F-Word Fall 2007 by The F-Word

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FWORD

AHISTORY Penn has an active feminist community, a fact vibrantly illustrated by organizations and centers on campus, from the Alice Paul Center to the Women’s Center to the Penn Consortium of Undergraduate Women. Student groups thrive at Penn, and many groups either implicitly or explicitly deal with issues of gender and sexuality. In thinking about our university’s history and our individual experiences here, it became clear that perhaps what was missing was feminist literary expression. And so we at F-Word set out to create a space for students to give literary and artistic voice to their ideas, feelings, opinions and insights on feminism, gender and sexuality. In that vein, we titled the publication “The F-Word: A Collection of Feminist Voices.” In looking to the past, we found inspiration in the form of a magazine called Pandora’s Box, which we originally set out to revive. Pandora’s Box was founded a decade or so ago by a group of dedicated students in the Women’s Studies department. These women had taken classes taught by Professors Rita Barnard and Margaret Mills and were heavily influenced by the works studied in these classes, texts written by Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, Diamanda Galas and other writers and artists. Pandora’s Box published the works of Penn women each year and was intended for a female audience. We wanted to incorporate a larger, more diverse group of both contributors and readers. We established our vision for the publication—to provide an outlet for writing or art pertaining to feminism (broadly defined as respect for all individuals regardless of gender or sexual affiliation). We received dozens of submissions for our inaugural issue and released that issue in January 2007. The magazine found a warm reception on Penn’s campus and we look forward to reaching even more members of our community in the future. We acknowledge the tremendous progress feminism has made and yet we know that there is still more to be thought and said, written and photographed, captured and articulated. The F-word editorial board would like to gratefully thank the Alice Paul Center and Associate Director Shannon Lundeen, our faculty advisor. We are also deeply indebted to the Kelly Writers House and director Jessica Lowenthal, as well as the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing and director Al Filreis. Thanks also to the Student Activities Council.

SUBMIT YOUR WORK FOR THE SPRING ISSUE

YOUR VOICE

We are looking for writing and artwork from any and all Penn undergraduate students. We’d love to receive your editorial pieces, poetry, academic essays, photographs, short stories, drawings, creative prose, personal essays, paintings and anything else! Anonymous submissions are allowed and pieces used for course assignments are welcome. Suggested maximum word length is 3,000 words (ten pages double-spaced). There is no restriction on artwork size or medium. Feel free to submit as many submissions as you see ﬁt and in whichever mediums you would like. Submissions are due by October 19, 2007. Submissions are accepted by email: To submit prose, contact fwordprose@gmail.com, To submit poetry, contact fwordpoetry@gmail.com, To submit academic essays, contact fwordacademic@gmail.com, To submit artwork, contact fwordart@gmail.com. Please attach the piece, rather than pasting it into the body of the email. If e-mailing isn’t your style, you can also drop your work off at one of our submission boxes on campus. The locations are the Alice Paul Center on the 4th Floor of Logan Hall and the Kelly Writers House, across from 1920 Commons (Computer Room, 2nd Floor). For more information, visit http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~fword/.

TABLE OF

CONTENTS FALL 2008 ��

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01 Menage-a-Trois 03 The Girls of Greenwich Village: An Analysis of the Women of the Beat Generation 07 To let You in 08 In and Out: Staging the Next Sexual Revolution 11 My Mother’s Legacy 12 Primates 13 The Portrayal of the Feminine in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried 18 My Body 19 No Papers 22 Postcard Wisdom 24 Nancy Pelosi in the Media: Grandmother of the House 29 Venus and Mars 30 Period 32 The Stage 34 Artful Destruction 36 The Color Purple: A “Womanist” Take on the Acquisition of Voice and Empowerment of the African-American Female 40 In English 41 The Shoe 43 Rags of Rape 46 Sexuality and Intertextuality: The Exposing of Heteronormative Constructions with Literary Ones in Winterson’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit 51 The Last Corner

Rhaisa Kai Lauren Gillespie Kara Daddario Arielle Brousse Alison Sara Weiss Catherine Chewning Bonnie Shnayerson Jess Purcell Caroline Henley Stephanie Bachula Kaitlyn Smeland Pia Aliperti Alysia Harris Julie Diana Ariel Tichnor

Nicole Richards Laura Michalak Terra Gearhart Trinh Lien

Amanda Aycock Kara Daddario

ART

02 Lea and Soﬁe 17 Furies 27 Collage 39 Camoﬂauge 44 Vagina Monologues 49 Sisters

Elizabeth Yohlin Priscilla Spencer Lauren Rubinfeld Elizabeth Yohlin Pauline Baniqued Priscilla Spencer

RHAISA KAI

MENAG E -A -T RO I S CLASS OF 2010

… But you’re Black You grew up in the presence of slave shacks Hear the cries of your fathers when John Coltrane blows in his sax Intellect doubted because people wonder if you’re here on the affirmative action track Yeah, there’s sexism but you carry the legacy of Africa on your back The media ordained your skin color to be associated with the survival of crack Your people built this nation yet it is you that catches the most flack Ain’t got power so you gotta base your worth on limited money stacks And you wanna worry about feminism …But you’re straight Never been tainted by participating in a gay parade Your people came too far for you to now complain This is the way things have always been and isn’t going to change Female subordination has existed since the days of Cain And you’re too attractive to think about these things, it’ll only drive you insane There are bigger things to worry about, like the effects of acid rain So stay in the mirror and stop inventing pain Because there’s no need for you to be a feminist …But you’re a woman Daughters around the world are seen as omens Been raped in parks and your treasures have been left open Members of your struggle reside from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean Your power has been hidden because its light is truly golden You must preserve the strength of the Yoruba goddess Oshun Started a war that caused the commercialization of the Trojan Bearer of the Messiah and yet you were a virgin And you don’t consider yourself a feminist

ELIZABETH YOHLIN

LEA AND SOFIE

LAUREN GILLESPIE

THE G I R L S O F GREENWICH VILLAGE:

AN ANALYSIS OF THE WOMEN OF THE BEAT GENERATION CLASS OF 2007

n high school I wanted to be a beatnik. I too wanted to go on the road, but I could never ﬁgure out what would happen if, traveling to Mexico in 1958, I got my period. Were you supposed to carry a supply of Kotex with you? How many could you carry? If you took all you needed, there wouldn’t be any room for all those nice jugs of wine in Jack Kerouac’s car.”1

In nearly every realm of life, the Beatnik generation of the 1950s rejected the traditional values of their decade and searched for a new, better, truer way to live. Juxtaposed against this, however, was an ethic which permitted their hosting of a Miss Bohemia pageant in January 1958. This illustrates that even a movement as progressive and liberal as the Beats espoused a relatively traditional role for women.2 However, to simply cite the Beatniks’ failure to reject absolutely the prevailing assumptions about women in the 1950s would be to ignore the complexity of the position of women within the Beat movement. In spite of what the Miss Bohemia pageant might suggest, a woman’s life in Greenwich Village afforded her far more liberty and a vastly less conventional lifestyle than did a woman’s life in Levittown. The personal memoirs of female Beatniks and the presentation of women in the Village Voice during the years 1957 and 1958 illustrate the ways in which female Beats simultaneously incurred conflicting experiences between the confinement of traditional 1950s values and the liberation of living “la vie boheme.” In considering why Beat women assumed a transitional posture between liberation and confinement, one must look to the increased power they obtained during the first decade of the Beat movement. In the 1940s, when the early Beats (including Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs) were first meeting in the neighborhood around Columbia University, the women with whom they kept company did not display the independence the women of Greenwich Village would come to embrace in the late 50s. These first women of the Beats were docile wives with a fate arguably worse than that of women throughout American suburbs, for their husbands’ own rebellion and dangerous lifestyles left them stifled and victimized. At nineteen, Edie Parker learned that she was pregnant when Jack Kerouac was away at sea. Knowing Kerouac’s fear of familial responsibility, Parker had an abortion, which left her unable to have children. Joan Adams (Burroughs’ common-law wife) suffered a similarly tragic fate as she accepted Burroughs’ homosexuality and mirrored his drug use, leaving her addicted to Benzedrine. These first women of the Beat generation were content simply to “define themselves as wives of geniuses.”3

Despite the constricting circumstances of the early Beat women, the development of the Beat movement eventually supported the women’s struggle for freedom. Throughout 1956 and into 1957, the Village Voice failed to print articles that explored the world of a “Village Girl.” However, the fall of 1957 brought articles focused on female subject matters. The column “Voice Feminine,” a commentary on life as a woman in Greenwich Village, appeared for the first time on November 13, 1957. Despite this, women were still excluded from some major aspects of Beat life. Kerouac’s classic Beat work On the Road firmly entrenched travel as a fundamental part of Beats’ rejection of conformity and inspired many Beats to embark upon journeys similar to Kerouac’s.4 Unfortunately, women were almost never able to go on the road. Though some critics have cited the inability to participate as a sign of women’s exclusion and repression, others, including female Beatnik Carolyn Cassady, have said that even in being left behind, women discovered their own forms of resistance to mainstream values.5 Women rebelled while remaining at home because male Beats’ lifestyle of unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction, and sexual promiscuity did not provide stability and security. To compensate for the nontraditional lifestyles of male Beats, women assumed typically male roles at a time when it was rare for a woman to be the breadwinner or to live alone.6 While these responsibilities did afford Beat women more freedom than the average 1950s female, elements of conformity persisted nonetheless. When the men came back from the road, most expected and wanted to return to a home that was based upon the prevailing gender roles of the time.7 According to Beat poet Diane di Prima, women were expected to follow the “rule of Cool.”8 This code of conduct required women to conform to the masculine assumptions of the Beats by always remaining repressed and silent, embodying Kerouac’s description of woman as “say[ing] nothing and wear[ing] black.”9 Thus, the effect of the Beat “code” was to make female Beatniks powerless and objectified, much like the vast majority of American women living during the 1950s. As Hettie Jones, a female Beat, has said, “while in the middle of being Beat we did a lot of stuff the vast majority of 50s and 60s women did: cooked, made beds, did dishes, and most suspect of all, bore children.”10 Over time, Beat women broke the “rule of Cool” and pursued more liberating experiences. Hettie Jones, wife of Beat LeRoi Jones, spoke of traditional, restrictive clothing as symbolic of a woman’s more general confinement and reminded the audience that “it was no small thing to take off that girdle and waist cincher and let your body be.”11 Joyce Johnson, Kerouac’s second wife, also noted elements of liberation, but within the sphere of creating art. Johnson said that Kerouac actually encouraged her to write and to continue to work on her novel.12 The aforementioned di Prima even began her own publishing company in order to get her work published. Hettie Jones summarized the progressive goals of Beat women as wanting to “be better women, new and different kinds of women.”13 Despite the growth of Beat women’s liberating experiences, the way in which the Village Voice generally presented a Beat woman’s approach to men, love, and marriage was largely conventional. One flagrantly traditional presentation of a woman’s perspective on love came in an article encouraging Villagers to buy Vespas. This article objectifies women and presents them as submissive to men. While explaining the advantages of owning a Vespa, the article notes that “a girl in skirts can ride comfortably seated behind the driver. That brings up another advantage over a car…the girl, while comfortably seated, holds tightly on to the driver.”14 This commentary does not even consider the possibility of a girl driving the Vespa but instead presents her, both literally and figuratively, sitting behind her man. In addition to the presentation of a woman’s approach to romantic relationships, the attention paid to and importance placed upon women’s clothing also reflect the mainstream values of the time which emphasized the appearance of women. The “Voice Feminine” column of November 13, 1957 traced a woman’s relationship to Greenwich Village through the symbol of a black turtleneck. The article noted that at sixteen a girl would slip on a black turtleneck to go to a Village coffee shop in an effort to appear cool, serious, and even mildly depressed or bitter. Later in life, the same girl would return to Greenwich Village, this time balancing a job and the bohemian lifestyle such that the black turtleneck would become a part of the “after-work wardrobe.”15 The overt emphasis upon style of dress in this article

