Iowa Journal of Literary Studies

Herbst, Nikki

THE LOAN—upon viewing Jeune fille au chat (Girl 
with a Cat) by Pierre-August Renior
Nikki Herbst
She read her poem
the first real words between us
all the time before measured in near misses, we
almost
listened (same line)
came close to speech. She looked at the girl and the 
cat
in the painting, then at me.
Let us measure the time from one veering off to the 
next
from her meaning to my meaning 
and back to hers 
and mine again.
That time in its jagged line, was it wasted?
The time between the artist’s glance and the 
rendering
of the cat’s parallel paws, empty?
Or could it be borrowed
might I have drawn nearer to her
while the image of the tufted red chair and the
striped
socks (same line)
the rough blue skirt, drooping white blouse 
and dark eyebrows warped prettily 
in the artist’s mind?
And could the painter have added a bit of pink to
the white shoulder
while she and I made small talk?
136


English

The Loan—upon viewing Jeune fille au chat (Girl with a Cat) by Pierre-August Renoir

Araas-Vesely, Suzanne


INTERVIEW WITH N. KATHERINE 
HAYLES
Suzanne Araas-Vesely
KATHERINE HAYLES H a s  unusual credentials for a literary scholar and 
critic. She has a master’s degree in Chemistry from the California 
Institute of Technology (1969). She has taught literature at Dart­
mouth College, the California Institute of Technology, and the 
University of Missouri-Rolla. In 1985 she came to the University of 
Iowa, where she has been awarded a faculty scholarship, 1986-89. She 
has made presentations at numerous conferences, has written articles 
on subjects ranging from Renaissance drama to modern fiction, and is 
the author of one book, The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and 
Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century, and two forthcoming studies, 
including Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and 
Science, due out the first of next year. In 1991 she will take over the 
presidency of the Society for Literature and Science.
Kate, could you acquaint our readers with your field and why it may be 
important to the study of literature and language ?
The first thing I notice about this question is that it’s phrased in the 
singular. The Cosmic Web was not so much about a single field, as about 
a field as an interactive relationship between subject and object. There 
are, for example, any number of physical fields one could talk 
about—the dynamic field, quantum mechanical field, and so forth— 
but the field as a concept has as its core the denial of the strict 
separation of subject and object. It’s in this sense that it’s important to 
range literature and language alongside field theories, because liter­
ature and language are central to the relationship between subject and 
object.
In your book The Cosmic Web you mention the 1979 article by Evelyn 
Keller, “The Cognitive Repression in Contemporary Physics,” which suggests 
that sexist assumptions on the part of mostly male contemporary physicists,
1
especially as they are linked to the belief in the world occupied by subjects and 
objects, is a barrier to creating a completely successful unified field model. Has 
there been any type of unified field theory developed since you wrote your book 
that has overcome the subject-object dichotomy ? Is it still, as you were saying, 
just a set of fields rather than a single field ?
There has been progress on various technical and scientific fronts. For 
example, super-string theory is now calling for a radical revision of the 
components of reality conceptualized by classical physics. Instead of 
four dimensions, super-string theory envisions anywhere from ten to 
twenty-four. In the case of ten dimensions, six of them are so tightly 
curled that only four can be seen. Super-string theory thus expands 
the vision of an interactive relationship implicit in early field theories. 
But when you speak about overcoming subject-object dichotomy, 
you’re obviously talking about more than scientific paradigms or 
theories. You’re talking about people’s relationships with other peo­
ple, to the world around them, and so forth. And this is such a 
complex question, reinforced by culture, language, institutions, that I 
don’t think there’s any possibility that a scientific theory of any kind 
could overcome them. What one could expect is an incremental 
difference in how we relate to the world around us, and in how we 
conceptualize that relation. But I don’t think it’s something that’s 
going to achieve any one final form.
If the subject-object dichotomy is still a conceptual problem for scientists, what 
