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

Sudderth, Lori K.

Leisring, Penny A.

Bronson, Eric F.

If They Don't Tell Us, It Never Happened: Disclosure of Experiences of Intimate Violence

Litovitz, Malca

70 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
Media and Representation in Re-
search. London: Sage, 2001. 
Poudrier, J. and R. Thomas-Mac-
Lean. “We’ve Fallen into the 
Cracks: Aboriginal Women’s Expe-
riences of Breast Cancer Through 
Photovoice.” (2009). Nursing In-
quiry 16 (4) (2009): 306-317.
Thomas-MacLean, R., J. Poudrier 
and C. Brooks. “Envisioning the 
Future with Young Aboriginal 
Breast Cancer Survivors.” Atlan-
tis: A Women’s Studies Journal 33 
(1) (2008): 59-71.
Wilkinson, S. “Breast Cancer: Lived 
Experience and Feminist Ac-
tion.” Women’s Health in Canada: 
Critical Perspectives on Theory and 
Policy. Eds. M. Morrow, O. Han-
kivsky and C. Varcoe. Toronto: 
University of Toronto Press, 2007. 
124-141.
Whanau Kawa Whakaruruha. Cul-
tural Safety Hut of the Whanau 
Kawa Whakarururbau. Apumo-
ana Marae. Rotorua. Palmerston 
North, New Zealand: psi Solu-
tions, 1991. 
Wood, P. and M. Schwass. “Cultural 
Safety: A Framework for Chang-
ing Attitudes.” Nursing Praxis 8 
(3) (1993): 4-15. 
MALCA LITOVITZ
What I’d Like to Hear
ILONA MARTONFI
The Black Box
Tell me healing stories under the tree.  
Let me sit at your feet and know 
that all shall be well. 
Look into my eyes as you speak
and see vastness mirrored there -
sky and earth.
Let me heal at your feet
receiving gifts and blessings.
Fill my bag with wisdom
and practices to still me.
Let me see enchantment
in the trembling leaves
and hope in the October sky.
Marlca Litovitz’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
 
Gazette Extra: Death from the sky: War on America!
Eerie silence in downtown Montreal:
Hijackers crash a plane into the World Trade towers 
— one hundred floors crumble. I watch it on television.
People are on alert. They huddle in small, silent groups.
I am thinking about my youngest daughter in 
San Francisco, thousands of miles away.
Eldest sister Erna in Los Angeles — 
“I don’t have space for this,” I tell my son.
“I am dealing with something bigger. My mother.”
”l will have the mastectomy September 17,” she said.
“I am not feeling well. I am tired.”
Ilona Martonfi’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
NEW FROM INANNA 
fall 2010 
essential resources for 
the feminist reader
www.yorku.ca/inanna


