Spinifex Press

My Sister Chaos

farhana — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

A woman leaves her country at the last minute, as a refugee in a civil war. She and her sister leave together and seek asylum in a new country where they will continue their lives. Laura Fergus’s wonderful first novel takes up the story of this woman (I) and her sister (the sister). We do not learn the sisters’ names. We do learn that they are twins and that they are no longer very young. We do not learn the country from which they came nor the country in which they sought asylum. We do not learn the city in which they live. We do not learn the name of the war that scarred them.

The story begins in Chapter 1 with our main narrator, the cartographer—the sister identified with “I.” We eventually learn that she is a highly skilled cartographer, and was well-respected in her native country. In her new country, she works at a level well below that from which she came. Her detachment from her job and her isolation afford her a great deal of time for her pet project: she is creating a map of her house.

Her map is of a specific kind: she is not simply drawing her house and its contents to scale. She has designated her drafting table as her Point of Beginning and she draws from that point to create her map. This means that, from that point, she measures distances and angles which, when completed, must add up to the whole with nothing missing and nothing left over. This kind of measuring can take into account previous boundaries, as well as histories of change and movement. As the story progresses, we find our protagonist agonizing over how to do just this. Beginning in Chapter 1 (the reader’s point of beginning, of a sort), the cartographer must find a way to include her sister and her sister’s chaos into the map she is making.

We do not meet the sister herself until the second part of the book. The sister’s chapters are fractions. We meet her in Chapter 12.5. She is not a whole number. The sister’s story is only ever mediated to us via her sister or an unknown narrator. However, it is the sister who reveals the cartographer and her map to us and to the cartographer. The cartographer herself, we learn, is herself not a whole number. In Chapter 21.75, the cartographer has a flashback. Her past comes creeping in and exceeds the precision the cartographer seeks. As the story progresses, the chapter numbers become increasingly fractured as the maps and the house and the sisters are found to exceed the sum of their measures. The cartographer abandons her map and begins to cut apart her house so it can match the map; the sister takes up the map and paints a new one. At the end of the book, the sisters have taken up the common project of destroying and recreating the house from the inside.

I cannot do justice to this book in such small space. It is marvelous. I’m still not sure I fully understand it, but it kept me up all night the night I read it and I look forward to rereading it.

Written by: kristina grob, January 13th 2011

Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Melinda Tankard Reist

Spinifex Press

Getting Real is a collection of essays that are charges against the worldwide phenomena of the pornification of childhood through advertising, marketing, and pop culture. This was a great book to read, particularly as the authors are Australian and I sometimes wonder how much of our collective reaction to porn and adult images going mainstream is a reflection of our country's Puritanical leanings. For the contributors to Getting Real, the problem is embedded not just in faux-feminism but also a twisting of feminism by marketers and others to make women believe that if they are "in charge" of their sexuality, then there isn't anything wrong with stripping, making out with other women to turn men on, and so forth.

About half way through the book I came across a few statements that made me think, "Wait a minute...This isn't a feminist book!" There's just a tinge of anti-sex sentiment in some essays. So I did some investigating and found that editor Melinda Tankard Reist is part of a women's think tank. Upon further digging, I came to the conclusion that the Women's Forum Australia seems to be what one might get if the National Organization for Women and the Independent Women's Forum had a lefty baby. (If anyone has more information about them, I'd love for you to leave it in the comments.)

While some essays wade into slut-shaming and defaming strippers and sex workers, on the whole Getting Real is a pretty good book. One eye-opening essay on street billboards makes the point that even though it is illegal for people to have porn in the workplace, we have to walk through porn-infested streets on a daily basis. Another essay brought up how many of us are using Flickr and YouTube to share our children's lives, which teaches them to perform publicly. There is also a discussion about the medicalization of girls' bodies. From HPV vaccines to plastic surgery, it's all there to ponder.

