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    • Naked in the Woods
    • An Interview with Carol Anne Douglas
    • Imagining Differently: Revisiting Radical Feminism
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    • "A Witch, A Cat Woman": Cat Woman's Patriarchal Roots
    • Feminism in the Work of Michele Pred
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    • An Interview with Sharon Doubiago
    • Confrontation with the Rapist
    • Defense Attorney's Lament
    • Entertainment for Men
    • Greve Series / White Works
    • A Review of Donna Prinzmetal's Snow White
    • Laws of Kissing If Newton Were a Woman
    • Two Poems by Judith Terzi
    • One of the Cronettes
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  • Previous Issues
    • Voices of Feminism >
      • Issue 16: "Feminisms" >
        • Toward a Theory and Praxis of Sustainable Feminism
        • Feminisms: Inclusion as a Radical Act
        • Grace
        • Three Ekphrastic Poems
        • Braids
        • Medusa
        • Who's Coming Along: Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton, and Collaboration Today
        • We had rituals we didn't know what for
        • A Brief History of a Feminist Mind
        • Marge Piercy: On Feminism, Politics, and Writing
        • Lack of Cover
        • Refresh
        • Crabby Apples
        • A Place of Storytelling and Sustenance: Molly Sutton Kiefer's Nestuary
        • When She Was Two
        • Margaret Sanger Speaks
        • A Song for Maman Dantor
        • Listen
        • Abiquiu
        • Changing
        • Barbie at Rest
        • When We Crack, Let's Do It Together
        • Duel
        • Domestic Constellation
        • America the Beautiful
        • Death of a Valkyrie
        • Old Woman Who Grieves War
        • I Read My Death in the Winter Stars
        • Femenina Sube: My Aquarian Age
        • The Straight Mind at Work at the Heart of Queer Theory
        • Journal: In the Bois de Vincennes
        • Landlady Emily Carr
        • Scenario For a New Agenda
        • I Could Do That
      • Issue 15: "Animal Instincts" >
        • Women. Horse. Mountain.
        • My Pre-Feminist Animal Instincts
        • Our Animal Selves
        • Presage
        • Animal Self
        • Comings and Goings
        • And the Hawk Flies
        • Birds of a Feather
        • Proper Adornment
        • Reverie
        • Algonquin Anthology
        • Sea Stars
        • Immortal
        • Spirit Horse
        • First Cousins: A Suite of Poems
        • Bird of Prey
        • Crows
        • Harpy
        • Snake I Come
        • Approaching the Gate
        • Horses in Winter
        • "Domestic Terrorist"
        • Homeless
        • Displacement
        • The Mornings After
        • Gust of Win
        • Squirrel Dick
        • Cats
        • Frankie
        • Worms
        • Animal Cracker
        • I Don't Believe in Marriage
        • Drawing on the Dream
        • The Cow with a Human Face
        • Orangutans at the Jardin des Plantes
        • Abattoir
        • In for Life
        • I Am Shark
        • Giving Voice to Bear
        • Threshold Crossing
        • The Mark of the Bear
        • Discernment Is All
        • Bears at Midnight
        • The Musky Scent of Bear
        • Baggage
        • The End of Our Friendship
        • Four Mile River Road: 1 Mile
        • The White Dog
        • White Dog/Blue Pearls
        • Baby Dream #15
        • Baby Dream #39
        • Fish Songs
        • Today I Fished
        • The Surgeon's Territory
        • Boudoir Portrait
        • The First Six Months of Survival
        • P for Patience
        • French Pout
        • My Next Girlfriend
        • Winter Solstice
      • Issue 14: "Preoccupation" >
        • Wheatpastes
        • An Editorial: "It's not time to worry yet."
        • Courage
        • Dispirited
        • Voices
        • Falling
        • Sunset #2
        • Cut You Out
        • Brooding
        • Planetary
        • Sleeping. Dreaming.
        • Drama with the Neighbor
        • Woman to Woman
        • The Conspiracy of Chores
        • Murder
        • White Sunset Through a Mesquite Tree
        • Patricia Cornflake's Lesbian Lifestyle
        • Doldrums, Horse Latitudes, and Tropics
        • A Woman Poet's Critique of Words Too Commonly Spoken
        • Memory's Witness
        • Finding Edges
        • Oh, That Bed! That Bed!
        • Mother, Daughter
        • Here We Are
        • Crazy Jane Addams Occupies Hull's House
        • Virtue
        • The Canary
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        • Occupy Wall Street Poster
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        • The Poison Our Grandmothers and Mothers Drank
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        • The Bathing Scene from Marguerite Duras's "The Lover"
        • As I Lie
        • The Therapist
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        • A Feminist Editorial on Death
        • Plucked
        • Chromosomal Geography
        • The Clinic
        • Offal
        • I Have Come to Show You Death
        • The Making of a Peaceful Death
        • Sayonara
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        • Cycle
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        • New Jersey Spring
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        • Triptych: Art Essay on Death
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        • A Spiritual Death? The One-Eyed Doe...
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        • For Linda
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        • Mindfall
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        • Love Is Stronger Than Death
        • Twins and M/Others: A Survival Story
        • Due Diligence (A.K.A. Cracking Open Her Case)
        • Empirical Evidence
        • Dissociation
        • 27.2727273 Readers
        • The Nomad
        • Manifesto
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        • Chinatown, Death, and Women
        • Surrounded by Death
        • Where Sanity Returned
        • Whitney
        • In the Shadow of Mumtaz
        • Of Woods
        • The Egg Broke
        • Playing with Dolls
        • Threadbare
        • Because We Must Lose You
        • Clock Time