English

What I'd Like to Hear

Day, Holly

140 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
Juror Ratings of Guilt in Canada: Modern Racism and 
Ethnic Heritage.” Social Behavior and Personality 31 (3) 
(2003): 301-312.
Pinnuck, Francine and Shannon Dowling. “The Gendered 
and Racialized Space within Australian Prisons.” 
Gender Nonconformity, Race and Sexuality: Charting 
the Connections. Ed. Toni Lester. Madison: University 
of Wisconsin Press, 2002: 44-61. 
Ringrose, Jessica. “A New Universal Mean Girl: Examining 
the Discursive Construction and Social Regulation of 
a New Feminine Pathology.” Feminism and Psychology 
16 (4): 405-424. 
Julian Roberts and Anthony Doob. “Race, Ethnicity 
and Criminal Justice in Canada.” Ethnicity, Crime, 
and Immigration: Comparative and Cross-National 
Perspectives. Ed.  Michael Tonry. University of Chicago 
Press, 1997:  469-522.
Sullivan, Shannon. Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious 
Habits of Racial Privilege. Bloomington: Indiana 
University Press. 2006. 
Vopni, Vicki. “Young Women’s Experiences with Reporting 
Sexual Assault to Police.” Canadian Woman Studies/les 
cahiers de la femme 25 (1,2) (Winter/Spring 2006): 
107-114.
ADRICK BROCK 
YOUR WIFE, THE MECHANIC
HOLLY DAY
A WOMAN’s PLACE 
You are husband to a mechanic
your wife wears black grease gloves
home from the garage
Any time there are roadside automobiles
   she stops
the family vacation to apply her woman’s eye 
to a burnt out radiator   ruptured fan belt 
impotent spark plug 
She smiles from under the hood
at the clueless man unable to admit
gratitude for fear of emasculation
Your wife, the over-alled bride
twelve pistons firing like warheads
every time a customer refuses service
denounces her expertise   says Shouldn’t
 you be mending sweaters, babe?
Your wife, placing the trust of all good men 
   in a single kiss
you share in the door frame
when evening has released her
from the underbellies of cars
We will not be broken by their old opinions
she says Kiss me like a human, 
     honey
I work with machines precisely because
they let me exist outside of them
Adrick Brock is a Creative Writing student at the 
University of British Columbia. He is also a Gender 
Studies minor and hopes to see more men in the 
Classroom alongside him.
You say a woman’s place
is barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
I say a woman belongs
propped up on a fluffy pillow
with plenty of filled chocolates
near her side.
I say a woman’s place
is in a canopy bed
fulfilling every fantasy she has
with whomever she wishes.
A woman’s place
has room enough
for two.
Holly Day is a journalism instructor living in 
Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband and two 
children. Her poetry has most recently appeared in 
Bottle, The MacGuffin, and Not One of Us.


A Woman's Place

Torwl, Meg

VOLUME 28, NUMBERS 2,3 143
La poésie et la prose de Meg Torwl étudient l’expérience du 
cancer à travers des considérations sur le genre, sur la sexualité, 
sur la sensualité, sur l’infirmité, sur l’âge, sur l’environnement, 
sur la société et sur les traitements alternatifs.
When you can name what people fear it no longer controls 
you. When you can laugh about it, you stop being so angry. 
I go to a support group for young women with cancer. In 
the world of cancer that’s anyone under 50! Who knew I 
would find myself in my 30s, admiring straight women’s 
breast implants, and celebrating the return of their post-
cancer-treatment hormones, periods, and with it their child-
making potential. About hormones, did you know someone 
did this study where they made men wear estrogen patches 
and then do math, and public speaking? Seriously, this is for 
real! What do you think happened? They did really badly. 
Now don’t go freaking out on me. I am the last person to 
imply women can’t be astrophysicists or politicians because 
of hormones, let’s not even go there, we know we can do it. 
We just have our days when it requires a little more effort 
than others not to snap our co-workers’ pencils. (You can 
take that any way you like.) 
Just in case you are wondering, and you are wondering, 
I still have my breasts. Sometimes I wear my pink breast 
cancer survivor bracelet. It seems innocent enough at 
first; so mutants can identify each other. That’s what we 
are you know, our genes mutated. The cells divide and 
1 makes 2, except one day 1 makes 37 and a half, and 
then you’re in trouble. Something to do with hormones 
and math apparently. Remain calm, there is no proof 
hormones give you cancer, but once the math is wrong 
and it’s 37 and a half, the hormones can get involved in 
kind of exponential algebra, and all havoc breaks loose. 
You, the others, those with no genetic or environmentally- 
induced mutations, I am going to call “the un-mutated”. 
So all the while you are running in the opposite direction 
out of fear, or offering my job to someone else in case I 
die, or not dating me because I’m bound to die. I can 
Cancer Comedy
Would You Like Hormones With That? 
meg torwl
feel some small satisfaction that I belong to this exclusive 
club of mutants, and you, don’t. I have decided to risk 
employment or getting a date again, and come out as the 
young and the mutated! 
m.e. The Unglamorous 
I thought cancer was going be different. I thought cancer 
was going be one of those popular diseases, finally; not 
like the obscure unglamorous disease Ialready have. The 
one that no one is going to give bus fare for, never mind 
“walk for the cure.” Walk for the cure, hell this disease 
doesn’t even have a test! The ones like m.e.—which cru-
elly for the brain challenged is impossible to pronounce 
and spell—Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Or, as it’s called 
in North America, and only in North America because 
everything is just a bit special here, cfids that’s Chronic 
Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome. The syn-
drome doctors either don’t know about, don’t believe exists, 
have no tests for, nor treatments, and generally have no 
idea what to do about. Kind of like before ms, or hiv/aids 
and the like, got nailed down. The syndrome I have to 
print out the World Health Authorities’ 1993 definition 
from the world wide web, and give it to doctors so they 
will know it is a real illness. In the usa one study found 
m.e. is eight times more common in women than breast 
cancer, and 17 times more common than aids. We do 
have out own day, May 12, and our own ribbon. It’s blue 
and not as popular as the pink bracelet, but nevertheless 
cute in its own right. No one wants to be our allies and 
wear the blue ribbon though. We can be tired and grumpy, 
ungrateful, and worst of all, we probably won’t get better, 
and it might not kill us either. 
Cancer the Glamorous
I thought when I got one of these more glamorous diseases 
like cancer, I would get much better attention from the 
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.


