Literary Woman

On Saturday, I went to a children's literature conference and what do you know, I didn't write a new poem, but returned to an old one--inspired by the description of Mrs. Darling's 'kiss' in Peter Pan--and added to it--this time inspired by other the characters secretly crushed over or are dying to re-write their Sapphic sub-plots. Still not sure about the cross-over from child to adult fiction, but hey, poetic license.

So, a second draft. Tweaking to follow I'm sure, but for now Poem #13:

Literary Woman

You were not always a Mrs,
nor have you ever been my Darling
it's just that, I want that kiss.
Mr Darling doesn't get it,
the children can't name it,
I only imagine it.

"What does the brain matter
compared with the heart,"
said the party-goer in the evening.
But not to Clarrisa, for whom
it could have been helpful, nor
Sally who wouldn't have listened.

Nor did Anne or Vita or one Miss Alexa,
all pining exactly to describe
the contours, the textures, the shape
of one Mrs Darling's kiss
all for whom's affection we did strive.



**Editor's note: This is my 365th post. If I had been writing for a year consecutively, this anniversary might have been more evident. As it is, I want to mark it all the same.

School Girl Crush

As I've been researching over the last months into all things queer with regards to picturebooks, how love is constructed has resonated with me the most. And, like my community theatre director said during a rehearsal, once you start thinking of something that has real creative potential life starts bringing you all sorts of examples to play with, study, and relate. Tonight, this thread inspired me to Google the term 'school girl crush.' I know why I did: I've been using Urban Dictionary a lot lately in my papers and I was wondering if there was a definition for it. The answer is, well, I love the internet.

Firstly, a website called everything2.com defines 'School Girl Crush' as:

A crush is defined informally in the dictionary as:

• a. usually temporary infatuation.
• b. The object of such an infatuation.

I think that there are a variety of crushes that one might have over the course of their lives, but they all kind of boil down to being a school girl crush. One that makes you feel juvenile and powerless under the one that you adore. One that makes you feel silly and hopeful for all the wrong reasons.

These are the kind of crushes that create pipe dreams that, never fulfilled, will be mourned over for weeks if not months. School girl crushes are wishes never granted that consistantly give the promise of a broken heart.

Nice. Hopeful. Tidy. Yeah, right.

The second link to pop up is wikihow.com. But it's a variation of my question: "How to Tell if a Girl Likes You in School." And, it's a 30 step process PLUS a huge list of tips. All I can say is 'Thank goodness I'm not in school still.' (Cause this definitely only applies to school...right? Yeah, anyway.)

The third link, the THIRD, is an even more specific situation on a question forum: "I don't think it is just another schoolgirl crush, so what can I do about my feelings for my teacher?"

My first reaction: I laughed, 'Yeah, hello, of course it's a schoolgirl crush.' Like I instantly, culturally new how wrong (read: dumb) she was for even think the question.

My second reaction: I laughed again. A) because who the hell am I to judge, I'm the one WRITING about school girl crushes, and B) I totally wasn't think about boys when I did my Google search. In my head, the word 'girl' simultaneously melted into one and became both me as the girl with the crush and the object of a crush.

End result from Google: school girl crushes are lame. Wouldn't it be nice to change that?

In other news, I've just finished the drafts of all my university papers. Erica Marie = MA'd OUT.

Swallows and Amazons

If I were ever going to join a literary group to be a part of, I'd seriously consider the Arthur Ransome Society. Swallows and Amazons = awesome.

Whoa Wednesday

Whoa, Wednesday, as in, 'Whoa, Wednesday, where did you go?!'

To my dissertation, that's where. Time spent on the final piece edits and proof-reads of my MA 20,000 word analysis/argument/total fun. Yes, I did just write total fun because even if deadlines make the nerves rattle, I loved every minute of crafting my argument, doing the research, even getting feedback. I was up until 2 am last night putting in the gorgeously edited photos of picturebook double page spreads my lady love photoshopped up for me, woke this morning to finish off the bibliography and abstract; I'm off the printers on Friday. Wham, bam, done.

Whoa, Wednesday, I missed you here, but it was so good over in Word.

Alexander Doty, Making Things Perfectly Queer

"While we acknowledge that homosexuals as well as heterosexuals can operate or mediate from within straight cultural spaces and positions--after all, most of us grew up learning the rules of straight culture--we have paid less attention to the proposition that basically heterocentrist texts can contain queer elements, and basically heterosexual, straight-identified people can experience queer moments. And these people should be encouraged to examine and express those moments as queer, not as moments of "homosexual panic," or temporary confusion, or as unfortunate, shameful, or sinful lapses in judgement or taste to be ignored, repressed, condemned, or somehow explained away within and by straight cultural politics--or even within and by gay or lesbian discourses" (Doty, Making Thing Perfectly Queer: 3).

