Content uploaded by Rebecca Luce-Kapler
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Rebecca Luce-Kapler on Apr 04, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
http://jlr.sagepub.com/
Journal of Literacy Research
http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/31/3/267
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1080/10862969909548049
1999 31: 267Journal of Literacy Research
Rebecca Luce-Kapler
As if Women Writing
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
Literary Research Association
can be found at:Journal of Literacy ResearchAdditional services and information for
http://jlr.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:
http://jlr.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:
http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/31/3/267.refs.htmlCitations:
What is This?
- Sep 1, 1999Version of Record >>
by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 11, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from
AS IF WOMEN WRITING
Rebecca Luce-Kapler
QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY
When
we
write literary texts such
as
fiction, poetry,
autobiography,
or
memoir,
we initiate performances
of
meaning that
subjunctivize
reality.
Because
the
subjunc-
tive traffics
in
human possibilities rather than settled
certainties
(Bruner,
1986),
writing
becomes
a site of
pos-
sibility,
an
"as
if
that works
in
multiple ways with,
through, and beyond the
text.
What such contingency
does
is
broaden the
possibilities
for
experiencing,
act-
ing, understanding, and
creating.
If
there
is no
"solid"
sense
of
self,
but rather an ever evolving story
of
iden-
tity that
is
always
in
revision, then our stories about
ourselves are
fraught with possibility
-
the subjunctive
possibility of
writing.
Women, using the fluidity of
writ-
ing to
express
a
variety
of
experiences,
shape
a
story of
subjectivity where they begin to see
themselves
as hav-
ing multiple
possibilities
for understanding and
acting.
This article
explores
some
of
the
possibilities
of
writing
that the author realized from
working
with women
writ-
ers and
describes
how, as
a
result
of
this
work,
she has
revised her thinking about writing and the teaching of
writing.
J
LR
v. 31 NO.
3
1999
pp.
267-291
CARMEN WROTE IN HER JOURNAL about her relationship with her
husband:
I arrived home at about 2
PM.
George was trying to organize a trip to the
J L R MediCenter because he had broken glass in his big toe. I dropped him off,
Luce-Kapler came home, rushed to put potatoes and pork chops in the oven then went
back to pick him up, not knowing that someone from Homecare was com-
ing to make his supper.
We
got home and then I had to get his antibiotics at
Guardian Drugs even though I felt exhausted. Yesterday George wanted a
new telephone answering machine, sol had gone to Sears to pick it
up.
Now
he decided that the old machine still worked, so he wanted me to take the
new one back. While I was out, he asked me to pick up some Travel Aids at
Superstore. When I came home, George had a note on the cupboard saying
that I had better move everything of mine to Mary's since I was talking
about staying there anyway.
Later, when Carmen had finally left her home and marriage, her hus-
band phoned her one morning and threatened to commit suicide, because
she had upset him so badly."He hung the phone up before I could answer,"
Carmen said. "I didn't know what to do and fell into the guilt trap he set."
She chronicled her efforts to get outside help and not to go back home,
which she realized is what he wanted her to do. At the end of the ordeal, she
wrote:
I am desperate to make George understand how unhappy I am and have
been for 25-30
years.
I've been unhappy about the way he treated and yelled
at the kids. I've been unhappy about his control over all of
us.
I've asked him
to treat us like he treats the neighbors - he's good to them.... Even if he
committed suicide, it would be his choice - not mine. I am not responsible
for his actions. I have covered for him and made excuses for him for so
many years that I will have to keep telling myself - "it's not my fault."
In our later conversations, Carmen told me that when her husband was
interviewed by a large insurance company for a job during the 1950s, she
also had to be interviewed. "They would not give him the job until they
had interviewed'the wife,"'she said."They had to be sure that I would agree
to do everything I could to help him be a good insurance agent. I had to
promise that I would have breakfast ready by 7:30, lunch by 12:00, and
supper at 6:30 so he could get right back out selling. I also had to promise
to have a clean white shirt available for him every day and to press his suit
every night."
Although Carmen's story was difficult to hear at times, it also became a
story of hope as with every page she was clearer about what and how she
was deciding to leave and what might lie ahead. In a recent entry, Carmen
268
noted: "I get so depressed at times and feel really beaten. Upon looking
back, I think these feelings are becoming less of a burden. I like to be in
control of my life and rarely have been."
As her writing became a way of sorting out the conflicting voices and
feelings, which inundated her daily, Carmen moved from remembering
the past and how she had been an independent young woman to being a
dependent wife. In the end, the writing became part of her decision to move
away from her husband and begin a different life for
herself.
Her voice
disintegrates
into dust
between
fingers,
perfume of honeyed wheat
heats shadowed
corners,
tantalizes her forgetting
sounds that saturate vibrations
Her
words
float with harvest winds,
southwest,
drying
green
lushness
hardened,
sweet
juice locked in kernels
She pulls a stalk,
catches
barley beards on her lips
scrapes
the head through her teeth,
chews
grain into
starchy
pulp
language
dribbles
from her tongue1
A Gathering ofWomen
In early morning with clouds threatening rain, I hear the rustle of the
women from the writing groups settling in my office, the fabric of their
clothing stirring the air, the whisper of their voices drawing my attention.
Carmen's words echo and reecho in my transcripts. Those words challenge
me as I challenge myself to consider the writing of this study.
For some time, I have had questions about writing from my experience
as a writer of fiction and poetry and as a teacher of writing in my high
school English classes. When I wrote outside the classroom, my work was
so closely entwined with my sense of subjectivity that the writing was
shaped by and shaped who I believed I was. In school, my students and I
did not seem to have the same relationship with writing - our work was
not as intimately connected to our subjectivity. Most times, we constructed
emotional distance between our work and our selves. To begin to think
about and understand the relationship between writing and subjectivity, I
needed to work with groups of writers again - both writers who were close
to school experience and those who were not.
This decision began a research project that involved working with three
different groups of women as young as 15 and as old as 67 who wrote and
spoke of their writing and recounted stories of their lives that unfolded
from the edges of pages and catachrestically crept from between lines. Two
J LR
As If
Women
Writing
1 The italicized
excerpts are
poems written by
the researcher as
she both partici-
pated in and
reflected on the
work of the writ-
ing groups. The
poetry is a resym-
bolization of some
of her theoretical
considerations of
the data.
269
J LR
Luce-Kapler
2 All participants
have been given
pseudonyms.