role does the literature need to play in fulfilling the end of science, maybe using 
“end” in a double sense ?
That’s a very complex question. It’s easy to point to literary works that 
have been influenced by science, but it’s very difficult to point to 
scientific works that have been overtly influenced by literature. To the 
extent that influence goes from literature to science, I think it does so 
in the ways that Gillian Beard describes, through narrative structures 
that are embedded within scientific discourse. For example, any 
scientific model that traces behavior through time could potentially 
constitute a narrative. Similarly, syntactic patterns, semantic usages, 
and metaphoric linkages also enter into scientific writing. So there is 
this indirect kind of influence from literature. To the extent that 
twentieth-century literature, especially, has been responsive to imag­
ining different ways of being, it does in fact play a role in fulfilling the 
end of science.
I think it's an exciting possibility. And I ’m also wondering how many
2
contemporary physicists read Pynchon’s work? Of course, that guiding role of 
literature might be a matrix type of role rather than, as you said, depending on 
direct influence. Do you think that the model of what you call a “cultural 
matrix” would require Whitehead’s “climate of opinion” to be in place before, 
say, Einstein’s and Saussure’s independent efforts could both suggest a relation 
of field models? Or can an individual apprehend a physical-cultural matrix?
Individual creative acts spring from the interaction between an 
individual’s sensibility and the cultural climate in which that individual 
works. When an individual vision is very idiosyncratic or very strongly 
motivated internally, it’s quite possible that a vision can emerge that 
works at cross-purposes with the prevailing cultural climate. A good 
example, I think, would be William Blake.
Yes. He is still interacting with the cultural matrix around him, but there seems 
to be a lot that is unusual; the alternative representations of what passes for 
truth in the text by the illustrations force the reader to keep questioning her or 
his assumptions. Blake seems almost modern in that respect; you don’t dare 
ignore anything.
Yes. Strong evidence for the effect of culture on all kinds of creative 
acts is demonstrated by the fact that important scientific discoveries 
are often made simultaneously, or nearly so, in widely separated sites. 
And this happens between science and other areas as well. Art, 
literature, theology, philosophy, very often manifest important corre­
lations with one another. And the most compelling explanation for 
this phenomenon is cultural.
To change the subject, I ’m wondering how much the study of earlier literature 
such as eighteenth-century British, for example, really even very early modern, 
can profit from a “field” approach that is only spoken of and thought of in our 
cultural matrix. How unified can this field of literature be with regard to the 
metaphor of the unified field?
I think that’s a really important question, and it’s one that I come back 
to again and again, without arriving at any easy resolution to it. At the 
moment, what most satisfies me is to say that similar concepts can and 
do occur to thinkers in any period. But that if there are not enough 
other people thinking along the same lines, if the idea is not strongly 
reinforced in the culture, then it is not likely to enter into the cultural 
mainstream and to become part of its tradition.-It exists, it may even 
endure because of individual genius, but it will not have the same kind 
of effect as when a cultural moment is right for crystallization to occur.
3
It almost sounds like you’re talking about layers of creation or reality or time, 
you know, like rings on a tree, or better yet, exchanges between neurotrans­
mitters in a living organism.
There’s definitely a feedback loop, I think, between the individual 
creative act and the cultural context. The culture no doubt influences 
the individual creative act; and individual creative acts also enter into 
and influence the culture as a whole.
This feeds into my interest in earlier centuries because it seems to justify keeping 
some sense of the canon from an earlier age, not necessarily insisting on what 
ingredients should be in there but, more importantly, what insights are related 
to ours or even ahead of ours.
Exactly. We can see threads of rich anticipation. I don’t deny that 
those are really there, but I also don’t deny that it’s our particular 