reduces women to being defined by an article of clothing, a simplification that reflects a onedimensional conception of women. Certainly, no one would dare attempt to summarize a man’s lifetime of experiences and accomplishments in a tie or a shirt. Amid these numerous examples of traditional presentations of women lay repeated liberal assumptions about a woman working and living alone. Although more women entered the paid workforce between World War II and the 1960s than ever before, mainstream depictions of these women were generally negative.16 However, the Village Voice presented women working without caveats or condemnation. In one “Voice Feminine” column, a man was interviewed because he had recently published a book about being the husband of a successful writer.17 The advertisements within the Village Voice also reflected an acceptance of women in the workforce. A particular ad for Williams Hairstyling claimed to “cater to the office girl: shampoo and styling in an hour or less during your lunch hour.”18 On the contrary, mainstream publications focused upon the negative consequences of female employment. Esquire magazine spoke of “the menace of women working outside the home” and Life described married, working women as “having a disease that threatened to destroy the family.”19 As the memoirs of female Beatniks and the content of the Village Voice display, though the Beats themselves rejected most of the conventions of the homogenous society they perceived around them, their attitude towards women was far more conservative. Later, women in other progressive movements (such as the Civil Rights movement) would face the same problems with traditional expectations for women from organizations that espoused otherwise liberal goals. Having experienced the same tastes of freedom that female Beatniks did, women involved in these movements would seek an expansion of their rights and become some of the first feminists. Thus, Beat women were, in a way, “protofeminist.”20 Though the women’s movement would later criticize female Beatniks for failing to attain what the feminists deemed to be a complete liberation, the women of the Beat generation viewed their role as a vast improvement over the norm. The experience of female Beatniks was perhaps best described by Hattie Jones when she simply said, “Even if I wasn’t exactly equal, it shit-sure beat being in the suburbs.”21 Endnotes: 1 McDowell, “Off the Road: Alternative Views of Rebellion, Resistance and ‘The Beats,’” in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21, no. 2 (1996): 412-419. 2 The Village Voice, “To Pick ‘Miss Bohemia,’” January 15, 1958. 3 Joyce Johnson, “Beat Queens: Women in Flux” in The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture, ed. Holly George-Warren (New York: Hyperion, 1999), 44. 4 Linda McDowell, 413. 5 Ibid., 413. 6 Sue Wiseman, “The Artist and the Boy Gang: Beat Boys and Girls,” Dionysos 4, no. 3 (1993): 3-8. 7 McDowell, 414. 8 Diane di Prima, Memoirs of a Beatnik (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), 94. 9 Jack Kerouac, “The Origins of the Beat Generation,” Playboy, June 1959: 42. . 10 The NY Beat Generation Show: Women and the Beats, videocassette (New York University: A Thin Air Video Series Documenting the Historic Beat Generation Conference, 1994). 11 Ibid. 12 Johnson, 45. 13 The NY Beat Generation Show. 14 Wendell Sax, “Economy, Freedom, and the Way the Girl Has to Hang On,” The Village Voice, February 20, 1957. 15 Flavia, “Voice Feminine,” The Village Voice, November 13, 1957. 16 Thomas Sugrue, lecture, November 15, 2006. 17 Flavia, “Voice Feminine,” The Village Voice, December 26, 1957. 18 The Village Voice, January 23, 1957. 19 Ibid.

Johnson and Grace, “Visions and Revisions,” 10. The NY Beat Generation Show.

Works Cited: di Prima, Diane. Memoirs of a Beatnik. New York: Penguin Books, 1969. Flavia, “Voice Feminine,” The Village Voice, November 13, 1957. ____. “Voice Feminine,” The Village Voice, December 26, 1957. Johnson, Joyce . “Beat Queens: Women in Flux.” In The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture, edited by Holly George-Warren. New York: Hyperion,1999. Kerouac, “The Origins of the Beat Generation.” Playboy, June 1959: 42. McDowell, Linda. “Off the Road: Alternative Views of Rebellion, Resistance and ‘The Beats.’”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21, no. 2 (1996): 412-419. The NY Beat Generation Show: Women and the Beats, videocassette. New York University: A Thin Air Video Series Documenting the Historic Beat Generation Conference, 1994. Sax, Wendell. “Economy, Freedom, and the Way the Girl Has to Hang On.” The Village Voice, February 20, 1957. Sugrue, Thomas. Lecture, November 15, 2006. The Village Voice, “To Pick ‘Miss Bohemia,’” January 15, 1958. ____. January 23, 1957. Wiseman, Sue. “The Artist and the Boy Gang: Beat Boys and Girls.” Dionysos 4, no. 3 (1993).

KARA DADDARIO

TO LET YOU I N CLASS OF 2008

“And this is my house and you make me happy so this is your poem” -Nikki Giovanni In my house there are dishes to be washed and newspapers to be read because I get the Wall Street Journal to say I’m reading something current. It’s a disaster in there; I have mice and I’m a smoker who eats sushi every night because I’m not really domestic like I told you. If I let you in you may ﬁnd the accumulation of chopsticks and soy sauce but you shouldn’t see that – you’re going to have a political career and you know the Kennedys. And what if you don’t understand the pictures on my wall and don’t like the books on my shelf – yes, I have read Sexual Politics, Twice. I could play you some music if we go in but I’m from Philadelphia and I’m not sure it even sounds the same as it would in your District of Columbia. Yet on my porch you lean in and tell me that you don’t wash wine glasses and you talk too loud and you have never made the bed in your life. We stand in the exposing silence of just Ourselves while I turn the key to the house, to My House, and let you in.

ARIELLE BROUSSE

IN AND OUT: STAGING THE NEXT SEXUAL REVOLUTION CLASS OF 2007

reached up to the highest shelf of my dorm room closet and pulled down a paper grocery bag, discreetly folded over at the top. Slipping my hand inside, I browsed cautiously through an array of leather, rubber, silicone and metal goodies before locating the item I sought—a simple, red leather collar with a steel D-ring at the throat. I pranced in front of my bathroom mirror, trying to figure out how it would look with a red leather jacket, or a black lace bra, or vinyl bondage boots. Of course, I wouldn’t wear anything like this on an ordinary day. But that night I’d been asked to look outrageous, and I intended to deliver, thunder thighs, knocked knees, flat chest and all. I primped and pouted like a pre-teen playing dress-up. But I was wrought with old memories of high-schoolers’ ire-packed expletives from when I so much as mentioned sex: slut, whore, perv, sometimes paired with fat for good measure, as though only airbrushed Barbie dolls were allowed to have sex and like it. I had learned long ago to laugh them off. People who were apt to deal these names out tended to overlook the fact that I’d only ever had sex in committed, loving, monogamous relationships. If feeling good about the carefully considered sex I have makes me a slut, pass me the KY jelly and call me a slut, because this, I felt, was worth nothing less than celebration. I was contemplating what patterned fishnets to wear, if any, when I heard my phone ring twice and stop. It was Nick, who worked with me on Quake, our campus’s first and only literary erotica magazine. He left a simple message: “AA XXX got shut down.” He wasn’t talking in codes. AA XXX was my destination for that evening, and the reason I was clad in vinyl and leather. Nick had been the one to introduce me to Jiajia, an upstart Bryn Mawr junior with a talented eye for photography and a forthrightness about her sexual proclivities. I idolized her from afar. I could talk the talk about bold sexual expression and tolerance, but if I was the one to mention that I keep a riding crop in my closet, she was the one who might wear it on a hip holster in a self-portrait. We were thrilled when she started her own campus erotica magazine, Virgin Mawrtyr. Within weeks of the suggestion, she had dozens of people on board with the project. She got the administrative go-ahead to reserve a location for a grand-scale fund-raising party. She distributed flyers, hired a DJ, printed up tee-shirts, and got permission to screen a film by artist Richard Kern. Her vision of a bacchanal in which people of all genders, shapes, sizes, and colors could embrace and display their sexuality without fear was coming to fruition. She named the party in honor of a Peaches song which declared, “I’m only double-A but I’m

thinking triple-X.” In short, she’d orchestrated my revolution for me, and all I had to do was show up. But the coup, it appeared, was not to be staged. I tossed down my leather and got hold of Nick to find out what went wrong. His response was a stream of safety concerns and alumni pressures. I didn’t understand and I was too furious and too frustrated to try. Defeated, deflated, I hung up and went to work. That night after my shift, I walked into a party that some mutual friends were throwing as a kind of substitute for the venue we’d lost. Nick let me in. The first thing I saw once my eyes adjusted to the dark and the haze was Jiajia, leaning back on a counter littered with beer bottles and discarded photographs. She was with her co-editor Emily and a short, shaggy, pierced-lipped hipster. I came up to offer my condolences. “Don’t worry,” she shouted over the bass thumping through the living room. “I’ve put out statements and everyone knows this is all bullshit.” Two dozen faceless people were already dancing, a cogent tangle of limbs like some writhing Ganeshian god. Behind me, a shirtless boy with his hair sweat-plastered to his face stood gyrating like a cage dancer. No one seemed to notice. By the end of the night nearly all of us had our shirts off as we danced. It was hardly some orgiastic obscenity. It was inspiring to see a room full of near-strangers sensing a comfort level strong enough to be able to let their guards down. These weren’t Victoria’s Secret models or Chippendales studs; I saw love handles and birthmarks aplenty, yellow teeth flashing in eruptions of laughter. But it wasn’t the point to be perfect. It never had been. The next week, I met up with Jiajia and Emily for dinner. We walked over in the rain from American Apparel. “Did you know that American Apparel has its own porn mag?” Jiajia chirped, barely thirty seconds after saying hello. “It’s called Butt. Isn’t that great? Omigod I love your umbrella!” The eyes went wide in her face as she gave a little skip down the road. She chattered eagerly about hip-hop culture and her love of polka dots. She didn’t remind me of a sex kitten so much as a squirrel or a sparrow. Over vegetable pad Thai, Jiajia and Emily told me that they had wanted to start Virgin Mawrtyr in part because it was such an interesting sexual community to explore. “Sexual expression is directly proportionate to the size of the group, right?” Emily said. “At Bryn Mawr, everybody knows each other. And everybody’s, whatever, more experimental in college, but there everyone’s much more open about it.” “I have to laugh whenever I think of what people say about Bryn Mawr girls,” Jiajia added, stabbing at a tofu cube. “The line is that we ‘gave up sex for an education.’ But, hey, it does happen.” I thought about one of Jiajia’s most recent shoots: a Bryn Mawr girl naked in a sea of unmarked, rose-red hardcover books, now and again glancing up from the text she was reading with a gaze that was both listless and coy. Jiajia emphasized, though, that she hadn’t set out to cause a stir; the controversy of the magazine had only been a not-unwelcome side product. “I just wanted to take pictures. Of women. That’s all.” She shrugged, offering a mischievous half-smile as she slurped a pink noodle up through the heart-shaped pucker of her lips, as if to say, “bring it on.” At the end, we spilled ourselves out of the restaurant and onto the sidewalk. Jiajia lifted herself in a hop and landed legs wide, hands at her vest’s lapels. She tensed her face into a roar as she tugged to reveal the simple black tee-shirt underneath which read CUNT, the same way Clark Kent pulls apart his white button-downs to expose the telltale S. The sexual superhero. The vaginal vigilante. Emily and I were helpless with laughter. We made our way to Slought Gallery, where we were to attend a lecture on the barebacking subculture in gay male pornography. Nudes plastered the walls: not the demure, submissive lasses of yesteryear’s classical galleries, but provocative, hungry bodies, deliberately open and exposed. Beyond them, behind a podium, an enormous screen provided us with images of a larger-than-life jelly dildo at work. But no one was shocked – we were neither among the depraved nor the judgmental. Surrounded by artists and Ph.D.s alike, the three of us were unable to find seats together, but we were happy to be there among people who found sex as compelling and significant a subject as we did. The lecturer interweaved theory and smut seamlessly, engaging the sexual acts on the screen through the lenses of Lacan and Foucault. There were still those, spotted about the lecture hall, who giggled lowly at the mention of

assholes or the use of the word “fucking”—but for the most part, it felt good-natured rather than dismissive. Jiajia’s and Emily’s faces, viewed from behind through the crowd, betrayed their excitement by their cheekbones which curled in smiles or squints, and by the soft fall of their hair as they tilted forward to take avid notes. The due attention was inspiriting; the faint scratching sound of pen on paper seemed as gratifying as nails on ﬂesh. I felt comfortable with the state of the new sexual revolution. We were here. There was something to say. It was being put out there, being lived out and shouted out; and we were all, in our way, taking it in.

