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

Driedger, Diane

VOLUME 28, NUMBERS 2,3 129
to help you face the hard slog
through terrain somehow familiar,
yet never as dark as now:
to feel the danger, how it stabs,
needles, scalpels,
sting of chemotherapy,
experimental, clinical trial, a tribulation
last-ditch effort, white flag to dis/ease;
or maybe you take an alternative route,
you’ll try anything now,
caffeine-enema herbs homeopathy organic 
roughage
vitamins tinctures teas tisanes so foul-tasting
you choke, but still,
you down them, desperate,
sorry now for every burger, French fry you 
ever ate
(or maybe it was that time they sprayed the 
forest
where you played as a girl, infusion of pesticide,
a trade-off for a summer free of mosquitoes).
anyway, now does it matter
the cause or whom to blame,
having come this far, suffered so much?
deep deep hurt, spreading until
pain is a cloak you wear,
weighs you down, stifles breath,
as you move with slow precision
toward a distant shore
where light and dark mingle,
where you hold tight
even as you let go,
where you fight
even as you surrender,
where the only recurrence
you really care about
is this (Repeat after me):
love, loss, love, loss,
love, loss, love, loss:
Love.
DIANE DRIEDGER
Cancer Treatment
One long list 
To administer
To remember
2 surgeries
2 general anesthetics
1 drain 
hanging out my side
1 breast surgeon
2 oncologists
4 and a half months of chemo
every 3 weeks
6 treatments in all
6 weeks of radiation
through it all I needed
1 emotional bulletproof vest
Diane Driedger’s poetry appears earlier in 
this volume.
Diane Drieger, “Cancerlilies,” 2008, watercolour, 22" x 30".Mary Trafford’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


Cancer Treatment

Weston, Joanna M.

VOLUME 28,  NUMBER 1 127
ELIZABETH PICKETT
hairline fracture
JOANNA M. WEsTON
Listening In
the ribs are a fragile cage
for the heart’s urgings
your boney skullcap
hot brain
firing nerves
eyes, brow, hands
tongue, lashings of teeth-
scarred knuckle, muscle
control, those abs
pecs, the six-pack
punches
through bruised organs
hear their music
in her ears and heart’s distal
pulse, an ancient cadence
fists
face
feinting
bloodlines traced
back to the cave
beneath fractured ridges
into the bone
Elizabeth Pickett’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
  for Anne Szumigalski ‘The Holy   
Fountain’ in ‘Woman reading in bath’, p.54
how did she know the girls
walking by the river
were virgins?
did she ask
‘have you had your first man?’
did she guess from their closed hips
that they had never opened
to passion and surprise?
did she know their breasts
small in tight white bras
were yet untouched?
did she eavesdrop
on their verbal
virginity?
Joanna Weston’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


Listening In

Eginton, Kay R.

