Tag: feminism

Writing on the Edge—By Lise Weil

Odette DesOrmeaux and Martine Huysmans, two members of the l’essentielle collective which also included Ariane Brunet and Harriet Ellenberger, 1988.

Just over thirty years ago, in June of 1988, I drove up to Montreal from my home in Montague, Massachusetts to attend the Third International Feminist Book Fair. At the time I was editor of the feminist literary review Trivia: A Journal of Ideas; we had a table in the exhibit hall, alongside books, presses, and journals from all over the world. The Fair, housed on the Université de Montréal campus, was attended by some 8,000 people, featured over 300 authors, and hosted the largest gathering ever of Indigenous women writers from Canada. Coming off three days of head-spinning, exhilarating, often revelatory panels, readings and conversations, co-editor Linda Nelson and I decided to devote the next two issues of Trivia to the event.

Trivia 13 focused on the feminist writers of Quebec and those influenced by them: Nicole Brossard, Gail Scott, Erín Moure, Louise Cotnoir, Michèle Causse (France), and Betsy Warland (BC).[i] The energy and vision of this community of feminist writers (which also included Louky Bersianik, France Théoret, Louise Dupré, and Daphne Marlatt) had provided much of the impetus for the Fair itself.[ii] In my editorial I attempted to name what it was about these writers that excited me so much. It had to do with their understanding of language as transgressive, and as material. With their exuberant flouting of genre boundaries—poetry becoming essay, fiction theory (“fiction/theory” – Brossard’s term)—all in deference to their insubordinate, uncooptable female bodies (“The breasts refuse”—Warland). And it had to do with the edge they/we were all on—as women claiming space for our own bodies and thoughts for the first time ever.

Just over a year before the Book Fair I had driven up for the opening of the bilingual bookstore l’essentielle, a word Brossard coined in her epic poem “Sous la langue/Under Tongue.” A bilingual edition of that poem was being launched to mark the occasion. The little store on Rachel was spiffy, with hot pink shelves and track lighting. I remember women in dress shirts and bright scarves hoisting glasses of white wine. I remember Brossard and her translator Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood taking turns reading the stanzas. On ne peut vas prévoir / You cannot foresee, each verse began, crescendoing as the lover’s mouth approached the body she desired, launching her into the unknown.

You cannot foresee so suddenly leaning
towards a face and wanting to lick the soul’s
whole body till the gaze sparks with furies and yieldings. . . .
Desire is all you see.

And I remember walking into my study one Sunday morning not long after that launch to find Linda with Brossard’s chapbook in her lap, weeping. “We don’t write like this here,” she said. “No one writes like this here.” Eros: words embodied it in Quebec women’s writing. Words were marks of possibility, thrusting us out to a precipitous edge where nothing was foreknown… No, there was nothing like this in our feminist world. Plus the lesbians I hung with favoured jeans and flannels.

Words were marks of possibility, thrusting us out to a precipitous edge where nothing was foreknown… No, there was nothing like this in our feminist world.

Some two years after the Book Fair I moved to Montreal, in part drawn by that subversive brew of Quebec au féminin, wanting to be immersed in it (and yes, admittedly, wanting to be among women who dressed up for each other). Beneath all this was a desire to write… in order to do which I knew I needed to get away from the home that was Trivia’s operating base. But weaning myself from the role of editor and translator took more than a physical move. It was thirteen years before I found myself in the grip of a long writing project: a memoir that began—not surprisingly—as a meditation on lesbian desire and that chronicled a series of disastrous love adventures that drove me, heartbroken, to this foreign city where I finally learned to abide—in love, and in place. A QWF mentorship with Elaine Kalman Naves in 2003-4 was foundational to this project. It would take me another twelve years to complete the memoir, but I wrote some two-thirds of a first draft in those months. Elaine’s encouragement and her insight were just the spurs I needed.

Launch of “In Search of Pure Lust” at L’Euguélionne, June 2018.

But it is also true that my memoir, In Search of Pure Lust, would not exist in its present form were it not for my immersion in Quebec au féminin (where the last section of the memoir is set) and its climate of formal permissiveness and political passion, its celebration of language as erotic. I imagine many literary products of this century, not only here in Quebec but throughout North America, owe a similar debt. So it’s both surprising and dismaying to me that nowadays in Anglophone literary contexts there is so little acknowledgement—or even knowledge—of these Quebec writers and their pioneering body of work. Even when the topic is formal innovation.[iii] Even in Montreal.[iv] At least here in Montreal, as of two years ago, we have a monument to this genealogy in the form of the bilingual feminist bookstore L’Euguélionne—named after Louky Bersianik’s kickass, visionary feminist novel. Long live L’Euguélionne!

