Kadar, Marlene

English

Journals @ The Mount

Rethinking Women's Collaborative Writing: Power, Difference, Property. L o r r a i n e Y o r k . T o r o n t o , B u f f a l o and L o n d o n : U n i v e r s i t y o f Toron to Press , 2 0 0 2 ; x + 205 pages; I S B N 0-8020-8465-6 ; $24 .95 . Lorraine Y o r k tackles the question o f how collaborative writing has been constituted and perceived head on. Her concerns reside in the realistic reappraisal o f what she calls the "fusion theory o f collaboration," a theory which tends to idealize relationships between "literary" women as "revolutionary, sisterly, or morally superior." York's knowledge of early modern scholars, both men and women, and her familiarity with contemporary women writers are astonishingly broad and also specific. Us ing both literary and theoretical texts from a variety o f eras, Y o r k persuades the reader that the "co-signature" of collaborative authorship is "as mutable and historically situated as any other feature o f writing" (25). Us ing Daphne Marlatt and Betsy Warland's "Reading and Wri t ing Between the Lines," Y o r k illustrates how the poets confront the complex unspoken rules o f their collaboration, what Y o r k sees as the fissures in the "erotic collaborative romance." W e conclude that collaboration between and among women writers and scholars is not necessarily always smooth or joyful , and that the beauty o f a history o f such writ ing is that it reveals a combination o f approaches and results that defy fixed "feminist" desired conclusions. Indeed, Y o r k ends her book with the statement that "the fault lines that run through women's collaborations make them al l the more compelling." The reader may not feel the fullness of this claim during what seems the brief space o f the book, but at the very least s/he becomes aware o f the weaknesses inherent in the academic "collaborative bandwagon." Y o r k analyzes three generic bodies - collaborative theory and criticism, prose collaborations, collaborative poetry and theatrical collaboration - in order to illustrate the transition from what were considered earlier impure or contaminated bodies o f work to more vital , sometimes riskier collaborations. In just one example - the partnership o f Met is writer Mar ia Campbell and white actress Linda Griffiths (in the Canadian play The Book of Jessica: A Theatrical Transformation [1989]) - Y o r k argues that the play is a more absorbing pieceof work precisely because the women are "differently engaged," not because they are mirthful and in harmonious agreement. Moreover, this engagement is important for a gendered revaluation o f the politics o f women's collaborative writing. It is in this instructive revaluation that York 's book is o f general value to scholars, but it is in the learned scrutiny o f collaborative texts in a variety o f genres that all readers w i l l find York ' s (historical) argument fulfilled. Marlene Kadar Y o r k University Women without Men: Mennonite Refugees of the Second World War. M a r l e n e E p p . Toron to : U n i v e r s i t y o f To ron to Press, 2000 ; i l lustrat ions; v i i i +275 pages; I S B N 0-8020-8268-8; $21.95 (paper). "Who o f you are still l iving?" Agnes, a Mennonite refugee in Germany, wrote to her American family (55). The question was poignant on the eve o f her return to the Soviet Union with her five remaining children, because no answer was possible. In Women without Men, this query is the leitmotiv o f the flight and resettlement o f Mennonite women and children from the Ukraine via Germany to Canada and Paraguay. These women derived meaning and identity from their communities o f culture and faith. They were thus aggrieved, and their lives constrained, by not knowing who had survived the secret police, the camps, and the war. Marlene Epp recounts the phys ica l hardships, prejudice, and moral condemnation they endured. It is a familiar tale o f women's courage and leadership in crisis being eclipsed by patriarchal privilege once order is restored. Being "alive" is itself open to question in this work. Hard labour on the collectivized Soviet farms; cold, starvation and often rape en route to Germany; overcrowding, disease and sometimes assault in the camps plague the women. In Paraguay they homestead in virgin jungle, while in Canada they are oppressed by social conditions, required farm labour and lack of mobility. Epp explores the effects o f unfamiliar gender roles, disruptions o f the social hierarchy, and social mores around family 

Rethinking Women's Collaborative Writing: Power, Difference, Property. Lorraine York.

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Rethinking Women's Collaborative Writing: Power, Difference, Property. Lorraine York.

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