cultural movement which focuses our attention upon them. I see 
literary works as variegated tapestries out of which many patterns and 
threads could be followed. What a particular time chooses to focus on 
reflects a particular cultural moment. The full tapestry is the result of 
complex interactions between individual sensibilities, the traditions in 
which works evolve, and the cultural context that energizes some 
concerns and not others.
In your section on science, you mentioned that there are inevitable indetermin- 
icies, even in mathematics, such that the concept that an absolutely pure 
mathematics in which everything is proven is no more tenable than the 
positivist’s attempt to create an unambiguous scientific language. Do you think 
that a change in the way scientists write would be good or feasible at this time? 
And if so, what kind of writing would best be able to articulate a unified field ? 
I sometimes have thought scientists ought to be required to present their theories 
as plays or musicals and perform them in conferences.
[Laughs.] I love the idea of performing physical theory as a musical or 
play; that’s a wonderful idea that people in the biology department 
here are actually working upon, setting chaotic data to music so that 
the ear, with its sophisticated processing, can discern patterns too 
subtle or complex for mathematical analysis. W hether scientists 
should write differently very much depends upon the audience and 
context. There’s no question that the conventions of scientific writing 
embody presuppositions that most people working in the genre are 
not aware of. Moreover, these presuppositions sometimes work
4
against the conceptual content of the articles. The question of what 
conventions and modes of writing best fit specific purposes within 
disciplines seems to me complex. I don’t know that someone from 
another discipline ought to impose his or her ideas about what “good” 
writing is, at least not without looking carefully at the disciplinary 
context for the discourse. Having said that, I would add that scientific 
writing as a mode of discourse strongly reinforces the idea of the 
subject-object split. If we wanted to create a mode of discourse that 
would attempt to overcome the subject-object dichotomy, it would be 
necessary to think deeply about how the presupposition of objectivity 
is embodied within scientific writing.
You have just defined the problem with science, if I understand you correctly, 
as a problem with how language is perceived: because language is a tool of 
observation within the field, like any other tool of science it purports to describe 
what it is immersed in and ends up referring back to itself Here science begins 
to look more like literature, at least like contemporary literature. In The 
Cosmic Web you remind us of the isomorphism of the history of scientific and 
literary questions that Derrida spoke of in O f Grammatology, but for you it 
is most rooted in Descartes where Derrida finds the root primarily in Kant. It 
seems as if there can be more than one cultural matrix in an age, more than one 
cosmic web.
You’re touching here on an aspect of my first book that I try to go 
beyond. In The Cosmic Web I hypothesized a cultural matrix without 
really looking at what it meant or how it works. In my second book, 
Chaos Bound, I’ve tried to go more deeply into the questions and, at the 
same time, to pose a more complex model for how interactions 
between disciplinary inquiries and cultural institutions take place. 
You’re quite right to suggest that it’s too simple to think of one 
cultural matrix in an age, because clearly culture is highly fissured and 
stratified, not by any means homogeneous or monolithic.
In Cosmic Web there was a phrase, ''speaking from within the field. ” To my 
way of thinking, that's a most important concept, because it explains the shift in 
writing that has brought the self-referential nature of language into focus. But 
if all language is part of a field, oughtn't any writing be able to speak this self- 
referentiality, as Barthes demonstrates in the case of Balzac's “Sarrasine?"
That goes back to what I was saying earlier about literary works being 
rich tapestries in which various epochs choose to follow some threads 
over others. For example, self-referentiality was not invented in the 
twentieth century. Midsummer Night's Dream is a case in point. What’s
5
different about reflexive writing in the twentieth century is its strong 
reinforcement by other strands within culture, so it comes to have a 
prominence that earlier reflexive writing did not.