ALISON SARA WEISS

MY MOTHER’S LEGACY CLASS OF 2007

My mother told me that you can’t have it all. That having a family meant a permanent wall in her career. That every sick day, school trip and vacation when she had to be out of contact with the office Lowered their confidence in her a bit more. But I don’t think she’d trade anything for the day when she picked me up from school in a limo and bought me a pizza to nurse me back to health. I wouldn’t. My mother told me that those parent committees and foundations Were like walking into Hell— Submitting yourself to the addle-brained machinations of teachers and administrators, mothers and fathers Who cared nothing for the welfare of their students and children. I learned that lesson every day in the politics of the classroom while I sat in my plastic chair. It wasn’t much of a shock. My mother told me that my education would only serve my ambition. Wasn’t too keen when I said I didn’t want to go to grad school. Made me promise to go back for my Masters. Someday. But I quickly learned, on the college green, that the J.D.s, M.A.s and M.D.s Are still just bridges to the MRS.s Women’s lib changed the scene? Think again. My mother told me that when I made my first million— “Million?” I scoffed, “I’ll be lucky to make rent.” My mother talked of millions, while she griped about how underpaid and underappreciated she had been for thirty plus years. How am I supposed to maintain my costly dreams, while scenes of discontent dance before my eyes? Most of those megastars don’t have the goods to back up their monster paychecks, but they get them all the same! My mother, like her mother before her, told me “You’re beautiful. Now forget about yourself.” Words that I whispered over and over As I, the ugly duckling, stepped into the sea of swans Who stood poised to rip me apart. Sometimes, it was only my mother’s faith that kept my head above water. My mother told me you can’t have it all, But you better fight like Hell to get as much as you possibly can.

CATHERING CHEWNING

P R I M A T E S CLASS OF 2009

exual dimorphism. Read: men and women are different and this is science. OK. Degree of difference affects social structure. Read: if sexual dimorphism index is anywhere near 100, social structure is rooted in monogamous relationships. That is, of course, as long as it is the male who is slightly dominant. The rare chance – so rare we’ll mention it only as a side-note in the textbook ﬁlled with real science – that female primates are slightly larger than males and, fuck, we’ve got chaos. No longer could the social system be rooted in monogamy. No, this must be an example of an Amazonian ape irrationally declaring her feminist pride. Or, as my TA delightfully exclaimed, “She’s a pimp.” (Insert undergraduate chuckles here.) Who knew primates exempliﬁed 1950s American ideals? Bipedalism is the result of male provisioning: “Males carried back resources to dependent females and young.” That’s right, we owe these two legs to female incapability. Just one opinion, but one worth mentioning. Valid to men in hats digging in the desert. Read: valid to textbooks and professors and students. Evolution through the lens of modern sexism. This is natural; this is science.

BONNIE SHNAYERSON

THE PO RT RAYA L OF THE FEMININE IN TIM O’BRIEN’S THE THINGS THEY CARRIED CLASS OF 2009

here’s a rage that goes through [the] story that was entirely intentional . . . [that] rage . . . could be the consequence of men doing all the ﬁghting and women being excluded from it. You can see it in the lingo in which women are talked about in the military. The language is pretty coarse. Women are treated in language, in conversation, as aliens, and in some ways women are aliens to that combat milieu. Exploring these issues is important to me, and even without having the lead characters be women, I can explore [them].1

The waging of war has always been linked to gender roles. With the exception of the last few decades, war has traditionally been viewed as a masculine undertaking: large men with large guns fight large battles while their wives and mothers remain safely at home. Therefore, warfare operates as a magnet for gender stereotypes. In The Things They Carried (1990), a collection of stories about soldiers in the Vietnam War, Tim O’Brien upholds this traditional gender dichotomy. In a war and country full of ambiguities, O’Brien’s squad unites, adopting a “band of brothers” mentality. The war becomes an exclusively male event, the soldiers’ masculine bond created in opposition to a feminine that cannot partake in the experience. The metafiction of The Things They Carried occupies a central role in the rave reviews of the book; consequently, many critics ignore O’Brien’s controversial representations of femininity. But it cannot be a coincidence that five of O’Brien’s stories were published in the men’s magazine, Esquire. These stories include “The Things They Carried” (1986), which begins the book, and “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” (July 1989). Representations of the feminine also occur in shorter stories such as “Speaking of Courage” and “The Man I Killed.” The critic Lorrie Smith observes in “The Things Men Do” that “O’Brien often depicts war as inaccessible to non-veterans, creating a storytelling loop between characters within stories that excludes the uninitiated reader and privileges the authority of the soldier’s experience.”2 Smith is referring to the exclusion of the feminine in the book. O’Brien, she asserts, presents the war as a privileged male event, one that the female reader cannot understand: she has the choice of “staying outside the story or reading against herself from a masculine point of view.”3 For the female reader to engage with stories about a war her gender never experienced, she must accept the severe and often derogatory gender roles O’Brien proposes. The salient message of “The Things They Carried,” the first story in the book, is that in order for a man to be a true warrior, he must reject the feminine. Women have to be excluded, but it is this very exclusion and the subsequent inability to understand war for which they are scorned. “The Things They Carried” underscores the male bond created at the expense of the

feminine, and sets the tone for the rest of the book. The story describes the relationship between Martha and Lieutenant Cross, the squad leader. Martha exemplifies the female stereotype of being removed from the war, tucked away at college. An English major, in her letters she “often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself.”4 Immediately, O’Brien presents the feminine as part of another world. The story warns against integrating women into war; when Lieutenant Cross is daydreaming about Martha, a soldier for whom he is responsible dies at the hands of the enemy. Ted Lavender’s death is the turning point of the story. Lieutenant Cross realizes that his love for Martha and his capacity to be an effective squad leader cannot coexist: he must choose between them. In order to be a strong soldier he must discard the feminine. After Lavender’s death, “[h]e hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach.”5 O’Brien’s reference to a “stone” elaborates upon the theme of weight—the story records in meticulous detail the range of weapons and supplies the men must carry. Lieutenant Cross substitutes the weight of Martha’s letters with the weight of his guilt, a weight more considerable than paper and symbolic of his decision to replace Martha with his men. He burns her letters, and promises himself that “[h]enceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere.”6 O’Brien establishes a division between genders, but goes beyond it to imply that the feminine presence is to blame for Lavender’s death. Feminine love and wartime leadership are set in opposition to each other, reaffirming the concept of male unity at the exclusion of the feminine. O’Brien’s portrayal of Martha as utterly removed from the war dovetails with his portrayal of other feminine characters incapable of understanding war trauma. In “Speaking of Courage,” O’Brien utilizes the character of Sally Gustafston to signify the impossibility of communicating the war experience to the feminine. The story revolves around Norman Bowker’s return home after the war. Sally epitomizes the clueless attitude of the town, oblivious to the trauma in her “lacy red blouse and white shorts.”7 O’Brien gives little dimension to Sally, allowing her no dialogue or agency. Sally, and all the other women left home and excluded from the experience, are not granted any space in the book to go beyond that role. By not assigning her thoughts or emotions, O’Brien necessitates a gender dichotomy. In comparison to the intensity of perspective the reader experiences through Norman, “[s]he looked happy. She had her house and her new husband, and there was really nothing he could say to her.”8 The complexity of Norman’s experiences, juxtaposed with Sally’s simplistic happiness, perpetuates the gender opposition. Although Norman wishes he could convey his experiences to Sally, he sees her as incapable of understanding. He imagines telling her about the shit field where the squad camped, and her suppressing his need to tell the story: “she would’ve said, ‘Stop it. I don’t like that word . . . This was not a story for Sally.’”9 When he imagines telling a masculine audience, however, he envisions a different reaction: “[n]o doubt Max would’ve liked it” and “‘Right’ his father would’ve murmured, ‘I hear you.’”10 The war can only be understood by and communicated to the masculine, thus encouraging unity in opposition to the feminine. O’Brien effectively pushes the feminine into the realm of “the other” through her association with the enemy in “The Man I Killed.” In the story, “the other” is feminized, perpetuating the gender gap. O’Brien attributes obvious female characteristics to the soldier whom the narrator kills, describing him as a “slim, dead, almost dainty young man.”11 Beyond his physical female characteristics, the narrator concludes he must have been a scholar, harkening back to the association between academia and women embodied by Martha in “The Things They Carried.” In his imaginings about the dead man lying before him, the narrator notes: His eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, and at school the boys sometimes teased him about how pretty he was, the arched eyebrows and long shapely fingers, and on the playground they mimicked a women’s walk and made fun of his smooth skin and his love for mathematics.12

By describing the enemy with reference to female features, O’Brien polarizes gender to the extent that the feminine is just as foreign to the American squad of men as the Vietnamese. The story elaborates upon the existing gender division through their associations with the enemy. The “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” overturns conventional gender roles, and warns against betraying male dominance in war. The story plays with the prospect of a soldier “ship[ping] his honey over to Nam.”13 Mary Anne arrives adorned in “[w]hite culottes and this sexy pink sweater” in stark contrast to the men’s fatigues. 14 The ideal American girl with “D-cup guts, trainer-bra brains,” her rapid assimilation into the war startles the men, and seems to refute the assumption that women cannot comprehend Vietnam.15 But Mary Anne understands too well: she goes beyond male experience. She “quickly fell into the habits of the bush. No cosmetics, no fingernail filing” and then the “wilderness seemed to draw her in.” 16 Mary Anne evolves from the pin-up blonde to a version of the feminine that none of the men recognize: a woman warrior. The first woman the reader witnesses in Vietnam, she comprehends, absorbs, and thrives upon the wildness of war, a fact that O’Brien demonstrates to be an anomaly. Before her transformation, Mary Anne made you think about those girls back home, how clean and innocent they all are, how they’ll never understand any of this, not in a billion years. Try to tell them about it, they’ll just stare at you with those big round candy eyes. They won’t understand zip. It’s like trying to tell somebody what chocolate tastes like.17 When Mary Anne breaks away from this misogynistic narrative of the feminine, she goes beyond the male understanding of war. Although the story initially suggests a divergence from gender dichotomy, it ultimately confirms gender differences by displaying her new role as monstrous and perverse. Mary Anne challenges male dominance in war when she transforms from feminine ideal to feminine soldier. She quickly adopts the skills the men have perfected and begins ambushes with the Green Berets. She changes in behavior and appearance: “[t]here was a new confidence in her voice” and “[s]he wore a bush hat and filthy green fatigues; she carried the standard M-16.”18 The ultimate transformation occurs when her boyfriend attempts to subdue her back into a feminine role. Instead, she disappears for three weeks with the Greenies: “in a sense, she never returned,”19 Mary Anne goes wild. Upon her return, she wears a “necklace of human tongues.”20 The intimacy of one’s tongue, an internal organ of androgynous eroticism, is significant. Mary Anne’s necklace represents an inside/outside reversal. She is wearing something outside that belongs inside: she wears her masculinity at her neck, when it should be subdued on the inside. Her decision to withdraw a symbol of eroticism from her victims and transform it into jewelry is a rejection of societal sexuality. She says to her estranged boyfriend, “you don’t know what it’s all about. Sometimes I want to eat this place . . . I want to swallow the whole country.”21 The tongues symbolize the sensory experience of consumption. O’Brien emphasizes the remnants of her femininity by a necklace: she still wears jewelry, but only in a perverse way. Mary Anne is as warning against the integration of the feminine into war, thus perpetuating the gender dichotomy. The Things They Carried asserts a male unity that exists at the expense of the feminine. Smith notes that “O’Brien uses female figures to mediate the process in homosocial bonding.”22 The female characters, with the exception of Mary Anne, who is viewed as a perversion of gender, are allocated no dimension, voice, or autonomy throughout the book. Therefore, their presence as the opposite gender facilitates the “band of brothers” mentality. Through their exclusion from the war narrative, women are forced to remain on the sidelines of the storytelling experience, or view it through the masculine lens. Although O’Brien’s blend of fact and fiction in his portrayal of the Vietnam War merits recognition, his decision to preserve this gender dichotomy is mired in the past.

