November 14, 2014
Disposable women, forever and always
We always had true crime books lying around the house when I was little, and since I read everything, these books were no exception, and I do wonder how the 10 year old’s psyche is affected by rigorous rereadings of Blind Faith by Joe McGinniss. I have a better sense of the impact of Wasted: The Preppie Murder by Linda Wolfe, the story of the murder of 18 year old Jennifer Levin in New York City by a man who strangled her in a park and pleaded guilty to manslaughter—the death was a result of “rough sex”, he said. (When police found him the next day, he was covered with scratches. He claimed he’d been attacked by his cat.) Which is that from very early on, I learned that there were some men for whom women were completely disposable, and that our justice system is stacked against victims of sexual violence in a way that is absolutely heinous.
I’ve been thinking about Jennifer Levin’s death since yesterday, when the verdict was delivered in another case involving the death of a teenage girl. We all know her name, but no one is permitted to print it, which means just this: you can indeed be prosecuted for using a rape victim’s name, but you can actually photograph the victim being raped and then share the image on social media—destroying the self-esteem and reputation of a teenage girl, who goes on to commit suicide—and receive a punishment that involves writing a letter of apology and attending a course on sexual harassment. “He must learn how to properly treat females,” is part of the judge’s verdict, as though this is something that must be taught, as though knowing “how to treat females” (who are indeed people) isn’t sort of one of the barest prerequisites for being a human being.
“Why didn’t he help her?” I wonder. The boy with the camera, I mean, or any of his friends, or the police who shrugged when the victim came to them with the actual photo of her rape being committed, and who found no way to prosecute any of the perpetrators (for distributing child pornography—the charge that has a man punished by letter of apology) until after her death by suicide. Why did nobody help?
Let alone, why are there people actually defending the perpetrators? The same kind of people who are bothered by rape charges ruining the lives of nice young men, or promising footballers? What kind of inside out world do we live in? The kind of world in which the parents of a young man who talks about having his colleague raped as a kind of punishment actually speak out in defence of their son? If that were my son, I’d draw the curtains and not go out again for a very long time. Have these people no shame? “We ask you to give him the chance to learn,” the parents say, to which I respond with a vehement, NO. One does not have to learn about how it’s wrong to talk about raping one’s colleagues (or anybody). If you don’t know this already, you never ever will.
When Toronto’s terrible mayor and a godforsaken excuse for a human being was diagnosed with cancer last fall, I fumed as public figures postured about prayers being with him etc. etc. This is another man who has not yet learned that it’s wrong to talk about raping one’s colleagues. It was all I could think of, as his ass fat tumour came down, that a public figure gets to say the things he said (let alone do the things he did) and then get up there with a whole lot of actually honourable citizens and campaign beside them for the job of mayor. “But no!” somebody protests, “do not make disparaging remarks about a man with cancer.” Because we’re willing to draw a line there—we are moral after all—but it’s women who are disposable, women who are nothing more than something for you to stick your dick in, or make jokes about sticking your dick in. A dick receptacle. And if that’s not enough, you can choke them too, “rough sex,” says another public figure, not even sheepishly. And now I’m thinking about Jennifer Levin again, a moment in time, 1980s’s excesses, but it’s forever and always. This is the world in which we live.
You can call it rape culture. You can call it the most horrendous, pervasive male entitlement too. But not all men, another voice pipes up, but oh, there are ever so many. Some of whom are even seemingly feminist allies, examining complicity as they forget about the women whose bodies they themselves have groped, and carrying banners at feminist rallies, even. These men are fathers, husbands, brothers and sons—to frame things in those terms. And I don’t know what to do.
In The New Quarterly 131, Karen Connelly’s essay, “#ItEndsHere,” parallels Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s seeming unconcern with the disappearance of 300 school girls with Canada’s own lack of response to the more than a thousand missing and murdered Indigenous girls and women in this country. (The most recent in the news is the young girl in Winnipeg, Rinelle Harper, who was assaulted twice and thrown in the same river where 15 year old Tina Fontaine’s body was discovered months ago. Mercifully, Rinelle Harper survived. She is recovering in hospital.) Connelly reminds us of the rumours surrounding the farm where the remains of so many women were eventually discovered—those rumours would not be investigated for years, during which time so many women died. Disposable women. Ineffectual authorities. There’s a pattern here. It’s like stringing beads.