This “speaking from within the field,” just to press a little bit further . . . 
Barthes uses a similar expression when he says “the text speaks itself " When 
you were speaking at the University of Iowa conference on Creativity and 
Research on March 7th, 1989, you spoke of your best creative moments as a 
collaboration with a “submerged voice" which tells you “what you didn't know 
you knew. " Is this “speakingfrom within the field?" It also interests me that you 
described this experience in terms of voice, when Derrida tries to privilege 
writing over voice as the basic means of expression. Are you talking about the 
same thing as Derrida's “traceV How do you achieve such a powerful flow of 
creative ideas ? Do you have any suggestions, to get practical for a minute ?
This conversation within ourselves takes place through speaking, as 
well as through writing. One way to open that creative flow is to write 
in an interactive way, to let the writing serve as a medium between 
what you know you know and what you don’t know you know. Is this 
“speaking frow within the field?” That’s an interesting question. I’ve 
been teaching a course this term with David Klemm and Bill Klink on 
reflexivity. I’ve had occasion to reconsider these questions, and also 
put them in a context of theological and scientific texts. Martin 
Buber’s I and Thou is a wonderful example of what it would mean to 
be in communication not only with the “Thou-ness” of another 
person, but also with the “Thou-ness” within one’s self. We were 
talking in class about the contrast between Buber’s approach and 
Freud’s. Whereas Freud’s strategy was to objectify the parts of the self 
with which we are not in intimate and continuous communication, 
Buber’s approach suggests that it’s only when we see ourselves as a 
unified self permeated by “Thou-ness” that we can achieve this 
internal communication.
Is it possible to have such a unified self when, for example, you have somebody 
like Pynchon pointing out in Gravity’s Rainbow how many different selves 
can exist in one individual?
I don’t think it could be achieved as a continuous state, but I think 
there are moments in which one does feel this. And of course the 
moment one is aware of the feeling, one has already lost it. From that 
point of view, the act of speech fractures the field. One does speak 
always from within the field, but the act of speech also fractures the 
field that contains it.
6
That’s right. T hat’s the paradox. Becoming aware of this internal 
communication is a way to try to make it more permanent, but by the 
very act of possessing it, one also loses it. It’s a way to try to make it 
more permanent, but by the very act of making it more permanent, it 
also in an important sense loses it.
If, as you are suggesting, a field theory approach to literature goes beyond the 
assumptions of post-structuralism, as you indicated in your remarks on 
Derrida, are there any more important ways it does this, other than what you ve 
touched on?
One of the elements that I would like to put into pictures I construct 
is the interaction between culture and text. For me this is an important 
way in which I want to go beyond. Actually, I’m uneasy with “going 
beyond”—“adding to” or “departing from,” maybe—other works in 
the field, including my own earlier efforts.
And now, as a result, your new book Chaos Bound is a dealing with chaos 
theory as a richer way science has of thinking about order, as always containing 
asymmetries, never exact. You were talking about not “going beyond” so much 
as Chaos Bound’s “emerging out o f’ The Cosmic Web.
I see the two studies as very much related. The deeper indications of 
field concept became apparent in a number of different areas when it 
was realized that a complete articulation of a formal system was not 
possible. Had these attempts to articulate completely formal systems 
succeeded, the result would have been an all-encompassing order. But 
since they were not possible, the pendulum began to swing the other 
way, and people became interested in disorder and chaos, in that 
which escapes resolution and cannot be predicted. It’s too early to say 
where that pendulum swing is going to stop; but the idea that such a 
swing is happening is central to Chaos Bound. The field concept had its 
greatest impact in the first half of the century; in the second half of 
the century, paradigms of disorder are coming to the fore. The Cosmic 
Web and Chaos Bound are complementary in this sense. I like to think 
that together, each signifies more than it could by itself.
And yet it seems to be groping for a way to make it more permanent.
7