Endnotes: 1 Debra Shostak, “Artful Dodge Interviews Tim O’Brien,” The Artful Dodge, 17, no.7 (1991). 2 Lorrie Smith, “The Things Men Do,” Critique 36 (Fall 1994), 18. 3 Smith, 19. 4 Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (New York: Penguin, 1990), 1. 5 O’Brien, 16. 6 Ibid, 24. 7 Ibid, 139. 8 Ibid. 9 O’Brien, 145-6. 10 Ibid, 146. 11 Ibid, 124. 12 Ibid, 127. 13 O’Brien, 90. 14 Ibid, 93. 15 Ibid., 97. 16 Ibid, 98, 105. 17 Ibid, 113. 18 Ibid, 99, 102. 19 Ibid, 105. 20 Ibid, 111. 21 Ibid. 22 Smith, 19. Works Cited: O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin, 1990. Shostak, Debra. “Artful Dodge Interviews Tim O’Brien.” The Artful Dodge, 17, no.7 (1991). Smith, Lorrie. “‘The Things Men Do’: Gender Subtext in Tim O’Brien’s Esquire Stories.” Critique 36 (Fall 1994): 16-40.

PRISCILLA SPENCER

FURIES

JESS PURCELL

M Y

Every month there passes through me a child I will not conceive. It takes place quietly. Red cells slide through me, coils of useless DNA traverse slowly that last journey. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t often think of it, my ability to create life as if it were nothing. Sometimes I imagine the accident: golden cluster of multiplying cells, the abstract, tiny life suddenly clinging to my own. I am young. I would know what it feels to cut myself apart, to cleave away the shadow of possibility, my own heart. I am always a little relieved when it comes, blood ebbing, slippery and gleaming, a different kind of possibility.

B O D Y

CLASS OF 2007

CAROLINE HENLEY

N O

P A P E R S

CLASS OF 2007

vandro cooked the same dish every night. Spaghetti with boiled potatoes, tomato sauce, and “mince,” which is what Brazilian immigrants to England, who don’t have any papers and share a bunk-bedded room with six strangers, call beef. He offered to cook every night, and I’m bad at saying no. Evandro presented the leftovers to the exchange students smoking pot in my dorm corridor’s kitchen, and I admired their refusals on the grounds that they tasted his same meal yesterday, they liked their own food, their own conversation. He had a son, a ten-year-old named Andrew; he named his child after the lead singer of the Sisters of Mercy, a horrible goth-metal band from the 80s. And as a recent graduate of child support, I was a little offended by his unfulfilled talk about sending money home. Skip that trip to Western Union, Mr. Hotel Porter, and let’s hit up the pubs! C’mere, baby, and let me kick ya in the neck with an ice skate! It’ll be crazy and young. His apartment was on the third floor of a house in Finsbury Park, an area in northern London littered with gyro shops, outdoor tee-shirt racks, and middle-aged men who asked me if I knew where I was going. Seven Brazilians in their twenties and thirties came in and out of the place, usually exhausted from twelve hours of construction or dishwashing. I felt like a regular Sir Nerdlington, with my college and authentic passport, and owning more than three pairs of clothing. They all paid rent to Giboya, who wore a long ponytail over his leather jacket and couldn’t speak English, but greeted me with a nod and a placid high five every time I visited. Raulo was the only one who made me nervous, with his rotted teeth and blasting of Linkin Park. I had to maneuver around him, often, as he was always playing chess in the tiny kitchen, pouring over his playbook for hours, but never challenging anyone to the game. My constant need to throw beer cans or onion peels behind him led to a few terrifying moments when the can or peel hit his back. They all called Evandro “chee-cher,” as his previous job in São Paulo as an English teacher had him energetically interjecting a few translated phrases when they told him about their bosses or girlfriends. After a week of becoming a reality in their kitchen, I earned the privilege of seeing Evandro and his bunkmate’s Italian passports, fake names et al. Without them they were ensured a free trip home. “I would like to give you energy now. May I?” he asked, and I consented. I sat still on the bed, darting my eyes everywhere, and he bowed to me three times and then hovered his hand over a shoulder or a temple, whispering an unintelligible prayer in Japanese for 10 minutes. And then I was purified, full of God’s light and energy. He asked if I felt anything . . . now?

Now? “A little” turned to “no” turned to “get your fucking hand out of my face.” The imperial thumb was turning more confidently downwards. He wore an irremovable locket— his assurance that he was rooted, that he belonged. The necklace’s permanence also assured that he wasn’t likely to shower as often as needed. Three hours of purification came later, when we went to the Mahikari annual conference on a Sunday morning. They are not a cult. Just a cafeteria tray laden with a plate of Buddhism, a salad bowl of Christianity, and a fountain drink of insanity, beckoning the cycle of reincarnation rather than trying to escape it like everyone else. After a few lengthy Japanese prayers and a woman who had the authority to lay her hand over the entire room to cleanse our bodies, I ducked out, leaving him mid-cleanse, and headed to the hotel bar to erase what may have been done. Two days after the conference, he accidentally slipped my keys into his pocket before leaving for work at the Zetter Hotel. Locked inside my room, I paced, stringing my hair, wildcat, waiting for the door to open. I sat him down when he came back. He was smiling with four tall Stellas that he bought with all his shift’s tips. “I don’t think I’m really ready for all . . . this,” I said. “I’m just really young. I’m not ready for this.” We sat, not making eye contact, for a good minute. “You’re hungry. I cook for you.” An old roommate from the Finsbury Park apartment called Evandro for his English skills after a couple thousand pounds disappeared from his bank account. Judgin’ n’ generalizin’, I didn’t know who to believe. The three of us walked into a bank in Covent Garden together, and I sat on a couch while Evandro translated the desperate boy’s account of fraud to one of the tellers in a back room. I sat bored for an hour, watching a little girl scream while her mother tried to discuss her account balance with a bank employee. Two policemen in tall rounded hats and batons on their hips walked into the bank and talked in low tones with another teller. My dead stare sprang to life when one of them brought out his walkie-talkie and asked for backup, as I heard him say, “Yes, they say they’re from São Paulo. Two of them.” Oh . . . man. Do I go in there, do I say we had to leave right away? Was there some sort of distraction I could make? The little girl and her mother were gone, and all the employees were glancing nervously but knowingly at the now doubled number of policemen. I could see into the room with Evandro and his friend, and they were still calmly pointing at numbers on papers. Maybe if I called him, and whispered what was happening outside, they could just get up and we could walk out quickly. Maybe if I texted him, “We have to leave now,” we could escape this and go back to the more forgiving Finsbury Park. The policemen finally made their move. They went over to the back rooms—and entered the one next to Evandro’s. A few minutes later, they ushered away two cuffed and downcast Brazilian men, completely anonymous to everyone else in the bank. Evandro and his friend finished with their teller and walked over to me. “Why do you look so white?” I had a week left to soak in the last of all I had in London, and we went to see the Sisters of Mercy, who were on a grand comeback tour. He saw them play in Brazil twenty years ago, and was set on unleashing their magic on me before I left. Tottenham Court Road was now Goth City. England takes goth seriously; it’s not a Hot Topic middle school phase, it’s a fifty-year-old men paint their faces white, women wear black veils, their children wear 10inch heeled boots lifestyle. Luckily I chose black for the occasion. The concert was sold out, and Evandro was truly a master in dealing with the scalpers. They gave him an offer, he squinted and calmly suggested a price twenty pounds lower, and they scoffed and walked away. Eventually he bought two tickets for seventy quid each, which is kinda funny, because they were 10 before they sold out. And somewhere in Brazil a small boy resorted to eating cat food out of a tin, safe in the knowledge that his dad, dad’s half-his-age girlfriend, and his namesake were all about to rock out. The Sisters’ drummer left the band in 1987 and, since then, the band decided to rely on a beat-box. Billows of white smoke filled the stage. G-chord, G-chord . . . A-chord? A bald man in leather appeared center stage, resolute in keeping his sunglasses on in the dark hall. The other two soon appeared out of the smoke. Take KISS’s worst album and put it in a mixing bowl. Pour six cups of water into that bowl, and you have the Sisters of Mercy’s entire discography.

They regaled us with songs of king cobras, big guns, the Temple of Love—consistent watery guitar solos with intermittent sexual innuendos. Evandro’s eyes were wide and hungry for more. “SÃO PAULO 1985! REMEMBER SÃO PAULO! SÃO PAULO 1985!” he yelled between every few songs, into my ear. “WOO! SÃO PAULO!” We were both grasshoppers and he was asking, begging for it. Just turn around and bite off his head. Just do it. I was careful not to push the grave and chained-faced people on the way out. No, no I don’t need any more tee-shirts. Well, I guess I don’t have any with skulls on it. We went to McDonald’s, and I could have “anything I wanted.” My virginity back wasn’t on the menu. Evandro wouldn’t let go of my hand. I was going back to the States the next day, and for me this was all obligatory. Oh, I love you too. Yes, we’ll write all the time. Sure, show up on my doorstep when you get your visa. We’ll open that café. I stopped craning my neck for the red double-decker and looked over, but cringed and looked away again. His eyes were pink and swollen with tears. I guess I had to try to cry now, too. Oh, the pain drips. Dead babies, dead babies, dead babies. The bus swung into view. I turned up my headphones to cover the sound of his body crunching under the wheels of the bus. In strange ideas, the divorce came naturally. Thank the gods of Mahikari there was nothing in writing left in London.

STEPHANIE BACHULA

POSTCARD WISDOM CLASS OF 2008

You have to understand. Women are free in this country. Free to drink until they can’t see, hell, to say what they want but not tell you what they want, to say FUCK. To not say no. Like men now they can get some peace and quiet. How was your day honey, put up your feet on the white picket fence but you have to remember Women Are Free. Just like used books on the sidewalk. Isn’t that romantic? This is very dangerous. To be free, to save unborn babies, sometimes, to want to die afterwards, always, to get out of that fucking hospital. You can’t keep me here. Some amendment or other says I have the right to take off my shirt on camera. The Supreme Court ruled–– Hold on, go wild man there are no rules man live every day like your last mortgage payment was late she was late but didn’t tell you and where’s your freedom now man, she took it and refused

to run away but it’s okay, man, hey just like that box it has a nice ring to it, Man, on the moon they don’t have problems like these but they also don’t have cheeseburgers.

KAITLYN SMELAND

NANCY PELOSI IN THE MEDIA: GRANDMOTHER OF THE HOUSE CLASS OF 2007

n November 2006, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman elected to serve as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Pelosi’s election marks a turning point for women in positions of government leadership; in her acceptance speech, she declared, “For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling. For our daughters and granddaughters, today the sky is the limit.”1 One important political dimension to Nancy Pelosi’s election is age. At age 66, she is by no means older than a number of existing congressmen and women, yet she has repeatedly publicly portrayed herself as a grandmother, raising questions about the societal roles of grandparents. She received both praise and criticism when she appeared on the House floor to take the gavel for the first time accompanied by a small crowd of young children—her grandchildren, and those of other congressmen. She has frequently cited her experience as a mother and grandmother as a political asset. While some critics have argued that Pelosi is exploiting her womanhood and personal identity for political gain, Abigail Trafford of the Washington Post views this grandmother story as a reflection of “the profound changes occurring in society because people are living longer, healthier lives - and, as grandparents, they want a say in the political discourse.”2 Although I agree with Trafford, I further propose that Pelosi’s public persona as a grandmother serves to effectively recast our modern idea of the grandparent (and in particular the grandmother) as increasingly valuable. What are the stereotypical characteristics that we traditionally ascribe to grandmothers that make Pelosi’s self-characterization as one seem, at first, rather jarring in the context of the House of Representatives? First, grandparents often care for children and focus on domestic concerns. Christine Crosby, editorial director of a magazine targeted toward baby boomers, notes that over 6 million children are cared for full time by their grandparents, which represents a “huge element of our family caregiving.”3 Pelosi adopted this domestic focus when she appeared at the Speaker’s desk with about twenty children, passing the gavel around so each could have a turn holding it. Trafford reported that on the night of her election to Speaker of the House, Pelosi was more interested in the birth of her grandchild than her political accomplishment, asking her aide “Do we have a baby?” rather than arranging the traditional phone conversation with the President.4 The stereotypical association of childcare with women might undermine Pelosi’s leadership role in a traditionally male-dominated field. Women are still a minority in governmental offices. Last year, 364 men served in the House of Representatives compared to only 70 women.5 Those women who currently hold office tend to shy away from domestic associations. In

