Search results for ""spinifex press""

Circus as drama and risk, as exuberance and irrepressible spirit, is the central metaphor Patricia Sykes uses to open a world where public and private share the same tightrope. The poems speak of women searching for footholds along the spectrums of politics, power, history, culture and relationships.Theirs are performances of celebration and hope as they wire dance through circumcision and incest, madness and suicide, genocide and war. There is passion and resistance, hot comedy and fire in the belly. Falling is the first victory, balance is the ultimate skill.

Read more less

When Doris Kartinyeri was a month old, her mother died. The family gathered to mourn their loss and welcome the new baby home. But Doris never arrived to live with her family – she was stolen from the hospital and placed in Colebrook Home, where she stayed for the next fourteen years. The legacy of being a member of the Stolen Generations continued for Doris as she was placed in white homes as a virtual slave, struggled through relationships and suffered with anxiety and mental illness.

Read more less

From the author of the acclaimed 'Godmothers' comes a new and startling novel. Beginning in the South Pacific and stretching back to a Mediterranean past, Sandi Hall explores a friendship that could affect the history of the world. When Dory Previn asked Did Jesus have a sister? Sandi Hall discovered that he did.

Read more less

What drives young women and what drives them mad? Twenty-something women talk about living their feminism. What they do, how they do it and why they choose to do it as feminists. The private collides with the public, anger with humour, desire with ideals. Writing themselves into the debate, these young women are talking up.

Read more less

Have you ever wanted to join the circus? Wondered what goes on behind the scenes? What trapeze artists think about as they swing through the air? How fit you have to be to be a performer? Reading this book lets you become an armchair acrobat. Established in 1991 as a community theatre project to work with survivors of sexual assault, the Women’s Circus has gone on to create innovative shows, toured to China in 1995 and has maintained a training program for women of all shapes and sizes, backgrounds, ages and abilities for fifteen years.

Read more less

From the Palaeolithic to the present, Chinese women have held up half the sky. Today they work as architects, soldiers, physicians and fruit growers, and some have travelled the Yangzi rapids in a rubber raft. China for Women is the perfect guide for tourist or armchair travellers. It neatly bridges past and present and brings to life the complex culture and history of China.

Read more less

First there was the detective novel with its stubble-chinned PI. Then came the feminist super-sleuths. Feisty, fierce and real. Now there’s Figments of a Murder. And Babes. Babes is about lust. Babes is about power. But what else is she up to? In her world women are torn asunder by love and lust, by murder and menace. Babes says she calls the shots. But does she?

Read more less

In this one-of-a-kind anthology, lesbian sisters from several countries explore their relationships with one another. Through their words and photographs, both well-known and less-famous siblings reveal the many faces of lesbian sisterhood. Here is a fascinating chronicle of what it is like to grow up, come out, laugh, cry, work and live together, as sisters in a family and as lesbians in a world.

Read more less

Australia is a land full of opportunities, but where can you go to find the things that matter to women? This book is a guide to the land as well as the diverse culture of women. Women's culture in Australia goes back more than 40,000 years and is a rich mosaic of story, art and music. On the top of this has come the culture of the past 200 years: from the British convicts, from China, from the Pacific, from the newer waves of migration and from the women's movement. This is reflected in literature, theatre, the visual arts, music, circuses and dance. Rural and urban women describe the places they know and love, they also describe their histories and show something of what lies behind a first impression.Contributors featured include: Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Faith Bandler, Portia Robinson, Elizabeth Jolley, Sara Dowse, Janine Haines, Dale Spender, Ruby Langford Ginibi, Kate Llewellyn, and Finola Moorhead.

Read more less

A guide to therapy, Beyond Psychoppression explores the intersection between the personal and the political. Betty McLellan surveys the development of psychotherapy and exposes the oppressive techniques of Freudian psychoanalysis, humanistic therapies, lesbian sex therapy, and new age and popular therapies. She challenges the myths about women's mental and emotional illness.

Read more less

I hope with the women who break their silence and contribute to this survey some very much needed changes will take place. God knows we need them.This book is the result of a nationwide survey of 2300 letters from women and 97 from men about rape and sexual abuse. Patricia Easteal analysed the materials primarily from women who have experienced abuse from husbands, estranged husbands, relatives, dates, bosses, priests, acquaintances and strangers.

Read more less

Who invented hieroglyphics? Who did Einstein’s mathematics? Who led the defence of Viet Nam in 40 AD? Who invented the first computer? Who built the pyramid at Giza? Who developed the merino sheep? Who was the first writer in the world? Who invented the wheel? All were women. When the next person asks: Where are all the famous women artists/inventors/architects/writers/scientists? – this book will make it easy to find their names.

