How I became a feminist

... books on the bureau... 

Rebecca Rose Jarvis asked me some questions about sexism in the workplace. 

Then she asked me some broader questions: “Grandmother, how did you find your role as a woman in the world? And how do I find my role as a woman in the world? And what kind of books would you recommend I read?” 

I’ve been thinking about her questions now for about three weeks. Well, really more like three months. My head has been swirling with wonderful memories of the past. I am going to capture some of that journey in print for her.

The specific question of what kind of books I would you recommend, led me to my own book shelf at the cabin. In the past 10 years, I haven’t kept my finger as closely on the pulse of feminist theory as I once did so most of my books there are pretty old. There was a time when I took courses at the University, and when I did, I made sure they had a feminist component, or made sure that I brought a lens of feminist theory to the course.

Just so you will know, Rebecca, I went back to paid work when I was 50 so I had been out of the work force for over 25 years. I worked at the University Library as an administrative assistant. While working there, the benefit package made it possible to take 4 courses a year towards a degree program, and 4 continuing education courses. I tried to take the full complement courses, with the degree-based courses requiring a bit more work (since there was a pass/fail component to them). Over five years, I had the chance to take 20 courses, leading towards any degree.

I chose to work towards a second undergraduate degree, a Women’s Studies Degree.

“What kind of degree is that?” someone might ask. I would not have suggested this as a major for one of my daughters when they began University as it doesn’t appear, at first, to be a degree that might lead to a well-paying career. I don’t think that would be exactly true now, but there might still be a grain of truth there.

... books of recipes ...

At that time, I was on a different journey. I wasn’t thinking about employment. 

I was unsettled by questions about a woman’s place in the world. 

I had been unsettled for most of my life on this question. In the 1940’s and ‘50’s, I was trying to figure out why there were two sets of rules in the world, one for men, and one for women. 

During those Women's Studies courses, I came to see the value of feminist theory, and how it could help me understand what is going on in the gendered world. 

For me, feminism opened a lens for understanding many of the other toxic ‘isms’: ageism, sexism, racism, colonialism. I think now that a study of any of these leads to a place where they all intersect.

You asked me which books you should read. This is difficult question because the books that I love are in part loved because they were part of a larger experience with a professor and a class of other students. I love specific books because of the questions I learned to ask of the text in the company with my professors and my classmates. If I were to give you advice, I would say, learn to love your books. Enter into relationships with them. Treat books as though you are having a conversation with the author.

For my part, I underline sentences with a yellow marker. I pencil questions in the margin. I write about other books I might want to read. On the fly leaf of books, I put page numbers and quotes I want to remember. At the back of the book, on the endpaper, I keep track of the names of the characters, or the setting, or ideas I want to purse after finishing this book. Anything that won’t fit into the margins, into the front or back of the book it goes. That is what those papers are there for: someone to write on them.

I never think about selling my textbooks. The ones I love, I still carry with me take them with me. Indeed, my books are spread between three houses now: Calgary, at ther Shuswap, and here at Rebecca Johnson’s house. I believe they are mine for life.

Often, when I have a question about feminism, I know exactly how to find the answer in one of the books I have loved and kept. I might find myself irritated if someone has moved a book from a known place. I usually know exactly on which shelf to find a certain book (or, I am irritated because I know where the book is on a shelf at a different house).

When I read Rebecca’s books, here in Victoria, she tells me to treat them exactly as if they were my own, marking them up, and asking questions of the author, or maybe even writing in the margins about my admiration of a succinct paragraph or a thoughtful turn of phrase. I agree with her that this system works for me, for I like to read the comments of someone else in the margin, if they have preceded me to a book.

I know where books are on the shelves at home, at the cabin, at your Aunt Rebecca’s house, and at your house in Montreal. I also know where to find those books on the shelf at the University Library, and how to find the free articles and books on Google when I am in transit.

Since you asked me the specific question about what you should read, I returned to some of the old classics that sit on my bookshelf. I like my reader called “The Second Wave of Feminism” wherein the voices of 20 women are captured. I have a copy of Kate Millet’s “Flying.” She autographed it for me. Her name scrawls from the bottom of the page to the top of the page. I’d never seen an author take up the whole page before. She made me think about a new way to write my own name on paper, metaphorically.

Two Christmases ago you gave me a feminist book as a gift. I read the book and then left it with you, (too many books become too much weight on plane flights). I was hoping that it will be part of your lifetime library.

... books by and about women ...

I may be wrong. 

Was the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 

I noticed her book called “Half of a Yellow Sun” won the Orange Prize, for the best book in its 25 years of awarding honours to women. 

I’m not sure if that was the author whose work we were sharing. You will have to tell me. 

I did read that the Orange Prize sprang out of an incident where the nominees for the Giller Prize one year only listed men. That was a fact I didn’t know before.

When women are absent in our social interactions, as in where prizes are awarded, women should be alerted to the question, “why?”. The question “why?” was asked in the past by our foremothers, and it is still a good feminist question.

When you ask me “what books should I read, Grandmother?”, I think about my own journey through “The New Yorker” this year. Each issue books are reviewed, some by and about women, so I find no lack of new material to consider. 

... books to store house history...

The above journal sometimes highlights articles about the lives of women. 

I recently ran across an article about Vivian Gornick, an author I hadn’t read. 

I went to my local library and requested all of the books that she had written: “The Odd Woman and the City”, “The Situation and the Story”, “Fierce Attachments”, etc. 

I read all of the books written by her that my local library had. 

And I will probably visit the University of Calgary Library and see if they hold books that the public library doesn't have.

What a woman might want to read will depend somewhat upon the decade and circumstances of her life. 

If I were like you, and at University, I think I would be pursuing feminist writings around the topics of my regular courses.

That would be an interesting topic for me: to know what the topics are you are studying, and then I would probably join in in reading feminist critiques about those areas of study. 

I have the feeling you like anthropology among other subjects. 

Would that be true?

Arta

(to be continued)