In the case of the
adolescent girls,
they chose their
own pseudonyms
with great
pleasure.
of the groupings, one composed of English teachers and the other of ado-
lescent girls, met regularly to write or respond to each other's work and to
follow the conversations to which such work led us. The last grouping, two
women in their 60s, wrote separately over several months, using writing
prompts and journal work, followed by conversations with me. The dis-
cussion from all the research groups reiterated how the women's texts were
really a confluence of their living, how those texts and our conversations
often revealed understandings about our lives that were significant and
illuminating, and how our own histories/stories/poetics interacted with
culture and politics to co-create meaning.
Imagine the first group, meeting during the winter after school. I have
turned up the heat because it is so cold outside and have made a pot of tea
and prepared a plate of cheese and crackers. Teachers are hungry after
school, because they've often had to skip lunch. Sidonie2 arrives first. She
teaches high school English in a predominantly White, middle-class sub-
urb and writes novels and poetry whenever she can find the time. (She
will also participate in the second writing group with the adolescent girls.)
When Casey, who teaches junior high English in a small town arrives, we're
ready to begin. Like Sidonie, Casey writes whenever possible, and both
women have taken reduced teaching loads to have more time for their writ-
ing, and both are active in the local writing community.
The second group, the adolescent girls, meets after school where Sidonie
teaches. The echoes of students shouting greetings or yelling taunts, the
banging lockers, the thud of books fade away. The intercom to the class-
room is temporarily diverted, so the after-school announcements are faint
reverberations from outside. The lights have been dimmed, and nine desks
are placed in a tight circle, ready for the girls to come in and settle down,
their journals and bits of paper falling out of their backpacks. Alexis ar-
rives first, bubbly and enthusiastic about returning to work with a favorite
teacher and excited about writing. She is followed closely by Dale, who is
younger, just in her first year of high school, and a bit shy about her writ-
ing. Ayelha arrives next, coming quietly and hesitantly into the room. She
too is new to the school having moved many times in her 16 years as a
daughter of a military family. Sophia, Pegatha, and Ella-Genevieve show
up at the same time. Sophia is confident and outspoken about her writing,
whereas Pegatha is very hesitant about being part of the group. Only the
presence of the teacher, whom she admires greatly, relaxes her enough to
stay. Ella-Genevieve is also in her first year of high school and somewhat
quiet and perhaps intimidated by being in the group. Finally, Norah ar-
rives with a splash of bravado and a long speech about why she is late and
why she is keen to be involved. Among the girls, as I learn later, are two
who are on Prozac; another is mourning the recent death of a parent. Some
270
of
the
girls feel socially inept
and
ostracized
in
different ways; almost
all of
them feel insecure about
who
they
are. As
Sidonie,
the
teacher, later says:
"Within
the
insular world
of an
affluent, 'white-bread' suburb,
the
girls
are
trying their utmost
to
cope with
an
alarming number
of
issues, problems,
and volatile relationships. They have difficulty negotiating
the
complex
and JLR
confusing signals from peers,
the
media, their parents, counselors,
doc- As If
Women
tors,
teachers,
and
administrators."
Writing
Finally, there are the two older women. I meet with them individually
and communicate with Hazel primarily through E-mail. Hazel has long
been interested in writing and has found workshop opportunities from
time to time. My research gives her a chance to focus on her interest again.
Carmen, intrigued by my topic, has asked to be part of the research, even
though she has not written anything but letters since she left school nearly
50 years before. Although Hazel lives far away from family and sees writ-
ing as a way to explore those connections, Carmen is going through a diffi-
cult time in her marriage and, perhaps without even being conscious of
this,
sees writing as a lifeline.
These are the women of my study, only some of whom will appear in
this article.
Beginning the Writing
Once I chose these women to work with, I created the structure of the re-
search groups by relying on my many experiences of participating in writ-
ing groups where budding and established writers develop their abilities
through feedback and work with peers. By inviting the women to join me
in such a structure, the only focus that was needed for the groups to begin
was a commitment to explore our writing together. Such groups were remi-
niscent of action research collectives where reflection and participation is
done by the participants and the researcher. This realization meant that I
would not be investigating the individual writers but instead would inter-
pret my experience of working with them as we wrote together, thinking
and talking about such processes of writing.
Action research appeared in the United States during the Second World
War as researchers sought ways for social science knowledge to be more
responsive to significant social problems. Kurt Lewin was one of the origi-
nators who developed this participatory research "whereby members of a
community could investigate problems... while at the same time creating
group processes aimed at mitigating the problem" (Carson, 1992, p. ii).
From this origin, various manifestations of action research have developed,
including poststructural action research, which emerged as a result of the
cultural shifts of postmodernism (Daignault, 1992). Such research is less
271
concerned about a resolution or mitigation of the problem than with
acknowledging the ambiguity and uncertainty of working within the so-
cial sciences. I thought that drawing on a poststructural action research
methodology would offer the space and flexibility that our work needed. I
J L R planned that, as I worked to understand my questions about writing, the
Luce-Kapler other participants would also find space in the group to explore their ques-
tions about writing and subjectivity. Fine (1994) noted that when we opt
to work alongside those we are researching, the results often reveal far more
about who we (the researchers) are, and the narrators in the writing of
such research become less transparent. Lather (1991) identified this kind
of social research as being where both the researcher and the researched
become "the changer and the changed" (p. 56). She pointed out that this
reciprocally educative process is its most important aspect."Through dia-
logue and reflexivity, design, data, and theory emerge, with data being rec-
ognized as generated from people in a relationship" (p. 72).
In this article, I am describing one aspect of our action research project:
my understandings of writing that evolved from participating in three
groups of women writers and from reading various texts about writing
during that process. Although this is a reporting of research, it is not struc-
tured typically, where the reader is offered detailed pictures of the partici-
pants followed by specific findings that can be attributed to individuals as
writers. Rather, this is a research report about how my participating in this
work with particular events and individuals helped me to think about writ-
ing differently, intertwined with the reading that helped to shape this inter-
pretation. As such, it more closely resembles a personal essay, but, as Eisner
(1997) has pointed out, the form one chooses to write a research report is
as important as the form of research in which one chooses to participate.
Such a choice, Eisner suggested, may be to represent the research in a way
that creates what he called "productive ambiguity?' meaning that it is more
evocative than denotative in order to offer some insight into the complexity
of a particular situation, a choice I have made with this work. And because
writing is an important way for me to come to know, I needed to be aware
that how I was writing this paper was an important aspect of this knowing
(Richardson, 1994). In this research, there is a doubling of such knowing;
that is, I wrote within the group and then, with some distance, wrote about
all three writing experiences in this article to further understand and build
on the insights about writing I had gleaned from my group participation.