        • Gynosis One: Samhain
        • The Last Trimester
        • Crossing
        • Tiny Eve
      • Issue 12: "Southwestern Voices" >
        • Issue 12 Editorial: "Southwestern Voices"
        • Trojan Horses in the Desert
        • You Can See the Silence
        • Fleeing Oklahoma
        • North Rim, Grand Canyon, AZ
        • Mobius Arch, Alabama Hills, CA
        • Vasquez Rocks Natural Area, CA
        • Our Lady
        • Mothers of Beauty
        • Talking Incest
        • Desire
        • Tales from the Health Club
        • Three Years Old Watching the Open Sky
        • The Missing Girls
        • It Has Become Our Will: Onward with Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
        • A Conversation with bell hooks
        • Gertrude Stein, Hitler, and Vichy-France
        • Tinker Tailor Soldier Stein
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        • I Lied
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        • Translations of Poems by Shez
        • In Memoriam: Christa Wolf
      • Issue 11: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct," #2 >
        • Editorial_11
        • Invisible Outline
        • We Live as Two Lesbians
        • PrognostiKate
        • Dinosaurs & Haircuts: A Performance Monologue
        • To Be Real
        • Matrices
        • Coming Into Word
        • Prince of Paris
        • Ending Patriarchy
        • The Revolutionary Is the One who Begins Again
        • Always a Lesbian
        • Anti- Rape
        • Walking the Moon
        • Entanglement
        • Women Alone
        • No One Lives Her Life
        • Coming Out of the Straightjacket
        • Oscar of Between
        • Michele Causse
        • Jill Johnston
      • Issue 10: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct?" #1 >
        • Editorials
        • Before and after Sappho: Logos
        • On Living with a Poem for 20 Years: Judy Grahn's "A Woman Is Talking to Death"
        • And Will Rise? Notes on Lesbian ExtinctionNew Page
        • My Mid-term Exam in Lesbian Theory
        • Letter for Cynthia Rich
        • Dispatches from an Australian Radicalesbianfeminist
        • No Longer Burning
        • Reinvention and the Everyday
        • The Personal is Political
        • Notes on Reinvention and Extinction
        • Dyke on a Haybale: A Lesbian Teen in Kansas Speaks Out
        • Gay Trans and the Queering in Between
        • Lesbian Lament
        • The Inconvenient Truth about Teena Brandon
        • Who Says We're Extinct?
        • She Who
        • Lesbians Going All The Way
        • Trivia Saves Lives
        • Notes on Contributors
      • Issue 9: Thinking of Goddesses >
        • Vulture Medicine Augury
        • When hens were flying and god was not yet born
        • Canoeing our Way back to the Divine Feminine in Taino Spirituality
        • Testify
        • Young Pagan Goddess
        • Goddess is Metaformmic
        • For Want of a Goddess
        • Amaterasu- The Great Eastern Sun Goddess of Peace
        • What is Goddess? Toward an ontology of women giving birth. . .
        • Inanna Comes to Me in a Dream
        • First Blood Well The History of Bleeding
        • The Song of Lilith
        • Freedom Speaks Through Us
        • Dulce's Hands
        • Notes on contributors (9)
      • Issue 7/8: Unabashed Knowing >
        • Bad Manners All That Jazz
        • Hypatia
        • Amerika in 5 Parts
        • Screens: The War at Home
        • Invisible Nature
        • Woman-Woman Bonds in Prehistory
        • I Saw a Woman Dance
        • The Edible Parts
        • The Happy Hooker Revisisted
        • Re-membering an Interrupted Conversation:the Mother/Virgin Split
        • Notes on contributors (7/8)
      • Issue 6: The Art of the Possible >
        • The Aerial Lesbian Body: The Politics of Physical Expression
        • Wanting a Gun
        • Red Poppies Among the Ruings
        • Returning Home with Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia
        • Noah's Wife
        • Reclaiming the Spooky: Matilda Joslyn Gage and Mary Daly as Radical Pioneers of the Esoteric
        • Grand Right and Left
        • Notes on Contributors (6)
      • Issue 5: The Resurrection Issue (2/2007) >
        • Waiting for Sappho
        • A Song of Captain Joan
        • Blue Mojo
        • Why Do Something If it Can be Done
        • In Memoriam: Monique Wittig
        • The Loudest Self
        • Clear and Fierce
        • (B) Orderlands' Lullaby
        • Borderlands
        • akaDARKNESS: on Kathy Acker
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        • The Making of Power
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        • The Essential Angel: Tillie Olsen
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      • Issue 4: The Wonderful & The Terrible (9/2006) >
        • Cunctipotence
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        • Our Lot
        • Doe a Deer
        • Degendering Sex: Undoing Erotic Alienation
        • Seven Stages of Lesbian Desire (What's Truth Got to Do With It?)
        • That Easter
        • Amazon Grace: Read it Aloud
        • Athene, 2002-2005
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      • Issue 3: Love & Lust (2/2006) >
        • Conversation with Michele Causse
        • Chloto 1978
        • The Woman with the Secret Name
        • She is Still Burning
        • In the Beginning
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        • When Sex is Not the Metaphor for Intimacy
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      • Issue 2: Memory (12/2005) >
        • The Lost Days of Columbus
        • Agenesias of the Orld World
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        • Return to Earth
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        • The Beauty Shop
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      • Issue 1: The Body (10/2004) >
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        • The Secret Pornographies of Republicans. What's left? Preferably Knot
        • Communing with Bears
        • TRIVIA LIVES: Division Street
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        • Notes on Contributors (1)
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Canoeing our Way back to the Divine Feminine in Taíno Spirituality 

