 
collections are conversations about 
the complexity of poetry as healing; 
of poetry as life-affirming; of poetry 
as vulnerability; of poetry as voice; 
of poetry as embodied; of poetry as 
confessional; of poetry as love; of 
poetry as flesh, slow dancing, affirm-
ing, present, living, healing, loving, 
nakedness.
Anna Natoli is a Ph.D. candidate in 
Women’s Studies at York University.
SINGING ME hOME
Carol Lipszyc
Toronto: Inanna Publications, 
2010
reviewed by miriam n. 
kotzin
Singing Me Home, Carol Lipszyc’s 
compelling debut collection of 
poetry, is far more than a simple 
melody. The poems are filled with 
arresting images, metaphors, and 
turns of language, as, for example, in 
the last lines of the opening poem, 
“Preserving Childhood,” girls with 
a purple hoola-hoop “press / time 
down, heart-shaped / and iridescent 
like leaves / before they scatter / in 
the lapses of wind.” The opening 
series of poems offer the complexities 
of growing up as child of survivors 
of the Holocaust. For example, a 
stanza describing the baking of Sab-
bath bread “to see how wide God’s 
honey-laced / blessings can spread” 
is followed by an answer to that 
question as the teacher first “locks 
the classroom door” and then tells 
the children “how she once lived/ in 
a bone yard / where ovens baked not 
bread/ but people, / where chimneys 
spewed ashes – / and what did we 
think of that, / boys and girls?”
The second two sections of Singing 
Me Home shift attention to the world 
of an adult—and these poems, 
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME178
Verna Reid has many stories to tell 
of “women between,” especially 
a generation of Canadian women 
whose creative working lives extend 
well into the last-quarter century of 
their lifespan and into the new mil-
lennium. Her readers might expect a 
text heavily informed by theoretical 
analysis, for the artists and writers 
she examines – Mary Pratt, Aganetha 
Dyck, Mary Meigs, and Sharon 
Butala – have contributed much to 
the development of contemporary 
art and literature in this country. 
They are practically household names 
– certainly to academics and students, 
readers and viewers of Canadian art 
and literature. Or, her readers might 
expect a text structured within a tight 
feminist framework that leaves her 
reader wanting more about the actual 
visual and text work produced by 
each. What Reid delivers, however, 
is her own story of reading between 
disciplines and genres, between gen-
erations and life stories, of these artists 
and the work they produce.
Her story might not have been 
told, or known, before the advent 
of women’s studies courses and pro-
grammes in post-secondary educa-
tion. Indeed, this text suggests the 
valuable contributions of feminist 
education and feminist analysis to the 
activities of “making” and interpreta-
tion. Like Reid, the lives of her four 
subjects operate within the confines 
of Adrienne Rich’s “compulsory 
heterosexuality” and, as Carolyn 
Heilbrun suggests, the daily struggle 
too, are remarkable. In “Lull” and 
“Critique” the narrator compares 
herself to a bird. In “Lull,” she is 
vulnerable, “like a fledgling bird / I 
can fall in the limber space between 
us.” In “Critique,” an encounter 
with the department head of creative 
writing, she has become “a yellow 
parakeet on his shoulder.” “Critique” 
is one of many poems that evidence 
Lipszyc’s sensitivity to sonic elements 
of a poem. Here internal rhyme and 
monosyllabic words skewer the cre-
ative writing department head: “what 
he thought I ought to say.” 
Lipszyc’s “Teaching ESL (at a 
Branch of Shopper’s World)” lifts 
and transforms the experience from 
a tour of pronunciation and gram-
mar to an expression of hope: “And 
when we conjugate / past and present, 
we sense / how our lives move one 
tense to another, / turning over and 
back again like a coda / around this 
undefeated planet.” 
“Reading Braille” is an example of 
brilliant, breathtaking, daring use of 
line length and stanza breaks. The 
long single mid-line of the poem, 
following a single word line of the 
longest stanza—comments on the 
metaphor and simile in the first two 
stanzas as “poor intermediaries,” and 
then moves to the metaphor of the 
title. The last few words of the poem 
engage the reader in active interpreta-
tion through the sort of ambiguity 
noted by critic William Empson, as 
they join the struggle to comprehend 
with sudden clarity. The genius of the 
metaphor of reading braille finally 
resides in its essential tactile element, 
an irony when all that’s left of the 
absent lover are words on a page. 
Careful and casual readers will 
both find pleasure in reading 
Lipszyc’s Singing Me Home, which 
exemplifies well-crafted poems of 
keen observation and deep feeling.
Miriam N. Kotzin is the Director 
of the Certificate Program in Writ-
ing and Publishing, Department of 
English and Philosophy at Drexel 
University. 
 