Richardson (1994) noted that the meaning of qualitative work resides
in the experience of carefully reading it. In order to represent such research,
Richardson suggested four possibilities that she called "evocative repre-
sentations": (a) narrative of the
self,
(b) fictional representations, (c) po-
etic representation, and (d) mixed genres where the "scholar draws freely
272
in his or her productions from literary, artistic, and scientific genres, often
breaking the boundaries of each of those as well" (p. 522). This final form
is where I situate my own writing of this research, which includes poetic
form, narrative, transcript, fictional renderings, and academic text.J LR
She wakes early to the dark wet of an autumn morning.
Somewhere,
at the As If Women
periphery, she hears the rustle of women
breathing
pages,
waiting.
She
feels Writing
loneliness
in knowing she must be the one to call out, but rises anyway to
make her
preparations.
A cup of
strong
coffee,
clean
paper,
soft clothing that
falb about her body in warm
folds.
She settles into the
chesterfield
corner,
the imprint of her
earlier figure
still there to embrace her while the ticking
of the wall
clock
reminds
her,
reminds
her.
Like the
tires
swishing on the
rainy
pavement outside. She shakes the gray quillow over her knees and
turns on the small light that illuminates her hand holding the journal, the
black
fountain pen. She begins a slow quiet chant
across
the page in loops
and
swirls.
She entices them, knowing that what she seeks can only unfold
in its own time. Word meets
word,
fingers
touch
fingers,
a rhythmic dream
state that
assuages
a month long
hunger,
the hunger of
longing
in a humid
darkness.
The Work of Narrative
Jerome Bruner (1996) suggested that it is through the telling of narratives
that we construct a version of ourselves in the world (p. xiv). Narratives
arrange events, summon characters, and create metaphors and other tropes,
which weave a cultural fabric that not only brings meaning to our actions
but also creates a milieu in which we can act. If this is so, what happens
when a writer chooses the lyric to create a version of herself in the world?
Or when she interrupts her narrative with lyrical forays? What happens to
self-identity? To this world?
Gertrude Stein, in writing about identity, said that it was "not a thing
that exists but something you do or do not remember" (cited in Elliott &
Wallace, 1994, p. 164). This thinking points to the shift away from the idea
of a fixed and stable identity; an idea that arose from the modernist no-
tions of a self as the foundation of a personality separate from the body.
The work of feminists and poststructuralists have further characterized
subjectivity as being constructed through discourses, which are often con-
tradictory and serve to shift and rewrite one's identity.
Anthony Kerby (1991), in his book Narrative and the
Self,
developed
the idea of the discursive nature of the self by suggesting, like Bruner, that
we develop a sense of identity by understanding the discourses that con-
struct us as narrative. "Self?' he wrote, "is given content, is delineated and
embodied, primarily in narrative constructions or stories" (p. 1). We take
273
the parts or "scenes" from our lives and fit them into a sense of wholeness,
albeit a whole that is continually changing and extending. This storytelling
does not cease, although it may not always be as conscious or present on a
day-to-day basis. We say that if we don't get that new job, it was meant to be
J L R and something better will be coming along. We imagine dramatic scenarios
Luce-Kapler before we break up with a lover, and then we "rewrite" the event afterwards,
an event that can go through many versions depending on whom we tell
and what our memories are. The process is one of "emplotment" (Kerby,
1991),
where discrete events can be causally connected into a narrative
structure that generates our understanding of the past.
This "narration of the self? to use Richardson's term, can attempt to be
seamless and complete while hiding turmoil. Carmen wrote to understand
her disintegrating relationship with George. The English teachers wrote to
escape their frustrations with teaching. The adolescent girls turned to writ-
ing as a way of coping with the stresses and crises of high school. In our
discussions with them about writing, Ella-Genevieve said, "I only really
write when I get frustrated or am sad. Basically I write to ease my pain."
Another time, Ayelha wrote a long poem about her great-grandmother's
recent death. She had been shocked to see the old woman in a nursing
home, mostly forgotten by the family, and had been appalled about the
lack of feeling her parents seemed to have at her death.
The girls' writing tried to give shape to the uncertainty and the fear as
they hoped to discover a coherent story, to interpret explanations, and dis-
cover understanding. Some of their writing dealt with difficult relation-
ships with men and boys; some addressed the sense of confinement as ex-
pectations and roles seemed to become more definitive for them every year;
some explored the images of women that were perpetuated by society and
the media, whereas others focused on their growing realization of the
difficulties of
living.
The writing was a way of making sense, of trying things
out, of searching for possibilities. The teachers' writing was not much
different. One continued to work through her father's death in poetry,
whereas another's writing was in part a response to the difficulties of teach-
ing within a nonsupportive and hindering administration. For Carmen,
the kind of wife and mother she had believed herself to be, the size of house
she lived in, the number of belongings she owned, and her relationship to
her community were all changing. Her writing was a way of interpreting
the life she was leaving but also of beginning to interpret the forms of a
new one.
As the writing continued, however, I noticed that there was not one co-
herent story where the women tried to fit each piece of writing into the
overall stories of their lives. Rather, the consistency and tidiness of such
274
stories were continually undermined through the writing. For instance,
the women did not use only typical narrative structures. They responded
to group writing exercises with poetry, journal entries, snippets that ranted,
rejoiced, or mourned an event. Sometimes, they drew pictures and created
collages. At times, the women wrote in first person with intensely personal J L R
voices,
while at other times, they chose a third-person perspective and relied As If
Women
on greater fictionalizing. The responses were fragmented and multileveled, Writing
revealing lives that were not being tidily explained by a coherent narrative.
The collection of writing resembled an abstract painting rather than a re-
alistic scene - a complex picture of varied lives filled with pleasure and
difficulty.
I realized that writing was not creating a plotted, consistent story of the
"self"
for these women, but that understanding their lives through writing
demanded a different kind of structure - something that would reflect the
fragmentary nature of their experience.