Marianela Medrano-Marra

When we see with one eye, our vision is limited in range and devoid of depth. When we add to it the single vision of the other eye, our range of vision becomes wider, but we still lack depth. It is only when both eyes see together that we accomplish full range of vision and accurate depth perception.
– Gerda Lerner

The valley in which I was born is a tiny place. The suffocating embrace of its smallness drew out the need to expand beyond the circle of its mountains. The actual village was no more than 4 miles wide and deep. The constriction or, at least what felt like constriction, grew invisible wings on me. I learned to fly beyond the circle of mountains braided in a perfect hug. In adulthood, I have come to realize that somehow people in the valley understood the metaphor of the hugging mountains and imitated them, by leaning on each other to survive the inhospitable scarcity often brought about by the implacable hands of nature and the ill attention of the government.

The name of my birthplace is Copey, which in Taíno or Arawak language means “flower.” It was in Copey where the seeds of my academic work were first planted. There I was drawn to the way of my ancestors, inscribed in  day-to-day social practices, and even in our childhood games and backyard “expeditions” where we would dig out Taíno ceramics that we used as our toys, unknowingly touching a part of the fabric of who we were as a people. Copey is located in La Linea Noroeste, the northwest region of Quisqueya, today the Dominican Republic, where nature sent her unmistakable, assertive message to keep us attuned to her turning cycles and her potent force. There, I learned the meaning of interdependence by watching it unfold in the daily interactions of people.