Interview with N. Katherine Hayles

Peabody, Susan

Reading and Writing Historical Fiction

Smith, Ken

NAMING THE IMMIGRANTS
Ken Smith
Some old ones, bent by turmoils 
I didn’t care to imagine, 
looked at me and drew a deep breath, 
as if to say
they had seen my kind before.
And I had seen their kind before, 
and breathed the stale air, 
the clothes worn
a second or third day without laundering, 
the spices whose names 
I will never know. There were forms 
to be marked with an “X” or a name, 
courtesies to be offered, 
a decorum to be maintained:
I sat at a long desk each day
while immigrants walked in front,
spoke what they could speak,
showed their documents,
tried to ask about their baggage
or about a relative
who had arrived the year before.
Generally there was not much to say,
and after a few months
I filled out the forms myself
for those who knew the least English,
because they seemed powerless
to survive without my help.
They spoke their names, I wrote down 
how they sounded, and though some 
looked over the papers and pointed
141
to the letters assembled there, 
there was nothing to be done— 
they needed names for their new lives, 
and I gave them.
They walked out of the room 
fingering the papers which bore letters 
something like strangers to them — 
which stood now in their stead 
in the world’s affairs.
They were new men and women.
I wrote it and it was done.
142


Naming the Immigrants

Alexander, Ilene

DEMURRING
Ilene Alexander
“IT’S JUST O ne o f  life’s little ironies,” Jim told me.
His voice was even, his eyes confronted mine. He leaned against the 
bar and let his elbow rest on the edge, his left hand curled, thumb and 
forefinger tugging at the end of his moustache. I fixed my eyes on the 
spoon ring, watching the rhythm of this familiar tic, hoping the 
movement would pull words from his mouth.
Nothing.
I slipped from my bar stool, stood close to my friend, circled my 
arms under his letter jacket and leaned my face against the cool 
leather arms. Jim and I had never been this quiet. We’d sprinkled a 
decade of conversations with “darlings” and giggles and gossip and 
great huge laughs. Or we’d focus in on “real s tu ff’—Jim ’s suggestions 
for decoding my dreams and his questions about politics and plans for 
political activism. We’d not lapsed into silence.
But then, Jim had never before told me he had just tested positive 
for the AIDS antibody.
In that time between school breaks we heard from my grandmother 
regularly; as usual, whatever family upsets had occurred, we didn’t 
hear. That was the sort of information we only learned during visits to 
Gram’s house, face to face. For two months nobody told me that he’d 
left. And even during one of my long weekends with my grandpar­
ents, “Your uncle’s moved back to Redondo Beach” is all that I 
remember hearing. I sensed, from my oldest uncle and grandfather, 
that we were better off now that “he” was gone. Their authoritative 
pronouncement overwhelmed me.
For one year Uncle Dick had been the “extra treat” of visits to 
Gram’s house. Most of the time conversations with my youngest uncle 
enriched my world—we spent afternoons beneath the backyard apple
82
tree reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning or Blake or Byron or 
Whitman, or on the front porch trying to see the details of just one 
more reproduction of an impressionist painting before my grandfa­
ther tuned the radio to WCCO for an evening Twins game. I was 
barely a teenager, fully in love with images—whether in poems, 
paintings, songs, or novels—and captivated by my uncle’s easy fasci­
nation with the world. With that attention I could overlook the biting 
teasing of cousins and others who believed their words could shrink 
my “pudgy” body.
In the face of Uncle Dick’s absence and a family stance that all was 
as usual, I told myself that Dick was reintroducing himself to life in 
Southern California, simply setting up a household, working on a 
relationship, saving money. I expected postcards saying, “The beach is 
wonderful. I miss you, and will send a plane ticket so you can visit.”
Fifteen years later I still wait for the postcards signed, “Love, Uncle 
Dick.” And I question what to believe about those 1970s months my 
uncle spent in Minnesota—Was he home to escape someone? or to 
find something? Was he really a “bad worker”? or was the family 
uneasy with his “lifestyle”? Sometimes, I wonder if he’s ever thought 
of finding the niece who asked questions but didn’t question him. 
Mostly, I piece together the story of my gay uncle’s disappearance, 
and I understand the years of silence—his, my own.
“Get out of town you god damn queer, or I’ll kill you.” Words from 
another family member? Someone told me these words prompted my 
uncle to leave.
I am looking for a relative named Edna Grace Stafford and I hear 
that she once lived in Denver and Omaha, so I send out query letters 
