Letters to the Editor
A Pledge of Support
How can this be? In the only state in the country that recognizes our relationships with a civil union, how can it be that we cannot support a published voice for our GLB community? We were stunned to see the plea from the editor, Euan Bear, revealing that the paper cannot pay its way and will soon be gone or greatly reduced.
This is not a question of just supporting the local paper. This is a critical time. We could lose our voice just when so many would love to see us stumble and fall, be less visible, less organized, less vocal. We do not have a strong presence in the mainstream press. OITM is a place where we can and must exercise our freedom of speech. It is a powerful tool. If Out In The Mountains closes up, our community will be weaker and just a little closer to silence.
And so, we will do our part. For one year, we will donate $50 each month (about the cost of one night out for us) to help get through this difficult time. If 30 individuals or couples would match this, or if 100 would pledge $15 monthly, we could pull this paper out of the red. No, this is not the answer. It is only a lifeline while we figure out the answer. What will you do?
During this time, we also pledge to encourage local businesses to advertise in OITM and we will more vocally support those that do. What will you do? Are you a small business? Then advertise! You can advertise for $15 per month!!! (We would also encourage OITM to raise their advertising rates.) As consumers, make it a point to do business with the advertisers you see in OITM, and thank them for advertising. These are not difficult things to do but we will surely regret it if we do not act now.
Our voices can be silenced so quickly, and in this case by our own failure to act. What are you willing to do before it is too late? What are you going to do when the silence falls?
Susan McMillan
Becky Roberts
Charlotte, Vermont
Oh Happy Day for Canadians
Oh Happy Day, that I should live to see a male couple and a female couple legally married. Too bad that was in Canada and not the United States. Unless we assume that Canada has all the geniuses in this hemisphere and the United States has all the idiots, if they can make it happen, we can too.
The gay people of Vermont (and more than a few straight people, too) worked yourselves into the ground to get the Civil Union law passed in your state. You made the voters of Vermont understand that you were NOT trying to change Vermont’s culture; Vermont’s culture has always been “You mind your business and I’ll mind mine.” You DID have to change the culture of the state legislature, and you accomplished that. I applaud all of you.
But I have lived with the same man for 32 years, and I want to get MARRIED! I want to pay more income tax because our incomes are combined. I am willing to write letters, contribute money, testify before Congress, and pitch a fit on the White House lawn – not that Dubya has a clue about the significance of international treaties and Supreme Court decisions. The institution of marriage needs no defense from me; I just want to join that institution!
Larry Jones
Lawton, OK
A Word from the Author
I am writing in response to some specific problems I have with Paij Wadley-Bailey’s review of my novel, Your Loving Arms. The publisher of the novel is Haworth Press, not Hawthorn Press as listed in the review. The lesbian imprint of Haworth Press is Alice Street Editions.
When the reviewer says that “the author has no clues that she is appropriating,” it suggests to me that she has not read the Preface, in which I present my rationale for writing as I did: “When Herman Melville wrote about whiteness, he created a monstrous white whale as metaphor. This novel, too, seeks to portray Whiteness, in the light of Blackness. For this reason, this book turned out very differently than most novels by white lesbians.”
In other words, the author decided to write what needed to be written, despite all the arguments that she knew regarding appropriation. (Each time this argument is pitched to me, it’s pitched as though I never heard it before, never considered its tenets, when the opposite is the case.)
At the end of the review, Wadley-Bailey grudgingly applauds the book for “sparking discussion,” and states that more books like this should be written. She thus articulates a rationale for the publication of Your Loving Arms that matches identically with the reason for its publication – and the reasons it was written.
Early in the review, Wadley-Bailey compares the novel to Al Jolson; yet buried further in the back of the book, claims that Tammy, the Black narrators’, “descriptions of racist incidents are powerful.” The Al Jolson metaphor, therefore, seems confused, confusing, or mis-inspired: I would be hard-pressed to think of Al Jolson doing minstrel songs with lyrics that include “powerful descriptions of racial incidents.”
[When] Wadley-Bailey asks the rhetorical question, “Should the book have been co-authored? I believe so,” she is assuming that a novel (this novel) is a singular act of artistic isolation. Admittedly, novel-writing is a lonely activity; yet, in retrospect, I realize that I was never working alone – I always had early readers who were African-American. Many of them were also writers. As such, I saw them as critical readers or editors, but never as co-authors – because they all had their own writing to do. I did, however, demand that my publishers hire, as editor, a Black woman from the South (Lisa Moore); and a Black woman (Yvonne Littleton) to do the cover.
At some places in the review, Wadley-Bailey confuses the names and biographies of my characters. So that the paragraph that begins “Tammy has led a life that does – and should – garner sympathy,” she has confused the Black character with the white one. In the same paragraph, Wadley-Bailey adds that “society rarely hears about a woman of European descent with a history of alcoholism, violence, dysfunctional family, poverty, prison time. In this novel it is the African-American lesbian who has love from family, financial stability, race pride.” That’s all well and good and true, but these words read as though they are Wadley-Bailey’s, when in actuality they are derived, almost word for word in places, from one of the cover blurbs. They are not set off in quotes, and the reviewer gives no indication of where those words, those ideas, came from. As such, they are taken out of context – and context, Wadley-Bradley would probably agree, is everything.
I agree with Wadley-Bailey that it is important for more people to come to the table “with the courage to speak honestly on the issue” of crossing the color line. It is why I wrote the book. Your Loving Arms has sparked exciting discussions for the author. In Atlanta, a reading from the book has resulted in an inter-racial lesbian discussion group.
Gwendolyn Bikis
Oakland, CA
Corrections
Oops, Pippin was not repeating himself in his Spiritual Essence column. That was our production error that merged the first paragraph of the May column with the June file. Sorry, Pippin. Likewise, we also apologize for accidentally omitting Stuart Granoff’s name from last month’s contributors list.