98 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
American women writers, transatlan-
tic studies, and maternal scholarship. 
1bcaction.org is the website for a 
helpful, activist organization 
2The Canadian Cancer society web-
site, under Breast cancer statistics, 
states: “Breast cancer is the most 
common cancer among Canadian 
women (excluding non-melanoma 
skin cancer.”
3The cult of true womanhood was 
first identified by Barbara Wel-
ter. The true woman’s transatlan-
tic counterpart is the angel in the 
house, which is also the title of a 
poem by Coventry Patmore (1854); 
literary examples of the type popu-
late the Victorian novel.
4Herndl’s designation of these nar-
ratives as “autobiographies” is prob-
lematic since, as she acknowledges, 
they deal with diagnosis and recov-
ery, and hence, are autobiographies 
of the cancer rather than of the 
author. As the ambivalence around 
the term “survivor” suggests, many 
breast cancer patients reject being 
identified by the disease. Herndl’s 
study addresses issues of identity 
thus explaining in part at least her 
choice of the term.
5Cathy Caruth’s work on trauma 
and, to a lesser degree, Herndl’s 
interpretations of Kelly Oliver’s 
theories on witnessing are sugges-
tive for an understanding of the 
reactions and responses to being 
diagnosed with a potentially fatal 
disease, and the subsequent need 
to tell about it.
References
Canadian Cancer Society. “Breast 
Cancer Statistics.” <http://www.
cancer.ca>.
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Expe-
rience: Trauma, Narrative and 
History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 
University Press, 1996.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. “Welcome to 
Cancerland: A Mammograph 
Leads to a Cult of Pink Kitsch.” 
Harper’s Magazine (November 
2001): 43-53; rev. and rpt. as Ch. 
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. In 
Complete Poem and Major 
Prose. Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes. 
Indianapolis: Odyssey Press 
(Bobbs-Merrill), 1957. 173-469.
Shields, Carol, contributor. Living 
and Learning: Breast Cancer Patient 
Workbook. Toronto: Audience 
Communications Inc., 1999.
Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor 
and aids and Its Metaphors. 1978; 
1988. New York: Picador; Farrar, 
Strauss and Giroux, 1990.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom 
Sawyer. In Classics of Children’s 
Literature. Ed. John W. Griffith 
and Charles H. Frey. New York: 
MacMillan, 1981. 359-486.
Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of 
True Womanhood.” American 
Quarterly 18 (1966): 151-74
1, “Smile or Die: The Bright side 
of Cancer,” in Bright-sided: How 
the Relentless Promotion of Positive 
Thinking Has Undermined 
America. New York: Metropolitan 
Books; Henry Holt and Company, 
2009. 15-44.
Eliot, T. S. “The Hollow Men” 
(1925). Selected Poems. London: 
Faber and Faber, 1954. 75-80.
Herndl, Diane Price. “Our Breasts, 
Our Selves: Identity, Com-
munity, and Ethics in Cancer 
Autobiographies.” Signs: Journal 
of Women in Culture and Society 
32 (1) (2006): 221-45.
King, Samantha. Pink Ribbons Inc.: 
Breast Cancer and the Politics 
of Philanthropy. Minneapolis: 
University of Minnesota Press, 
2006.
KAY R. EGINTON
The Breeze, Resting
Late summer wind, encouraging
 the phlox
The breeze rests
	 and	summer	music	fills	the	air.
Age, and the threat of tomorrow,
 diminishes somewhat
Perhaps this,
	 another	time	only,	not	the	end.
We know much has not
 been part of our experience
We nod and smile in an amiable way,
	 sometimes,	but	the	challenge	remains.
Music sublime paints the scene
 of late day
And	sunlight	on	flowers
	 illuminates	all	for	now.
The	flowers	nodding,	smiling	for	a	time.
Kay R. Eginton has published thee times with Canadian Woman Studies, 
2003, 2007and 2010. She also has published with Lyrical Iowa and self-published 
one volume, Poems, Penfield Press, 1981. Kay lives in Iowa City, Iowa.