WOMEN BETWEEN: 
CONSTRUCTION OF SELF 
IN ThE WORk OF ShARON 
BUTALA, AGANEThA DyCk, 
MARy MEIGS AND MARy 
PRATT
 
Verna Reid
Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 
2008
reviewed by janice 
andreae
between private domestic constraints 
and the public sphere of self-deter-
mination and agency. 
Reid began teaching literature at 
the Alberta College of Art and Design 
in 1967, then women’s studies at 
acad and the University of Calgary 
where she received her Ph.D. in 2003 
at the age of 75. Her intertextual 
and interdisciplinary doctoral work 
was inspired by the autobiographi-
cal content of her students’ work 
and the experiences they shared in 
her classroom but her interpreta-
tion and relational analysis were 
made possible by the critique and 
content of women’s studies courses 
and the body of feminist-informed 
knowledge she acquired through her 
studies. She cites the importance of 
Mary Kelley’s “On Sexual Politics and 
Art” in Framing Feminism: Art and 
the Women’s Movement 1970-1985 
(1987) edited by Roszika Parker and 
Griselda Pollock, and Pollock’s own 
Vision and Difference: Femininity, 
Feminism and the Histories of Art 
(1988) and Differencing the Canon: 
Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s 
Histories (1999).
Reading between the disciplines, 
Reid employs feminist scholarship 
and feminist theory to rupture exist-
ing androcentric, hierarchical canons 
of literature and the visual arts, and 
the historical and interpretative prac-
tices they advance (See Julia Kristeva, 
New French Feminisms, 1981). Reid’s 
strategies of interpretation echo 
Susan Stanford Friedman’s in her 
groundbreaking essay “Women’s 
Autobiographical Selves: Theory 
and Practice,” Heilbrun’s in Writing 
a Woman’s Life (1988) and Nancy 
Miller’s in Subject to Change: Read-
ing Feminist Writing (1988). Also 
evident is the influence of life-writ-
ing texts Essays on Life Writing: From 
Genre to Critical Practice (1992) 
and Autobiography and Questions of 
Gender (1991) edited, respectively, by 
Canadian academics Marlene Kadar 
and Shirley Neuman. 
Reid’s own investigation relies 
heavily on the concept of unraveling 
representation(s) of the self expressed 


English

Singing Me Home

Weston, Joanna M.

144 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
medical system. But how wrong can you be? As young 
women, every single one of us was told we were too young 
to have breast cancer, and yet we do, in our 20s and 30s 
and younger. Unfortunately, most of what the medical 
system knows about breast cancer, for example, is ap-
plicable to women over 50, since 80 percent of women 
who get it are over 50. So it came as quite a shock to me 
that I had to go the cancer agency website and find the 
protocol for gp’s for annual follow-up tests after a breast 
cancer diagnosis, and give it to the doctor. That I had to 
point out that the suggested annual mammogram for the 
six percent of women with breast cancer who are under 40 
can miss breast cancer up to 52 percent of the time and 
demand an ultrasound with 94 percent accuracy rate. I 
find that’s the best way to deal with doctors, don’t you? 
Give them a prepared speech, with statistics, handouts, 
and weblinks, because between work and illnesses and 
friends and fun I have so little else to do!
When I “just” had m.e., people had no trouble at all 
telling me, friends, relatives, strangers, if that happened 
to them they’d want to be “put out of their misery,” you 
know, euthanized. So comforting and supportive to know 
that so many felt I would be “better off dead.” Now people 
fall into two main categories, and one special and rare 
subgroup. Group 1: totally in denial I have cancer, never 
ever mention it. Group 2: obsessed with my breasts. Not 
my health, not my well-being, not how I am feeling, not if 
I have enough to eat, but my breast, the tumor, the treat-
ment, or lack of, as they see it. They don’t say I would be 
better of dead now, they say, “please stay alive” with their 
scared-by-cancer faces. Now that I have an additional 
illness to deal with my life is of course so much more 
fulfilling. The rare subgroup: perfectly fine to mention it 
or not and very grateful I am.
Many think it sheer lunacy, that I have taken matters into 
my own hands, done my own research, hours and hours, 
of all the different treatment options. Made the choices 
which are right for me. Choices they do not understand, 
and that makes people, afraid. Not the right choices for 
them, and that makes people angry, with me. It doesn’t 
matter that I have copies of all my test results and reports, 
and x-rays. Or that I make qualified professionals explain 
to me exactly what each one means. It doesn’t matter that 
I know exactly what my cells are doing, and what I am 
trying to do to them, with the medicines I am taking. It’s 
not over either way, no one can say I am getting better, 
nor that I am dying. I am living with this illness cancer, 
and that apparently, is almost, unforgivable.
I have traveled a different journey from some. I went 
through the heartbreak of illness in my early 20s, of 
confusion, disbelief, of believing I was going to get bet-
ter, of not getting better. Of believing I was going to get 
better, of not, getting better, of believing I was going to 
get better, of not, getting better. It went on for years, 
until finally I had to accept it, and move on, and I did. 
People ask me what my plans are. I have none really, to 
be peaceful, to get better, to live my life how I would if 
I was going to live, or die. It is all the same in a way, the 
mindfulness of how you spend your time. Frankly, I am 
invested in neither outcome, remission or death, but in 
some middle-ground, which is the present day. That’s 
perfectly okay with me, but not for most others. They 
want to know what to expect, and when. None of us can 
ever really know. So, these are my plans: sleep, rest, food, 
medicine, meditation, art.
Meg Torwl is an interdisciplinary artist, working in Writ-
ing/Performance, Arts Advocacy, Radio, Video, New Media. 
Her work has been published, performed, broadcast, screened, 
and exhibited, in Canada, usa, uk, and New Zealand. Her 
writing has been published in Knowing me, Spin, Eat these 
Sweet Words, Linescapes, Nuestra Voz, Sinister Wisdom, 
Magdalena Aotearoa, Sins Invalid and (in) valid. She has 
a degree in Social Policy, and is a commentator with the nz 
Disability Media Collective. She has produced three new 
media projects and four documentaries, which are distributed 
by Video Out. Her program dealing with cancer, The Young 
and the Mutated, was broadcast in 2007. Her work can be 
found at <http://integrialmedia.blogspot.com>.
JOANNA M. WESTON
Keep Childhood
unfold the children
lay them carefully
  down
iron bodies flat
so they will fit
into the spaces
held for them
slide them onto hangers
in locked cupboards
where moth and rust
cannot corrupt
oh their innocence
Joanna M. Weston has had poetry, reviews, and short 
stories published in anthologies and journals for twenty-
five years. Her poetry book, A Summer Father, was 
published by Frontenac House of Calgary. This poem 
was originally pubished in The Outreach Connection 
(2003). Reprinted with permission.