Connelly writes, “When there were enough missing women—68 to be exact…—the police finally began to look for them. The investigation into the missing women of the downtown east side began in 1998. [Redacted] continued committing murders until his arrest on February 22, 2002.” And from her poem, “Enough,” from her recent collection, Come Cold River:
Unfold the maps on the table.
Let me show you hell.
As described in The Globe and Mail.
Oddly, it includes English Bay,
blue salt water, sand, crows,
owls in the cedars.
The road out?
Oh, that remains
under construction.
April 24, 2013
Malarky Triumphs!
Oooh, what a night! I’ve been a devotee of Anakana Schofield’s Malarky since I first read it just over a year ago now, and so it was fantastic to be in the crowd tonight as Our Woman, the book and its author finally got the credit they’ve long-deserved. So pleased that Malarky was tonight awarded the 2013 Amazon First Novel Award. Sometimes it all works out all right. And sometimes you also end up with the most mind-blowing assortment of desserts in your lap, on a plate even, ready to eat. They were as good as they looked.
February 11, 2013
News!! Truth, Dare, Double Dare: Coming in April 2014
I started talking about motherhood three and a half years ago, joining a conversation that I’d never supposed could be so absorbing, perplexing, and reflective of larger issues and politics. And as I talked about motherhood more and more, it began to occur to me how alienating was that conversation to so many other women, whether they were mothers themselves, or had wanted to be, or had become mothers in ways that were less than straightforward, or had never wanted to be mothers at all. I started to see how the motherhood conversation was not nearly wide enough to encompass women’s diverse experiences of motherhood, and maternal things. I began to see how understanding the various relationships that women have to motherhood could tell us a lot about about women’s lives today, the real nature of “choice”, and how far feminism has brought us (or not, in some cases).
It all started with my friends, really, whose experiences of infertility, adoption, abortion, maternal ambivalence, miscarriage, being child-free were so absolutely ordinary in so many ways, but were also represented as being far outside the bounds of the motherhood conversation. I wondered if there was a way that these experiences could be included in a broadened conversation, along with stories of stepmothering, grandmothering, single motherhood, other relationships with children that weren’t necessarily biological, having many children, having only one, having children die, worrying about having children die, exercising choice, or having choice taken away from you.
It was last December when I was talking about this with my friend Amy Lavender Harris, and she said, “This would make a really good anthology.” That night, I got to work emailing women writers I knew whose stories fit the bill. I spent last winter and spring contacting writers, so many of whom responded with complete support for this project. I spent the summer writing my own piece (over four amazing days at the Wychwood Library, during which I listened to “Call Me Maybe” on repeat) and was constantly aglow with the idea that all over this country were brilliant women were busily at work creating this book with me. They sent me their essays and they were wonderful, and I spent late-summer and Fall putting the pieces all together.
And now I am happy to report that the news is official. Our book, Truth, Dare, Double Dare: Stories of Motherhood will be published in April 2014 by Goose Lane Editions, whose people have been as supportive of this project as I could have dreamed of. Key champion has been my agent Samanatha Haywood–I feel so lucky to have her in my corner. And my mind has been blown by the generosity and brilliance of the women who came together to make this book possible: Heather Birrell, Julie Booker, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Myrl Coulter, Christa Couture, Heather Cromarty, Nancy-Jo Cullen, Marita Dachsel, Ariel Gordon, Amy Lavender Harris, Alexis Kienlen, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Michele Landsberg, Deanna McFadden, Maria Meindl, Saleema Nawaz, Susan Olding, Alison Pick, Heidi Reimer, Kerry Ryan, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, Carrie Snyder, Patricia Storms, Zoe Whittall and Julia Zarankin. Each of these writers has underlined the one thing I’ve always been sure of, which is that women are absolutely amazing.