I can’t help longing for the kind of literary community that first drew me to this city, a locus for deep conversation revolving around a common cause that felt urgent enough to unite writers of different cultures and languages. What might that common cause be today? As global forces thrust us towards a darker precipitous edge, and an endless expanse of unforeseen. . . .

Lise Weil’s memoir, In Search of Pure Lust (Inanna Publications, 2018), is a finalist for an International Book Award and winner of an Ippy Award. Her essays, literary non-fiction, and translations have been published widely in Canada and the U.S. She was founder of the feminist review Trivia: A Journal of Ideas (1982-1991) and its online offshoot, Trivia: Voices of Feminism (2003-2011). She is currently editor of Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, which publishes writing and artwork created in response to an age of mass extinction and ecological collapse. She teaches in the Goddard College Graduate Institute. www.liseweil.com

[i] Contributors to Trivia 14, “Language and Difference,” included Lee Maracle, Jeannette Armstrong, Gloria Anzaldua, and Jewelle Gomez. Copies of Trivia 13 and 14 can be ordered for $5 plus postage. lweil22@gmail.com

[ii] Six of these writers met on Sundays every three months in Montreal to talk about feminism and theory. Theory, A Sunday (Belladonna, 2013), a recent translation of La théorie, un dimanche (1988), collects the writings that emerged from these conversations.

[iii] See, e.g., Bending Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction (eds. Margot Singer and Nicole Walker, Bloomsbury, 2013). Much of the bending and unsettling described in these essays was being performed by the writers of Quebec and was addressed explicitly in Gail Scott’s “Shaping a Vehicle for Her Use” (Spaces Like Stairs, Women’s Press, 1989).

[iv] Not even at a recent reading by a visiting Canadian author from a work of fiction titled Theory.

Photo credits: Marik Boudreaul (header image); Favor Ellis (headshot)

July 19, 2019
How Do I Research and Write About My Subject When There’s No Archive?—by Linda M. Morra

When perusing the scrapbook of a Canadian female writer and artist, I find a twig of cedar clipped to its pages. Later, I read her handwritten letters, which reveal that the twig was exchanged as a token of affection between correspondents. I have been researching this writer for over a decade, and her archives have undergirded three of my books—a real gift, when I know that women’s archives are often scarce, if they exist at all.

“But how do I research and write about my subject when there’s no archive?” This is a question I’m often asked because of the frequent lack of material about women’s lives. The answer is layered, multidirectional.

I.

Perhaps there is an archive—just not one in an official, state-sanctioned place, such as a university, museum, or library. There are materials; you just haven’t found them yet. You have to go beyond formal institutions and ask surviving family members of the subject in question—sometimes more than a few times. And you have to consult with documents in out-of-the-way places. The latter sometimes means borrowing someone’s truck—or hopping into a stranger’s—and carrying a pocket knife along with your laptop, just to be sure you’re going to be okay.

“Perhaps there is an archive—just not one in an official, state-sanctioned place, such as a university, museum, or library.”

II.

How do I research and write about my subject when there’s no archive? Sometimes you don’t yet have access to the archive, so you have to know how to ask. You have to be there at the right time and the right place and the right day and ask the right person. (Surely, not that guy? Yup, that guy.) Sometimes it means drinking a Guinness for breakfast because that was what was offered to you, and you don’t want to be rude, and you were never one to back down from a challenge. Then it means waiting until you’re headed towards being more than just a bit tipsy, even after the whole omelette you ate for good measure, and then it means asking right then for permission to access files. Who knows if you slurred your words when you asked? That’s not on record anywhere. Sometimes that’s what it takes to gain confidence, and not just your confidence to ask for permission, but also his: he needs to know you’re a worthy candidate for permission. Drinking a whole Guinness at 9 a.m. apparently qualifies you.

III.