Read more less

Once she had reconciled herself to the view that a garden snake, however beautiful, was not evil, Suniti decided to set about the matter in a more businesslike way. She put an ad in the paper: ‘Elderly gentlewoman seeks to make a bargain with the devil’. Where are good and evil to be found? What is the path to sainthood? Is it through poetry or good deeds? St Suniti talks to angels and flowers, dragons, saints and ordinary people in her quest. Suniti Namjoshi has original imagination full of surprises encompassing saints and wolves, Beowulf and Bangladesh, Grendel and Star Trek.‘It’s hilarious, witty, elegantly written, hugely inventive, fantastic, energetic, up to the minute, analytic, touching…

Read more less

Getting your man, getting the right man, is not always easy. But women whether they be pieceworkers, housewives, artists, business women or farmers, know just how to get their man. In the tradition of Thelma and Louise, women’s revenge drives these stories.

Read more less

Here the shadows of the plants were miraculously distinct. She noticed the separate grains of earth in the flower beds as if she had a microscope stuck to her eye. She saw the intricacy of the twigs of every tree. —Virginia Woolf, Orlando Inspired by the writing of Virginia Woolf and the painting of Georgia O’Keefe, Lariane Fonseca uses the camera as a medium through which to depict the ‘passion of flowers’. This selection of her flowers showcases the breadth of her interest in nature’s contribution to the visual beauty and sensuality in our lives. It demonstrates her sensitivity and skill – a skill that reaches far beyond her comment – ‘I just take pictures’.

Read more less

The pathology of patriarchy, the idea that one group of people should control another—even own them, own even life itself—is at the core of today’s crises. The End of Patriarchy asks one key question: What do we need to create and maintain stable, decent human communities that can remain in a sustainable relationship with the larger living world? Robert Jensen’s answer is feminism and a critique of patriarchy. He calls for a radical feminist challenge to institutionalized male dominance; an uncompromising rejection of men’s assertion of a right to control women’s sexuality and reproduction; and a demand for an end to the violence and coercion that are at the heart of all systems of domination and subordination. The End of Patriarchy makes a powerful argument that a socially just society requires no less than a radical feminist overhaul of the dominant patriarchal

Read more less

In this moving collection of poems, award-winning writer Sandy Jeffs shares her journey through madness over four decades, drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the motley gathering of characters at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Both delightful and insightful, playful and serious, witty and whimsical, The Mad Poet’s Tea Party provides a devastating commentary on how our society treats those with mental illness from the perspective of someone who has experienced all its interventions. It captures in poetic form the enigmas and contradiction in madness.

Read more less

The history of Coogee’s McIver’s Ladies Baths – Australia’s only ocean pool reserved for women – is eloquently told in these stories from women who have found friendship, sanctuary and sheer pleasure as they have gathered and swum at ‘the Women’s Pool’. Humorously told tales of encounters at the pool sit together with stories of sorrow and regret. Older women tell of the history of the pool and the famed ‘Thursday Married Ladies Club’; younger women detail their delight at the natural beauty, the safety and the sense of freedom that the pool offers. No aquatic manspreading here. In this book, women from a diverse range of cultures reveal the role that the women’s pool has played in their lives. From the ‘365ers’ who brave the elements all year round to the younger women who seek summer sun on the rocks, a picture emerges of a place of natural beauty and a space for women to simply be themselves.

Read more less

What do you do when you fall in love with your next-door neighbour? You peer at each other through a hole in the fence and eventually climb over. Sybil is a member of The Good-Hearted Gardeners, a Society for Well-Meaning Efforts for the Betterment of Language and the Salvation of the Planet, which her lover, Demo, is allowed to join. It’s funded by MI5, who ask them to monetise and weaponise the English language. Soon afterwards they discover that English is even more widespread than anyone had thought. Even the birds and the fish, the cows and the kangaroos can speak it – when they choose. The Good-Hearted Gardeners set about trying to talk to anyone – crows, magpies, robins, goldfish, cows, horses, rats, mice – who will talk to them. With climate change and technology gone mad, what’s in store is a frightening scenario that threatens everyone – humans, animals, plants. Can the headlong rush to extinction be halted? When the birds, and the cows and the horses and the mice and all the rest come together, much is made possible. But at what cost? Will the planet and its inhabitants be saved? A comedic allegory for our future.