People in the valley would gather together in juntas or convites, a kind of reciprocity practiced among the campesinos or country people, where both men and women came together to work somebody’s parcela or orchard, until the land of each participant was tended. This practice reinforced the idea that the “I” does not exist without the “we.” The aftermath was some sort of butterfly effect; each individual got what he or she needed without monetary exchange, or distinction of gender. Well into the late 1960s the concept of paid labor was foreign to the simple people of Copey. During harvest times in the valley they would exchange goods so everyone had a little of everything. Pre-colonial societal practices on the island were primarily interdependent. “One for all and all for one” seems to have been the motto. In learning about the Taíno's way of living and agricultural practices, I recognized their influence on me and, most importantly, how women’s contributions were tied to the success of these practices, and how far away from the land colonization and industrialization subsequently situated women. The Goddess principle of reciprocity was clearly inscribed in the Taíno’s social practices.

It was not until 2005 that I understood the meaning of the metaphor of the hugging mountains in my life. I was canoeing on the Housatonic River, surrounded by hugging mountains dressed in multicolor foliage, when I had an experience that broke me wide open. An experience that reconnected me with my essence.

While in ecstasy, amazed at the foliage reflected in the water, my body was overtaken by a knowledge that could not be put into words. I felt my body merging with the water and the surrounding mountains, the colors, the water, each leaf, and I could not tell where one started and the other ended. I found myself singing the name of Taíno Chief Anacaona, as if an invisible hand were orchestrating my singing. My body and her name dove into a synchronistic movement that defied any possible description. I was overtaken by a sense of bliss. I interpreted the experience as Anacaona’s invitation to reclaim her name, forgotten in the history, despite her presence of great magnitude in the Taíno culture. She was the chief of the Xaragua kingdom or cacicazgo. Her kingdom was the heart and core of the entire island, where social gatherings and Areítos, ceremonial rituals that included dancing, drumming, rattling and chanting took place.

Picture
Taíno life tree, from a cave in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic. Photo by Marianela Medrano-Marra
In the Litchfield hills, miles and miles away from my native land, I had a sensation of being transported back to Anacaona’s times and to the valley of Copey. With my body as filter of a great inner knowing and spiritual connection, Anacaona’s call shifted my perception. I was indeed broken open, ready to define the destiny of my life as a scholar and keeper of the Taíno tradition. It was then and there I started revising and recomposing the story I have told myself of me as a woman, writer and researcher.

Despite the always cherished company of my husband, that afternoon in the Housatonic River I felt profoundly alone and, at the same time, profoundly connected with everything in my surroundings. My body experienced a knowledge that cannot be put into words, only experience and sense could translate it. Such a profound rediscovering of my intuition helped me realize that something inside me was transformed, and that the transformation was inscribed in my body at a cellular level.

Throughout my research I re-discovered what I had forgotten, that Taínos lurk longingly beneath the water surface, waiting for their dispersed children. Taíno archetypes call for a reconnection with nature; they lure us into our essence. Only when we quiet the mind, open the body, can the message be received. Anacaona’s call was an invitation to study Taíno spirituality, which was lost in the patriarchal legacy of colonization. The word Taíno means “good people” in Arawak. Chief Anacaona called me and invited me to paddle my way back to the Taínos, who themselves navigated by canoe. I got the metaphor immediately; it was through water that I heard the call to go back. I have shared this experience many times, and each time I write it down or verbalize it, I see more and more where the canoe was really taking me: into a navigation of the spirituality of my Taíno people. That is the commitment of my scholarship: to restore the sense of wholeness of our spiritual practices. My interest as a scholar is to examine whether the assumption and knowledge of a Divine Feminine in the Taíno culture can empower Dominican women, and if a similar culture-specific empowerment can be translated to other women across cultures.

As a child I witnessed many juntas as they marched in caravan to la bahia de Sancié where my father’s tobacco and yucca plantations were. My desire to one day visit Sancié wedded me to patience and perseverance, two necessary qualities of effective writing and quality scholarship. In my imagination, each day at dawn, I would fly over the mountains to catch cangrejos (crabs) in the manglares or mangroves, and the crabs would come to my hands with the humility of a domestic pet. I was too young then to go to Sancié.

Migration and adult responsibilities have distracted me from physically going to Sancié, but not from the knowledge that a good story can keep me alive and thriving. The stories I tell myself as a scholar and writer in the field of Goddess studies speak about the transformative power of memory and the importance of revising history—most especially of the importance of reclaiming what has been lost in the telling.