Keep Childhood

Bode, Rita

The Sense of an Illness and Breast Cancer Culture

Woolfrey, Sandra

VOLUME 28, NUMBERS 2,3 133
SANDRA WOOLFREY
Speaking of Isak Dineson, 
Beryl Markham and Georgia O’Keefe 
SANDRA WOOLFREY
Hummingbird
SANDRA WOOLFREY
Sweet Reminder 
This morning as I ate a plum, 
my finger on the stem end,
sweet juice on my tongue,
I thought of you, my lover.
Sandra Woolfrey is an artist and poet who gardens 
in Quebec City. http://www.sandrawoolfrey.ca
hummingbird parts my hair 
ruby red jewel 
green winged essence fans the air.
Sandra Woolfrey, “Winter Birds: Hummingbird of My Heart ,” 
2007, handmade felt, 24 x 24 cm.
Sandra Woolfrey, “My Summer Dress,” 1998, handmade paper, 
wood, leather and embroidery cotton; 100cm x 110cm.
I won’t apologise for looking to these women. 
There are few of them and none
that I knew when I was a girl and knew
I had to break this endless pattern of dusting
and scrubbing and drying , peeling,
boiling, ironing, mending,
hoeing, picking, before
my hands were worn,
my eyes dull and dead,
long before my body
  Stopped
among the dishes, the dust, the pastry
and the tears that needed mending that
pieced together the patchwork quilts of 
 women’s lives
that somehow these must be gifts
I would give and be given
that would embroider my life
without becoming its fabric
and I didn’t know where to find
the calico, the silk, the worsted
and the velvet that my quilt
would be made of
I didn’t know that they
must come from within
painfully the way gauze
winds off a wound that is healing
and
joyfully the way one discovers
the satin smoothness of new skin.