1958, Congresswoman Coya Knutson’s estranged husband published a “Coya, Come Home” letter to his wife, begging her not to seek reelection and to come home to take care of their son. Largely because of the bad publicity from his political stunt, Knutson lost her seat in the House.6 Although this event occurred in the 1950s, a period when women were intensely identified with the home, the sentiment that domestic life and legislative office do not mix well still persists. However, Pelosi’s self-portrayal as a grandmother seems to have helped her public image. As women have made strides in obtaining a more equal standing in society, and as they have become a larger voting constituency, family issues have received more public attention. It has become normal for politicians to associate themselves with the problems facing the family. In addition, grandparents are supposed to be warm and doting. Pelosi adopts this image with her polite manners, charming family anecdotes, ever-present smile, and soft, feminine dress. Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts describes her as “soft spoken, from a generation that has a certain kind of softness.”7 In contrast, the stereotypical congressman is serious and severe. He makes hard decisions to get the job done. The demands of his profession make emotional warmth inappropriate. Interestingly, though, Pelosi uses the skills of mother and grandmother as an aggressive legislator, becoming the stern disciplinarian, when necessary. She jokes, “I am not afraid to use my mother-of-five voice to ensure that I am heard.”8 Steinhauer paints a portrait of the disciplinarian Pelosi in action as she responds to a pair of whispering young women at a donor luncheon: Representative Nancy Pelosi, mindful that some guests had paid $10,000 for a plate...shot a frown - the sort a grandmother gives when someone arrives at Christmas dinner in a wrinkled shirt - and in a split second, the whispers ceased. Ms. Pelosi’s face resumed its trademark molar-baring smile.9 In an interview at that same luncheon Pelosi asserts, “I wouldn’t say I’m tough. I think I am firm and strong.”10 Age becomes another concern for the grandparent-politician. Old age continues to carry a number of negative connotations in our modern society: wrinkles, a loss of beauty, forgetfulness, a slowing of mental faculty, reduced activity and vigor, and potentially inappropriate nostalgia. None of these attributes are considered useful for a legislative career, or public life, in general. Using the label “grandmother” as a political asset superficially seems inappropriate. Pelosi, however, breaks most of these stereotypes. She is mentally acute, articulate, educated, active, and respected by her peers. Trafford argues that Pelosi “exudes confidence, and her words are intelligent, passionate, and judicious.”11 She is widely perceived as energetic (although this is often expressed in the degrading feminine labels of “feisty” and “spicy”).12 And in terms of appearance, most critics agree that she looks healthy and attractive. Trafford refers to her as a “Power House Granny” and a “Glam-Fem,” noting that “her hair is dark and coiffed. Her teeth sparkle white. There is not a line on her face. Her eyes dance with life. . . . In short, she is making history with style.”13 Pelosi has used (and broken) these grandmother stereotypes to draw attention to, and strengthen, her political position. Defining the idea of successful aging as retaining the physical and mental qualities of youth may not actually be liberating to many older women, who worry about their inability to live up to this ideal. However, in addition to breaking the negative stereotypes of a traditional grandmother, Pelosi is also challenging the idea that youth is more socially valuable than old age. First, she draws attention to the positive characteristics of grandparenthood. She acknowledges the skill and energy involved in care, saying, “When my children were young, time was my most precious commodity. It made me the ultimate multitasker and the master of focus, routine, and scheduling.”14 Furthermore, she emphasizes the importance of childcare to all of society: “I view my role in politics as an extension of my role as mother and grandmother. The reasons I came to Congress are simple: the children, the children, the children. . . .Being a grandmother is a constant reminder of the need to build a stronger future for the generations to come.”15 In addition, Pelosi remains connected to younger generations in critical ways outlined in

Donald Cowgill’s “The Aging of Populations and Societies” in which he puts forth a number of reasons why being old in a modernized society results in lower social status and fewer roles of leadership and authority. A major theme in Cowgill’s explanation is intergenerational distance—due to factors like urbanization and education, older people find themselves removed, physically and mentally, from younger generations. For example, with urbanization comes migration to cities, leaving older family members behind. Increased education for younger generations leads to new technology and new jobs, which, though enthusiastically appropriated, devalues the work of older generations, whose innovations are left behind.16 In large part, Pelosi herself defies these generalizations about older people. She is a product of urbanization herself (she lives in San Francisco), is well educated, and has spent years in public service. She is not disconnected from younger generations in this way, and is, in a way, exempt from the term “old” according to Cowgill’s classification. However, these effects of modernization which divide older and younger generations have limits, according to Cowgill. It may be worth considering that our society is reaching the point of such advanced modernization that more institutions and legislation in the interest of the elderly are in place, the rate of advancement in technology and new knowledge has decreased, and the gap between the generations is reduced. According to historic multi-national data analyzed by Palmore and Manton, the status of younger and older generations does tend to converge once the period of modernization in a society slows.17 Perhaps, the United States is nearing such a point as the public seems to be increasingly comfortable with accepting Pelosi as the “Grandmother of the House” and will, due to slowing modernization and/or additional broken stereotypes, continue to take grandparents (especially grandmothers) more seriously in positions of political authority. Endnotes: 1 Ben Shapiro, “Shock Story: Nancy Pelosi is a Woman,” TownHall.com, January 10, 2007, http://www. townhall.com/columnists/BenShapiro/2007/01/10/shock_story_nancy_pelosi_is_a_woman (accessed February 20, 2007). 2 Abigail Trafford, “Power to the Grandparents,” The Washington Post, November 14, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/10/AR2006111001607.html (accessed February 21, 2007). 3 Marilyn Gardner, “Nancy Pelosi, Hero of Grandparent Power,” Christian Science Monitor, January 17, 2007 http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0117/p15s01-cogn.html (accessed February 20, 2007). 4 Trafford. 5 Gardner. 6 “Coya Knutson,” Minnesota Historical Society, http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/ 119coya_knutson.html22 (accessed April 26, 2007). 7 Jennifer Steinhauer, “With the House in Balance, Pelosi Serves as a Focal Point for Both Parties,” The New York Times.October 30, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/politics/30pelosi.htm l?ei=5090&en=1b074791350dedca&ex=1319864400&partne=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all (accessed February 21, 2007). 8 Gardner. 9 Steinhauer. 10 Ibid. 11 Trafford. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Elaine Povich, “Nancy Pelosi- Meeting Madame Speaker,” AARP Bulletin, January 2007, http:// www.aarp.org/bulletin/yourlife/nancy_pelosi.html (accessed February 20, 2007). 15 Povich. 16 Donald Cowgill, “The Aging of Populations and Societies,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 415, Political Consequences of Aging. (September, 1974), http://links.jstor. org/sici?sici=00027162%28197409%29415%3C1%3ATAOPAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q (accessed February 25, 2007).

Cowgill, 7.

Works Cited: Cowgill, Donald. “The Aging of Populations and Societies.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 415: Political Consequences of Aging. (September 1974). http://links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0002-7162%28197409%29415%3C1%3ATAOPAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q (accessed February 25, 2007). “Coya Knutson.” Minnesota Historical Society. http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/ 119coya_knutson.html (accessed April 26, 2007.) Gardner, Marilyn. “Nancy Pelosi, Hero of Grandparent Power.” Christian Science Monitor, January 17, 2007. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0117/p15s01-cogn.html (accessed February 20, 2007). Povich, Elaine. “Nancy Pelosi- Meeting Madame Speaker.” AARP Bulletin, January 2007. http:// www.aarp.org/bulletin/yourlife/nancy_pelosi.html (accessed February 20, 2007). San Francisco Chronicle. “Text of Nancy Pelosi’s Speech,” January 4, 2007. http://www.sfgate.com/ cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/04/BAG5ANCTQ27.DTL (accessed February 20, 2007). Shapiro, Ben “Shock Story: Nancy Pelosi is a Woman,” TownHall.com, January 10, 2007. http:// www.townhall.com/columnists/BenShapiro/2007/01/10/shock_story_nancy_pelosi_is_a_ woman (accessed February 20 2007). Steinhauer, Jennifer. “With the House in Balance, Pelosi Serves as a Focal Point for Both Parties.” The New York Times. October 30, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/politics/30pelosi.htm l?ei=5090&en=1b074791350dedca&ex=1319864400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted= all (accessed February 21, 2007). ThisNation.com. “U.S. Congress Quick Fact.” ThisNation.com. http://www.thisnation.com/congress -facts.html.Trafford, Abigail. “Power to the Grandparents.” The Washington Post, November 14, 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/10/AR2006111001607 .html (accessed February 21, 2007).

LAUREN RUBINFELD

COLLAGE

PIA ALIPERTI

VENUS AND MARS CLASS OF 2007

Fires rage at the Taco Bell, again. The artist paints the pair at their second sitting. He envisions a series: Venus and Mars at the bookstore, at the gym, illicit texts in class, Venus and Mars “studying” like pressed ﬂowers between the stacks. It’s an age-old story, he marvels mixing the oils. He’s picked an apple for today’s pose natural or not. The lighting reveals cracks already in canvas. Mars would rather eat grilled cheese in diners than share appetizers of the Italian variety. To hear Jimmy Buffet on the radio, than murmur over long-winded violins, to speak plainly on dirty laundry than exalt over the moon. Venus, for her part, plays skee-ball for love of the game. She requested to be depicted in lucky yellow dress without the post-coital stare. Rhubarb instead of myrtle in her hair. The artist fusses with shredded lettuce. He glances at his sketches, shifts napkins into view,

straw wrappers. Mars should sprawl in booth asleep, unarmed while Venus should ever-so-gently stroke his hairline up and down. The artist doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t suppose Mars is thinking about sex, not necessarily with Venus who, with careful precision, can moisten a straw wrapper, an accordion caterpillar, and make it crawl. Eventually, he will notice the leaves are endangered, the rhubarb, the clean canvas the lucky yellow dress.

ALYSIA HARRIS

P E R I O D CLASS OF 2010

Feeling the world penetrate itself over and over Infect itself with HIV And other sugary sweet goodness, Ingesting STDs as if they were rice krispy treats. But what you’re missing is deep inside the batter On which men try to blame their lack of self restraint, Is the antibody. Inside her body hides a plethora of knowledge That you keep trying to ﬁnd e=mc2. That equation needs passion But from her navel to the souls trapped in her feet You will ﬁnd the seeds of revelation And the capability to nurse you back to health. She holds untapped wealth, Left over from the gold rush of 49. She holds your son, your future embedded in a zodiac design. A perfect minstrel that sings verse Giving Birth to all your unawakened dreams. More regular and more sanguine than Any myriad of angels ever seemed. And even though she bleeds for a week, A period is just a mark that with her God’s thought process was complete. She is a Woman. Period.