November 27, 2012
Here and There
No blog post of considerable substance today because I have scheduled a marathon tonight to get though 200 pages of Richard Russo’s Straight Man before my book club meets tomorrow night. Whatever book I’m reading next is not allowed to be 400 pages along–I need a dose of brevity. In huge news, Harriet turned 3.5 yesterday and therefore had her photo taken with Miffy. We can’t quite believe how much she’s turned into a big girl since her birthday 6 months ago. Her Daddy also had a birthday this weekend, an actual full birthday, and it was a pleasure to celebrate his goodness (and eat cupcakes). In great luck news, we participated in a community clean-up on Saturday and found $10 in a leafpile. On Sunday, we stopped by the AGO to see Monica Kulling read from her new book Lumpito, which we’re all a little fond of. I was thrilled to see a couple of my favourite books of 2012 turn up on the Globe and Mail’s best book round-up— Mad Hope and The Juliet Stories. Other exciting things are Obama supporting indie bookshops; a new novel by India Knight!; and this excellent book vending machine which I have to visit asap. As soon as I finish reading Straight Man, that is…
November 19, 2012
Reading in the First Trimester
I have so much trouble reading when I’m 6-12 weeks pregnant. As I’ve done it twice now, I can say for a fact that I am the problem and it’s not necessarily the books I encounter, all of which seem to me to be absolutely intolerable. In my first trimester of pregnancy, I completely lack the patience required to overlook the (often obligatory) parts of any book that are intolerable, and understand its fundamental goodness. I can’t read a book that’s very long either, because eventually it becomes associated with nausea and even the thought of the book makes me want to puke. I have a similar relationship with Calgary– every time I go there, I’m 6 or 8 weeks pregnant, and I can’t even think about it anymore. And with Cloud Atlas, whose first pages I read in Calgary and therefore never again.
Another book I can’t handle is Cybele Young’s A Few Bites, which is so so good! But the book came into my life when I was six weeks pregnant and when Ferdie is presented with his lunch of broccoli, carrot sticks, and ravioli, my stomach heaves. I can no longer eat broccoli, which is bizarre because I’ve always loved it, but no longer, temporarily I hope. We’ve had to ask our organic food delivery to stop bringing it because every week I threw it out.
There is Nicola Barker’s The Yips, which I bought in Calgary but Calgary was not even the problem. The biggest problem I think is that it was not as good as Burley Cross Postbox Theft or Darkmans, and I was so unhappy (and feeling sick) while I was reading it. There were a few weeks where I hated everything, and not just books, but then I started reading A Very Large Soul: Selected Letters of Margaret Laurence, and began to feel better. Correspondance and short stories were the trick I guess, fragments, and perhaps this was why I was so elated to discover Isabel Huggan’s The Elizabeth Stories–finally a book to fall in love with. And the Susans anthology. And slowly, slowly, I was happy to find that I could love books again. (I am not sure that Calgary will recover so easily.)
So yes, this is a round-about way of saying that after being the first woman ever to have a baby three and a half years ago, I am going to pioneer the act of having a second at the end of May. Literary trauma aside, I’ve had a relatively easy first trimester and have been so grateful for Harriet’s mornings at school so that I’ve still been able to get my work done. Grateful too that we dragged out Harriet’s napping through the weeks when I needed it most. Also that emotionally, I’ve have a much easier time of it this time around–with a three year old running around, less apparent miracles are easier to believe in. I have faith this time, and it’s so refreshing not be crazy (though we’ll see how long the sanity lasts. In my experience, it comes in limited quantities only).
I am excited and terrified, and hoping that everyone who promised it would be easier second-time around wasn’t lying. I am really excited for Harriet to become a sister. And most of all, I just feel enormously lucky, that this decision whether or not to have a second child was one we had the freedom and good fortune to make for ourselves.
October 30, 2012
Hatchback
Where have I been? Nowhere, actually, except consumed by projects and daily life, plus we’re giving up napping at our house, which is cutting into my reading time. And so the past few days, I’ve been reading instead of blogging when I had the chance– the wonderful Elizabeth Stories, which I can’t wait to write about here. Had a wonderful night out with Stuart on the weekend, with dinner and Ira Glass at Massey Hall! Halloween has also become a full-time preoccupation–we’ve had three parties so far, and it’s not even Halloween yet. I’m also getting ready for the Wild Writers Festival this weekend, where at my session I will advise writers not to write blog posts in which they apologize for not blogging. So I’m kind of breaking my own rule now, but then consistency has never been my strong point, and I’m not apologizing either. Also, I can’t believe I haven’t told you about the eventful IFOA night I attended last week (I am the anonymous woman calling out angrily), with the marvellous Anakana Schofield (who came over for breakfast on Saturday) and that I met Leanne Shapton!!!, which went much smoother than the time I met Joan Didion. Thank goodness.