Sweet Reminder

Gosse, Douglas

VOLUME 28,  NUMBER 1 151
Carver argues that definitions of 
the ethical human subject must take 
into account the recent challenges to 
traditional notions of sex, gender, and 
sexuality posed by transsexuality, gay 
marriage, and new reproductive tech-
nologies. Mitchell further troubles 
the analytical categories of ‘sexual 
difference’ and ‘gender’ by arguing 
that the shift to the conceptual 
category of gender reflects a move 
to the horizontal organization of 
society as a sisterhood or fraternity as 
opposed to a patriarchy. Tony Lawson 
advocates an ontological analysis of 
gender in which social positionality 
is conceived as ontologically separate 
from human agency. According to 
Lawson, this approach would enable 
feminist theorists to acknowledge 
the important differences among 
women’s experiences, while simul-
taneously recognizing their shared 
social positions.
Catherine Hakim’s essay may be 
the most controversial of the book. 
She challenges the commonly held 
feminist belief that it is gender 
inequality which accounts for the 
pay gap and gender segregation in 
employment in ‘developed’ coun-
tries. She argues instead that it is 
the lifestyle preference, to focus on 
family or career, that best predicts 
achievement in the public realm. 
Hakim argues that because of ad-
vances in gender equality feminist 
analyses are largely out of date and 
should be replaced by preference 
analysis. Rosemary Crompton’s and 
Jude Browne’s essays offer critiques 
of preference theory on the basis 
that it supports the status quo and 
disregards various social, institu-
tional, and legislative constraints on 
choice. Crompton argues for state 
interventions that would support 
the dual-earner model of families 
and Jude Browne advocates equality 
in parental leave legislation. 
This book is suited to a wide audi-
ence of specialists or non-specialists 
in any of the disciplines represented. 
While there is some interesting ma-
terial on gender as a conceptual and 
subjective category, this book is most 
useful for those with an interest in 
feminist perspectives on public policy 
and work.
Kristine Klement has a Master’s degree 
in Women’s Studies. Currently she is 
a Ph.D. candidate in the Social and 
Political Thought Programme at York 
University. Her dissertation is titled 
“What Does a Feminist Want? Psycho-
analysis, Feminism and Hysteria.”
the demons of 
aQuilonia
Lina Medaglia
Toronto: Inanna Publications and 
Education Inc., 2009
reviewed by douglas 
gosse
Lina Medaglia is a modern Italian-
Canadian Scheherazade, telling yarns 
that magically intersect, to keep the 
reader wondering what happens next, 
and how her sometimes innocuous, 
sometimes alarming stories intercon-
nect. The plot is narrated in a pleas-
ing, journal-like fashion through the 
frank eyes of a young Italian peasant 
girl, Licia Giganteschi, in Southern 
Italy’s picturesque, hilly farmland 
region of Calabria, located at the toe 
of the Italian peninsula. Licia is raised 
by Grazia, her mother, whose sparse 
words carry hidden meanings. Her 
father, a Gastarbeiter, or guest worker 
in Germany, disappears for months 
at a time to toil and provide for his 
family in a foreign land; This leaves 
Licia at the whim of her extended 
relatives, who scrutinize her every 
move, as is the custom in many 
villages, adding to the sometimes 
warm and charming, sometimes 
oppressive atmosphere, for all is not 
pastoral, idyllic, and what it seems, 
in the village.
Licia, an anti-heroine, is an intro-
vert with a whiplash intellect and 
intuition, who even as a child has 
an august penchant for language, 
reading, and learning. She observes 
everything, and knows full well the 
treachery that lies in the hearts and 
minds of the adults and children 
surrounding her. Licia’s psychic-like 
intuition sets her apart from her 
family and community, and is also 
the catalyst for her obstinate yet 
compassionate inquiry into mysteries 
related to her family and community. 
Although charged with a variation of 
the old adage, “Children should be 
seen and not heard,” Licia’s burning 
desire for knowing pushes her to break 
silences and endlessly question, even 
as she journeys into adulthood. 
Why does her recalcitrant grand-
father guard a chest of valuable 
literature in the attic, and a stack of 
government bonds, when the family 
lives in relative poverty?
Was Licia’s young kinswoman of 
16 years, Natalia, a victim of a crime 
of passion just before her wedding, 
or is there something more sinister 
brewing in their family? 
Who is Sister Assunta really—the 
village madwoman, a suffering Cath-
olic saint, or a tragic, fallen woman? 
Inexplicably, why is she a confidante 
of her own mother, Grazia?
Another of her mother’s acquain-
tances, the misshapen Carmela, 
a woman of medicinal herbs and 
midwifery, simultaneously inspires 
respect, and yet fear and dark suspi-
cion…what happens to all the babies 
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME152
who are deemed ‘abnormal’ or born 
out of wedlock?
Ultimately, Demons of Aquilonia is 
not just any mystery novel, but also 
a book of questioning one’s place in 
society, one’s social class, and the ten-
sions inherent in racial, sexual, and 
gender norms. Just as the characters 
