It wasn’t so long ago that I was rereading The Box Garden (for #1977Club). But last year I was thinking only of Charleen and had forgotten whatever I’d ever known about her sister Judith, whom I’ve recently gotten reacquainted with, rereading Shields’ debut, Small Ceremonies (1976) earlier this year.
A lot of readers discover Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca as teenagers, but I was fully grown and reading books inspired by browsing the local feminist bookshop, writers like Audre Lorde and Marilyn Frye, bell hooks and Gloria Alzandúa. In my stacks that year, 87% of the books were
In the first week of Covid-19 lockdown, I pulled The Box Garden off the shelf, opened it to read: “That there are no certainties in life. That we change hourly or even from one minute to the next, our entire cycle of being altered, our whole selves shaken with
Rereading Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony (1995) is a blatant act of homage. When I first heard Choy read from his work, he was promoting his memoir Paper Shadows (1999) at a Pride event. He was reading with Marnie Woodrow and Sky Gilbert: one, a curly-haired slightly messy young
There are three things that I noticed in this rereading of The Handmaid’s Tale. The use of time in the narrative. The importance of what is not said. The matter of world-building and perspective. In all three, readers are wholly engaged. Engaged in the use of time, in the