Read more less

In My Sister Chaos two sisters escape an unnamed war-torn country into separate lives of exile. The cartographer is obsessed with keeping the world in order, but finds it unraveling under her own demands. Her sister, an artist, arrives unexpectedly. Her very presence is a sign of chaos for the cartographer. But in spite of this, the sister has a firm grip on the real world, and a greater connection to the past. Chaos and order in tension provide the scaffolding for this compelling work of fiction. Presented within a world of obsession and trauma it asks whether any of us is immune to the forces of destruction.

Read more less

Horses and women have always shared a bond. Why else do little girls plaster their schoolbooks with pony pictures? Why do women spend weekends devotedly mucking out paddocks? Or willingly go out in public wearing tight, unforgiving, pale jodhpurs? How is it that otherwise fastidious females cheerfully fill their cars with hay, their nails with dirt and their boots with mud, while turning out gleaming horses, with barely a tail-hair out of place? It seems that in days when urban sprawl is overtaking paddocks and trails, and country life seems so far away, little girls (and big ones!) still dream of horses.

Read more less

An anomalous kiss. A white turtle ferrying the dreams of the dead. A working siesta in a five-star hotel. A woman’s twelve-metre hair trawling corpses from a river. Or a queue of longings in Darlinghurst. These enigmatic tales are stories of chance and hope. Alternately mythic, wistful or quirky, Merlinda Bobis’ tales resonate with an original and confident storytelling voice. Published as The Kissing in the United States.

Read more less

I had thought once that I felt most at home in a plane in mid-air, but that isn’t true. I belong to India and to the West. Both belong to me and both reject me. I have to make sense of what has been and what there is.Suniti Namjoshi traverses the cultures of the East and of the West. She muses on the patterns of her life, and of the impact of colonisation, both the resistances and the acceptances of it. Growing up a princess in the ruling house of Maharashtra, the two most important relationships in her life were with her grandmother, the Ranisaheb, and with Goja, the servant woman who slept beside her bed.When she was ten her test pilot father was killed in an air accident and Suniti was sent away to boarding school. After working in the Indian Civil Service for some years, she decided that she wanted to be a poet and she moved to the West. In the US and Canada she became just another brown-skinned immigrant without the privileges of her childhood.

Read more less

We are looking for a man with a hard heart; a heart of stone; a heart of a real man.One afternoon, a twelve-year-old girl goes missing near her village. The local police tell her mother and the villagers she has been taken by a wild animal. Five years later, a young government employee Amantle Bokaa finds a box bearing the label ‘Neo Kakang; CRB 45/94’. It contains evidence of human involvement in the affair. So begins an illegal and undercover struggle for justice and retribution. A powerful story of corruption, The Screaming of the Innocent challenges the romantic representations of Africa. Botswana High Court judge Unity Dow continues the fight she began with Far and Beyon’, to give her country a strong voice in the bookshelves of the world.

Read more less

This international anthology brings together research, heartbreaking personal stories from survivors of the sex industry, and theory from over thirty women and men – activists, survivors, academics and journalists. Not For Sale is groundbreaking in its breadth, analysis and honesty.

Read more less

Lé vi-Strauss tried to convince women that we are spoken, exchanged like words; Lacan tried to teach women we can’ t speak, because the phallus is the original signifier; and then Derrida says that it doesn’ t matter, it’ s just talk.Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Nietzsche: the chant resonates through universities around the world. Have you ever tried to untangle the words of postmodernist theorists? How to find your way through the labyrinth to sense and clarity? If so, this is the book for you.

Read more less

Offering an exciting ride into how the world could be, this book is the one we have been waiting for. Feminists have long been saying we could do life differently, here is the local and global exploration of what needs to change, what must go and how together we can make a new reality. A visionary book with a focus on local and global politics and social movements, Wild Politics presents a powerful critique of global western culture. Susan Hawthorne unpicks the structures of power and knowledge, law and international trade rules, as well as probing issues that intimately affect our daily lives. Wild Politics concludes with a compelling vision for a world inspired by biodiversity

Read more less

Shattering the popular myth that porn is harmless, the personal accounts of 25 brave women in He Chose Porn over Me reveal the real-life trauma experienced by women at the hands of their porn-consuming partners – men who were supposed to care for them. This confronting but necessary book dares to tell the truth about pornography’s destructive impact – about the men who habitually use it and the women and children who are mistreated and discarded as a result. The women in this book were collateral damage in their partner’s insatiable greed for porn. Their stories tell of the crushing of intimacy, respect, connection, love. Porn colonised their families, leaving women rejected and scarred. They were subjected to sexual terrorism in their own homes. The men, turbo-charged by pornography, were intoxicated by sexualised power. They didn’t care if they lost everything including their partners. In this haunting expose, pornography is rightfully situated as an insidious tool of violence against women. The contributors, now working to re-build their lives, found a confidante in Melinda Tankard Reist who supported them in the sharing of their experiences in these pages, and to warn other women – don’t date men who use porn …