bend and manipulate truths to serve 
their own nefarious and altruistic 
purposes, so too must characters 
wear a variety of masks, much like 
the Greek masks of theatre—the 
innocent maiden, the mistress, the 
scholar, the wise fool, the slave, and 
the master. At times, Licia sports all 
of these masks, and her catharsis lies 
in navigating through the conflicting 
expectations inherent in all of these 
roles. En route to accepting her own 
true nature in a world that has little 
tolerance for keen-eyed sentinels, 
Licia challenges the status quo, for 
she is a natural fighter for knowledge, 
honesty, and righteousness.
When her family immigrates to 
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Licia 
passionately pursues education, 
literacy, social mobility, and en-
lightenment but is hampered by 
the paradoxical memories of her 
troubled childhood in Italy. This 
necessitates a trip back home to 
Calabria, for to know oneself, and 
where one is going, one must first 
examine the past. 
Licia juggles acceptance in her 
family, social circle, and relation-
ships, whilst battling her pragmatic 
desire for knowledge and truth, for 
she knows that only truth may lead 
she and her loved ones to a difficult 
rebirth … and rebirth for this eter-
nally morphing anti-heroine might 
bring greater common understand-
ing, bonding, and even the illusive 
mutual acceptance she spends her 
life striving towards. However, what 
price will Licia, her family members, 
and her childhood neighbours and 
friends be prepared to pay? 
In addition to the stirring plot, 
the poignant description, and art-
ful, straight-forward writing style of 
author Lina Medaglia are commend-
able. There is not a word de trop in 
this novel. One has the impression 
of being seated in the cozy kitchen 
of Licia in downtown Toronto, and 
while sipping fragrant caffe, she starts 
spinning yarns of her hometown in 
Italy, that are at once mesmerizing, 
enchanting, and disturbing…
Douglas Gosse is the editor of Breaking 
silences and exploring masculinities, 
a critical supplement to the novel 
Jackytar (2008), and author of Jacky-
tar (2005), The Romeo & Juliet 
Murders (1997), and The Celtic 
Cross, A Vampire Journal (1995).
tell me a stoRY, 
tell me the tRuth
Gina Roitman
Toronto: Second Story Press, 2009
reviewed by april 
sharkey
The title—Tell me a Story, Tell me the 
Truth—exudes mystery and entices 
readers. After all, who gets to define 
what truth is or whether or not it 
even exists for that matter? While 
truth is often linked to history, those 
traditionally in charge of writing it 
have mainly been men. Since the 
second wave of feminism, scholars 
and activists have compiled their 
own histories that focus on personal 
experiences and often deconstruct 
problematic concepts such as truth. 
Despite the void left in traditional 
historical texts, it is these narratives, 
handed down through generations 
of women, that construct and best 
represent some of their experiences 
and truths. 
While the title seems a bit contrary 
and somewhat suspect, there is no 
confusion about the photos that 
adorn the front cover—photos that 
offer the only material evidence of one 
family’s experience of the Holocaust. 
The cover represents the author’s own 
personal history and lends itself to 
the narrative. Through the photos, 
author Gina Roitman confounds the 
boundaries between truth and fiction 
even further with the inclusion of 
evidence of her history.
It is this glimpse of one family’s 
history, a history that travels from the 
concentration camps and displaced 
persons camp, or lager of post wwii, 
to the tenements of Montréal, where 
Jewish immigrants negotiated the 
challenges of starting over in a new 
country after losing familial identi-
ties, home, and homeland that signi-
fies the strength of a people’ history. 
What captures the reader’s eye is 
Roitman’s seamless ability to move 
fluidly between first person experi-
ences and third person narrative, ex-
posing the presence of fiction in truth 
and truth in fiction, and a little bit of 
both revealed through myth. While 
writing in the first person, Roitman 
peppers readers with Yiddish terms 
and names, claiming and symbolizing 
her Jewish identity. The third person 
reveals the North American story of 
a young Jewish girl’s “coming of age” 
in Canada following wwii.
Roitman begins by recounting her 
own relationship with her mother. In 
the introduction, she gives readers 
a common story—one of a mother 
and daughter struggling to co-ex-
ist—with one firmly entrenched 
in the past and the other heavily 
influenced by a very different present. 
As the book progresses, it becomes 
evident that it is about the mother’s 
responsibility to make sure Leah 
Smilovitz (and Roitman) will always 
remember her words, despite the 
fact that she did not live them. It is 
through this storytelling (narishkeit) 
that Leah can feel some connection 
to her mother and history. It is this 
symbiotic relationship between story 
and truth that provides a foundation 
for the book. 
Indeed, Roitman has presented a 
work that blurs the lines and is in 
constant tension. The most difficult 
task for the reader is keeping in mind 
that Tell Me a Story, Tell Me the Truth 
is a piece of fiction. Roitman quali-
fies the title by revealing the tensions 