October 24, 2012
On the Rosalind Prize
So thrilled to read about the advent of the Rosalind Prize, Canada’s new literary prize for fiction by women. Which is not to say that Canada needs more literary prizes in general, but I think we need this one. Two years ago, I shared my thoughts on the Orange Prize, and I haven’t changed my mind. Oh, and you know my feelings on women and the Leacock Prize. Anyway, it turns out that the stats for women and Canadian literary prizes are as pathetic as all the others.
In a week during which the same old (justified) woes about women’s representation were aired again, and a venerable Canadian publisher faces peril, it is refreshing to see action for positive change and it’s really nice to be inspired.
October 2, 2012
On awards lists, malarky and various apes
The Giller shortlist was announced yesterday, the nominees for the Governor General’s Awards announced today. Writers Trust last week too, and in general, I’m not so grumpy anymore. I love that The Juliet Stories is getting props. I don’t love that Malarky still isn’t, but I’m confident that it’s a book that will hold its own. Its enthusiastic readers will do its propping for it. I look forward to reading some of the other nominees.
Last week I read the Giller longlisted My Life Among the Apes by Cary Fagan, which I enjoyed a lot. Also was pleased to interview Fagan on 49thShelf, and I hope you’ll check it out because I’m really proud of this one. I’ve also been inspired to create a list of books with monkeys on their cover–a most worthwhile endeavour, I think.
Check out also recent #Fest2Fest interviews with writers Andrew Larsen and Sarah Tsiang.
September 17, 2012
Funny September
For me, this time of year is a kind of bookish rapture. The Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, Word on the Street Toronto, and the Victoria College Book Sale are what my Septembers are usually built upon, allowing me to bring home ample inspiration, sunshine memories, and new piles to add to my to-be-read stack. But this year is a bit funny, as my sister had the nerve to put her wedding right in the thick of it, and so now we’re going to be on other side of the country instead of at Word on the Street, and we gave Eden Mills a miss in order to save funds for that trip across the country. Which is all right actually, because my sister’s wedding is going to be wonderful, and I have so many books in my stack that I’m grateful to be put a timezone away from the Vic Book Sale, but it’s been overwhelming getting work done in time for before I go. So this is why you get to read about why I’m really tired, instead of reading about my brilliant time at Eden Mills. But I promise, I’ll be back to all three next year, and it will be a fine reminder to wish my lovely sister a happy anniversary.
June 11, 2012
The best literature this country has ever produced
From my letter to my Member of Parliament and Minister James Moore regarding the federal government’s cessation of funding to the Literary Press Group of Canada:
“Canadian presses are right now publishing some of the best literature this country has ever produced. If you aren’t already familiar with titles such as Darcie Hossack’s Mennonites Don’t Dance (Thistledown Press, also nominated for Commonwealth Writers Prize), Billeh Nickerson’s Impact: The Titanic Poems (Arsenal Pulp Press), Madeleine Sonik’s Afflictions and Departures (Anvil Press, also nominated for Charles Taylor Prize), Daniel Griffin’s Stopping for Strangers (Vehicule Press, shortlisted for Frank O’Connor and Danuta Gleed awards), Mad Hope by Heather Birrell (Coach House Press), Mnemonic: A Book of Trees by Theresa Kishkan (Goose Lane Editions), The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud (Gaspereau Press, winner of the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize), I’m a Registered Nurse… by Anne Perdue (Insomniac Press), and Monoceros by Suzette Mayr (Coach House Press, nominated for 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize), which are only some of the best books I’ve read lately, then I suggest you seek them out. And then you will understand my concern about the LPG funding cut, and about how much we all stand to lose as a result.”
The matter is urgent. If you support Canadian readers, Canadian books, and Canadian writers, please write your MP and tell her/him so.