Through research I go back to the past to redefine the present. Taínos had an oral tradition; telling stories was important to the ancestors, as it was how they were able to conserve the essence of our culture. Taínos, while not the only inhabitants of Quisqueya, were the most developed and organized indigenous group, which perhaps accounts for why their cultural practices last to this day. I take it upon myself to tell their stories, sometimes through academic scholarship, and other times, literally through the flight of my imagination in the form of poems.

Picture
Images from Taíno cave, San Cristobal, Dominican Republic. Photo by Marianela Medrano-Marra
The genesis of the Taíno people can be traced back to the union of a God named Yucahu Maorocoti and a fertility Goddess named Atabey Yermao-Guacar-Apito-Zuimaco (multiple names signify her importance). Other female Taíno deities are Itiba Cahubaba, Mama Jicotea or Caguama, Guabonito, and Guabancex. During my visits to Taíno ceremonial sites in the Dominican Republic, I was able to see how my ancestors left in those caves their rubrics, indelible traces of their communion with nature and their holistic approach to life in general and to spirituality in particular. Visiting the caves was a journey into the core of ancestral spirituality, a journey that lit up the eyes of my inner child, still gazing up at the chain of mountains in Copey, dreaming to go to Sancié, to the mangroves and the blue waters where the spirit of Anacaona dwells.

My study of Taíno spirituality has revived archetypes and myths from my childhood. For instance, the archetype of la Ciguapa, a Taíno trickster of liberation and freedom, represented as a female figure with long hair dragging along the earth and feet pointing backwards, has greatly illuminated the aim of my research. La Ciguapa’s feet were backwards to cover her tracks so nobody could follow her.

In the same sense, La Ciguapa is a great metaphor for the way scholars of Dominican women’s studies very often have to work their way into the scholarship. Dominican history, with very few exceptions, has been told primarily by men invested in perpetuating patriarchy and therefore omitting the lines in history where women’s contributions are palpable. The pre-Columbian Taíno women left behind art and artifacts  that indicate they were key figures in their society. Most historians have failed to highlight women’s influence in the Taíno world, a failure that has translated into a modern society that, for the most part, continues to deny women their place in Dominican political, social, and economic development.

Picture
Atabeyra image
When I work with women I present the archetype of La Ciguapa to  illustrate a feminine symbol that can translate into political and spiritual consciousness. Most often, the women discuss the archetype, and through writing, find and develop a resonance with her. La Ciguapa, like many of the women I work with, was forced into “internal exile.” She goes into the wilderness to restore her sense of self. Expelled from society, she, like the women I work with, is forever looking for a (political) way back. Her strategy, when she feels persecuted, is to point her feet backward while she moves forward, so nobody can find and harm her. As Ciguapas, (tricksters), women have the capacity to stand at the threshold of awareness and insight, to penetrate the mysteries of the world (spiritual consciousness). La Ciguapa represents both transformation (moving forward) and safety (the backward feet offering protection in the wilderness).

My scholarship is an invitation to go back to our roots, to our genesis, back to the Great Mother Atabey Yermao-Guacar-Apito-Zuimaco, to Itiba Cahubaba, Mama Jicotea or Caguama, Guabonito, and Guabancex, to La Ciguapa, to the Great Father Yucahú Vagua Morocoti. In so doing we can reunite the two basic energies from which we sprang. My scholarship does not attempt to deny men in order to empower women; nor does it propose women as victims. It agrees with Lerner’s quote at the beginning of this essay. The way scholarship can bring about transformation is by adding the female vision to the male, to restore depth and range of perception. My work in the field of Goddess Studies invites myself and other women to reclaim our place as co-creators of the world—to be Ciguapas, female tricksters seeking internal balance and reclaiming our innate ability to be wild and highly intuitive.

Abou the author

Marianela Medrano is a Dominican writer and psychologist living in Connecticut. She offers workshops and readings in various venues. In her workshops, she combines literature, psychology, and her research on the Sacred Feminine to help others find new ways of knowing the wholeness of human beings. Her publications are: Oficio de Vivir (1986), Los Alegres Ojos de la Tristeza (1987), Regando Esencias/The Scent of Waiting (1998) and Curada de Espantos (2002).