JULIE DIANA

THE STAGE CLASS OF 2008

love being in the theater before anyone else gets there, when the dressing room doors are still locked and the security guard has to fish through his massive collection of keys to find the one that fits my door. Before the stagehands arrive at their dark dungeon of a room, littering foul smells and foul language throughout the backstage area, yelling at each other, cheering for some game on television. The house is lit and the work lights cast comforting shadows over the empty red velvet seats. Nothing moves; everything is silent. The enormous space, at once welcoming and daunting, swallows me. Onstage, the floor harbors frightening obstacles, like ridges, bumps, and bubbles in the marley. Pieces of loose tape peeling at the edges seem to cringe with age. One or two variable slick spots can bring me down in a second without warning, like sheets of black ice. Some floors have too many panels with too much tape; some have too few panels with no center, eighth, or quarter markings. Floors can dye my new shoes, leaving streaks of black or dark gray across the fresh pink satin. Aprons are always comforting—although if they’re too big, I have a false sense of security. If they’re nonexistent, I’m terrified of falling into the pit. Rakes, the steep inclined floors of older theaters, are only manageable if I’m used to them, otherwise they feel like a nasty trick. Sometimes designers will scrap the scrim or backdrop normally used to disguise the backstage area. Without this gentle drape, there is no place to hide for a last minute costume adjustment or a superstitious gesture. Waiting in the wings, watching from the wings, exiting into the wings, getting stuck in the wings, crashing into the wings. Wings because they fly in and out, depending on what sets or arrangements are necessary. Wings because they can hide, shield and cover. Wings cloak lighting booms – the best of these structures are bolted to the ground so you can use it as a barre or as an anchor for some violent but necessary stretch. Sometimes the wings are so narrow and dark that I can’t see beyond the boom and I just have to run, or turn, or be thrown, off into the black unknown. More often than not I end up crashing into a speaker or tripping over some loose wires. Blinding spots follow my every move. Glaring, glowing orbs shoot at me from the sides, and footlights along the apron scream, “Stop!” If the house lights are dim, I hope that no one in the front row falls asleep. Little do they know how visible they are: the dancers are watching them, in our extended moments of

repose, as much as they’re watching us. And someone should let them know that sitting in row A with a pair of binoculars is completely unacceptable. I start asking myself, “Can they see that pimple on my chin?” The major difference between dancing onstage and working in the rehearsal studio: no mirrors. What a relief, after weeks or months of constant self-criticism, to be free of my own image! I can simply walk out onto the stage and gaze into a sea of red velvet darkness rather than being forced to stare at my omnipresent reflection. Onstage, I am not consumed with my fluctuating weight or unchangeable proportions. I immerse myself in the artistry of the movement and react to inner impulses. I become a less inhibited woman. This reaction seems strange, given that on average there are 2,500 sets of eyes watching from the audience. But something inexplicable happens when the house lights go down and the sound of the orchestra fills the space. My heart beats a little faster and my mind battles itself to stay calm. My legs feel weighted and weak, threatening to buckle. My stomach turns in spite of the two or three Tums I just chewed in the dressing room. I convince myself that I am ready. I jab the toe of each shoe into the ground in an effort to reassure myself that the floor is still there. Delicious anticipation. With the curtain down, I feel secure and warm, as if I’m being covered with a heavy blanket. A soft hum of voices seeps through from the other side to remind me that I’m not alone. Jumbled sounds from the orchestra pit blare through the speakers and drown out any last minute anxieties while other dancers jump up and down to stay warm. Latecomers, dressed in street clothes, blow their last kisses before they rush out to the front of the house. The stage manager calls, “Places!” The performance comes. . . and goes, with only one chance to get it right. A steady red light peers out from the standing room section, a clear indication that the company is videotaping. Suddenly my movements are self-conscious and I feel tremendous pressure to make everything perfect. This might be the show that I will show my children. At the end of a long season, I look and feel like a vampire: my skin is deathly pale, my eyes are a bit sunken, and my toes are bloody. I crawl out of the dusty theater long after the sun has set, light enough to fly and desperate for a meal. But, for now, the world outside must wait. I walk toward the stage door and notice a single, naked light bulb positioned like a beacon at the foot of the stage. It shines against the black void of house lights, commanding my attention and beckoning my return. The space that was flooded with the sound of music and applause just minutes before is now quiet and abandoned. It too needs some rest. I listen to the sound of my New Balance sneakers squeaking against the marley and relish the few moments of solitude. Not often can I experience the stage without some other presence in the wings, in the house, or in the lighting booth. I take a deep breath and smile. I’m already home.

ARIEL TICHNOR

ARTFUL DESTRUCTION CLASS OF 2008

Lining my eyes with a charcoal pencil I trace a trap around my lashes, hoping That what I accentuate will serve as bait To reel your retinas into my eyes that wait.

(Love can’t be blind if you ﬁnd My wide eyes a magnet in disguise. “You look beautiful,” you say as our pupils embrace. Sweet tears wash the make-up off my face.) Layering tinted gloss onto my puckered lips I plump my mouth with paint, promised By the commercials to glimmer and shimmer Even when the lights grow dimmer.

(You lick off my lipstick In the bliss of a kiss So your hunger will subside. “Mmm,” you say. “Tastes like cherry pie.”) Lifting my shirt just slightly so I let my necklace linger at the hemline, hanging Where smooth skin slides into parts clothing hides And where your tantalizing eye temptingly glides.

(After glossy hor d’oeuvres comes the main course As your hungry paw, feeling my ﬂesh in the raw, Aims to shoot, ready to score. “That shirt suits you well,” you say. And you throw it on the ﬂoor.) Laboring under the heat of my ceramic straightener I solder every strand of hair, scented With a sweet shampoo, to seduce you With a smooth and shiny hue.

(Each perfect strand excites your hand To rustle it and tousle it Into a wild and frizzy state. “Your sex hair,” you say, “looks great.”) Looking one last time in the mirror I put on my coat to meet you, wondering Why the careful construction of simple seduction Must always end in my destruction.

NICOLE RICHARDS

THE COLOR PURPLE: A “WOMANIST” TAKE ON THE ACQUISITION OF VOICE AND EM POWERM ENT OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE CLASS OF 2007

omanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”1 Such is the analogy Alice Walker generates to substantiate her use of the term “womanist” as a richer, more inclusive alternative to feminism, which has historically denoted a discourse committed to the plight of white middle-class women. Walker expands the expression “womanish,” used within African American folk dialect to describe a precocious or sassy female child, to signify “a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually, and one who appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility, and women’s strength.”2 Walker brings this concept to life in her 1982 novel, The Color Purple. A revision of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Color Purple transposes Hurston’s heterosexually based romance into a celebration of female homosocial desire and homosexuality within a patriarchal society. By reconstructing the novel in this manner, Walker elucidates the essentiality of female bonding in the acquirement of voice and empowerment of the African American female: a solidarity that enables Celie of The Color Purple to challenge and restructure the oppressive, patriarchal institutions of marriage and abuse by ultimately transforming her world into a female centered community. Within the novel’s opening lines, Walker immediately establishes the victimization of black women in the dominant patriarchal order of the American South. She marks Celie’s loss of voice through her stepfather’s threatening phrase, “you better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mommy.”3 Fearful of her stepfather and humiliated by her incestuous rape, Celie is dually stripped of control over her body and voice, as her stepfather demands that she “shut up and git used to” the reality of her sexual abuse.4 Thus, Celie’s stepfather and his aggressive words initially coerce Celie into silence, as she must reduce herself to nothingness as a means of concealing the reality of his sexual violation. Celie’s rape symbolizes the burden of the sexually conquered black female: stripped of her physical autonomy and forced into silence out of fear of her male oppressor. However, in the midst of hardship, Celie finds the strength to protect the well-being of her younger sister, Nettie. Understanding that her sister could be the next victim of her stepfather’s sexual abuse, Celie assures Nettie that “I’ll take care of you,” and promises to divert her stepfather’s attention by “gitting in his light.”5 Her mother’s weakness and eventual death forces Celie to take on the role of both sister and mother. Celie’s relationship with Nettie is her first and strongest female bond—an enduring homosocial relationship that will last throughout the course of the novel.

Utilizing his power in a rigid, patriarchal society, Celie’s stepfather disrupts Celie and Nettie’s strong, loving tie when he forces her to marry the domineering, abusive, and misogynistic Mr. _____. Celie and Nettie’s separation epitomizes patriarchal corruption, which feminist Helene Cixous articulates as men’s “greatest crime against women.”6 Although “these sisters need each other desperately,” “each must mature and survive without response from the other.”7 Thus both Celie and Nettie are separated from their sources of strength.8 Assuming that her sister is dead because “she never write,” Celie knows no other mode of survival than to remain passive, finding self-expression only through the process of letter-writing.9 Celie thus succumbs to the oppressive hand of Mr.____ , who further suppresses Celie’s voice by forcing her to take on the status of “the Other.” “The Other,” as depicted by Simone de Beauvoir illustrates Celie’s place as the second sex, or Celie’s obligation to submit to Mr.____ because of her alleged inferiority.10 Celie thus serves her husband like a “Hegelian slave” as she toils over the land.11 She literally becomes the mule of the world, or the working property of Mr.____, similar to Janie’s experience in her marriage to Logan Killicks, as depicted by Hurston in Their Eyes Were Watching God. In both novels the women are harshly oppressed because of their doubly marginalized status as black and female.12 Thus, Celie, muted and powerless, takes on the tasks of both gender designated roles, becoming at once a wife, mother, and a farmer in Mr.____’s household. Mr.____ readily replaces Celie’s stepfather as her oppressor as he subjects her to verbal and physical abuse. Here oppressiveness is transposed into various forms as a means of suppressing Celie’s empowerment and acquirement of a voice. Just as Celie’s stepfather attempts to weaken her spirit, Mr.___ reduces Celie to nothingness by saying “You black, you pore, you ugly. You a woman. You nothing at all.”13 By attacking her race, class, and sex he triply marginalizes her as a means of distorting and smothering her identity. Moreover, Mr.___ subjects Celie to corporal punishment in what feminist Christine Froula calls the typical “patriarchal marriage plot that sanctions violence against women.”14 Thus, in efforts to diminish Celie to that of mere property, or a chattel slave, Mr.____ “beat [Celie] like he beat the children.”15 Through this act of infantilization, Mr.____ further conveys his desire to reduce Celie to an inferior standing. Although Nettie’s last words urge, “you got to fight. You got to fight,” Celie willingly submits to Mr.____ and his abuse, viewing him with an emotion similar to the fear with which she perceives her stepfather.16 Celie admits, “I don’t fight, I stay where I’m told,” claiming that all she knows how to do is “stay alive.”17 However, in Celie’s conviction that she will be able to survive as Mr.___’s virtual slave, she ironically remains weak and unable to assert her voice—figuratively dead as her voice becomes “buried.”18 Furthermore, in his abuse and victimization of Celie, Mr.____ appropriates the role of the white male slave master as the oppressor of the black female. Celie’s transformation and ultimate acquisition of voice cannot be attained without the presence and influence of Shug Avery: the embodiment of beauty, love and desire. Shug Avery captures Celie’s heart and, with her intrusion into Celie’s home, eventually restores her spirit. Shug Avery represents Celie’s first and only erotic love. Celie expresses her preference for women, which partially spurs out of her fear of men, claiming, “I don’t even look at mens…I look at women, tho, cause I’m not scared of them…First time I got the full sight of Shug Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like her mouth, I thought I had turned into a man.”19 Thus it is fitting that Shug Avery serves as both the epitome of what Celie desires in a lover and what she aspires to be. Like Sofia, Shug Avery “act more manly than most men.”20 She possesses a commanding presence and maintains her power through song, enabling her to subdue and control men in a typically male dominated community. Shug Avery’s presence as Mr.____’s lover and mistress, “which should break up any household,” instead “proves oddly restorative” as Celie and Shug Avery form an indestructible romantic love built on the foundation of friendship.21 Thus, Walker replaces Tea Cake and Janie’s romance within Hurston’s work with that of Celie’s and Shug Avery’s. By substituting female love for male love, Walker stresses the importance of female bonding in Celie’s reacquisition of her voice. Accordingly, in Walker’s development of Celie and Shug Avery‘s unique and multi-faceted relationship, she gives consideration to the definition of homosocial