and hope that I’ve tapped into the right bureaucratic source. In the 
meantime my grandmother gives me Edna’s address book, which 
includes a list of her Chicago residences. I send a Colorado friend out 
to investigate the Denver information, while I spend the last of my 
summer vacation walking down Ashland and Rogers streets in Chi­
cago.
“What are you looking for?” asks a woman who’s watched me walk 
the block while she unloaded groceries from her car. The bumper 
stickers endorse “Carter/Mondale” and a local union. I feel at ease 
approaching her. I explain my wandering as looking for a particular 
address on a block with no street numbers above the front doors. The 
woman points me in the right direction, hoists her bags of groceries, 
and wishes me good luck. I do find several of the apartment buildings 
where Edna had lived. Though I haven’t yet pieced together all the
83
details of Edna’s life, I find traces and evidence of the years from 
1900-1967. Edna emerges as an emotionally and economically inde­
pendent working woman of the 1900s.
Alas, dead ancestors—even those like Edna who are not included in 
official records and public resources—are infinitely easier to find than 
one gay man who in the 1970s disappeared somewhere into a 
California community. I have found, then and now, that I don’t have 
the material resources to draw on for this search. My attempts began 
with letters, first addressed to the house Uncle Dick had owned—on 
Curtis Street in Redondo Beach—then to agencies that might help 
track down if and when the house was sold. For a long time I simply 
hoped that my uncle would appear; that he would, for example, 
simply be at my grandfather’s funeral. Off and on I would let go of the 
search, and the hope. As I grew into my own life I would occasionally 
turn to networks my friends could provide—getting the word out in 
gay communities, tapping into computer bulletin boards.
Even as I came to understand my uncle’s need for independence 
and identity, I asked the Salvation Army for help in tracking down this 
missing person. And I wrote to Social Security, sending along an open 
letter to forward to my uncle. Once, I even thought of sending a 
dedication to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 program.
Nothing. Only nightmares.
Jim is on the telephone making an appointment with a student who 
commutes to campus once a week. “Yes, we’re in the student union. 
Don’t worry,” he says to the anonymous caller, while dragging the 
phone into the small entry room. “We don’t get much traffic on this 
hallway, and the office door is unmarked,” linking his arm through 
mine and escorting me into his office. He pauses and lights a cigarette. 
“Yes, we’re experienced in counselling the families of gays and 
lesbians.” He looks at me, I imagine that he’s probably thinking, “I’m 
about to begin one of those conversations.” He hangs up the phone. 
His ears are mine.
“My uncle’s social security account is ‘inactive.’” I continue when 
Jim shifts to the edge of his chair, “Now it’s impossible to trace him 
through the government computers, I guess.” The phone rings again, 
Jim enters another session on his calendar. I cry, facing the possibility 
that this “official” disappearance might mean my uncle is dead, or has 
changed his identity. Another STOP in this search, and it’s difficult to 
conceive of alternative possibilities.
19 September 1984, writing in a small, clothbound journal, I ask, 
“Do I have any right to intrude on the new life Richard seems to have
84
created? Am I obsessed? Wrongly focused? Did I offer him no hope 
that I would be open, caring and damn accepting?” Jim had urged me 
to move on by understanding what I had gained during the times I 
spent with my uncle. No more questions, but a search for answers.
You are dying
and I am writing on this page
because the way to show you
your death
matters
is to
live
my life
—Anne Rickertsen, 11 September 1985
I would leave my hometown—Jim ’s hometown—eleven months 
after Anne brought this fragment of a poem to our writers’ group of 
four women. I would leave first—with two masters degrees, and move 
to another state just before my 30th birthday. Anne would move to a 
new city and write a cycle of poems with Jim, who would also move 
from this hometown after the “city fathers” refused to extend civil 
rights protections to gays and lesbians. The writers’ group, though, 
would meet for some months before Anne and I moved; in that time, 
I wrote, finally, about the nightmares I had spoken of only to Jim.
“Dear Richard,” the journal entry began. So ordinary, the first few 
lines orderly and explanatory. Then:
You are a non-person. Someone whom I can’t grasp, throttle or hold. I hate wanting 
you here. . . .  I have dreamed about you. In wakeful stares I see you sitting at a 