The Breeze, Resting

Dunn, Katelan

Mothering the Third Wave

Bosset, Farideh de

162 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
on which it eventually consumes itself burning in its 
own heat. […] On the riverbanks of the Nile the legend 
is associated to the cycle of the sun, which dies at night 
to return in the morning […] For the ancient Egyptians 
death was only a passage towards another existence, a 
return to the primordial light and to eternal life. Here, 
however, it is death itself that bestows sense and reality 
to existence. 
3From Chernobyl, the Gulf War, Kossovo, and Pales-
tine…to what we eat and breathe. The list is synthetic 
but not random. 
4A coin was produced in 1987 for the exhibit Le Donne 
Ridono (Women Laugh) in Ferrara (Church of San Romano). 
The project, however, didn’t stop at the object: “Fusionality 
is the alchemy of every exchange where mediation is exactly 
the part that each one of us cedes to go to the other and 
hence to transform/be transformed. Convenient relation 
between thing and woman that embodies the exemplary 
model for all exchange because living interrelation between 
object and bodies that in reciprocity find the specific form 
of each own and each other’s sense. (That is to say that 
surplus-work and surplus-value are gifts and as such they 
should be launched into the social as the form of value due 
to woman and the authority of this “should” would have 
to be formally socialized so as to signify the mechanism 
without which there is no blossoming of the self ). The 
structure of language contains an authentic process of 
exchange: the social structure that takes advantage of 
this process is inherited from maternal speech, it lives of 
relations between the concrete and the abstract, capable 
of adaptation and constant creation. In the early learning 
processes of childhood, things, between subjects, become 
animated because the mother herself becomes thing for 
the other with the goodness of being born mortal through 
the loan of earth, air, stone, hands themselves become part 
of transformational play: this is something that remains 
on this side of all appearance because each death lives 
on if loved.” (See Marchionni, “L’immagine, il dono, il 
vivente” in Reddito e mutilazioni. Iniziativa a sostegno di 
Emergency, Teatro del Guerriero, Bologna May 5, 1995. 
Beatrix Archive) 
5The mystery texts of the goddesses that pertained to 
resurrection were buried between a yew and a myrtle as 
these two trees represented respectively the last vowel and 
the last consonant of the arboreal alphabet and were sacred 
to the Goddess of Death. In this alphabet, the pine was 
the tree of life, whereas the myrtle was the tree of death. 
(See Graves, Greek Myths, 50; 52.5) 
6In the metaphor of the sacred body there is the sacrifice 
of the woman who nurtures, the first nurturing body: the 
predatory orality of the child becomes the predatory oral-
ity of domination. This happens every time one removes 
the place where the event of a life that nurtures for “free” 
takes place. When there is no material counterpart to “pay” 
for such nurture, it is inevitable that natural categories of 
exploitation start to take hold. Because the “void” of this 
place of apparent “free” nurture becomes permeable to 
a multitude of virtuosos capable of manipulating trust, 
thanks to the simplicity of communication codes, which 
are of a chemical nature in ants, but in humans belong 
to the realm of advertising. On one level it was easy to 
intercept those codes, because they rely on the sequencing 
of simple stimuli. On another, however, it was also a source 
of weakness. The organism has lost its own instinct for 
survival and has adapted to the modifications imposed by 
the environment without a counterpart of resistance.
∗In Italian Marchionni plays with the signifier “partire” 
(“to depart”) inserting a bracket around the “r”: “pa(r)tire”. 
The word can be read thus also as “patire” (“to suffer”). 
[Translator’s note]
∗∗Marchionni writes: “tra/dire”, which can mean both 
“to betray” and to “speak between the lines”. There is 
also an echo of the famous Italian pun on the work of 
translation: “Traduttore/traditore” (translator/betrayer). 
An apt pun in this context, where the silent work of 
translation speaks between the lines of the text of the 
other. [Translator’s note]
∗∗∗Italian version of Ariadne. [Translator’s note]
∗∗∗The word for “god” in Italian is “dio,” which contains 
the word “io” (“I”) in it. Marchionni highlights the pres-
ence of the “I” within the word for “god” by putting a 
slash in the middle: “d/io.” [Translator’s note]
FARIDEH DE BOSSET
The Accent
The accent is the cadence
of syllables in the voice
like a blemish or a wart,
a birthmark,
acquired through life.
Or, inherited like an heirloom
to wear
or bear
like a second skin.
Farideh de Bosset’s poetry appears earlier in this 
volume.


The Accent

Rocca, Laura Duralija

Infertility in Women After Cancer: A Dangerous Metaphor, An Important Dialogue

Brooks, Carolyn

"I Just Didn't Tell Anybody What I Was Doing": Aboriginal Women Cancer Survivors Visualize Social Support

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.


Hummingbird

Cet article décrit le développement et les pratiques d’une campagne anti-viol chez les groupes de la base organisée par des étudiantes au programme d’études supérieurs en Études de la femme de l’Université York. Cet article discute la valeur de leur pratique en repensant à ce que veulent dire les mots sécurité, espace, et changement social