desire explored by feminist Eve Sedgwick which represents an “intelligible continuum of aims, emotions, and valuations” that “links lesbianism with the other forms of women’s attention to women: the bond of mother and daughter for instance…and the active struggles of feminism.”22 In a series of stages, Shug Avery releases Celie from the binds of a patriarchal dominance: allowing her to embrace her voice, her autonomy, and her love for women. Understanding the power of voice, Shug initially encourages Celie to find her own voice through song, as she quietly hums, conveying Celie’s sadness and burden in a tune entitled “Miss Celie’s song.”23 Thus, Shug attempts to give voice to Celie’s struggle by encouraging her voice. As she befriends Celie and embraces her hardship, Shug Avery soon learns that Mr.____ truly is “some no count man doing [Celie] wrong” and thus slips from the role of friend to mother and protector, assuring Celie, “I won’t leave…until I know Albert won’t even think about beating you.”24 With her words and authoritative presence, Shug thus frees Celie from the physical oppression that has burdened her since her stepfather’s sexual violations. Lifting the weight of physical abuse from Celie’s shoulders, Shug soon takes on the role of teacher by freeing Celie from the burden of attaining sexual pleasure through man. Shifting from historical sexual terminology, which typically focuses on a female’s hole, castration, or lack of the ideal sexual organ, Shug draws Celie’s focus to her clitoris, using the metaphor of a “button that git real hot” to depict her erogenous zone.25 Celie thus learns that sexual intercourse with a male is unnecessary for her to feel pleasure. With this careful description, Walker shows her rejection of Freudian theory, which embraces the theory of “penis envy,” or women’s desire for the phallus due to their literal possession of a hole: representative of their deficiency, void, or incompleteness as a sex. Shug Avery’s illumination of this pleasure zone releases Celie from limited patriarchal notions of female pleasure, which ultimately challenges the institution of heterosexuality as well as male dominated concepts of female sexuality. And with this depiction of sexuality, Shug Avery and Celie’s relationship suddenly slips from homosocial to homosexual: strengthening their detachment from male centered society and foreshadowing their ultimate liberation from its various constraints. Walker centers Celie and Shug’s romance as “the nucleus of a new and self-sustaining society:” one that embraces the ideal of female homosexuality as beautiful and empowering, while rejecting the conventional social institutions of heterosexuality and homophobia that prevail within patriarchal society.26 Walker interestingly reveals Shug and Celie’s only depicted sexual encounter as a continuation of homosocial bonds. In doing so, she celebrates the broad range of female homosocial desire that seems to easily collide with homosexual desire, which offers a continuum between “women loving women” and women promoting the interest of women.27 Celie’s exploration of female homosexuality thus signifies her freedom from the burden of male sexual oppression and a sexuality that she has always associated with fear. Celie ultimately decides to leave Mr. ____, and before she does, in her ultimate display of empowerment, she finally fully asserts her voice and conveys her strength. Celie confronts him and asks, “any more letters from Nettie come?”28 Celie’s language becomes so powerful that it has the force to curse Mr.____, punishing him for the physical and verbal abuse, neglect, and evil that he has inflicted upon Celie as she claims, “Until you do right by me, everything you touch will crumble.”29 With these words, Celie inflicts the pain and suffering that she has experienced upon her oppressor. And as she acquires her voice, Celie finally asserts her presence, which she has attempted to negate over the years, as she exclaims, finally hearing her “voice say to everything listening,” “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook . . . But I’m here.”30 Primarily through the love of Shug Avery and the spirit of Nettie, Celie finds a source of strength that enables her to flee from the male dominated structure. In the end, she exchanges brutal oppression for a life of love and autonomy where she is truly “alive.” Endnotes: 1 Janet J. Montelaro, Producing a Womanist Text: The Maternal as Signifier in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, (Victoria: University of Victoria, 1996), 14. 2 Ibid, 12. 3 Alice Walker, The Color Purple (California: Simon and Shuster, Inc., 1982), 3.

Ibid, 5. Ibid, 7. 6 Helene Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Signs, no.1 vol. 4 (1976): 349. 7 Peter S. Prescott, “A Long Road to Liberation” in Contemporary Literary Criticism, ed. Jean C. Steve, 450 (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1984). 8 Prescott, 450. 9 Walker, 18. 10 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 4. 11 Ibid. 12 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1937), 13. 13 Walker, 23. 14 Montelaro, 33. 15 Walker, 20. 16 Ibid, 17. 17 Ibid, 21. 18 Ibid, 18. 19 Ibid, 7. 4 5

Ibid, 56. Prescott, 450. 22 Eve Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 508. 23 Walker, 65. 24 Ibid, 67. 25 Ibid, 69. 26 Molly Hite, “Romance, Marginality, Matrilineage: Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 22, no. 3 (1989), 98. 27 Sedgwick, 508. 28 Walker, 175. 29 Ibid, 176. 30 Ibid. 21

Works Cited: Cixous, Helene . “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs, no.1 vol. 4 (1976). de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. Hite, Molly. “Romance, Marginality, Matrilineage: Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 22, no. 3 (1989). Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1937. Montelaro, Janet J. Producing a Womanist Text: The Maternal as Signiﬁer in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Victoria: University of Victoria, 1996. Prescott, Peter S. “A Long Road to Liberation.” Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jean C. Steve, 450. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1984. Sedgwick, Eve. Between Men: English Literature and Homosocial Desire. New York:Columbia University Press, 1985.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. California: Simon and Shuster Inc., 1982.

ELIZABETH YOHLIN

CAMOFLAUGE

LAURA MICHALAK

IN ENGLISH CLASS OF 2007

In English, I am me And everything I do is neutral I swim in the lake Drive to the corner store and pay $18.35 for groceries Read books and write on occasion. It’s easy to take for granted “Aren’t you confused?” asks my Portuguese friend. I’m not, but I understand that she is. She has never swum the way I have – neutrally. Whatever she does, she is never alone: The car she drives is a man, The carton of eggs she buys are ﬁlled with a dozen little men, And she pulls thin, paper men from her wallet to pay for them. When she writes, she is She and everyone knows it. She doesn’t understand how I can write pages upon pages And remain a mystery. No one needs to know – why should they? You’re confused, but I like it. Sexless and powerful I run, I jump, I scream, And you don’t know. You don’t know, but you want to. You want to know if my blue eyes are framed by long lashes or thoughtful furrows. If my skin is soft and supple or tough from years of labor. If my voice rings like a bell or bellows like a horn. I see your frustration Your confusion Curiosity You want to know, but I can’t let you. I am me And that’s all you need to know.

TERRA GEARHART

T HE

SHOE

CLASS OF 2007

loody, bloody hell. My shoe had come off AGAIN, and now I was gonna have to go and find it. O’course, everything would have been much easier if I’d had shoes that fit, but when you keep your footsies in cardboard-soled cheapnesses bought off some bugger on the street, you have to figure they’re gonna fall off when you run, especially if you gotta run as if Lucifer himself was after you. It’s a good comparison, come to think of it. The bastards who’d chased me (young, loud, drunk, nobby, and thinking a soot-stained little bit o’ street fluff like me’d be an easy catch) had about as much in common with Lucifer as anyone I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure that’s what the Devil himself looks like: a big oaf of a nob, drunk as a lord and wanting to do me proper. That’s what they all think, right afore I hits ‘em with a brick. Stupid gits. Anyway, I’d lost my shoe, probably when I had to run across that loooong stretch of stairs, coming down from some big to-do ball-house place—looked like they were having a nob dance. Only dancing I know is the kind the floozies do down at The Crooked Nose, and that’s sure nothing like nobby dancing. I headed back to find my shoe, limping a little on account of one of the bastards had caught me a pretty good one on the hip. I warn’t too mad, seeing as how he was down on the ground and kicking his feetsies around because I caught him a good ‘un twixt the poles. That’s legs, to you. I got raped by a nob the first time when I was fourteen, and I’ve had my trusty brick with me ever since, and I’ve got my screaming so’s it’s good and loud. Nothing wrong with my lungs, nossir. Usually the brick’s enough, though—you just hafta know where to aim. Anyway, I made it back to that long stretch of steps—marble, they was—and there’s this nob, tall, dark, handsome, my-mama-loves-me-and-my-papa-pays-my-way type, holding my shoe and looking at it like it just give him the pox. Well, I marched right up to him and took it. It was MINE, after all, and while I may be just some little flower-seller chimney-cleaner scrawny London-underbelly wench (all true), my shoe is still MY SHOE. I snagged it right out of his nice, clean hands, and he stared at me as if I’d smacked him upside the head. “What, you never seen a shoe before?” I asked him—using my best Lady voice, o’course. He looked confused, and then a little upset. “Young lady, have you been attacked?” he asked, in a solemn kind of tone that made me shiver. I did have a right impressive amount of blood on me—the bastards’, mostly, but mine, too—and I figured I may’s well take off running, since the coppers usually take any sign that you’ve been roughed-up as a sign that you had it coming. Coppers are bastards, too, and the brick doesn’t work so well on them. I turned around and started running, but I forgot about my hip and fell down, tush-splat. Now I was

muddy, bloody, and I still didn’t have my shoe on my foot. The nob frowned down at me, then stretched out his hand and helped me up. “Might I escort you home?” he asked me. “I’m sure your family is quite anxious on your account, and you should probably see a physician.” I had to laugh, a little chuckler that turned into a nice big belly-roarer. “I got no family to speak of, Lordship, and if I had any of the shiny stuff, I’d have better uses for it than some quack-man.” He sighed a little, an I-willnever-understand-these-people kind of sigh. Or so I thought. “Well then,” he said, “I suppose I shall have to take you to my home, and my mother can help clean you up. We’ll call the family physician, and he’ll have a look at you.” I just stared at him. Honest, I couldn’t even laugh this time. Who in bugger-all WAS this crazy-man? Obviously, he wasn’t all there upstairs. Poor sod. Then he started talking some more. “See here, young woman, I know perfectly well that you are unsure of my motives, so let’s try this, shall we? I shall walk to my house at a steady pace, and you may follow at whatever distance suits you, understand? I am neither gullible nor mentally incompetent, I simply dislike seeing people muddy, soot-stained, limping, and spattered with blood. That is all.” And he turned around and started walking. Just like that! I followed his stiff-necked lordship for a pretty fair way, and never once did the blighter say another word to me. Fine, I thought. I won’t talk to Your Mightyness, neither. He walked slow, though. I noticed that, and so did my hip. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. Finally, we got to this big house—one of those what you could cram 50 families in—and he stopped. “I’ll go get my mother and bring her out to you,” he said, and he looked me right in the eye as he said it. He was an honest nob, I’ll give him that. He brought his mama out to me, and she seemed a right sensible woman; she looked me over, asked how many had been after me, and didn’t seem at all surprised when I said three. “What did you ﬁght them off with, my dear?” asks she in that no-nonsense voice. When I said a brick, she smiled at me, nodded once, quick-like, and asked me to step into the house, please. Just like that. “Step into the house, please.” I couldn’t think of anything to do but follow her. She wasn’t the kind of lady you said no to. Once we got inside, she was still naught but business—come here, give me your clothes, wash in that tub, use this bandage, comb your hair, take this ointment…bossy, like, but she made me think of my mama, so I did everything she said. I miss my mama. She didn’t have a brick, that last time. After she got me all cleaned up, Her High-and-Cleanliness gave me back my clothes, all nice and neat and clean, pretty as you please. I know she saw the scars on me, but she didn’t say nothing about them. I dunno why, but I’m glad she didn’t. When I was about to walk out the door, she stopped me, gave me a nice thick new shawl, and said, “Child, perhaps you should instruct some of the other young ladies in your brick technique, since you seem to excel with that particular weapon. It could be a useful skill, and I do get a bit tired of all the blood and mud that gets tracked over my carpets. Perhaps you could prevent a bit of that, make things better for everyone, hm?” She looked at me with a glint in her eye, a glint just like I seen in the eyes of the doxies who no man would smack around, because she could hit back. I always liked those doxies, ‘cept for the leg-spreading bit. Anyway, I looked the old lady over, then I looked at her son, the handsome nob who had brought me home to his mama. He looked me right in the eye, serious and straight and honest. No man ever looked at me, at me, quite like that afore. I looked back over at the lady who raised him, and I said to her, “Maybe you’re not doing so bad at making things better yourself.” She looked a little surprised, then she smiled at me, a big, sunrise kind of smile. Don’t know why, but when I walked out the door, I felt like I could take on ten million bastards. WITHOUT a brick. A few blocks away, I realized that I still didn’t have my shoe.

TRINH LIEN

RAGS OF RAPE CLASS OF 2010

Inspired by “Bones of Hunger” by Varley It started with the tears of the women after the militiamen swept through you gathered their tears crushed them into black pigment for ink dipped your pen in --to show empathy for their violation wrote the women’s stories on old rags --to unburden them from shame you smuggled them out bundled in an old box hidden in a passing truck you prayed for their justice, and several weeks later someone stumbled on it read and passed around from nation to nation until the rags ended up displayed on auction on Ebay cleverly remade into a “Rags of Rape Purse” marked “Handmade from Rwanda” the blinking red bullet “Buy It Now” a paparazzi followed celebrity was pictured with one fashionable consumers clamored to bid the box returned with orders for more you didn’t understand and couldn’t explain it to the women you had meant it as a call for justice, not a business proposal.