table, drinking. Sometimes white wine and we are talking about Van Gogh and 
Romantic poetry. Other tables are littered with bottles, all empty and in disarray, of 
beer. . . . Fuck you. How dare you invade my dreams. How dare you invade my 
days and nights. I have found you in one dream—I run toward you, bounding off 
the plane and into your outstretched California arms . . .  no hug in this embrace, 
the knife in your fist cuts a traitor’s heart into my back and the dream ends. 
Nightmares that don’t go away. Fuck you. How dare you come into my dreams, 
awake and asleep, to die. How dare you send me hospital dreams, like rose stems 
and thorns put in ajar to decorate my bedside. How dare you, you who brought poetry 
and art to my eyes, bring dying to my dreams. Send me your self, your dreams, your 
poems, your art . . . send them as you live your life. Fuck you. Don’t die. Send 
yourself.
I have not lived peacefully with my uncle’s absence. But finally I 
understand that the bitterness of my writing, the intense horror of my 
dreams has to do with my own fears—fears that as a lesbian my family 
will want to be rid of me as well.
85
Folks say you’re bad.
They don’t know you.
They only know what they scared of in theirselves.
They own living.
They own dying.
They want you 
to hate you.
Me
to hate you 
cause they hate 
their own selfs.
—Anne Rickertsen, 1986
As a girl I had carried a stuffed tiger to bed when I was unhappy or 
scared; of course as an adult I’m not supposed to admit that I still need 
that childhood reminder of an afternoon spent taking hold of my 
uncle’s hand because the department store was too big. Sometimes I 
sit with the tiger in my favorite chair, piecing together words, worlds, 
and ideas. But when the world seems too big, I pick up that darn tiger, 
crawl into bed, and hug it til I find a way to face whatever situation.
The tiger and I attempted to understand the nightmares. It seems 
fairly clear to me that the dream images of hospital beds, tubes, and 
shrouded figure were the stock symbols of sickness and death. And 
certainly the pink triangle embroidered on the patient’s gown was an 
identifying mark, a scarlet letter of sorts. Maybe years of absence plus 
the dreams minus the social security account equalled Death. This 
hospital dream wasn’t the only one I’d had; it was, in fact, the 
introduction to each of four other dreams. Conversations were central 
to each of these other dreams; my uncle and I talking about our lives, 
about lovers, poems. And the conversations were in familiar places—a 
local tavern, the front porch.
The tiger and I have cried over more immediate concerns since my 
mother called in April 1987 with a medical report about Tracy, my 
high school classmate: “full-blown AIDS.”
Some folks in my hometown were thriving not only on gossip about 
the gay activist who tested positive, but were chatting openly about the 
hair stylist (okay, “appearance consultant”) with AIDS. My mother, I 
heard on a far different gossip channel, responded by sending Tracy 
a “thinking of you” card.
“It is you!” I hear from across the aisle.
I have just spent eight hours on a bus, two hours in a car, four hours
86
sleeping, and an entire day drinking coffee in an office that had 
hosted so many conversations of students in women’s studies. Sitting 
in the auditorium, I am ready to be welcomed home, anxious to 
retreat into the music of a favorite performer and the company of 
feminist friends.
On this night we have journeyed to this performance for the 
pleasure of community, and to raise money for Tracy. We had all 
hoped tonight Tracy would feel well enough to join us, but the AZT 
tires him out.
Jim  is at my elbow, squatting down and whispering in my ear, “Let’s 
have a date.” But the house lights fade and I can only nod my answer, 
hoping we’ll meet in the lobby to quibble over where to eat lunch. Yes, 
I’m thinking, there’s so much more I am beginning to understand. 
About conflicts in my families. About “border disputes”—where 
fragments of my beliefs, my history, my personality, my community 
come into frictive contact; about synthesizing “parts” of my life—the 
seemingly incongruent ones—into a passion for involvement in the 
world.
I have made the journey across more than the miles between my 
new home and my hometown, and the measurement is in ideas 
explored, risks taken, relationships nurtured, relatives understood, 
friendships begun. More often than not, “talkin’ real honest” has 
moved me along. Talking has captured words for my ideas, words to 
challenge others’ assumptions, words that help explain differences so 
they won’t become divisions.
This has been a journey toward genuinely liking the person I am: 
lesbian, working class, more rural than urban, educated, and a 
“hum or separatist.” (“If we can’t laugh, it’s not our revolution” is our 
first motto.)
I lean back in the chair, rest my elbow on the seat beside me, and 