Ikeda, Naoko

Rosser, Emily

You Be Vigilant! Don't Rape! Reclaiming Space and Security at York University

Ogunyankin, Grace Adeniyi

VOLUME 28,  NUMBER 1 155
ers, and fosters the empowerment of 
women and the children they raise, 
continue to date. 
Kinser’s book Mothering in the Third 
Wave is a refreshing and startlingly ac-
curate anthology of the struggle and 
complexity of mothering in a third 
wave feminist era. In an effort to 
eliminate oppressive stereotypes of 
maternity that have often dominated 
feminist and mainstream discourse, 
Kinser and her contributors call for 
an examination of both the idealized 
maternal experience versus the real 
one, the accepted stereotypes of the 
good mother and the bad mother, 
and the meaning of the diversity in 
maternal behaviour, since the pro-
cess of mothering is complex, and is 
situated in social, psychological, and 
political realities. Kinser does not 
present the experience of motherhood 
through rose-coloured glasses; rather, 
she is aware of the complexities and 
ambiguity involved in being a mother 
in the twentieth century.
As highlighted by the contribu-
tors of this anthology, and by Kinser 
herself, there exists a kind of social 
limitation produced by a traditional 
understanding of gender identity and 
motherhood which dictates only one 
way to be a mother and to experi-
ence motherhood. This complicates 
the multiplicity of experiences of 
mothering and experiences that differ 
from the uniform social construct of 
motherhood, which is depicted as 
“ideal”. The greatest success of this 
book is its emphasis on women’s 
subjective, lived experiences, which 
cut across lines of race, ethnicity, 
class, and sexuality, and are placed 
at the centre of Kinser’s analysis. 
The essays include the experience 
of motherhood from the perspective 
of lesbian mothers in a heterosexist 
culture, minority mothers seeking to 
reconcile their mothering practices 
with their struggles against patriarchy, 
and mothers attempting to negotiate 
their maternity with their feminist 
beliefs, to name but a few.
The only weakness of Mothering in 
the Third Wave is that the majority of 
the contributors to the anthology are 
mothers in the academy. Narratives 
of working-class mothers forced to 
negotiate the challenges of mother-
hood and the labour force, or Third 
world women who have left their 
own families to raise the children 
of Western men and women in an 
attempt to gain citizenship would 
have enhanced the collection.
Kinser combines the academic 
with the narrative, making Mother-
ing in the Third Wave accessible to 
a broad audience and of interest to 
students, scholars, and those moth-
ering in the 21st century, whether or 
not they identify as feminist mothers. 
Ultimately, Mothering in the Third 
Wave provides a space from which to 
explore what (feminist) mothers are 
currently struggling with, allowing 
women to reflect on their own moth-
ering practices. It helps us to imagine 
mothering as not only a practice with 
the ability to empower the women 
who engage in it, but also as a socially 
and politically relevant endeavour 
that has yet to be valued, supported, 
and appreciated as important and 
significant, and recognized as work 
that is transformative, and socially, as 
well as culturally, sustaining. 
Katelan Dunn is currently a Ph.D. 
student in the department of Sociology 
at McMaster University in Hamilton, 
Ontario. Her research interests include 
social inequality, gender, sexuality, im-
migration, and queer theory. 
afRican women’s 
movements: 
changing 
political 
landscapes
Aili Mari Tripp, Isabel Casimiro, Joy 
Kwesiga, Alice Mungwa
New York: Cambridge University 
Press, 2009
reviewed by grace 
adeniyi ogunyankin
African Women’s Movements, a collab-
orative work by four scholar-activists, 
provides a comprehensive analysis 
of African women’s movements 
in the 1990s and the consequent 
impacts on national politics and the 
entrenchment of women’s rights 
in sub-Saharan Africa. Backed by 
primary fieldwork, analysis of media 
reports, and secondary literature re-
view, the authors explore the factors 
behind women’s visibility in politics 
and unprecedented role in effecting 
policy changes, and also examine 
why some countries have advanced 
women’s rights while others have not. 
Though the authors provide adequate 
and comparative evidence from major 
countries in Africa, they particularly 
focus on comparative case studies 
of Cameroon, Mozambique, and 
Uganda due to similarities in Gross 
Domestic Product and high preva-
lence of women’s movements and 
different colonial histories.
The authors first highlight the 
influences of African women’s pre-
colonial traditions and strategies as 
well as involvement in anti-colonial 
and national liberation struggles on 
African women’s movements in the 
1990s. They next examine the inef-
fectiveness of women’s postcolonial 
organizations in addressing women’s 
rights. Prior to the 1990s, women’s 
organizations were not autonomous 
and were subsumed under umbrella 
women’s organizations, often tied to 
and funded by the ruling party. How-
ever, in the 1990s, new autonomous 
women’s movements emerged with 
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME156
politicized agendas and contributed 
enormously to constitutional reforms 
and legislative changes. Three key 
factors led to the rise of new women’s 
