“Placing Muslim women at the heart of my own work was in a way a refusal of our invisibility.”

Go and read the excellent Rahat Kurd’s piece on the power of Egyptian feminists and their roles in the recent uprising and revolution, as well as their roles within Islam.

Last year in July precisely I was informed by a professional antagonist and (sometimes) friend “Your feminism is eighties wrought and boring.”

Part of my response included the assertion that my feminism “doesn’t take the position of contempt for and isolation from other women.  Nor is it shaped by the judgements of men.”

This morning reading Lemonhound’s blog I am proud of my feminism and ever more committed to it, given the current climate and recent mind blowing experiences redolent of 1852. The derailings continue from time to time it has to be said, last week one, this week another. But feck it the wheels go back on the track and I maintain the track is moving in a compelling and engaging direction whether the gatekeepers believe so or not. So thanks very much antagonist but I trust my own weather forecast on these matters not yours.  (Go tell your granny how to suck eggs, comme maman dirait)

Read opening bits of Manfacturing Consent, found handy-dandy as ever on the side of the road. Side of road is providing amply these days. After I read the first few paras was left with this daunting sense of Manfacturing Content and what have I manufactured myself… far too much attention on male writers!

It is a source of national shame that Helen Potrebenko’s Sometimes They Sang is out of print and remains so. It should also be a source of major feminist agitation! An agitation that would heave it back onto the page! Someday I will be in position I hope to do something about it. This slim novel must be back in palms. It’s unique in it’s rural -urban considering and the woman is looking for a job. We live in a province with a turbulent labour history and where is it on the page? People are exasperated this very minute searching for jobs and they’ll search even harder in their fiction to find someone engaged in such a task.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is another writer whose work I should have written about.

Betty Lambert’s novel Crossings is another novel that should be revisited and I’d like to do an event that would bring some women together to revisit it and consider it today.

One of the challenges of writing such pieces is where to place them. It is becoming particularly woeful in Canada to find outlets.

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I am excited to be collaborating with a visual artist on a performance piece for the autumn. Today we had our first meeting to discuss ideas and it was an inspired and buzzing exchange.