For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.       
"We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change.
There are new mountains." (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1986)
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    • Radical: A Tribute to Barbara Mor
    • Radical Lesbian Feminism in Practice
    • Abe Louise Young: A Suite of Poems
    • Capacity
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    • Allison Merriweather: A Suite of Images
    • Localized Deafness: A Suite of Poems
    • Naked in the Woods
    • An Interview with Carol Anne Douglas
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    • First Responder Who Only Fainted During Training Videos
    • Index of Jobs for Women
    • Screwnomics
    • Menstruation
    • Merkin Art: A Suite of Pussies
    • "A Witch, A Cat Woman": Cat Woman's Patriarchal Roots
    • Feminism in the Work of Michele Pred
    • Lucky Girl
    • The Social, Cultural, and Political Necessity of Anne Sexton
    • An Interview with Sharon Doubiago
    • Confrontation with the Rapist
    • Defense Attorney's Lament
    • Entertainment for Men
    • Greve Series / White Works
    • A Review of Donna Prinzmetal's Snow White
    • Laws of Kissing If Newton Were a Woman
    • Two Poems by Judith Terzi
    • One of the Cronettes
    • Inspiration
  • Previous Issues
    • Voices of Feminism >
      • Issue 16: "Feminisms" >
        • Toward a Theory and Praxis of Sustainable Feminism
        • Feminisms: Inclusion as a Radical Act
        • Grace
        • Three Ekphrastic Poems
        • Braids
        • Medusa
        • Who's Coming Along: Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton, and Collaboration Today
        • We had rituals we didn't know what for
        • A Brief History of a Feminist Mind
        • Marge Piercy: On Feminism, Politics, and Writing
        • Lack of Cover
        • Refresh
        • Crabby Apples
        • A Place of Storytelling and Sustenance: Molly Sutton Kiefer's Nestuary
        • When She Was Two
        • Margaret Sanger Speaks
        • A Song for Maman Dantor
        • Listen
        • Abiquiu
        • Changing
        • Barbie at Rest
        • When We Crack, Let's Do It Together
        • Duel
        • Domestic Constellation
        • America the Beautiful
        • Death of a Valkyrie
        • Old Woman Who Grieves War
        • I Read My Death in the Winter Stars
        • Femenina Sube: My Aquarian Age
        • The Straight Mind at Work at the Heart of Queer Theory
        • Journal: In the Bois de Vincennes
        • Landlady Emily Carr
        • Scenario For a New Agenda
        • I Could Do That
      • Issue 15: "Animal Instincts" >
        • Women. Horse. Mountain.
        • My Pre-Feminist Animal Instincts
        • Our Animal Selves
        • Presage
        • Animal Self
        • Comings and Goings
        • And the Hawk Flies
        • Birds of a Feather
        • Proper Adornment
        • Reverie
        • Algonquin Anthology
        • Sea Stars
        • Immortal
        • Spirit Horse
        • First Cousins: A Suite of Poems
        • Bird of Prey
        • Crows
        • Harpy
        • Snake I Come
        • Approaching the Gate
        • Horses in Winter
        • "Domestic Terrorist"
        • Homeless
        • Displacement
        • The Mornings After
        • Gust of Win
        • Squirrel Dick
        • Cats
        • Frankie
        • Worms
        • Animal Cracker
        • I Don't Believe in Marriage
        • Drawing on the Dream
        • The Cow with a Human Face
        • Orangutans at the Jardin des Plantes
        • Abattoir
        • In for Life
        • I Am Shark
        • Giving Voice to Bear
        • Threshold Crossing
        • The Mark of the Bear
        • Discernment Is All
        • Bears at Midnight
        • The Musky Scent of Bear
        • Baggage
        • The End of Our Friendship
        • Four Mile River Road: 1 Mile
        • The White Dog
        • White Dog/Blue Pearls
        • Baby Dream #15
        • Baby Dream #39
        • Fish Songs
        • Today I Fished
        • The Surgeon's Territory
        • Boudoir Portrait
        • The First Six Months of Survival
        • P for Patience
        • French Pout
        • My Next Girlfriend
        • Winter Solstice
      • Issue 14: "Preoccupation" >
        • Wheatpastes