Cancer Comedy: Would You Like Hormones With That?

Ritchie, Marlene

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME154
children in directions she never her-
self arrived at. She only/ navigated 
and travelled the seven windows of 
the house, and the two/ doorways.” 
Brand is wise enough not to explain 
the paradox: the question of being an-
chored and poor and a woman, versus 
being unmoored and incoherent with 
possibilities. Both options have their 
problems and their benefits. 
Fierce Departures functions as a 
showcase for Dionne Brand’s consid-
erable gifts, and provides a delightful 
introduction to her range, her pre-
occupations and her unforgettable 
sound. Read this collection if you 
would like to understand why she 
has won so many awards, and how 
well she has earned her position as 
Poet Laureate for Toronto. 
*Galloway, Matt. Interview with 
Dionne rand. Here and Now. cb-
cRadio One, Toronto, September 
30, 2009.
Elaine Jackson is a writer, yoga teacher, 
and juggler of part-time occupational 
therapy contracts who dreams of some-
day being as poetically talented as Di-
onne Brand. She lives north of Mount 
Albert, Ontario—pretty much in the 
middle of a swamp.
ButteRflY teaRs
Zoë S. Roy
Toronto: Inanna Publications and 
Education, Inc., 2009
reviewed by marlene 
ritchie
The themes in Zoë S. Roy’s first 
collection of fifteen short stories, 
Butterfly Tears, are universal. They 
explore whether our lives are pre-
destined and, if not, whether we are 
free and have the courage to better 
them. This exploration differs from 
the usual, because the life questions 
are explored through fictitious nar-
ratives depicting Chinese women 
living in China, or as immigrants to 
the United States and Canada, and 
they relate to life between 1934 and 
1996. All but one of Roy’s stories 
are told solely or in part by Chinese 
women with a particular focus on the 
status of these women as influenced 
by history, culture, and education. 
The plots are about relationships 
and are realistically set in the Chinese 
countryside and small apartments or 
in North American cities. Characters 
take on reality as they engage in daily 
life. The players could be Western 
women except for the fact that these 
women are bound by upbringing and 
memories to their homeland. We are 
persistently reminded of this tie in 
dreams and flashbacks. “Yearning,” 
“Twin Rivers,” “A Mandarin Duck,” 
“Gingko,” and “Life Insurance” ex-
plore the theme of women’s search 
and expectation that each woman will 
find the security of a “Mr. Right.” “A 
Woman in China,” and “Noodles” 
reflect on the teachings of Confu-
cius prevalent in Chinese society, 
where the woman is to subjugate 
her wishes to those of her father and 
then to her husband. “Frog Fish-
ing,” “Ten Yuan,” and “Balloons” 
are stories about patriotism and the 
lives of people during the Cultural 
Revolution, and about the realiza-
tion by some people of their lack of 
freedom. Though uncovering family 
secrets often figures in the plots, this 
is the focus in “Fortune Telling” and 
“Wild Onions.” In the latter story the 
woman comes to understand why her 
family members were labelled as “evil 
people.” In the tales “Herbs” and 
“Jing and the Caterpillar” women 
with unusual courage chart new 
paths. The first story, “Butterfly 
Tears,” sets the tender, reflective tone 
of the book. While the protagonist 
Sunni hears a familiar melody on 
the radio, “she sinks into the music’s 
sweetness as the memories it triggered 
played in her mind.” She sees herself 
as a child again, questioning her 
grandmother about love and life and 
pondering her present relationship 
with her husband. She is reminded 
of Grandmother’s story about Liang 
and Zhu: forbidden to be lovers, 
they soar together as butterflies in 
the afterlife. Nostalgia, tears, hope, 
and resolve come to the fore in Roy’s 
stories, and we are led to weigh the 
course of our own lives. 
Marlene Ritchie is a Toronto freelance 
writer. Her essays and stories are 
inspired by her family experiences, 
nurses’ training, years of teaching in 
Japan and China and being a partner 
in the auction business. She is on the 
Advisory Board for Child Research 
Net, a journal dealing with issues 
involving children.
motheRing in the 
thiRd wave
Amber E. Kinser, Ed.
Toronto: Demeter Press, 2008
reviewed by katelan 
dunn
Analyses of mothering tend to gener-
ate diverse reactions and elicit power-
ful responses. Despite the burgeoning 
literature that exists on motherhood 
and mothering, the same debates sur-
rounding the value of motherhood, 
the nurturance of family, and the 
possibility of mothering as a form 
of activism which promotes, deliv-