Moving Beyond Traditional Narrative
Carol Shields (1993), in her essay'Arriving Late: Starting Over," which tells
of her questioning the traditional structure of story, began by describing
her previous adherence:
A story had to have conflict, it was said. A story consisted of a problem and
a solution; I believed that too. A story must contain the kind of characters
that the reader can relate to; well, yes, of course. Every detail provided
in a short story must contribute to its total effect; well, if Chekhov and
Hemingway said so, then it had to be true. The structure of a story could be
diagrammed on a blackboard, a gently inclined line representing the rising
action, then a sudden escalatory peak, followed by a steep plunge which
demonstrated the denouement and then the resolution. I remember feeling
quite worshipful in the presence of that ascending line. Very tidy, very tight,
the short story as boxed kit, as scientific demonstration, and furthermore it
was teachable, (p.244)
Not until Shields found herself caught and frustrated in the middle of writ-
ing a novel, did she consider different ways of structuring narrative. She
decided to shelve her novel and to experiment with narrative possibilities,
writing in whatever direction the work seemed to take her. She describes
the resulting year of work as one of the most pleasurable of her writing
career. There was a reckless happiness to her writing and a sense that she
owned what she was writing: "every word, every comma. The small, chilly
bedroom where I had my desk in those days felt crowded with noisy images.
275
Strange images. Subversive images" (p. 245). Some of her stories did not
have conflicts and strong, central characters, or they had a disturbing mix
of realism and fantasy. One short story, "Home," is about nothing more
than the invisible threads of coincidence that link us to others in the world
J L R and yet one is left with a deep satisfaction and sense of hope in having read
Luce-Kapler it. This was the power, Shields notes, of the material shaping her stories
rather than the theory.
She also began noticing the way women told stories orally and to think
about how such practices could shape her narratives. She observed that
women tended to sit together and recount episodic events with digres-
sions and little side stories rather than telling linear tales and that they
often would throw "their narrative scraps into a kind of kitty and make
them a larger story" (p. 249). In her writing, she wanted to embrace such
contradictions, the tentativeness, the episodic, and the jumble of memo-
ries.
To her, such writing was more "realistic" than
the spine of a traditional story, that holy line of rising action that is sup-
posed to lead somewhere important, somewhere inevitable, modeled per-
haps on the orgasmic pattern of tumescence followed by detumescence, an
endless predictable circle of desire, fulfillment, and quiescence, (p. 248)
The appeal of the random and disorderly narrative for Shields was that it
offered a semblance of the texture of women's ordinary lives rather a re-
counting of personal battles to be won and goals to be obtained.
In her essay, "Craving Stories," Susan Stanford Friedman (1994) re-
iterated such thinking about narrative and identified four ways in which
women's writing has deconstructed and reconstructed narrative. First, she
noted, women have resisted what Virginia Woolf called "the tyranny of
plot" in an accepted manner; that is, they have used the structure to write
their own ideologies. Second, Friedman supported Carol Shield's work with
her explanation that women often reconfigure narrative patterns to struc-
ture their writing in meaningful ways. Third, Friedman suggested, women
whose cultures rely on a living oral tradition weave strands of oral and
written narrative conventions. Paula Gunn Allen has pointed out that much
of Louise Erdrich's work is such a hybridity of the oral and the written
(P.G.
Allen, public lecture, University of Alberta, September,
19 9
6). For ex-
ample, The Bingo Palace (1994), emerges from an oral tradition with a
Western narrative gloss as does Allen's own work, The Woman Who Owned
the
Shadows
(1983). Fourth, Friedman noted that many women writers have
reached beyond narrative to create a collaborative dialogue in their work,
for instance between the visual and the narrative or between lyric and nar-
rative. As Toni Morrison (1984) suggested, "narrative is not and never has
276
been enough, just
as the
object drawn
on a
canvas
or a
cave wall
is
never
simply mimetic"
(p.
3 8 8).
Morrison described
the
possibility between, through,
and
beyond
nar-
rative.
To
acknowledge such openness, means
we
recognize writing
to be
more complex
and
less easily defined
and
categorized. Gail Scott (1989)
JLR
wrote:
As If
Women
Writing
we keep writing the (poetic) story, the (poetic) novel - further imbued with
a little theory: i.e., commentary signifying that place where our writing pro-
cesses consciously meet the politics of the women's community (as well as
contemporary strategies for writing).... Now, I think, for me at any rate, it's
precisely
where
the poetic and the personal enter the essay form that thought
steps over its former boundaries, (p. 106)
Friedman (1994) also described the relationship between the poetic
and the narrative in her discussion of the intertwining of lyric and narra-
tive where the right and necessity for women poets to claim historical and
mythic discourse "permeates the interplay of lyric and narrative in women's
contemporary long poems" (p. 38). Within such poetry, she explained,
women use direct narrative to tell a story or arrange lyrical sequences that
the reader can (re)construct as an implicit story. Narrative can also exist
on the borderline of such poems, connecting a series of shorter, lyrical
pieces together. In these long poems, Friedman suggested, narrative and
lyric "coexist in a collaborative interchange of different and independent
discourses" (p. 23).
The blurring of genre boundaries is not what is crucial for women's
writing, however. Rather, it is the possibility of multiple choices to write
a text that most clearly reflects the experiences about which they write,
whether they combine the fictional and poetic techniques in an essay such
as Scott's "Spaces Like Stairs" (1989) or call on the lyric to create a poem
like Di Brandt's "the one who lives underwater" (1987). Sometimes, being
able to move beyond the narrative and the prosaic is the only way of writ-
ing, as Brandt (1996) explained:
I couldn't write prose because I kept getting stuck in the sentences: once
you started you had to say whatever the syntax prescribed. I wanted every
sentence to have the whole world in it, concentric circles of world, waves
and curls of
it.
With poetry it was the opposite: the lines crumbled fell away,
short, broken, twisted, without breath, because of the fear of God (and my
father's hand) in it. (p.14)
Sometimes, too, because poetry attends to the spaces around the words
and between the words and the margins, such writing is the only way
women can come to understand their own silencing and silences. "Each
277
poem has its own silence," M. Nourbese Philip (1994, p. 295) wrote. A si-
lence that shapes the text as much as the words and helps to define the
poem. A silence that has its own grammar, its own language.
In each group, we challenged each other to explore different kinds of
JLR writing. Rather than trying to tell "our" stories like coherent narratives, we
Luce-Kapler created writing practices that would offer more fragmented glimpses and
open up spaces for possibility. Some of those writing practices included
the young women bringing favorite songs and asking us to respond by
flow writing (nonstop, timed writing) to one line or word. Another exer-
cise involved choosing a button from a button jar and writing about the
memories it stirred. For all groups, prompts, texts, objects, pictures be-
came sources for bits of writing. As our collection of<bits"grew,so did our
conversations about what those pieces pointed to and what they might
mean. But, I continued to wonder, if it was not the creation of coherent
narratives that led us to some understanding of our experiences, how did
the writing illuminate the possibilities of our lives?