        • An Editorial: "It's not time to worry yet."
        • Courage
        • Dispirited
        • Voices
        • Falling
        • Sunset #2
        • Cut You Out
        • Brooding
        • Planetary
        • Sleeping. Dreaming.
        • Drama with the Neighbor
        • Woman to Woman
        • The Conspiracy of Chores
        • Murder
        • White Sunset Through a Mesquite Tree
        • Patricia Cornflake's Lesbian Lifestyle
        • Doldrums, Horse Latitudes, and Tropics
        • A Woman Poet's Critique of Words Too Commonly Spoken
        • Memory's Witness
        • Finding Edges
        • Oh, That Bed! That Bed!
        • Mother, Daughter
        • Here We Are
        • Crazy Jane Addams Occupies Hull's House
        • Virtue
        • The Canary
        • White Sunset #3
        • Flow
        • Citrus
        • The Devil Finds Work for Idle Hands
        • Occupy Wall Street Poster
        • The Tent
        • Occupy Me!
        • (post)Occupation
        • The Poison Our Grandmothers and Mothers Drank
        • Hellish Clout
        • Tangle
        • The Bathing Scene from Marguerite Duras's "The Lover"
        • As I Lie
        • The Therapist
      • Issue 13: "Death" >
        • A Feminist Editorial on Death
        • Plucked
        • Chromosomal Geography
        • The Clinic
        • Offal
        • I Have Come to Show You Death
        • The Making of a Peaceful Death
        • Sayonara
        • Sitting in the Lap of God
        • Cycle
        • My Assailant
        • New Jersey Spring
        • Something Missing
        • Triptych: Art Essay on Death
        • The Heroes of Ecbatana
        • Jane is Dead
        • The Miscarriage
        • A Spiritual Death? The One-Eyed Doe...
        • Black Bears
        • Circus
        • The Road to Nowhere
        • American Jisei
        • Nothing to Lose
        • For Linda
        • For Ryan
        • Mindfall
        • Rest in Peace
        • Love Is Stronger Than Death
        • Twins and M/Others: A Survival Story
        • Due Diligence (A.K.A. Cracking Open Her Case)
        • Empirical Evidence
        • Dissociation
        • 27.2727273 Readers
        • The Nomad
        • Manifesto
        • Baby Island
        • Chinatown, Death, and Women
        • Surrounded by Death
        • Where Sanity Returned
        • Whitney
        • In the Shadow of Mumtaz
        • Of Woods
        • The Egg Broke
        • Playing with Dolls
        • Threadbare
        • Because We Must Lose You
        • Clock Time
        • Gynosis One: Samhain
        • The Last Trimester
        • Crossing
        • Tiny Eve
      • Issue 12: "Southwestern Voices" >
        • Issue 12 Editorial: "Southwestern Voices"
        • Trojan Horses in the Desert
        • You Can See the Silence
        • Fleeing Oklahoma
        • North Rim, Grand Canyon, AZ
        • Mobius Arch, Alabama Hills, CA
        • Vasquez Rocks Natural Area, CA
        • Our Lady
        • Mothers of Beauty
        • Talking Incest
        • Desire
        • Tales from the Health Club
        • Three Years Old Watching the Open Sky
        • The Missing Girls
        • It Has Become Our Will: Onward with Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
        • A Conversation with bell hooks
        • Gertrude Stein, Hitler, and Vichy-France
        • Tinker Tailor Soldier Stein
        • Organic Evolution
        • Eclipse of Hope
        • I Lied
        • First Apartment
        • Translations of Poems by Shez
        • In Memoriam: Christa Wolf
      • Issue 11: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct," #2 >
        • Editorial_11
        • Invisible Outline
        • We Live as Two Lesbians
        • PrognostiKate
        • Dinosaurs & Haircuts: A Performance Monologue
        • To Be Real
        • Matrices
        • Coming Into Word
        • Prince of Paris
        • Ending Patriarchy
        • The Revolutionary Is the One who Begins Again
        • Always a Lesbian
        • Anti- Rape
        • Walking the Moon
        • Entanglement
        • Women Alone
        • No One Lives Her Life
        • Coming Out of the Straightjacket
        • Oscar of Between
        • Michele Causse
        • Jill Johnston
      • Issue 10: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct?" #1 >
        • Editorials
        • Before and after Sappho: Logos
        • On Living with a Poem for 20 Years: Judy Grahn's "A Woman Is Talking to Death"