movements: 1) influence of interna-
tional norms and ideas pertaining to 
women’s rights; 2) political liberaliza-
tion and democratization; and 3) 
access to alternative funding sources 
such as international donors. 
The authors assert that a thriving 
and politicized women’s movement 
is insufficient for the successful 
entrenchment of women’s rights. 
Rather, countries that pass legisla-
tions safeguarding women’s rights ex-
hibit the following patterns: 1) active 
autonomous women’s movements; 2) 
openness to changing international 
norms regarding women’s rights and 
representation; 3) availability and 
deployment of resources to advance 
women; and 4) the opening of new 
opportunities as a result of a major 
upheaval, such as the end of conflict. 
For example, Cameroon, Mali, and 
Kenya have encountered challenges 
in the legislative process in com-
parison to post-conflict Uganda and 
Mozambique that have implemented 
constitutional changes. 
Even in countries that have been 
open to change, not all proposed 
legislative changes by women’s or-
ganizations are embraced. Proposals 
that have received the most resistance 
often challenge traditional customs, 
family relations, and gender relations. 
The recent August 2009 mass protests 
in Mali against a new family code 
promoting women’s marriage and 
inheritance rights comes to mind as 
a perfect case in point. 
 The authors provide an illumi-
nating discussion on the challenges 
that women’s movements face such 
as government attempts to restrain 
autonomy and voice as well as ex-
pectations that demand for equality 
and rights will be limited to particular 
aspects of societies rather than cross-
cutting issues. Another challenge 
that the authors discuss is public 
misperception about acquisition 
of assets as a result of donor funds 
instead of utilizing the money to 
address the issues of the community 
and less privileged. I believe they 
have glossed over this issue by offer-
ing the explanation: “Because of the 
general deprivation of society, this 
(mis)perception is more strongly 
felt in Africa than in other parts of 
the world.” I think that they should 
have addressed the possibilities of this 
being true and the cases in which it 
has happened rather than brush off 
critics’ often legitimate perceptions 
as “(mis)perceptions”. They should 
have further broached an honest 
discussion on how to minimize this 
“(mis)perception” and create more 
transparency and accountability to 
the community. 
African women’s movements were 
optimistically characterized as orga-
nized across ethnic, clan, religious, 
and rural-urban divides while the 
authors failed to question possible 
class and power relations that may 
pervade women’s organizations. Also, 
there is a disproportionate focus on 
women politicians and rights activists 
whereas other women’s organizations 
that are more informal and/or with 
less opportunities to influence policy 
and legislation were submerged. 
More disconcertingly, the authors, 
whether intentionally or uninten-
tionally, essentialize African women 
and fail to sufficiently demonstrate 
that there may be conflicting interests 
and definitions of women’s rights 
among women. To exemplify, I recall 
that while many women’s rights activ-
ists promoted the proposed family 
code reform in Mali, there were some 
women’s organizations that were 
concomitantly protesting it. 
Despite the above criticisms, Af-
rican Women’s Movements presents 
an unparalleled and much needed 
comparative analysis of politics, 
gender, and women’s movements in 
sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, I 
like that the authors note that African 
women’s movements are not only 
influenced by international norms, 
but also contribute to the creation of 
international norms. This book ad-
dresses any misconstrued notion that 
African women have limited agency 
and that African women’s movements 
are a byproduct of feminist move-
ments in the North. 
Grace Adeniyi Ogunyankin is a Ph.D. 
candidate in Women’s Studies at York 
University. Her research interests are in 
the areas of: gender and development 
planning, women’s reproductive health 
and policies in Nigeria, women’s politi-
cal movements in Africa, and African 
feminisms.
gloBalization, 
pRostitution and 
sex-tRafficKing: 
coRpoReal 
politics
Elina Penttinen
London: Routledge, 2008
reviewed by leeann 
townsend
I was quite intrigued by the project 
that Elina Penttinen endeavoured 
to carry out in her book. Through 
an examination of sexual commerce 
in Finland and Russia, the author 
proposed to do the following: to 
question what sorts of subjectivities 
and agency are produced by global-
ization; to ascertain how globaliza-
tion is embodied and enacted in 
everyday life; to write feminist ir, 
an alternative to traditional main-
stream/male-stream academic ir; and 
decentre positivist research methods 
by conducting an ethnography of sex 
bars and foregrounding the narratives 
of the women who work in them. 
This all sounded rather promising 
and potentially useful for studies of 
international relations, globalization, 
and sex work and having practical 
implications for feminist praxis and 
methodology. After reading through 
the text, however, I am not convinced 
that the author fulfills these goals.
In the first three chapters, Penttin-
en draws on theorists such as Judith 


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