The Demons of Aquilonia

Ordóñez, Maria-Belén

Too Precious for You

Martonfi, Ilona

VOLUME 28, NUMBER 1 65
2009 Winner of 
the Northern Lit Award
Silver Medal Winner of the 
2009 ippy Awards for Literature
www.yorku.ca/inanna
INANNA PRIZEWINNERS
Finalist 2010 Trillium Award
for Poetry in French
Marionettes carved from wood.
Chimney sweeper.
A girl, Magda.
Nut trees and pines.
Carpathian Mountains.
Blueberry picking in August.
In the days of tallow candles,
walls hung with hand-loomed tapestries.
Flat weave kilim rugs.
My mother’s childhood house:
one low window, attic rooms.
Red mud of Maros River,
Grandmother Mariska picks wild sorrel.
She works as a cook. Arad, 1928.
After school, Magda is alone in the house.
stepfather says: “I’ll kill you if you tell anyone!”
A girl, Magda:
dressed in Sunday best,
her coat is all buttons,
embroidered white blouse.
White leggings. Black shoes.
Polio fever at age four,
affected below the knee.
Ilona Martonfi’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
ILOnA MARTOnFI
Magda


Magda

Litovitz, Malca

VOLUME 28, NUMBERS 2,3 93
This article is written in memory and 
celebration of Glenda Adshade.
The stories, commitment, and passion 
of many people and agencies made the 
Lesbians and Breast Cancer Project 
possible. Chris, Lisa, Patti, Pam and 
Fran were members of the Project 
Team. The names of all of the team 
members and of the women who par-
ticipated in the study, along with a list 
of partner agencies and funders and 
the project report, are hosted at the 
DisAbled Women’s Network Ontario 
website <http://dawn.thot.net/lbcp> 
(thanks to dawn Ontario, and Bar-
bara Anello, for this). 
References
Barnoff, L., C. Sinding and P. Gras-
sau. “Listening to the Voices of 
Lesbians Diagnosed with Cancer: 
Recommendations for Change in 
Cancer Support Services.” Journal 
of Gay and Lesbian Social Services 
18 (1) (2006): 17-35.
Coalition for Lesbian and Gay 
Rights in Ontario. Systems Fail-
ure: A Report on the Experiences 
of Sexual Minorities in Ontario’s 
Health-Care and Social-Services 
Systems. Toronto, 1997.
Daley, A. “Lesbian and Gay Issues: 
outside of Canada’s Health Pol-
icy.” Critical Social Policy 26 (4) 
(2006): 794-816.
Lesbians and Breast Cancer Project 
Team. “Silent No More: Coming 
Out About Lesbians and Cancer. 
“Canadian Woman Studies/les ca-
hiers de la femme 24 (1) (2004): 
37-42.
Sinding, C., L. Barnoff and P. Gras-
sau. “Homophobia and Hetero-
sexism in Cancer Care: The Ex-
periences of Lesbians.” Canadian 
Journal of Nursing Research 36 (4) 
(2004): 171-188.
Steinbugler, A. “Visibility as Privi-
lege and Danger: Heterosexual 
and Same-Sex Interracial Intima-
cy in the 21st Century.” Sexuali-
ties 8 (4) (2005): 425.
MALCA LITOVITZ
Cheap Top
Cheap top — twenty-five bucks-
made me feel great for a summer.
Now even expensive clothes
leave me the same —
I can’t play with what I wear.
My hands are clasped,
feet flat on the floor
like some grade school student
in Gradgrind’s college.
Where did my daring go?
Jarred, rattled, shot down —
a tube up my nose,
a bag on my waist,
an uncertain future.
Chemicals through my body —
hair lost —
no eyebrows, no eyelashes —
no trace of hair any where.
Music I can’t listen to,
books I can’t read,
files I can’t sort.
“Accent the positive,” dad used to say.
Dad’s gone.
November is almost gone.
Malca Litovitz’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


Cheap Top

Bosset, Farideh de

VOLUME 28, NUMBERS 2,3 109
King, Samantha. Pink Ribbons, Inc.: 
Breast Cancer and the Politics of 
Philanthropy. Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 2006.
King, Thomas. The Truth About 
Stories: A Native Narrative. Toron-
to: House of Anansi Press, 2003.
Kristeva, Julia. This Incredible Need 
to Believe. Trans. by B. B. Brahie. 
New York: Columbia University 
Press, 2009.
Marchetto, Marisa Acocella. Cancer 
Vixen: A True Story. New York: 
Random House, 2006.
Smith, Annie. Bearing Up With Can-
cer: Life, and Living With… To-
ronto: Second Story Press, 2004.
Tasker, Yvonne and Negra, Diane. 
Interrogating Post-feminism: Gender 
and the Politics of Popular Culture. 
Durham: Duke University Press, 
2007.
Watters, Debbie. Where’s Mom’s Hair: 
A Family’s Journey Through Cancer. 
Toronto: Second Story, 2005. 
M. E. CsAMER
skin Deep
Age loosens the skin, Joe,
as if it would unravel from the bones
like	an	old	sweater,	tired	of	being	worn.
This is part of the long letting go
but you, you’re just beginning, have skin
folded for the future, the string-bean
long drink of water you may well become
if	your	doctor	knows	his	babies.
Skin holds the net of nerves,
lets us feel each other’s 
stunning	touch.	Your	hands
on my face set those nerves alight
like the netted Christmas strings
along Tyrell Avenue, shining out
from	under	your	inaugural	snow.
Skin	is	a	gift	of	the	first	order.
We moan its distension after one
too many trips to Tim’s
or haul and tie it up again
when gravity’s unceasing sway
pulls	us	too	close	to	the	earth.
I like the loosening, Joe, it gives me
more space to grow old in;  young,
we move light as air but living weighs us down,
first	revelry’s	rich	banquets,	but	then	we	thicken
with loss, the dead carving their names in us
that	we	might	carry	them	on.
Skin is the book of life: everything is written on it
scar	of	the	first	skinned	knee,	pucker	where	bones
break	through,	bubble	of	fire	damage,	the	slice	in
your	Mommy’s	belly	where	they	pulled	you	free.
FARIDEH DE 
BOssET
Rosie’s Eyes
Rosie had become a pair 
   of eyes
screaming I am Rosie,
the same girl I was 20 
			years	ago.
The promising star,
now thicker and shorter
make-up and jewellery
covering	most	of	her.
Her dimmer eyes
Washed out of dreams
the faint reminder
what	could	have	been.
Farideh de Bosset was born in 
Tehran, Iran, where poetry is part 
of everyday life and conversation. 
She lives in Toronto. <www.
faridehdebosset.ca>.
M. E. Csamer is widely published in Canadian literary magazines. 
Herbooks include Paper Moon (Watershed Books, 1998), Light is 
What We Live In (Artful Codger Press, 2005), and A Month With 
Snow (Hidden Brook Press, 2007). She is a Past President of the 
League of Canadian Poets.