For Monday -- Reading a Picturebook

Last night I read one of my new favorite picturebooks to Alex and our friend, J: Queen Munch and Queen Nibble. It went fantastically well, seeing as we're all in our mid-twenties, huddled around in our friends apartment. Their reactions were wonderful, and I also enjoyed the storytelling. It takes multiple readings and the accumulation of time to get the voices down just so. At a few points in the stories, the voices started to take shape: a little husky and boisterous for Queen Munch, hushed and a bit uptight for Queen Nibble, proud for the Important Reader, casual and laidback for Goodnurse Scrubadub. More readings are needed, but they are on their way.

My Mind

At 10:40 PM, I published "squishy wishy wishy washy splishy splashy sploshy." to my blog. At 10:41 PM, I was chastising myself for only writing "squishy wishy wishy washy splishy splashy sploshy." That's not the point of this blog, my mind says. That's not the point of this assignment, my mind echoes.

What is the point of this assignment then? To write something, one a day, and have it have a time-stamp so I can't cheat or fib or forget? It is to get me to write. I think maybe the moderns' would have quite liked my "squishy wishy wishy washy splishy splashy sploshy." It kinda reminds me of e.e.cummings (was he a modern?). It also reminds me of Holes. The sound effects in that book are great. (Yes, I do believe books have sound effects.)

You see, "squishy wishy wishy washy splishy splashy sploshy." it sounds in my brain right now. All the celebration and acheivement, the finality and question, the fatigue and countless tasks. You see, today I had my final class for my Master's programme. (Yes, programme, not program.) Today was the final class and, well, that is my final seminar/lecture class until an undefined moment, an unpredictable moment from which point I will return to the classroom. And to be honest, I hope it is when I am leading the class, not taking it.

Today I spoke with my dissertation advisor about continuing at my university to complete a PhD. A PhD. Never in my life, before 8 months ago, 12 months ago, 6 months ago, did I seriously consider that I, Erica Marie, would want/get/desire such a degree, programme, length of research. And yet, I do. I really do.

You see, I'm not done yet. I'm not done yet with this subject of books and words and love. I'm not finished reading about books and words and love. And, more to the point, I'm not fed up yet with writing about books and words and love. I may never be done. I may never want to be done. And this is a chance to continue that love, that investigation of the production, the creation, the telling of love. Of love, it's what I want to do.

So I Won't Forget

• "I came to the conference for your workshop. There are not many people doing this research."
• "You had nothing to worry about!"
• "You are a novice compared to them, technically, but you did better than half the key note speakers."
• "I just wanted to give you a hug. Don't be nervous."
• "It was funny after my coming out looking back at all the books I read as I child and thinking 'Oh, that makes sense!'"
• "I heard it went brilliantly!"
• "Judy and I did some PR work for you."
• "I'd like to talk to you about your paper, and your poetry."

Yes's. BIG yes's.

Strawberries II

Part of the reason I like the scene with the strawberry so much is because of Alex. Our code word for "I really want to kiss you right now" is "strawberry."

In case you were wondering, we have a code word for kissing, but some people aren't down with two ladies exchanging kisses in public. I know, uncool.

Shh, don't tell!

Strawberries

I'm starting to write my dissertation and it's been a hard process to even start writing. I kept forgetting how incredible, insightful and subversive these texts are. I'll leave you with this "taster:"

"Queen Nibble chewed [the strawberry]. Her mouth filled with juice, the juice of summer and sunshine and silliness, a pink tingling juice that put pictures into her mind of balloons and wobbling red jellies and a best friend with a big daft laugh. The juice trickled down her chin and onto her palest dress, staining it forever in a shape exactly like a heart."

- Queen Munch and Queen Nibble, Carol Ann Duffy

Ecofeminism What?!

"I believe...that creative, complex ecofeminist interpretations of literary texts should be able to enhance the growth of ecofeminist theory rather than wait for its development. In order for the project of ecofeminist literary criticism to flourish, though, it must become more responsive to its position at the intersection of two broad fields--ecofeminism and literary theory and criticism--and simultaneously draw from and contribute to both of these fields."

- Karla Amrbruster, "A Poststructuralist Approach to Ecofeminist Criticism"

For Thursday - The Wind in the Willows

"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

IBBY Conference Call for Papers

COPULATING, COMING OUT, & COMICS:

The High School Chronicles of Ariel Schrag

ABSRACT

What does it mean for a young person to read about a peer’s sexual experiences in a graphic novel? Is it OK for young people to learn about sexuality, sex toys or masturbation from a comic? And just how graphic should a graphic novel get? Written by Ariel Schrag in four autobiographic installments, The High School Chronicles of Ariel Schrag details the teenage experiences of its creator without reservation or concern for ‘what is appropriate’. Throughout, Schrag illustrates her first sexual experiences, others’ imagined sexual experiences, and masturbation; narrates her coming out process from ‘straight’ to ‘bisexual’ to ‘lesbian;’ and ruminates on her life and ‘the comic.’