The best part of Getting Real was learning a new term: corporate pedophilia. "Sexualizing products being sold specifically for children, and children themselves being presented in images or directed to act in advertisements in ways modeled on adult sexual behavior." This goes far beyond the dress-up of our youth to performance on a daily basis. "The task for today's teenagers is to win back their freedom from the adults who run the advertising agencies and girls magazines and the 'sex-positive' media academics who insist that 'bad girls' are powerful girls."

The essays are well cited, but avoid a lot of academic jargon, making Getting Real a quick read. The book is feminist, but with a dash of moderate conservatism thrown in. The topic brings together some typically opposing forces, and that's always good for the discussion.

Cross-posted from Viva La Feminista

Written by: Veronica I. Arreola, April 27th 2010

The Butterfly Effect

admin — Sun, 27 May 2007 19:06:00 +0000

By Susan Hawthorne

Spinifex Press

While reading the first half of Susan Hawthorne’s newest collection of lesbian poems, The Butterfly Effect, I found myself lost in footnotes. Each poem reads on the right page, while footnotes to the poem fill up the left page. Most of the time, the footnotes are as long as, if not longer, than the actual poem. At first, I thought this was a brilliant idea. Then I started to get slightly annoyed by the footnotes and felt that they were a little pompous and unnecessary. How dare Hawthorne interrupt the poetic flow with a useless footnote!

But I re-thought this assertion, and wondered if there are readers out there who are not aware of Sappho, lesbian bar culture, the history of lesbian literature, the lesbian prisoner stereotype or the importance of pool in lesbian culture. My final conclusion of the footnotes is one of intrigue: either Hawthorne uses the footnotes to educate the reader to the purpose of every image that she used. She also uses the footnotes to create a steady pause between each image, giving the reader more time to really think about what she is trying to create.

Either way, footnotes or not, each poem is breathtaking in its imagery, emotionality, creativity and political conscious. The second (and footnote-less) half of The Butterfly Effect stems from the tumultuous emotions brought on by her mother’s death. Hawthorne invites the reader into a twenty page “Dialogue With Death,” recounting the situation surrounding her mother’s death and the aftermath of grief and loss. Hawthorne executes each poem with great style and courage. As a whole, this book of poetry is intended for the smart reader, the emotional reader, the relentless reader and the lesbian who wants to understand the depth of her herstory. The Butterfly Effect is an enchanting collection of profound poetry.

Written by: Chelsey Clammer, May 27th 2007

September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives

admin — Mon, 21 May 2007 13:25:00 +0000

Edited by Susan Hawthorne, Bronwyn Winter

Spinifex Press

As an antidote for all the disingenuous head-scratching over “what went wrong” in Iraq—how the United States transmuted the world’s sympathy and support into global revulsion in the wake of September 11, this painful retrospective on what might have been—or rather what should have been—is a powerful tonic. The writings gathered here, a pastiche of genres and a powerfully diverse set of feminist voices, were written in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks and published by an Australian press. Collectively, they urge restraint, appreciation of context and cultural history, acknowledgment of American complicity in terror, resistance to stereotyping and a simplistic Manichean perspective on those involved. Collectively, they imagine a nation that might have emerged from this trauma sadder but wiser, with a renewed place of leadership in the world.

This book reminds us that not everyone succumbed to fear mongering and the atavistic desire for revenge as the toxic dust settled over Manhattan. As we listen now to campaign-inspired and half-hearted mea culpa from politicians complaining they were misled, this collection proves that there were thinkers of real courage speaking out for peace and caution even in the weeks immediately after 9/11.

Barbara Lee, for example, in a piece written on 24 September 2001, explains why she stood alone in the House of Representatives in voting against war authorization: “I could not support such a grant of war-making authority to the president; I believe it would put more innocent lives at risk.” Candlelight vigils, held throughout the world, pleaded that “war and retaliatory violence are not the answer to terrorism, as they have never resolved any conflict”—to use the language of the Delhi Women’s Petition. In poems, letters, editorials and essays, feminist writers around the world stood up in the midst of the anger and asked for compassion, for a renewed commitment to global justice.

There are also ominous warnings throughout the book about the consequences of war for women that, six years later, have still not fully come to public notice. A poem by Evelyne Accad reminds us that “war conceives only war.” What we must now remember, even if catastrophically late, is that there was another way.