How do I research and write about my subject when there’s no archive? At other times, the archive is stashed away in a basement, hidden from prying eyes, waiting for daylight—or perhaps, you tell yourself optimistically, waiting for you. And accessing it takes earning trust, but not by drinking beer this time. No, this time it means taking all kinds of precautions: reading documents, preparing documents, writing documents, rewriting those documents, and rewriting them again. It means signing contracts, and trying to do all manner of intellectual calisthenics to be sure you’re in top form to handle this one just right. Oh, you’ll still get it wrong—or, at least, your copy editor will—but it won’t matter. It seems you were doomed not to get this one right. When you work with an archive that no one even knew existed, a misstep can happen in spite of your best efforts.

“It seems you were doomed not to get this one right. When you work with an archive that no one even knew existed, a misstep can happen in spite of your best efforts.”

IV.

How do I research and write about my subject when there’s no archive? Maybe the archive isn’t a tangible thing, such as a document or photograph. My dear colleague and friend, TL Cowan, researches cabaret. A performance is an elusive thing, but someone’s memories about one night can help you reconstruct it; recollections about the scene tell you something about what a performer might have been trying to accomplish. Many witnesses recounted how a Kahnawake poetess at the turn of the century wore a stereotypical “Indian dress”—a short little buckskin number—before an audience of white men. Titillating, you might think, until you read the fiery tone of her lyrics and understand that where and how she performed her work added value and meaning to it. Then you realize she was giving these men unmitigated shit for their assumptions of superiority, and for the violence wrought upon Indigenous nations.

V.

How do I research and write about my subject when there’s no archive? Consider archival deposits that may not seem to have anything to do with your subject—at least, not at first. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police files offer one example. Maybe you’re not interested in the RCMP. Perhaps they’re not exactly your cup of military tea. (I personally prefer espresso, if it can be had.) But sometimes you may want to drink that tea because of what you might learn. The RCMP, as it turns out, spied relentlessly on women activists in the 1970s. They have files upon files on feminist associations and meetings. You don’t have to like RCMP tactics, but reading their records will reveal a lot to you about these women activists. And, later on, you can still drink your espresso.

VI.

How do I research and write about my subject when there’s no archive? Have you considered different searches on the internet? Ah, the digital world, that mysterious place that consistently reminds me of the ocean, which washes up a wealth of material one day and is a seemingly flat, calm, and inscrutable surface the next. What lies underneath that surface? If you just bait the right hook, what will you draw up? Sometimes the hook dangles there, brings in nothing much—an old shoe, candy wrappers, and some algae. You suppose it’s possible you can reconstruct something from the old shoe. Then, at other times, you find a whale, and you have no idea how to fish for whales. Befriend it, perhaps? Yes, that’s better, and don’t turn your back on it while it frolics in the harbour. How did that whale get there? You download everything you find that day, because tomorrow it may swim away back into the ocean, and only surface again with a whole new set of research terms, whatever those might be.

“Ah, the digital world, that mysterious place that consistently reminds me of the ocean, which washes up a wealth of material one day and is a seemingly flat, calm, and inscrutable surface the next. What lies underneath that surface?”

By now, you’ve tried everything you know. What do you have left? You may have found material completely unrelated to your current subject. A postmark, say, that proclaims “God Bless America” or “Help Retarded Children.” You wonder: has anyone written about these postal slogans? Your imagination begins to suggest a future project.

Gather these materials. Delight in the wealth of all that’s left behind—from twigs to postmarks to letters. Leave your own trail, to form in effect a new archive—a gift for another generation of researchers. Finally, remember to call upon your own imagination. That has a peculiar and unaccountable wealth of its own. Don’t forget to visit that archive, ever.

Linda M. Morra is a professor of Canadian literature and Canadian Studies at Bishop’s University. Her book, Unarrested Archives (UTP 2014), was shortlisted for the 2015 Gabrielle Roy Prize in English; her edited edition of Jane Rule’s Taking My Life (2011) was a finalist for the LAMBDA prize (2012). She is the current president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation.

Photo credits: The National Archives (UK) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons (top banner); Linda M. Morra (postmarked envelope)

August 25, 2017
Writing Post-Partum by Darrah Teitel

I have this memory that I can’t shake. It is from a time of rebellion. I was in university, a baby feminist, aspiring playwright and general know-it-all. I was listening to Tori Amos’s latest album, Scarlet’s Walk, written post-partum. It stank, I declared to my roommate. Tori had lost her edge. She was writing about domestic themes, instead of masturbation and hating God. I began cultivating a theory: babies killed the cool in female artists.