Rosie's Eyes

Durisin, Elya Maria

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME158
of “saving” women from trafficking 
– a very problematic situation. This 
book does foster a continuance of 
these feminist debates and, therefore, 
should be read, albeit cautiously.
Leeann Townsend is a first year Ph.D. 
student in the Department of Wom-
en’s Studies at York University. Her 
interests include prostitution and traf-
ficking, transnational feminism, and 
militarism. 
the idea of 
pRostitution
Sheila Jeffreys 
North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 
2008
reviewed by elya m. 
durisin
Sheila Jeffreys’ primary concern in 
The Idea of Prostitution, an updated 
version of her 1997 text of the same 
title, is to subject the sex workers’ 
rights position (such as the idea that 
prostitution is work or that women 
have choice in prostitution) to a 
radical feminist critique. Jeffreys takes 
issue with what she describes as the 
‘normalization’ of the sex industry by 
sex worker organizations and some 
postmodern and queer theorists writ-
ing on sexuality, and attempts to show 
how the interests being represented by 
these parties are not those of prostitute 
women but actually those of the sex 
industry. She includes chapters on 
prostitution as male violence and 
international approaches to ending 
trafficking of girls and women for 
work in the sex industry. As Jeffreys 
explains in the last chapter, her pur-
pose in this book is to challenge the 
idea that “prostitution is just work, 
and sex, and choice.” 
With this text, Jeffreys revives a 
radical feminist anti-prostitution 
analysis; however she does not suc-
cessfully overcome its limitations, 
which have caused it to fall out of 
favour among many sex workers, 
activists, and academics. Jeffreys 
maintains that there is one defini-
tive truth about prostitution, that 
is, it is violence. This results in her 
discounting sex workers and sex 
worker organizations that do not 
support her arguments. In describ-
ing her understanding of prostitu-
tion as a form of male violence, she 
acknowledges that not all prostitutes 
support this position. However, Jef-
freys’ resolution to this situation is to 
suggest that those sex workers who 
do not share her perspective should 
not be listened to as they have not 
been given adequate opportunity to 
understand the harm of their occu-
pation. For Jeffreys, prostitution is 
an inherently harmful violation of 
women’s human rights, regardless of 
context or what the women involved 
might think.
Jeffreys responds to arguments put 
forth by sex workers’ rights activists 
through reference to American sex 
worker organizations and sex worker 
performing artists; however she does 
not engage with current writing and 
research from sex workers or sex 
worker organizations. A review of 
recent sex workers’ writings and com-
munity and academic collaborations 
with sex workers’ rights organizations 
clearly demonstrates that sex workers, 
and the organizations representing 
their interests, have a complex and 
sophisticated understanding of the 
problems, challenges, benefits, joys, 
and so on, of sex work. The sex work-
ers’ rights position recognizes that sex 
work is many things to many different 
people, the breadth of which cannot 
be appreciated through a lens that 
apprehends male violence exclusively. 
Sex workers’ rights organizations 
recognize that sex workers may 
experience violence and exploitative 
working conditions; however they 
do not advocate for an abolition of 
prostitution. 
Although Jeffreys’ text, first publish 
in 1997, was updated and reprinted 
in 2008, she has not engaged with 
the breadth of newer writing on 
prostitution, sex work, and traffick-
ing. She instead relies heavily on 
Hoigard and Finstad (1992,1993), 
Giobbe (1990,1991,1992), and 
Farley and Hotaling (1995) and 
does not engage with the plethora 
of methodological critique towards 
anti-prostitution feminist research. 
While Jeffreys maintains that prosti-
tution is harmful to women in ways 
that other jobs are not and could not 
be, she does not discuss this assertion 
in relation to research on embodied, 
emotional, and care-giving labour, 
which is particularly relevant given 
the increase in service-related occupa-
tions such as domestic work in the 
global economy. 
Jeffreys’ discussion of trafficking in 
the concluding chapters of the text 
is particularly troubling in a climate 
where it is becoming increasingly 
difficult for women in many parts 
of the world to cross borders. She 
does not address how her position, 
one that sees all migration for work 
in the sex industry as trafficking and 
a violation of women’s human rights, 
could be used by particular political 
interests to justify increased border 
security that would further limit 
women’s rights to mobility. 
This book is most useful if un-
derstood as a particular, and rather 
outdated, perspective on prostitu-
tion. It is reflective of a time in femi-
nist theorizing and political debate 
on gender and sexuality in which 
feminists and sex workers were often 
pitted against one another. While it 
is important to recognize and discuss 
the problems with working condi-
tions in sex industry, it is unclear 
what the advantages of this position 
are and why this perspective seems to 
have such lasting appeal among some 
feminists. Given the growth of the 
international and North American 
sex workers’ rights movements, it 
is critical that academic researchers 
begin to take seriously the analyses 
of sex workers and the numerous sex 
worker organizations representing 
their interests.
Elya Maria Durisin is a Ph.D. can-
didate in the Department of Political 
VOLUME 28,  NUMBER 1 159