        • And Will Rise? Notes on Lesbian ExtinctionNew Page
        • My Mid-term Exam in Lesbian Theory
        • Letter for Cynthia Rich
        • Dispatches from an Australian Radicalesbianfeminist
        • No Longer Burning
        • Reinvention and the Everyday
        • The Personal is Political
        • Notes on Reinvention and Extinction
        • Dyke on a Haybale: A Lesbian Teen in Kansas Speaks Out
        • Gay Trans and the Queering in Between
        • Lesbian Lament
        • The Inconvenient Truth about Teena Brandon
        • Who Says We're Extinct?
        • She Who
        • Lesbians Going All The Way
        • Trivia Saves Lives
        • Notes on Contributors
      • Issue 9: Thinking of Goddesses >
        • Vulture Medicine Augury
        • When hens were flying and god was not yet born
        • Canoeing our Way back to the Divine Feminine in Taino Spirituality
        • Testify
        • Young Pagan Goddess
        • Goddess is Metaformmic
        • For Want of a Goddess
        • Amaterasu- The Great Eastern Sun Goddess of Peace
        • What is Goddess? Toward an ontology of women giving birth. . .
        • Inanna Comes to Me in a Dream
        • First Blood Well The History of Bleeding
        • The Song of Lilith
        • Freedom Speaks Through Us
        • Dulce's Hands
        • Notes on contributors (9)
      • Issue 7/8: Unabashed Knowing >
        • Bad Manners All That Jazz
        • Hypatia
        • Amerika in 5 Parts
        • Screens: The War at Home
        • Invisible Nature
        • Woman-Woman Bonds in Prehistory
        • I Saw a Woman Dance
        • The Edible Parts
        • The Happy Hooker Revisisted
        • Re-membering an Interrupted Conversation:the Mother/Virgin Split
        • Notes on contributors (7/8)
      • Issue 6: The Art of the Possible >
        • The Aerial Lesbian Body: The Politics of Physical Expression
        • Wanting a Gun
        • Red Poppies Among the Ruings
        • Returning Home with Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia
        • Noah's Wife
        • Reclaiming the Spooky: Matilda Joslyn Gage and Mary Daly as Radical Pioneers of the Esoteric
        • Grand Right and Left
        • Notes on Contributors (6)
      • Issue 5: The Resurrection Issue (2/2007) >
        • Waiting for Sappho
        • A Song of Captain Joan
        • Blue Mojo
        • Why Do Something If it Can be Done
        • In Memoriam: Monique Wittig
        • The Loudest Self
        • Clear and Fierce
        • (B) Orderlands' Lullaby
        • Borderlands
        • akaDARKNESS: on Kathy Acker
        • Remembering Barbara Macdonald
        • The Making of Power
        • Octavia Butler: A note on Xenogenesis as a love story
        • The Essential Angel: Tillie Olsen
        • Carol's Hands
        • Notes on Contributors (5)
      • Issue 4: The Wonderful & The Terrible (9/2006) >
        • Cunctipotence
        • Global Lovers
        • Our Lot
        • Doe a Deer
        • Degendering Sex: Undoing Erotic Alienation
        • Seven Stages of Lesbian Desire (What's Truth Got to Do With It?)
        • That Easter
        • Amazon Grace: Read it Aloud
        • Athene, 2002-2005
        • Notes on Contributors (4)
      • Issue 3: Love & Lust (2/2006) >
        • Conversation with Michele Causse
        • Chloto 1978
        • The Woman with the Secret Name
        • She is Still Burning
        • In the Beginning
        • Sanctuary
        • When Sex is Not the Metaphor for Intimacy
        • Arielle
        • Quotidian Love
        • Leverett
        • After Sappho's Fragments Tips for Natural Disasters Said Before
        • A Lesbian is a Memoir
        • Notes on Contributors (3)
      • Issue 2: Memory (12/2005) >
        • The Lost Days of Columbus
        • Agenesias of the Orld World
        • The Power of the Earth Shake/Rousing
        • Return to Earth
        • Forces of Nature
        • The Beauty Shop
        • The Other Shore
        • Notes on Contributors (2)
      • Issue 1: The Body (10/2004) >
        • Lovesick
        • Guerilla Girl Ponders the Situation
        • The Secret Pornographies of Republicans. What's left? Preferably Knot
        • Communing with Bears
        • TRIVIA LIVES: Division Street
        • After Reading: Les Gueilleres
        • Notes on Contributors (1)
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