Read more less

Do we want to live in a world without birdsong? The pesticides, the coal mines, the clear-felling forestry industry, the industrial farmers are destroying the earth with their insistence on profit. But what point is profit on a dead and silent planet? In this enlightening yet devastating book, Susan Hawthorne writes with clarity and incisiveness on how patriarchy is wreaking destruction on the planet and on communities. The twin mantras of globalisation and growth expounded by the neoliberalism that has hijacked the planet are revealed in all their shabby deception. Backed by meticulous research, the author shows how so-called advances in technology are, like a Trojan horse, used to mask sinister political agendas that sacrifice the common good for the shallow profiteering of corporations and mega-rich individuals. The biotechnologists see the lure of cure, rising share prices and profits. She details how women, lesbians, people with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, the poor, refugees and the very earth itself are being damaged by the crisis of patriarchy that is sucking everyone into its vortex. Importantly, this precise and insightful volume also shows what is needed to get ourselves out of this spiral of destruction: a radical feminist approach with compassion and empathy at its core. Shame is an emotion of the powerless because they cannot change the rules. The book shows a way out of the vortex: it is now up to the collective imagination and action of people everywhere to take up the challenges Susan Hawthorne shows are needed. This is a vital book for a world in crisis and should be read by everyone who cares about our future.

Read more less

Nicole Brossard is known internationally for her writings on writing, on feminism and on lesbian existence. This edition released for a new wave of feminist outrage is a book full of spirit, energy, insight and chutzpah (or maybe cheek). She is a major voice in contemporary literature with incisive and hard-hitting essays about feminist imagination and culture. I believe there's only one explanation for all of these texts: my desire and my will to understand patriarchal reality and how it works, not for its own sake but for its tragic consequences in the lives of women, in the life of the spirit. Years of anger, revolt, certitude and conviction are in The Aerial Letter, years of fighting against the screen which stands in the way of women's energy, identity and creativity. —Nicole Brossard

Read more less

1999. Winter. Bondi. Harry’s been on the streets so long he could easily forget what time is. So Harry keeps an eye on it. Every morning. Then he heads to the beach to chat with the gulls. Or he wanders through the streets in search of food, clothes, Jules. When the girl on the bus sees him, lonely and cold in the bus shelter that he calls home, she thinks about how she can help. She decides to write a symphony for him. So begins a poignant and gritty tale of homelessness and shelter, of the realities of loneliness and hunger, and of the hopes and dreams of those who often go unnoticed on our streets. This is the story of two outcasts – one a young woman struggling to find her place in an alien world, one an older man seeking refuge and solace from a life in tatters. It is also about the transformative power of care and friendship, and the promise of escape that music holds. An uplifting and heartbreaking story that demands empathy. Amid the struggles to belong and fit in, we are reminded that small acts of kindness matter. And big dreams are possible.

Read more less

One day there will be peace in Vietnam. But not before more war. Touched by the Lady of the Realm, Liên dreams of bones and bodies under the sea. The prescient warnings from the Lady weigh heavily on Liên, who is burdened by her inability to save everyone. But she knows too that the Lady speaks most to those who listen. Set against the background of the Vietnam/American War, we follow Liên’s path across five decades that are punctuated by endless war and suffering. Yet even in the most desperate of times, Liên refuses to be ruled by fear and anger and persists in her hope for a peaceful future. But will hope be enough?

Read more less

The Abbotsford Convent becomes more than the setting, 'the grey mince-meat walls', of this collection. It emerges as presence, intimate and familiar as well as constraining and forbidding. But it is childhood itself which becomes the subterranean geography and pulse. Subject to an overworld of lay and religious adults, 'the razor of power having such adult force', the voices in these poems create multiple pathways through memory and time as they map and navigate the many-stranded mysteries of their institutionalised lives.

Read more less

Girls are portrayed as sexual at younger ages, pressured to conform to a 'thin, hot, sexy' norm. Clothing, music, magazines, toys and games send girls the message that they are merely the sum of their body parts. The effects of prematurely sexualising girls are borne out in their bodies and minds, with a rise in self-destructive behaviours such as eating disorders and self-harm, along with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.