Butterfly Tears

Mills, Shereen W.

Consent and Coercion in the Law of Rape in South Africa: A Feminist Transformative Approach

52 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
Professionals. The Jeanie Schottenstein Center for 
Advanced Torah Study for Women, n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 
2008. <http://www.jewishwomenshealth.org/article.
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Association	of	Black	Nursing	Faculty Journal	15.1 (2004): 
15-21. Web. 29 Sept. 2009.
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Betancourt. What	to	Do	if	You	Get	Breast	Cancer. New 
York: Little, Brown & Co., 1995. Print. 
Kraus-Tiefenbacher, Uta, et al. “Intraoperative 
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Langellier, Kristin M. “You’re Marked: Breast Cancer, 
Tattoo, and the Narrative Performance of Identity.” 
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Culture. Eds. Jens Brockmeier and Donal Carbaugh. 
Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2001. 
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Millsted, Rachel and Hannah Frith. “Being Large-breasted: 
Women Negotiating Embodiment.” Women’s	 Studies	
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Mosher, Catherine E. and Sharon Danoff-Burg. “A Review 
of Age Differences in Pscyhological Adjustment to Breast 
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101-14. Web. 31 Oct. 2008.
Pozo, Christina, et al. “Effects of Mastectomy Versus 
Lumpectomy on Emotional Adjustment to Breast 
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1292-8. Web. 10 May 2009.
Probst, H. et al. “An Evaluation of the Accuracy of Semi-
permanent Skin Marks for Breast Cancer Irradiation.” 
Radiography	12.3 (2006): 186-8. Web. 30 Oct. 2008.
Radley, Alan and Susan E. Bell. “Artworks, Collective 
Experience and Claims for Social Justice: The Case of 
Women Living with Breast Cancer.” Sociology	of	Health	
and	Illness	29.3 (2007): 366-90. Web. 3 Oct 2008.
Reinharz, Shulamit and Lynn Davidman. Feminist	Methods	
in	Social	Research. New York: Oxford University Press, 
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Roussi, Pagona et al. “Patterns of Coping, Flexibility in 
Coping and Psychological Distress in Women Diagnosed 
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Schöpfel, Joachim and Dominic J. Farace. “Grey 
Literature.” Encyclopedia	Of	Library	And	Information	
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Niles Maack. New York: Crc Press, 2004. 2020-39.
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Siekkinen, M., et al. “Quality of Care Experienced by 
Finnish Cancer Patients during Radiotherapy.” European	
Journal	 of	Cancer	Care	17 (2008): 387-93. Web. 31 
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Spear, Scott L. and Joanna Arias. “Long-term Experience 
with Nipple-areola Tattooing.” Annals	of	Plastic	Surgery	
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Thomas-MacLean, Roanne. “Memories of Treatment: 
The Immediacy of Breast Cancer.” Qualitative	Health	
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Role for Preference Assessments in Research on Quality 
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Take me back to white curtains
blowing in a fresh wind —
a Flower Power poster
with coils of snakes around its head.
Autumn leaves hang brown now on 
branches,
but traces of white whimsy live in my 
soul.  
MALCA LITOVITZ
Whimsy
Malca Litovitz was an award-winning Canadian 
poet, highly respected professor of English literature 
and creative writing, editor and critic. Though no 
longer with us, her indomitable spirit, energy and 
courage live on in the memories of the many people 
who knew her—Malca’s inner, reflective soul residing 
forever in her calm, lyrical poems.