Science, York University. She is also a 
board member at Maggie’s: The Toronto 
Sex Workers Action Project.
sexing the 
teacheR: school 
sex scandals and 
QueeR pedagogies
Sheila L. Cavanagh
Vancouver: University of British 
Columbia Press, 2007
reviewed by mary j. 
harrison
In Sexing the Teacher: School Sex 
Scandals and Queer Pedagogies, Sheila 
L. Cavanagh invites us inside recent 
sex panics involving white female 
teachers in Canada, the United States, 
and Britain, such as Mary Kay Letour-
neau, Annie Markson, Amy Gehring, 
and Heather Ingram. Through a 
sophisticated analysis incorporating 
psychoanalytic, queer, feminist, film, 
postmodern, and postcolonial theo-
ries, Cavanagh suggests that our col-
lective fascination with white, female 
teachers who engage in flirtations or 
sexual contact with “underage” boy 
students has everything to do with 
defending against our heteronor-
mative anxieties and queer desires, 
and very little with concern about 
actual ‘harm’ to the boys themselves. 
In none of these cases did the boys 
involved identify with the “victim” 
label enforced upon them by what 
Cavanagh calls “the master narrative 
of child sexual abuse.” Yet, in spite of 
the boys’ explicit denial of their victim 
status, their respective teacher-lovers 
faced personal, professional, and, in 
some cases, legal reprimands which, 
according to Cavanagh, exceeded 
the consequences for men teachers 
in similar (or non-consensual) cases. 
Cavanagh’s investigation into this 
phenomenon plunges us into the 
underbelly of the sanitized, white/co-
lonial, heteronormative social order 
to reveal a swirling mass of complexi-
ties, disavowals, queer desires, and 
desperate fears. 
Much is at stake for education and 
society when we interrogate school 
sex panics. As Cavanagh explains, the 
school is the site where we expect stu-
dents to be exposed to “a higher order 
of learning,” including the demands 
of the future-oriented, heteronorma-
tive social order and the unjust myriad 
of exclusions upon which it relies. It 
is the white, female teacher who is 
charged with the social reproduction 
of white, heterosexual norms, usher-
ing her students into what education 
and the moral majority imagine to 
be a “proper” future as productive 
citizens of the nation. When the 
white, female teacher— positioned 
in the cultural imaginary as mater-
nal paragon of virtue, pedagogical 
saviour, and humble servant to the 
colonial mission—avows and acts 
upon her non-normative desires she 
queers the pedagogical encounter, 
the educational space and mission, 
developmental time, and what Jan 
Jagodzinski (2002) calls “the family 
romance in education.” Further, her 
transgression provides threatening 
evidence that heteronormativity is 
culturally, not naturally, mandated. 
In a chapter that focuses on lesbian 
teacher/student relationships, Cava-
nagh introduces a clever concept she 
calls “postmodern eugenics.” This 
refers to the moral majority’s fear of 
the “proliferation of queers” through 
homosexual “contagion” (her use of 
“eugenics” highlights the colonial 
and racist overtones of this fear). 
We may usefully apply this concept 
to Cavanagh’s whole study insofar 
as the moral panic is partly fuelled 
by the fear that female teachers who 
behave in queer ways will inevita-
bly rub off on children whom we 
imagine (paradoxically) to be both 
heterosexual and innocent. Impor-
tantly, Cavanagh does not condone 
sex between students and teachers, 
clearly stating that she considers 
such infractions unprofessional. Yet 
she makes the crucial distinction 
between what is unprofessional and 
what is criminal. Agreeing that sexual 
abuse of male and female students 
unfortunately can and does occur by 
male and female teachers, Cavanagh 
nevertheless insists that we must 
develop ways of thinking beyond 
the “master narrative of child sexual 
abuse” to allow that some relation-
ships between students and teachers, 
if unprofessional, are sanctioned by 
what she calls “social consent.” Stu-
dents who engage in socially consen-
sual sex with their teachers are hurt 
not by those relationships, Cavanagh 
argues, but rather by sensationalized 
media coverage, official silencing 
and denial of their sexualities, and 
enforced separation from their lov-
ers. Concluding her study, Cavanagh 
reflects on her writing process and 
the resistance she encountered to her 
queer analysis of school sex scandals. 
Courageously, she causes a stir by 
insisting that the teachers featured in 
her book ought not be labelled—nor 
persecuted as—“pedophiles.” This 
chapter demonstrates the insidious 
workings and discursive restrictions 
of the moral panic: to the anxious and 
moral majority unable or unwilling 
to think beyond its investments in 
its current “master narratives” and 
cultural imaginings, Cavanagh’s notes 
on some scandals become scandalous 
in their own right. Where she calls for 
the development of a queer pedagogy 
which embraces the role of Eros in 
the pedagogical encounter—for 
“[w]ithout Eros, there would be no 
incitement to learn or to teach”—the 
moral majority hears only the threat 
that Eros seems to pose within the 
confines of the “master narrative of 
child sexual abuse.” I fear there is 
currently little room for the kind of 
radical queer pedagogy that Cava-
nagh’s study wistfully envisions, but 
certainly Sexing the Teacher represents 
a step in the ‘right’ direction. 
Mary J. Harrison studies Education as 
a Ph.D. student at York University. She 
is interested in the social and political 
functions of moral panics especially as 
they relate to adult constructions of the 
innocence of youth, and to sex education 
in public schools. 


Not a member yet