As Gina de Vries asks in her essay ‘Unsuitable for Children,’ ‘How can we support children and teenagers in the discovery of their sexuality...?’ I will argue that with the rise in illustrated memoirs, comics and graphic novels are particularly appropriate for exploring questions around sexuality, sex, and relationships. With such taboos lurking down many a school hall, comics like Schrag’s are a place for young people to gain an Awkward perspective or clear Definition; an exploration of Potential; and some Likewise camaraderie through a visual and textual medium.

The Country and The City

'Is it anything more than a well-known habit of using the past, the "good old days," as a stick to beat the present? [I Want to be a Cowgirl] It is clearly something of that, but there are still difficulties. The apparent resting places [open range, children's books], the successive Old Englands [The Wild West] to which we are confidently referred but which then start to move and recede, have some actual significance, when they are looked at in their own terms [Giddy Up, Cowgirl!]. Of course we notice their location in the childhoods of their authors, and this must be relevant [Susan Lowell]. Nostalgia, it can be said, is universal and persistent; only other men's nostalgias offend. A memory of childhood can be said persuasively, to have some permanent significance[Cindy Ellen, Little Red Cowboy Hat]. But again, what seemed a single escalator, a perpetual recession into history, turns out, on reflection, to be a more complicated movement: Old England [Old West], settlement [cattle drives], the rural virtues [gender roles]--all these, in fact, mean different things at different times, and quite different values are being brought to question [gender, identity, power, imagination].'

-- Raymond Williams, The Country and the City
(1975, 21-2; notes mine)

Cowgirls & Pirates

There exists in the world multiple series of combinations that make my heart pump. Strawberry & Mango. Compass & Anchor. Grapes & Cheese.

And until now, I wondered if I was the only one fascinated by the possibly strange combination of Cowgirls & Pirates. Apparently not:

Meet the best find I got on my cowgirl pirate picture book pursuits online today: Adventures of a Cowgirl-Pirate by Critter. The world is wonderful sometimes.

Why Children's Literature is Important

In the second year of my undergraduate studies at UC Santa Cruz in Literature and Feminist Studies, I took introductory theory courses for both of my majors. Literature Theory focused on the role of the author in 20^th Century literature while Feminist Theories explored the construction of narratives—narratives of identities, historical and cultural constructions, the way we come to understand truth—in academic theory, in social and moral understandings, in our classroom.

From those courses I came away with two concepts: “What is the role of the author?” and “Don’t get sucked into the anecdote.” As a student of literature and an author of my own work in narrative poetry and creative non-fiction, I approach the first question from two angles. When reading and investigating a piece of literature, I take into consideration the historical and geo-political context as well as the intentions of the author and what they mean or do not mean to the work. When working on a piece of my own writing, I am often asking how my identity and intentions shape the context of my work. Thus, whether it is my own work or a piece of literature, it is how a narrative takes form—and why—that intrigues me most.

My interest in narrative construction lies not just in the story arc, but in the political and cultural ramifications of that narrative’s construction through its ability to entertain. As my feminist professor stood in front of the lecture hall, she entertained us—with stories of the author’s life or her own, of current events, or popular culture. However, as soon as we had relaxed, we were reminded not to become too enamored with the proverbial “anecdote.” “What is important about how I am telling this story?” she would ask. We were not allowed to ignore or forget that a narrative is actively constructed, shaped by context, author and reader, storyteller and listener.

While stories have intrinsic entertainment value, the way an author or story-teller constructs their narrative can be just as telling. As a student of poetry, I focused early on the importance of form. Titled “In the Telling of a Love Story” my senior thesis in Poetry was founded on the idea that form can be as subversive as content. Through that work, I tried to show how the form of a narrative about two women in love can be just as politically or radically significant as the content of the story itself.

In a similar vein, I feel the authors of children’s literature are combining form and narrative to achieve an agenda for a target audience. Children’s literature does not just entertain through this pairing, it aims to instruct as well. These stories hold their audience’s attention while also serving as tools of indoctrination, shaping the way a child sees, interacts and understands the world around them. Authors are thus actively informing the next generation’s ideas of family structures, aspects of identity, cultural customs, social interactions and an understanding of truth.

As an area of study then, I feel it is important to highlight what is currently being reflected in children’s literature about our present culture and society. What does it mean for the child to understand that not every house-hold has a set of heterosexual, biological parents at its helm? How do children form their personal identity through a bombardment of gender roles in their bedtime stories? How does an author explain the concept of sharing in a way that will prepare children for our technological, multicultural, and international society?

I hope to explore the impact of form and narrative through the Masters in Children’s Literature programme at Roehampton University, combining my backgrounds in literature and feminist theories. I feel passionately about children’s literature because these stories have and will impact how we and future generations understand and interact with the world around us. These narratives—of sharing, of families, of imaginary realms and creatures—are actively constructed by adults for children (and adults) and should be paid due attention. Thus the study of children’s literature not only has the potential to be entertaining, the work is political and subversive as well.