Whimsy

Karpsinki, Eva C.

Cancer Publics: The Private/Public Split in Breast Cancer Memoir

Caron, Brittaney

Clarke, Alyssa

Redford, Melanie

VOLUME 28, NUMBER 1 43
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tion) May 23, 2008. Online: 
<http://Excal.On.Ca/Cms2/ 
Index2.Php?Opt ion=Com_
Content&Do_Pdf=1&Id=60 
60>. Accessed May 28 2009.
York University Security Service. 
“Campus Alert: Sexual Assault.” 
Sept. 8, 2007. Online: http://www.
Yorku.Ca/Security/Campusalerts/
Sexualassault-8sept07-Revised.
Pdf>. Accessed May 30, 2009. 
Three years after the activities in the 
preceeding article took place, the 
culture of violence at York Univer-
sity persists. According to an article 
in York’s student newspaper, Excali-
bur, dated September 23rd, 2009, 
“Since January 2007, there have 
been 15 reported sexual assaults 
and 10 reported assaults causing 
bodily harm on campus, according 
to York security logs. Campus alerts 
have been issued for only 20 per-
cent of them” (Birukova). Another 
assault was then reported in Bet-
hune residence on November 19, 
2009 (Kwan). A few months later, 
on April 21, 2010, a woman, a York 
community member, was raped by 
three men just outside of the York 
campus. This sexual assault became 
the “straw that broke the camel’s 
back” for student feminist activists. 
Sexual assault is a problem for many 
university campuses, and York, like 
many other universities, seems to 
have fallen short of developing ef-
fective preventative measures, and 
adequate response and security. This 
indicates what might be perceived 
as an overall indifference on the part 
of the administration to the severity 
and impact of sexual assault for the 
entire student body, as well as for 
teachers and staff members.
Following this last attack, a group 
of students of which we were part, 
decided to mobilize. On an evening 
in May of this year a coalition of York 
students and non-York allies assem-
bled and organized an event that had 
multiple goals. Like other feminist, 
anti-racist, anti-oppression students 
before us, we sought to provide safe 
walks home from the campus (given 
by volunteers in teams of two), and 
to inform students about the culture 
of violence that we perceive as being 
indirectly perpetuated by the admin-
istration. We took to the campus to 
occupy space, to show the administra-
tion that students have a voice that 
will not be silenced, to protest that 
our tuition fees are not being put to 
proper use, and to make it clear that 
our sisters (and brothers) who have 
been directly and indirectly affected 
by sexual violence have our support. 
We wanted to show that rape is not 
simply something women should be 
Post Script from York U
brittaney caron, alyssa teekah and melanie redford


Post Script from York U

Thomas-MacLean, Roanne

Unravelling the Ribbon: Learning About Breast Cancer Through Poetic Transcription

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