Leave
traces
ofmy
body
on the page
sweat
from my hand
flakes of skin
curve of pen
color of day
sleep of night
Even if I come back to this page tomorrow
I will be somewhere else and
have forgotten
the angle of
light
in my eyes
that reminded me
of
these
words
and not others
I will
have
forgotten
the quality of night
a page from a book
the grapefruit for breakfast
yet it
lingers
in
spaces
spiders through language
somewhere
278
The Subjunctive Space
The women's writing reflected their experiences in varying degrees, but
moving away from trying to tell our "true stories" in narrative fashion
brought in greater elements of fictionalization while seeming to be more J L R
useful representations of their lives. Of course, trying to identify which As If
Women
pieces of a person's writing have actually happened to her and which have Writing
not is a futile exercise. Rather, I am speaking more about how the writers
saw their pieces, how deeply implicated they imagined their lives in the
work. When the writing was more autobiographical in nature, the women
saw these pieces as being less "imagined" than others. But even where the
writers claimed they were "writing it exactly the way it happened," the events
still had to be "re-imaged" before writing them and in doing so, writers
chose some details and omitted others as well as reorganizing them to suit
an anticipated audience. When asked, Sophia, who had been adamant that
she was writing about an event just as it had happened, admitted that she
had made up some of the details to make the story "more believable" and
"interesting." When we told her she had good imagination in this story,
however, Sophia still insisted that "It's not imagined. I mean it's true."
As Sophia's response suggests, "imaginative" is often a qualifying term
used to evaluate writing in our culture. If someone says, "His short story
was so imaginative!" she means that what might be called "everyday" or
"ordinary" is made unusual or strange with great success. Most of the
women in the study would shy away from their work being called imagi-
native. "It's not that good" many of them would say, or like Sophia, they
would not see a role for imagination in a "real" event.
However, imagining is connected to our lived events even as we move
beyond what we call the "real world" to reconfigure experiences and gen-
erate fictional truths. Kendall Walton (1990) defined these fictional truths
as being a prescription to imagine something, a social agreement to act as
if some things were true. For instance, when talking about the book Tom
Sawyer,
we generally say that "Tom Sawyer was lost in a cave" rather than
"In the story, Tom Sawyer was lost in the
cave."
We agree to speak as if Tom
were a real person. As if. The subjunctive.
When a writer wishes to describe her experiences, her text becomes a
subjunctive reality that expresses contingent, hypothetical, or prospective
events. The writing then becomes a site of possibility, a place of as if: For
the writer and for the reader, they write and read as if the story can de-
scribe the reality of a moment or event and as if language did not remove
us a step from that sense of reality. What such contingency does is broaden
the possibilities for experiencing, acting, understanding, and creating.
The writer participates in the story as an imagined narrator or character,
a persona that creates an "I" distinct from the writer. Through recognizing
279
this "other," she finds herself in a mutual reflection and perception. The I
who writes can trace some of the complicity and influences in the I who is
written about. The writer can test some of her assumptions, put some
dreams up for grabs, be someone else and
"herself"
within the text at the
J L R same time. This imagining from inside can include either being the one
Luce-Kapler who is central to the action or the one who is observing the goings-on,
moving from the center to the boundary of the scene. Out of such imagin-
ings,
can arise fictional truths and a fictional world that recruit a reader's
imagination, even if the only reader is the writer of the text. With those
fictional
truths,
the writer and reader can explore the as if, sometimes dis-
covering alternatives for their lives and seeing the multiplicity of their
subjectivities in a way that offers a sense of coherence and connection even
within their shifting and changing nature.
Russian literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin, described this process of cre-
ating a persona through writing as
exotopy,
which translated from Greek
means "finding oneself outside" (cited in Todorov, 1984, p. 99). The writer
first puts herself in the place of the character: she empathizes. Then she
returns to her own position in order to keep the character external from
her and to be one step outside the story: part of
it,
but not part of
it.
Through
this process of recognizing the other, of communicating, she comes to some
self-understanding.
In creating a character (anything from a narrator of a poem or story to
a named personage), I choose several threads, knit them into a new char-
acter, and then recognize at least some of the character's aspects as being
specifically from my own experience. (Even though all aspects originate
from some form of my experience, 1 can never "see" all there is to see in
relation to myself.) I have not lost those "pieces" of
myself,
but rather un-
derstand them differently within the context of an imaginary character. I
can feel the character "tugging" at those threads and know, even as I un-
derstand the character as someone else, that we are still connected. We are
one and not one. Thus, I come to understand or "hear" some of the dis-
courses that construct me through a relationship with characters in
my writing, and this process serves to disrupt the notion of a fixed and
unified
self.
Thin Ice
Silver rainbow
trout swim
below ice
where her
large
limbsflail
280
body
bleached
words
clogged
in veins sinking
to
mud
bottom
suckers
in dark
caves
,
sip last
traces
J
ofhairgold Wntin8
tickle blue
O
lips
encased
in
solid bubble
she pirouettes
across tightropes
slides
across
gossamer
slicked with spittle
chants
to copper windows
pitches notes
harmonizes
inside crying
frigid waiting
offers
no
thing except
crack
of
distant
branches
in winter
twilight
ember glowing
in
her
belly
hotforpuff
of
air
to ignite fire
melt glass
crack
ice
floes
set things amove
The Tensions
of
Language
Within subjunctive spaces of writing, language is shaded with a complex-
ity of experiences, ideas, and attitudes from which the writer can draw.
Particular words written at a particular time and place have a meaning
different from any other conditions where those words may be written or
281
spoken. Bakhtin (1981) described this polysemic nature of language as
"heteroglossia." Heteroglossia is characterized by the tensions in language
where the writer works toward the desire to have her words capture indi-
vidual experience even while she seeks to establish a unitary meaning
J L R between herself and her listeners or readers. Bakhtin described these ten-
Luce-Kapler sions as centripetal and centrifugal: Centripetal force brings together mul-
tiple possibilities in a hope for a unifying language or in a desire for ho-
mogeneity, whereas centrifugal force destabilizes those possibilities and
stratifies language. Within the subjunctive space, writers may search for
the centripetal, for we do imagine ourselves to be whole, even while sub-
verting other, more hegemonic forces through the centrifugal activity of
considering alternative schemas. Considering other possibilities can call
into question what is assumed, considered, or sanctioned. For the women
writers, exploring the shape of possibilities was "forming living," and in
doing so, they acknowledged some of the limits and possibilities of their
sense of
self.