Read more less

A sister volume to the internationally successful A Girl’s Best Friend, this book explores the relationships between women and their cats - or more aptly, cats and their women. There are cats of all colours and sizes - from the city, the farm, the bush; cats who can open fridges, sign contracts, and cats-in-drag. They get stuck in strange places and survive amazing ordeals. Some disappear only to return mysteriously; others live on as most treasured memories. They entertain, amuse, frustrate and delight us; they tug at our hearts and offer insight into our lives. A delightful collection of writing from women and girls all around the world, accompanied by beautiful photographs of their feline friends.

Read more less

What does a place mean? An old kauri villa with a one-roomed school attached is the place that has sustained a writer, Beryl Fletcher, through turbulent years and an obsessive love. Sent away at the age of six for a few months to the house at Karamu, she discovered books and spent many nights reading by candlelight, listening to the call of the moreporks. Karamu became a symbolic landscape of safety that helped her to survive.

Read more less

A story of one girl 's struggle with herself, her life and her family. And the story of a family's struggle with a daughter/sister they can never hope to understand. She lies in the bed and she is sick. Sicker than she's ever been before. But with the sickness comes a pain and in that pain she finds a glory. And it's the glory that gets her through. When her body heals and she is out of the hospital and home with her family, she finds she needs to seek out a new glory, a stronger glory. She finds it in starvation. But her family, her friends, and her teachers intrude, and she decides she needs a different life, one where her glory is truly safe. A story of one girl's struggle with herself, her life and her family. And the story of a family's struggle with a daughter/sister they can never hope to understand. An impressive new voice in youth literature, Sarah Brill's novel Glory tells the powerful story of a fifteen-year-old girl, who has just woken up in a hospital after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Sarah Brill began writing for the theatre at the age of 15. She attended four National Young Playwrights Workshops before graduating to the National Playwrights Conference.Since then she has had several plays produced and broadcast on the ABC. Glory is her first novel.

Read more less

How do you decide to live? Or do others make that decision for you? In this lyrical novel, Beryl Fletcher explores the paradoxes of modern life. As a new academic, Julia finds her beliefs challenged by her students, reinforced by her friend’s mistreatment and dismissed by her family. Just as her mother sought freedom from her family’s rural poverty, Julia and her sister Isobel, search for their own solace finding it in different and disparate places.

Read more less

Naryshkin Park is a place where lovers once walked. On 2 October 1941, it became the site of a mass grave. Rose Zwi deftly weaves together clues from survivors’ accounts, old photographs, official documents and archival research to form a many-layered account of the proud history and tragic destruction of the Jews of Lithuania.

Read more less

An international anthology of writings on cyberculture and feminist interventions. A diverse and at times fractious discussion of issues raised by these new forms of cultural expression. The contributors engage with a range of questions including: What is cyberfeminism? How does feminism influence multimedia production? What are the possibilities for feminist activism and research on the internet? How are colonisation, cybersex and virtuality to be theorised? How do these technologies affect our theories about bodies and minds? And what are the implications for creative artists?

Read more less

The first book to be published anywhere in the world to provide women with an introduction to the Internet. The authors explore the role of gender, anonymity, privacy, pornography, harassment and security. It is a straightforward guide to the use of electronic systems, as well as a brief history of women and computers including Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. This book is a collector’s item, a book of and for its time.

Read more less

Cathie Dunsford's much-loved Cowrie returns. The Journey Home follows her through her passions for life, love, food and challenge. Peopled by a diverse array of characters: Benny, the outrageous film-maker; Peta, who Cowrie falls in love with; and the student DK, who has a few things to learn. Torn between her newly-made friendships in California and her roots in her homeland, Cowrie discovers that there is a price to pay for exile even when it's voluntary.

Read more less

They came from the stetl to a new land, to a new life. Another year in Africa, they said, another year in exile. Old bonds break as they adjust from the old world of pogroms to their new life in Africa. Six-year-old Ruth is haunted by memories of tragedy and persecution that are not even hers. Award-winning author, Rose Zwi, evokes with tenderness the 1930s and 40s with a tale of loss of innocence alongside the stirrings of Apartheid.

Read more less

Alix Clemeger, sophisticate and internationally famous composer and concert pianist, is the toast of high society. A succession of momentous milestones has determined her life and career. The last is when she meets Tansie Landon. Tansie, beautiful, enigmatic, fragile, is – although not yet successful – an exceptional sculptor. But Tansie’s childhood of abuse and neglect has left her so emotionally scarred that love has become a source of embattlement.When Tansie begins to display towards Alix the same harshness and indifference she knew as a child, she tests Alix’s love to the limit and pushes herself to the edge of destruction. In the end Tansie’s gift to Alix is a lesson in the possibilities and limitations of love.

Read more less