A few years later, I was in Montreal studying playwriting at The National Theatre School and Maureen Labonté was giving a class on this Canadian playwright none of us had ever heard of, Gwen Pharis Ringwood. Ringwood had written the award-winning Still Stands the House before getting married in 1939 and having four children. Although she continued to write, her main commitment, until the 1970s, was her family. A mother herself, Maureen raised her eyebrows at me. She knew it would plague me. The next few plays I wrote were explorations of why maternity and feminism were incompatible. I wrote one play about the contempt that ambitious, public women have for maternal, domestic women. I wrote another about how cool and sexually experimental Mary Shelley was before she accidentally had babies. And then, because I had tempted fate, I fell pregnant myself.

And then, because I had tempted fate, I fell pregnant myself.

What I knew of parenthood was that it is exhausting; I’d be harried with responsibilities but also full of joy. Though I wished this joy for myself and ultimately chose it, a fear began to grow alongside my fetus. I had learned that in order to write, a girl needs time, money and a room of her own. But I work for the federal Status of Women Critic, and I know the statistics. They show that the gender wage gap grows exponentially as soon as women become parents.

Even if I tried to ignore the socio-economic barriers, I couldn’t help but notice the interpersonal ones. Many of my childless friends stopped inviting me to hang out, just assuming I was never doing drugs or having hot sex again. The fact that these assumptions were largely correct for the time being didn’t make them less upsetting. I found community elsewhere, which is to say online. One third of the blogosphere is composed of mommy blogs. Many mommy bloggers are really good writers who are totally obsessed with the experience of motherhood. They made me feel less lonely and for that I am thankful. I’ll digress to note that there is no daddy blogosphere.

When I became a parent, I discovered that there is a fourth thing a girl needs in order to write. She needs something to write about. The greatest threat to my writing career was actually myself, or loss thereof. My plays usually discuss liberated feminine bodies, and they make my parents blush from their seats in the audience. Since having my son, I can’t even watch upsetting scenes from Game of Thrones without covering my eyes. I am not who I used to be.

The greatest threat to my writing career was actually myself, or loss thereof.

It’s hard for me to admit that I’ve changed. I’m not sure that I’m okay with it. But now, for the first time in two years, I have managed to get the time, money and space to write. I have a residency at a supportive theatre company, and my wonderful boss is willing to give me some time off to write. These opportunities are essential to writers like me, and are also so infrequent that I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. That’s three out of four. As for number four, it’s coming. I find myself faking it a little, but starting to feel glimpses of the real thing. Like learning to have an orgasm with a new partner, I must familiarize myself with a new body and for the first time, the new body is my own.

I have come to realize that there are women with small children working, writing. When I was at rehearsals for my play, The Apology, I had a nursing five-week-old in a sling. Joan MacLeod came up to me and welcomed me to the club. On Mother’s Day she sent me a section of Kim Collier’s Siminovitch Prize acceptance speech from 2010: “In a lot of ways I felt like a pioneer – creating ways for these two huge commitments to live together. And I believe one of the great gifts Jon and I gave to our theatre community was an example that it was possible, that family can be the centre of your life while your theatre work is too. To all women director/creators with children: bravo, be brave and break the mould – carry them in the hall, breastfeed between the seats, go on tour together, whisper about process and actors and what worked and what didn’t. Include your kids in your life, let them learn from your passion.”

And so this is where I am at: I have vowed not to confuse first words or breastfeeding with interesting material for plays, and this article is the closest I plan to come to mommy blogging myself. But I’m writing through my fears. And sometimes, I even write about the kid.

Darrah Teitel is a playright and graduate of the University of Toronto and the National Theatre School of Canada’s Playwriting program. Her plays have been produced across Canada and her journalism, fiction and poetry have appeared in various periodicals and journals throughout the country. Darrah’s play Corpus is the winner of the Calgary Peace Play Prize, the In The Beginning Playwriting Award and the 2011 Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award. Her play The Apology was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Betty Mitchell Award for best new play. The Apology won the Calgary FFWD Audience Choice Award for 2013. She was a member of the Banff Playwrights Colony in 2007, 2011 and 2012, and was a 2010 MacDowell Colony Fellow. Darrah is currently the playwright-in-residence for the Great Canadian Theatre Company and is working for the NDP Status of Women Critic. Corpus will be produced by Teesri Duniya Theatre in November 2014 in Montreal.

October 31, 2014