Opening up the subjunctive spaces of writing widens the possibilities
but also increases the sense of risk. This was never clearer than in Carmen's
experience. She had finally, after months of worry about her abilities, es-
tablished a ritual of flow writing every evening for
herself,
but then an-
other worry appeared. "When I wrote down how angry I was at my hus-
band," she said,"then it suddenly seemed true. I wondered if he might find
this."
She discovered hiding places for her journals and during one of our
interviews, we made arrangements that I would receive and destroy her
journals should anything happen to her. "Writing is different than think-
ing these feelings to yourself? she said. "But I'm glad to be doing it now. I
think I cheated myself out of memories by not doing it before."
Writing is a risky business; our thinking shaped on the page for others
to ponder, consider, judge. So much of our experience, our imagination
reshaped, existing in a space of its own. Writers struggle with both the de-
sire and resistance they feel toward writing. Women, especially, who are
searching for a way of writing that questions patriarchy, must overcome
their own reluctance first. Then, when the courage is found to write and
perhaps subvert canonized structures, there may be resistance and strong
reactions from others who do not want to hear what is being written, what
is implied or stated outright. When Carmen was interviewed after the study
was over, I asked her about the role of the writing in her decision to leave
her husband. She told me that it certainly had helped her see possibilities
in new ways, but that it had not "caused" her to leave, and that writing had
been satisfying enough that, in beginning to shape her new life alone, she
has joined another writing group as a way of exploring some of the op-
tions for
herself.
282
On
Where is the language now?
words march into little
boxes,
push at her
edges,
square
her
jaw,
soften her hips, ...
confuse
her.
,
she rummages
carefully:
smart enough, girl, body, breasts, important, strong, pussy /.
but Writing
bombarded
hangs onto
strong,
drifts toward smart
too easy to get sucked up.
sent away.
lost
pieces dry
up.
she slaps bits together
flourpastewhiteglue.
no wonder she
creaks
when she walks
tender and brittle skin
blizzard of flaked words
hides disintegration.
parts float
about the house
tell her where they've been
or not.
how to
continue
The adolescent girls met for some time as a writing group before they
began to risk anything with their writing. The greatest feat for them at first
was just reading some of their writing to the rest of
us.
Those first few pieces
focused on a familiar topic for them - characteristic narratives of love.
Di Brandt (1996) described how, in her experience as an artist-in-the-
schools, the girls she worked with wrote primarily about love and their
great anxiety around that subject."It's a particular kind of
love,"
she wrote.
"It's highly conventionalized, abstracted, full of wispy clouds and unicorns
and fluffy kittens and fluttering hearts and, running through everything, a
deep sense of loss, grief over the beloved's absence" (p.
15).
An early poem
written by one of the girls reflects just such abstraction.
I remember a couple of months ago
I met him
We sat at a little table all night
In a restaurant across town
283
It was New Year's
And I was still getting over my
first boyfriend
He seemed so nice
_ _ _ I liked him for a long time after that
T T, , And he was only 17
Luce-Kapler r , ,, ,, 1W,
r For sure he couldn t pull the
"But you're so YOUNG!"
No
He pulled the
"But I'm friends with your sister!
How could I go out with you?
Besides...
I'm in grade 12."
In other words
Basically the same thing
I just smile and laugh
You can bet that hurts ...
Like Brandt, my first response to such poetry is to want the writer to be
more concrete, to make me see what she is seeing, feel what she is feeling
through physical detail. This language is detached; we hear only the words
of conversation, not the body responses. But as Brandt also points out, stu-
dents have just spent a number of years in school learning how to think
abstractly and learning how not to attend to the body. I realized, too, in
talking to the girls how hard it is for them to actually express concrete
body responses. It feels strange to them, embarrassing. I wonder why they
write about the romances they write and how they are often so laden with
sadness. I ask them to compare this to the movies and books that have a
happy ending.
"I find it's superficial to write happy endings," Ella-Genevieve
says,
"be-
cause it seems so fake. Because life's not really like that. Everything doesn't
end in a happy ending. So most everything I write is sad."
Sophia agreed that none of her stuff was happy, and Alexis said hers
wasn't either because she wasn't very happy."Mine might not seem so grim,"
she added, "because like I really really hated the bad stuff in my life but if
you read it you won't know what I'm talking about. It's not just saying like
right there 'I feel it sucks'" It seemed they saw their writing as more of a
protest, a rendering of the dream that patriarchy had handed them col-
ored by the recognition that it was all imaginary, that no one could love
them as totally and perfectly as promised. So why write about romance at
all? Why retell those stories? Brandt suggests that:
284
These young women, on the cusp of adulthood, didn't want to acknowledge
the betrayal of the world, of boyfriends and fathers, and of men in
general, so they wouldn't have to acknowledge self-hatred, deep down, so
they wouldn't feel worthless, abandoned, discriminated against, threatened,
because diey were women, (p. 16) T L R
Janice Radway (1983), in her study of women who read romances, sug- As If
Women
gested that women return again and again to that genre as a way of satisfy- Writing
ing needs created by a patriarchal culture that is unable, at the same time,
to fulfill those needs. Radway described how their reading was also sub-
versive in many ways. With the girls' writing, it seemed that they both saw
the romance as a story available to them and as one that would not be
neatly resolved. In their stories, even as they searched for unity and happi-
ness,
they undermined its possibility and the reality of it happening. As
Sophia noted, "We don't write happy endings because it doesn't happen
that way in real life. The way I see it is that people who are writing ro-
mances are writing for the moment because a lot of women will get sucked
in and they're just giving them the fantasy all the time. They want to be
happy, but to try to sit down and write something like that with a happy
ending? No way"
Within the girls' romance writing lay the possibility for further writing
that called into question some of the societal roles assigned to women.
Although they did not necessarily see their writing as undermining the
romantic story of patriarchy, then- choice of how to tell such stories sug-
gested that further imaginative writing might open up different possibili-
ties for them to consider. The poet Ted Hughes (1967) wrote that
"All
imagi-
native writing is to some extent the voice of what is neglected or forbidden,
hence its connection with a past in a nostalgic vein and the future in a
revolutionary vein" (p. 51). I wondered if by challenging the girls to go
further in their imaginative writing, they might move beyond the romance
story and write pieces that had some revolutionary possibility for their
future rather than the sense of entrapment their romance stories held.