PAU L I N E BA N I QU E D

VAG I N A M O N O L O G U E S

AMANDA AYCOCK

SEXUALITY AND INTERTEXTUALITY

THE EXPOSING OF HETERONORMATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS WITH LITERARY ONES IN WINTERSON’S ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT CLASS OF 2007

istory is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe knot it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing,” muses Jeannette, lesbian protagonist of Jeannette Winterson’s narrative Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, during a chance encounter with her old lover, Melanie.1 Pushing a baby carriage—an emblem of the normative family—Melanie has become increasingly vacuous and dull in the time since their relationship and seems to have forgotten their impassioned and forbidden love. Her memory “lapse” triggers Jeannette’s ruminations on the nature of “history.” This scene evokes two unified ideas present throughout the text: a rejection of the heteronormative “ideal” and a postmodern view of histories/stories/reality. Winterson tells the story of Jeannette, a young lesbian adopted into an Evangelical Christian family who struggles with the ostensible incompatibility of her religion and her sexuality. Weaving together autobiographical anecdotes, fairy tales, and allusions (Biblical, historical, and others) Winterson crafts her narrative such that the structure itself evades normative classification (she insists that Oranges is not a novel) and rejects linearity. Wielding both this intertextual structure and the content of these intertexts, Winterson questions the verisimilitude of reality and compulsory heterosexuality. Before starting on Winterson’s text, we need a working definition of certain terms with which we can equip ourselves in order to further explore the significance of her intertexts: postmodernism, essentialism, performativity, and compulsory heterosexuality. The attempt to define postmodernism conflicts with the concept of postmodernism itself: to say “postmodernism is…” is immediately problematic within the postmodern context. Postmodernism combats essentialism, or the belief that there is an essence of things; instead, everything is, for the postmodernist, constructed by language, social pressures, historical norms, and cultural ideals. Promoting a greater consciousness of the limits of both language and knowledge, postmodernism rejects “History” in favor of a multiplicity of histories. Because of one’s “trapped position,” says postmodernism, one must always question history, culture, norms, and power dynamics: “History in the postmodern moment becomes histories and questions,” explains Marshall. “It asks: Whose history gets told? In whose name? For what purpose? Postmodernism is about histories not told, retold, untold . . . It’s about the refusal to see history as linear, as leading straight up to today in some recognizable pattern.”2 Winterson rejects essentialism by emphasizing the performance of gender and heterosexuality. The theory of gender performativity shuns essentialism—Judith Butler most

famously presents the theory in her book Gender Trouble: “The substantive effect of gender is performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence . . . gender proves to be performative—that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be.”3 For Butler, gender only exists as a series of stylized acts that create the illusion of an essence underlying and motivating those acts. We only think of male and female bodies as such because of a succession of discontinuous gendered acts (wearing a skirt, acting “macho,” being submissive . . . ), which are characterized by heteronormative society and heteronormative language as distinctly “masculine” or “feminine.” The illusion is that the essence of gender comes before the acts, that a person behaves a certain way because she is female. Instead, gender performativity holds that she is considered female because she behaves a certain way. Heteronormative society begins this gender attribution at birth, with the first exclamation, “It’s a boy/girl.” Within this one sentence, the baby endures a nonconsensual gendering and is transformed from the gender-neutral “it” into a gender-defined “boy” or “girl,” accompanied by s particular set of expected and regulated behaviors. Lastly, a definition of compulsory heterosexuality: for the purposes of this discussion, compulsory heterosexuality is the demand by society that because reproduction is a heterosexual function, love and family must necessarily also be heterosexual. Society links the functional, survival-oriented relationship of human reproduction to the emotional relationship of love, apparently arbitrarily. So, then, Winterson sculpts a postmodern, fragmented narrative in order to undermine the perception of linear history and to reveal the performative nature of both gender and compulsory heterosexuality. Her intertexts demonstrate that the heteronormative relationship is a “fairy tale,” a story, a fiction, which sometimes “comes true” and sometimes does not. However, Winterson begins her treatment of this subject with Jeannette’s own family. Jeannette’s mother, while espousing compulsory heterosexuality, merely goes through the motions of her own heterosexual relationship. She regards marriage as a chore, as a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. Refusing to beget children because “she didn’t want to do it,” she adopts Jeannette. Voluntarily, in not submitting to the “reproductive” function of the heterosexual couple, Jeannette’s mother rejects the normative social construction of the family.4 A direct result of this rejection is Jeannette’s adoption, her “virgin birth” to her mother, which is one of the first powerful instances of intertextuality that underscore the constructed nature of gender. The passage alludes both to the Bible—the mother follows “a star until it [comes] to settle above an orphanage”—and to the Greek myth of Athena—Jeannette is born from an idea, “sprung from her [mother’s] head,” just as the Goddess Athena is born from the head of Zeus, and becomes the goddess of wisdom or ideas.5 In both allusions, Winterson smudges the sharp line usually dividing gender roles: Jeannette is likened to the male baby Jesus lying in the manger, and to the goddess Athena who possesses attributes normally considered masculine, as she is the goddess of war. Additionally, in the short vignette that describes her adoption, Jeannette is never gendered. She does not experience the moment of interpolation at birth, the moment that someone cries, “It’s a girl/boy,” the moment that a non-gendered being, an “it,” becomes a “he” or a “she” and is thereafter treated as if the description of sexual organs is a determinant of essential identity. The narration identifies baby Jeannette as simply “a child,” “the child,” and “it.”6 Furthermore, Winterson employs a vocabulary of construction in the description of Jeannette’s mother’s decision to adopt: “She would get a child, train it, build it, dedicate it to the Lord: a missionary child, a servant of God, a blessing.”7 The idea that a child can be built into a role as a missionary or a servant begs the question: might not a child be “built” into a gender role as well? And, what happens when the “building” does not work? Winterson calls heteronormativity into question again with a multi-dimensional intertext that starts when Jeannette is in the hospital following surgery to restore her hearing. Elsie, an older member of Jeannette’s church congregation, regularly comes to visit Jeannette during her stay at the hospital. When Jeannette is “sad she read[s] [her] Goblin Market by a woman called Christina Rossetti, whose friend once gave her a pickled mouse in a jar, for a present.”8

This has a double significance. First, Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market has decidedly homoerotic undertones: two girls, sisters, Lizzie and Laura, live together. Laura, tempted by the forbidden fruits of the Goblin Market, consumes them and then, unable to access them after her feast, wastes away while pining for the ambrosial fruit. Lizzie, who cannot bear to see her sister in such a miserable state, attempts to buy the fruit from the goblins and bring it back to Laura. When she refuses to eat the fruit herself, the goblins pummel her with it and grind it into her face, trying to force it in her mouth. Covered in the juice of the fruits, she runs home to her sister, and she cries to Laura, “Did you miss me?/ Come and kiss me./ Never mind my bruises,/ Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices/ Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,/ Goblin pulp and goblin dew./ Eat me, drink me, love me.”9 Here, Winterson suggests that homosexual love is sometimes necessary for survival, as it was for Laura, who would have wasted away without it. Also, Jeannette meets her first love, Melanie, at a market, which hints at a parallel between Jeanette’s life and the poem, and implicitly compares Melanie to “forbidden fruit.” And in having an older and devoted member of the church tell this story, Winterson demonstrates that the heterosexuality demanded by the Evangelical church is not universally accepted at face value. Another parable that Winterson weaves into her narrative, that of the prince in search of the perfect woman, also serves to underscore social constructions, namely those of gender and compulsory heterosexuality. The prince wants to find a woman “without blemish inside or out, flawless in every respect” to take as his wife.10 After rejecting every woman presented to him, one of his advisors stumbles upon the “perfect woman” in the middle of the forest. She has qualities traditionally associated with femininity: she is beautiful, she can cook, sew, and nurture the sick, and she has a lovely voice. She is “perfect.” However, she denies the prince’s request of marriage. Although apparently the feminine “ideal,” she, like Jeannette, refuses to submit to compulsory heterosexuality. Unable to cope with this wisdom that undermines his view of the world, the prince sentences the “rebellious” woman to death. The prince’s subsequent execution of the woman mimics the way that Jeanette’s society, which demands conformity to the heterosexual norm, polices sexuality and imposes punishment on those who stray from the ideal. But the execution of the woman, the attempt to silence she who does not submit to compulsory heterosexuality, ends up destroying the prince’s society: her blood drowns his entire court and he barely escapes by climbing a tree. This clearly characterizes gender policing as destructive. By making abundant allusions to the Bible, myths, and literature, Winterson achieves an intertextuality that challenges reality-as-we-know-it by denying a single linear history and compelling the reader to view normative social assumptions (gender, heterosexuality) as utter performances, rather than as fixed facts. In support of the postmodern idea of a multiplicity of histories, Winterson writes a history: “We are all historians in our small way,” she muses in “Deuteronomy.”11 And, in a way, she even rewrites the Bible, given that she names each of her chapters after books of the Old Testament. Her Bible, however, questions earthly normative social behaviors and paves the way for a space where religion and non-heterosexual love are compatible. Furthermore, it is a confirmation of the importance of individual interpretation, as she makes her story “what [she] will” because “it’s a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained… the only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like a string full of knots.”12 This taken into account, Winterson does “the best” she can do: she “admires the cat’s cradle” and “knots it up a bit more.”13 Endnotes: 1 Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, (New York: Grove Press, 1985), 171. 2 Brenda K. Marshall, “Introduction,” Teaching the Postmodern: Fiction and Theory (New York: Routledge, 1992), 4. 3 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999), 33. 4 Winterson, 3. 5 Ibid, 10. 6 Ibid.

Ibid. Ibid, 30. 9 Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, http://users.crocker.com/~lwm/goblin.html (accessed December 6, 2006). 10 Winterson, 62. 11 Ibid, 94. 12 Ibid, 93. 13 Ibid. 7 8

Works Cited: Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1999. Marshall, Brenda K. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Introduction.â&#x20AC;? Teaching the Postmodern: Fiction and Theory. New York: Routledge, 1992. Rossetti, Christina. Goblin Market. http://users.crocker.com/~lwm/goblin.html (accessed December 6, 2006). Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. New York: Grove Press, 1985.

PRISCILLA SPENCER

SISTERS

KARA DADDARIO

THE LAST CORNER CLASS OF 2008

At the jazz club off Broad Street between the second note on a saxophone and the third martini with two green olives I found you intriguing. Our only company was an amateur musician wailing on each measure and he played it so well it didn’t matter it was only us. The cool blue wall hit a hot wood ﬂoor that my feet tapped and your toes jived while arms and words intersected and I knew that I could dig you. Our shoes clicked us onto concrete; swirled us into a Philadelphia summer where my hair curled and your brow sweat but it didn’t matter, we were young. We careened down Lombard because I liked the sound of it and you liked the brownstone with the kitchen light that lit the sidewalk. Midnight smelled like hydrangea and laundry detergent. You hummed some unsyncopated melody as we reached the end of the street. When you turned the corner my legs turned too because it made sense as we followed the fringes of our shadows, disappearing into night.

FWORD

B OA R D & B O DY SPRING AND FALL 2007

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Design Editor

Kristin Williams Carly Brush Jasmine Fournier

Academic Editor Prose Editor Prose Editor Poetry Editor Poetry Editor

Katie Eichner Carly Weinreb Ali Lapinsky Kara Daddario Barrie Nussbaum

Publicity Co-chair Publicity Co-chair Penn Consortium of Undergraduate Women Liaison Secretary

Ariel Tichnor Deeptee Jain Carrie Alexander Lindsay Eierman

General Body Members

Faculty Advisor

Jodine Gordon Mara Gordon Laura Michalak Lauren Newman Jess Purcell �� Meredith Weber �� Alison Weiss Shannon Lundeen

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FWORD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FALL 2007

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The F-Word editorial board extends its heartfelt thanks to our sponsors. These people and organizations have made our publication possible. We greatly appreciate their contributions, their expertise and their support. Thank you to

THE ALICE PAUL CENTER: Shannon Lundeen THE CENTER FOR PROGRAMS IN CONTEMPORARY WRITING: Al Filreis THE KELLY WRITERS HOUSE: Jessica Lowenthal THE STUDENT ACTIVITIES COUNCIL

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FINÉ.