push my hair back over my ear, grabbing a handful to twist. Through­
out the night I have been welcomed home. I will see Tracy in this 
week. I have talked with Jim at intermission about the end of the 
dreams. But now I listen closely to Ann Reed:
We cannot know what you go through, or see through your eyes, but we will
surround you the pride undisguised. In any direction, whatever your view, you’re
taking our love there with you.
In the 1988 summer I visit a few days with Howard, another uncle, 
who is dying from cancer, lunch with Jim in a city we both enjoy, 
return to my home university for a reunion, hide out at Tracy’s house 
for a weekend, tell my mother and a cousin about a class I will teach 
in the fall— Lesbian Lives in the U.S. But I have not spoken of “it,” of
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being lesbian, openly with my family, nor have I really been encour­
aged to do so. I leave for my summer teaching job knowing that I will 
have to put my fall course together suspecting that I will have to pull 
the parts of my life together. Even with my parents I reveal only parts 
of these new understandings, not quite finished with examining this 
fear that has underscored my life.
Weeks later, at Howard’s funeral, I tell the first out-right lie about 
my public teaching life to those who ask about the next school 
year—it’s Rhetoric again, I tell them. I return to my summer teaching 
with a feeling that I am the ugly step-cousin. Riding in the car I 
silently recite the only Emily Dickinson poem I have memorized: 
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
To a discerning Eye—
Much Sense—the starkest Madness—
‘Tis the Majority 
In this, as All, prevail—
Assent—and you are sane—
Demur—you’re straightway dangerous 
And handled with a Chain—
I keep learning that fine distinction, in word and deed, between the 
adjective “demure”—quiet and serious, or pretending to be so—and 
the verb/noun “dem ur”—to raise objections, an objection raised. And 
I thrive on cultivating that discerning eye—sometimes astounding, 
sometimes frustrating those around me.
In the fifteen years between memorizing Emily Dickinson’s poem 
for a class assignment and writing this essay for my family, I have 
demurred to racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism, abuse, 
unethical behavior. In the Reagan/Bush era I jokingly tell my mother 
I fear being legislated an illegal presence. Even in the “liberal 
academy” I have been able to work as an educator and activist largely 
because my family has joined in the effort by providing support and 
sanctuary. These women and men, my parents especially, have a 
history of attempting to understand my ideas and of accepting the 
choices I’ve made. I have been expected and invited to share my life, 
my friends, and my writing. They have not asked when I’d “settle 
down”—marry, end school and begin a profession; they have seldom 
discouraged me from being outspoken and honest.
With this essay, I have begun again to demur, to break at this point 
from my uncle’s script: I shall continue writing in the family book, 
showing that all of our lives matter. And it feels powerful.
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I think about how to write an ending: Quietly, with a renewed 
feeling of empowerment? Sentimentally, with the reactions from my 
Gram, parents, aunts and cousins who have responded across some 
silence with love and pride? Politically, with an eye toward pedagogical 
challenges for the university? Reflexively, with a nod toward my own 
reaction now that I’ve read this essay—which, as I face Tracy’s death 
and others, or as I scan crowds, looking for my uncle’s face, becomes 
an essay that won’t end.
But I must close, and so I will expose a thread that cuts in and out 
of my life: I realize that I have embroidered several years of my life 
with my grandm other’s thoughts from a June 1979 letter; it is her 
three last words in this paragraph that I want to be at the close:
As far as Richard goes we haven’t heard anything—There’s some people that live 
out there and he lives with their son. I wrote to them & they never answered. So I 
figure he’s O.K. & if anything should happen these people would write me. 
Anyway I hope.
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The Loan—upon viewing Jeune fille au chat (Girl with a Cat) by Pierre-August Renoir

Interview with N. Katherine Hayles

Reading and Writing Historical Fiction

Naming the Immigrants

Demurring

Untitled, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 10.1

Untitled, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 10.1

Cog

Untitled, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 10.1

Untitled, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, no. 10.1

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