After we had been meeting as a group for some months, the girls ex-
pressed a desire to push their writing beyond the comfortable level it had
reached. Sidonie, who knew the girls well, felt that they might be ready to
read an excerpt from Jeanette Winterson's (1995) book of essays, Art Ob-
jects. The piece, entitled "The Semiotics of
Sex,"
discusses how Winterson's
work is a call to write what the writer felt must be said; it's an invitation to
write the forbidden. We read aloud the section that begins:
How much can we imagine? The artist is an imaginer. The artist imagines
the forbidden because to her it is not forbidden. If she is freer than other
285
people it is the freedom of her single allegiance to her work. Most of us have
divided loyalties, most of us have sold ourselves. The artist is not divided
and she is not for sale. Her clarity of purpose protects her although it is her
clarity of purpose that is most likely to irritate most
people.
We
are not happy
_ _ „ with obsessives, visionaries, which means, in effect, that we are not happy with
* . artists. Why do we flee from feeling? Why do we celebrate those who lower
" us in the mire of their own making while we hound those who come to us
with hands full of difficult beauty?
If we could imagine ourselves out of despair?
If we could imagine ourselves out of helplessness?
What would happen if we could imagine in ourselves authentic desire?
(pp.
116-117)
Afterwards, Sidonie encouraged the girls to go home and write the for-
bidden - however they might interpret that statement. We wanted the girls
to challenge themselves in their writing but not go beyond what was com-
fortable for them. They returned to the group somewhat amazed by what
they had accomplished. This group of mostly shy and quiet girls was so
pleased with their work that they decided that they would take part in a
public reading held at local cafe. They suggested inviting their parents and
their friends and would read their pieces of "forbidden writing." Di Brandt
(1996) recommended that we need to give students the opportunity to
leap into the volcano, to explore their real feelings, but that we also have to
give them a map to get back out. That map had been established by the
safety in the group; they read their pieces, had them acknowledged and
accepted. Now they were willing to give public voice to their words. The
language that constrained them, influenced their lives in profound ways,
echoed in these excerpts from their cafe readings:
Be polite, curtsy well, love men your own age,
never fight or swear, respect your elders. You
are a girl. Nothing more.
the forbidden worms into the heart and mind until what one
truly desires
had been encased in the dark walls of what one ought to
desire
to hear clearly the voices that have whispered at her
for so many years.
\bu dominate my dreams
But everything is not as it seems
The world around her forbids her
to write, to express. It is considered
286
childish and considered reaching for
something that is not there. So they are
saying that she is denied the freedom
to imagine and express ... She refuses to
live like this and stands up ..
against all the .,,tT
... . , ,. . . . As If
Women
criticism and discrimination. { .
There are no limits for her,
Writing
no rules, and if any,
she breaks them all.
As she sits in her tree, she remembers the Barbie doll
that she had so long ago. She thought of how nice
Barbie would have looked in jeans, a T-shirt, and with
no hair. She decides that perfection must be altered
even if it is forbidden.
Writing offered an opportunity to use language differently. For the girls,
this meant writing beyond just the sad ending to express their anger and
frustration at the heterosexual romance as constructed in our society. Most
of the writing from all the women called into question the condition of
their lives from the controls and restrictions put upon women's bodies to
the heterosexual romance that attempts to structure much of society. Al-
though the changes created may have been small in some cases or the real-
izations only dimly figured, one cannot underestimate the power, I believe,
of even the smallest of ripples.
the tilt of
bodies uncrossing
arms welcome
language in the body so
when words are spoken
already they
are
familiar
already half yours
mouth shaping language
even as it
reaches
your ears
words and the body of
words
shape new thoughts standing
on the brink
Aftermaths
For all the women writers, the spaces created by the group became one
way of finding the encouragement and the courage to continue. Like the
tradition of quilting bees or coffee Hatches, or even the Bloodhut, the writ-
287
ing groups became places where the talk about writing explored relations
and possibilities for living that might have been judged too dangerous in
more public places of day-to-day life. In the group, we could speak as if
some things were true or as if we could lead our lives in particular ways.
JLR We told stories about ourselves and others: some were actual experiences,
Luce-Kapler some were unfulfilled wishes or fantasies. What would happen
if?
Because
our writing was not confined to one form, the range of options in style and
responses further developed the sense of possibility.
Although many welcome changes occurred for the women through
writing, the possibilities that emerged were not always positive. Sometimes
realizations were difficult and sometimes there was little correspondence
between the writing and understanding. For example, although the girls
wrote severe indictments against Barbie and her symbolic function as the
"perfect female," many of them still worried obsessively about their weight
and body size. Sometimes, too, the writing created situations where one
girl betrayed the confidence of another. After learning through our writing
group that Pegatha was hoping for a date with a particular boy, Ayelha pur-
sued him and went with him to the senior prom, much to Pegatha's distress.
At other times, the writing seemed to further complicate the complex lives
of the participants. However, in follow-up interviews the consensus from
the groups was that overall the writing had been a wonderful event that
had opened up new possibilities for them. In fact, some of the girls were
continuing their own writing group, as are other members of the study.
Ongoing Thoughts About Writing
Rita Felski (1989) suggested that if women consider the political function
of art, their work can disrupt the structures of symbolic discourse through
which patriarchal culture is constituted. The experimental and innovative
text, the avant-garde, is one way to disrupt the conventional, the expected,
the unquestioned. In avant-garde writing, the semiotic dimensions become
more predominant. But, Felski pointed out that "fragmentation and sub-
version of patterns do not in themselves bear any relationship to a femi-
nist position and will be perceived to do so only if the themes explored in
the text bear some relation to feminist concerns - if, for example, the text
seeks to undermine an obviously patriarchal ideological position" (p. 32).
What women have to say as well as how they say it are important.
Gail Scott (1989), in wondering how women actually choose a form in
which to write, speculated that there was a connection between the form
women choose and the circumstances of their
lives.
The forms in this study
ranged from journal entries to poetry to short fiction, but always the sen-
288
tence structure reflected a certain kind of breathing as the emotion spilled
over the words and cascaded into the gaps and pauses in their work.
The importance of form seemed most clear with the girls' writing. Al-
though most of their writing was first draft, where form had been instinc-
tively chosen and not polished or reconsidered, when we asked them to JLR
"take apart their writing," the effect of those forms on the overall piece was As If
Women
evident. We were inspired by some of Frigga Haug's (1987) work with writ- Writing
ing as a way of exploring the girls' feelings, hopes, dream, and wishes.
Changing the form by using the word of their writing and then listing words
in categories (feelings, hopes, dreams) rather than leaving it in prosaic or
poetic form gave us a new way of considering what they had said. The lists
cleared some of the emotion and stopped the rhythms, so the words, in
this new context, seemed different somehow but still with traces of their
former intentions. Some of those intentions seemed surprising when re-
vealed in such a way. At the same time, clearing some of the influences of
the semiotic chora (Kristeva, 1980) from their language, reinforced for us
how much more is revealed through the writing than just the language
that is chosen. The rhythms that are created from particular words being
in proximity to each other, the silences, the line breaks, and the punctua-
tion create sensations that are difficult to describe in language but that can
be clearly felt when the words are read. So it is not only our words that
reveal some of our intentions, aspirations, designs, or aims, but also how
we choose to say them.