Written by: Rick Taylor, May 21st 2007

HELP! I'm Living with a (Man) Boy

admin — Sat, 19 May 2007 13:57:00 +0000

By Betty McLellan

Spinifex Press

Seems like writer and feminist psychotherapist Betty McLellan has heard my cries. Help! I’m Living with a (Man) Boy tackles what really needs to happen in dealing with the men (or boys) in your life. As a mother of two - one by birth and one who suddenly morphed into my own personal man/boy after we said “I do” - I think McLellan hit the head on the spot: “Poor men.” Okay, don’t jump out of your seat quite yet.

McLellan takes a new approach to typical problems that women encounter in their relationships with men - “men are sold a lie… believing they are superior” - and she wants to put an empowering spin on typical self-help books for women. Rather than advising women to grin and bear it or, better yet, fix themselves, she empowers women to take charge of these relationships and shape those boys into the men that are hiding under that little boy demeanor.

McLellan packs a punch with her true-to-life advice, mixed with a light and humorous touch. What happens when the man of your dreams turns out to be a child? McLellan urges women to take a look at the behavior of children and place those behaviors in a body resembling their dream man to truly understand them. So what’s that mean for those of us living with these boys? And what’s the relationship fix? McLellan doesn’t promise that this advice will always work, but she does discuss the joy of a mutually respectful, honest and loving relationship and how to help the man/boy in one's life get there.

Written by: Megan Blair, May 19th 2007

Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution

admin — Thu, 10 May 2007 11:37:00 +0000

By Mary Lucille Sullivan

Spinifex Press

Mary Lucille Sullivan attempts to tackle the world's oldest profession, but provides more questions than answers. When the State of Victoria in Australia became one of the first governments in the world to legalize prostitution in 1984, both residents and the rest of the world wondered how this radical law would affect women's role in this underground, but very active workforce. Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution investigates whether the ladies of the night in Victoria are expanding or diminishing the sex industry. With politics and morals to divide and conquer, Sullivan leaves her readers more confused than enlightened.

Sullivan, who holds a PhD in political science from the University of Melbourne, has previously explored this forbidden topic in What Happens When Prostitution Becomes Work: an update on legalised prostitution and contributed to Not for Sale: Feminist Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. Sullivan's clear, direct and well-polished language offers no flowery, hidden messages for her audience to interpret. Like a true professional, she lays down the facts as she sees them, in most cases anyway.

The main downfall of Sullivan's lengthy text is the lack of supporting data, which is a must for any researcher. In "Setting the Framework," she begins to explain her purpose for studying prostitution in Victoria. She states, "'Sexual services ranks highest of all personal service industries in terms of revenue (reaching as high as 80 per cent) and drives the overall growth of this economic sector in general." There was no explanation of where this information came from, whether it only affects Victoria, how recent is the research or what kind of "sexual services" was she referring to. Did I also mention that this is all in the first chapter? Yes, she does raises questions about legalized prostitution, but also leaves readers wondering in places where they shouldn't be.

A more shocking example that begged for facts was her perspective on "sadomasochism as torture." Sullivan studies Susan Hawthorne's own research in S&M/B&D for lesbians. She explains, "Throughout her work, Hawthorne has documented the horrific treatment of lesbians who are tortured in families, in prisons and in mental asylums, explaining how in many countries being lesbian still carries an immediate jail sentence." Where was the evidence that either the author or Hawthorne backs up to prove that bondage play is indeed a danger to lesbians? Which women claimed to be tortured? How does S&M affects Victoria and most importantly, what does sadomasochism have to do with legalized prostitution? The list of questions keep growing, but there are no answers.

Sullivan's determination to explore prostitution laws in Australia should be applauded. However, her lack of necessary data makes her come off as a prude, amateur researcher publishing a first draft that others will mistake as a scholarly text. If she would have just backed up her theories like anyone else in her field, Sullivan's book wouldn't have fallen short from its true potential.

Written by: Stephanie Nolasco, May 10th 2007