Summer 2003

Dub Poet Afua Cooper: How Racism Railroads Culture; PLUS: Feminist Bodybuilding: Lisa Bavington by Krista Scott-Dixon; The History of Canadian Women and Jazz, including Mother of Pearl, Marilyn Lerner and more; The Radical Cheerleaders.

The Dearth of a Nation by Sheila Nopper

The Dearth of a Nation

Afua Cooper blows the whistle on Canada's history of slavery and gives a voice to unsung heroes of the past. Afua Cooper is a poet and writer whose work includes Memories Have Tongue, Utterances and Incantations: Women, Poetry and Dub, and (with co-editors Peggy Bristow and Dionne Brand) We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History.

Straying from the Gender Pack by Joy Parks

Straying from the Gender Pack

Ivan E. Coyote is doing what she does best. She's telling a story and this one is about her experiences in public washrooms, the place where her gender is most often questioned. "I've frightened women, I've been screamed at, I've been hit in the head with purses. Once in the Toronto airport, I got dragged out of the stall with my pants at my ankles.

Open

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Author:

Lisa Moore

Review by:

Sara Cassidy

No wonder this book was nominated for a Giller Prize, even if it was the dark horse. These ten short stories are deliriously rich, visceral and sexy. Tenuously balanced on spare dialogue and packed with startling, sensuous images, they're also dreamy, if mercifully free of the sentimentality, implausibility and self-consciousness of so-called poetic fiction. Unfortunately, Moore's sentences are relentlessly short and though they're always rewarding, I came to feel riddled.

This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions For Transformation

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Author:

Gloria Anzaldua, Analouise Keating (editors)

Review by:

Mridula Nath Chakraborty

"Twenty years ago we struggled with the recognition of difference within the context of commonality. Today we grapple with the recognition of commonality within the context of difference." In the preface to this long-awaited anthology by radical women of colour, Gloria Anzaldua spells out again what it means to conduct an oppositional feminist politics within white settler colonies.

Anorexia's Fallen Angel

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Author:

Barbara McLintock

Review by:

Danette Dooley

When award-winning investigative journalist Barbara McLintock set out to write a book about the controversial Montreaux Clinic in British Columbia, she did so with four years of research backing up her horrifying conclusions about the clinic that had treated thousands of anorexia sufferers. Her knowledge of the subject area adds credibility to her gut-wrenching story. Anorexia's Fallen Angel is the story of Peggy Claude-Pierre's rise to fame for her miraculous treatment of near-death anorexics.