But that said, a cautionary note needs to be added here lest I leave the
impression that one can entirely determine another's or her own inten-
tions through reading her writing. In reading or writing, one can perhaps
come to reflect on and see her experiences in a different light as Carmen
did in the study, or such as the girls did when they experimented with the
discourse analysis and began to have a sense of the words they were choos-
ing to describe themselves, which provided some insight into how they
were understanding their identity. But our texts always say more and less
about us than we or our readers can ever know. A text and its writer are not
isomorphic. Nevertheless, writing is a site of possibility where we can learn
things about ourselves, where we can imagine different choices, and where
we can reconfigure our experience. We create conditions to become other
than what we are or have been. My work, my
"story?
as a writer and a teacher
depends on this kind of imaginative possibility, the vision of the as
if.
These
rich, as //"hypothetical worlds (our own or those of others' creations) change
our experiences to make them less familiar so that we can become con-
scious of "what is not yet, of what might, unpredictably, still be experi-
enced" (Greene, 1995, p. 92). Now when I teach writing, I focus on offering
289
such opportunities for my students to see and imagine possibilities. I think
it is important to increase their awareness toward language, its power to
shape them, and their power to shape and use it. If that means that they
then began to choose differently from the expected choices and make de-
JLR cisions with more awareness, then such teaching is more than worthwhile.
Luce-Kapler
As I
mentioned earlier
in the
paper, when thinking about these issues
of form and possibility, I was led to consider carefully the form in which
this research should be written. I found myself thinking often of Virginia
Woolf and her words about her work: "I am writing The
Waves
to a rhythm
not to a plot ... though the rhythmical is more natural to me than the
narrative, it is completely opposed to the tradition of fiction and I am cast-
ing about all the time for some rope to throw to the reader"
(Woolf,
1975-
1980,
p. 204). Hearing old words in a new rhythm may mean we hear them
differently. And, I'd like to suggest, reading research in a new form may mean
we think about such work differently.
Author Note
This article
is
based
on the
author's doctoral work
at the
Department
of
Second-
ary Education, University
of
Alberta,
and was
funded
by the
Social Sciences
and
Humanities Research Council
of
Canada,
an
Izaak Walton Killam Scholarship, and
Andrew Stewart Memorial Graduate Prize.
REFERENCES
Allen, P.G. (1983).
The
women
who
owned
the
shadows.
San
Francisco: Spinsters
Ink.
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981).
The
dialogic imagination (M. Holquist, Ed.;
C.
Emerson
&
M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin,
TX:
University
of
Texas Press.
Brandt,
D.
(1987).
Questions
I
asked
my
mother.
Winnipeg, Canada: Turnstone Press.
Brandt, D. (1996). Dancing
naked:
Narrative
strategies
for
writing
across
centuries.
Stratford, Canada:
The
Mercury Press.
Bruner,
J.
(1996).
The
culture
of
education.
Cambridge,
MA:
Harvard University
Press.
Carson,
T.
(1992). Collaboratively inquiring into action research.
In
T. Carson &
D.
Sumara (Eds.), Ninth invitational conference
of the
Canadian
association
for
curriculum studies. Edmonton, Canada: University
of
Alberta.
Daignault, J. (1992). The language
of
research
and the
language
of
practice neither
one
for the
other: Pedagogy.
In T.
Carson
& D.
Sumara (Eds.), Ninth invita-
tional
conference
of
the Canadian
association
for curriculum
studies.
Edmonton,
Canada: University
of
Alberta.
Eisner,
E.
(1997).
The
promise
and
perils
of
alternative forms
of
data representa-
tion. Educational
Researcher,
26
(6), 4-10.
290
Elliott, B., & Wallace, J. (1994). Women artists and writers: Modernist (im)posi-
tionings. London: Routledge.
Erdrich, L. (1994). The
bingo
palace.
New
York:
HarperCollins.
Felski, R. (1989). Beyond feminist
aesthetics:
Feminist
literature
and social change.
Cambridge,
MA:
Harvard University Press.
Fine,
M. (1994). Working the hyphens: Reinventing self and other in qualitative
research. In N.K. Denzin
&
Y.S.
Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of
qualitative research
(pp.
70-82). London: Sage.
Friedman, S. (1994). Craving stories: Narrative and lyric in contemporary theory
and women's long poems. In L. Keller & C. Miller (Eds.), Feminist measures:
Soundings in poetry and theory (pp. 15-42). Ann
Arbor,
MI: University of Michi-
gan Press.
Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and
social
change.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Haug, F. (Ed.). (1987). Female sexualization. London: Verso.
Hughes, T. (1967). Poetry in the making. London: Faber & Faber.
Kerby, A. (1991). Narrative and the
self.
Indianapolis,
IN:
Indiana University Press.
Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in
language:
A semiotic approach to art and literature
(L.S.
Roudiez, Ed.; T. Gora, A. Jardine, & L.S. Roudiez, Trans.). New York: Co-
lumbia University Press.
Lather, P. (1991). Getting smart: Feminist
research
and pedagogy with/in the post-
modern. New York: Routledge.
Morrison, T. (1984). Memory, creation, and writing. Thought, 89, 385-390.
Philip, M.N. (1994). Dis place The space between. In L. Keller & C. Miller (Eds.),
Feminist
measures:
Soundings in poetry and theory (pp. 287-316). Ann Arbor,
MI:
University of Michigan Press.
Radway, J.A. (1983). Women read the romance: The interacton of text and context.
Feminist
Studies,
9, 53-78.
Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lin-
coln (Eds.), Handbook of
qualitative research
(pp. 516-529). London: Sage.
Scott, G. (1989).
Spaces
like
stairs.
Toronto, Canada: The Women's Press.
Shields, C. (1993). Arriving late: Starting over. In J. Metcalf & J.R. Struthers (Eds.),
How stories mean (pp. 244-251). Don Mills, Canada: General Publishing.
Todorov, T. (1984). Mikhail Bakhtin: The
dialogical principle
(W. Godzich, Trans.).
Minneapolis,
MI:
University of Minnesota Press.
Walton, K.L. (1990). Mimesis as
make-believe:
On
the
foundation of the
representa-
tional arts. Cambridge,