Hecate articles from May 1997

Hecate archives from May 1997

Editorial. (liberalism in Australia under Federal Liberal government)(Editorial)
May 1, 1997... It has not taken the Federal Liberal government long to begin reversing some aspects of the liberalism to which we had become accustomed under Labor. Their latest Budget cuts foreign aid, reduces immigration and continues reductions in funding...

Sheik fantasies: Orientalism and feminine desire in the desert romance. (Sarah Holland's novel 'Desert Destiny')
May 1, 1997... The sheikh towered over her, a whip in one savage hand. She knelt at his feet, sweat on her parted lips. The hot desert sun beat down on them, and as the music rent the air she inched away from him on her knees, the whip cracking mercilessly on...

Australia. (short story)
May 1, 1997... Sometime I sit down and think that such a different life I lead. Back then when we arrive in Australia, I was dress in our cultural clothes. No skin showing except the face and hands. Ladies not allowed to cut the hair. Got to do the hair in...

The historian in Poland, 1986. (poem)
May 1, 1997... Your friend the jeweller made me a ring. An artist whose work changed after Solidarity. His specialty became amber honeyed, light as plastic. Silver embraced, looping, arms around a gemstone head - yours. Containing slivers, shards, your...

Pottery competition. (poem)
May 1, 1997... Rivals, you and I, vying for first prize. Yours is thin, inflexible, fine porcelain. Mine's terracotta, smells of earth after rain. Yours hardens quickly into permanence. I add water to mine, squeeze it tight to ease the meaning out....

I'm not your wet dream, baby. (poem)
May 1, 1997... Iwritetryingtomakesenseoutofmylifewhatthefuck'sgoingon I write out of despair Pamelagetsalotofattentionthatwomanwithherollingpin'salwaysgotpoin tytitsandpoutinglipsandI'mgladthere'sawoman'spageeveryThursday See the waxy images? See them?...

Hoffman and Lalique. (poem)
May 1, 1997... Twentieth Century Decorative Art and Design was the sign on the shop. But in the window were wrought iron tables, telephone benches, dusty bakelite smokers' stands, plaster dogs and lamps shaped like a gondola with Mozart or Casanova (and...

'Why all the stuff?' (poem)
May 1, 1997... Aren't you ready yet he says car keys in his hands I scoop up the baby round up the children collapse-grab the stroller sling the bag on my shoulder (the free one for ballast) and close the door with my teeth what stuff I ask incredulous...

Men in white. (short story)
May 1, 1997... I was about eight years old when my mother, after a lot of cajoling and false promises on my part, gave me permission to go on a picnic with two of my girlfriends. I remember my contribution to our first feast was salami and Pita bread;...

Ruptures in the skin of silence: a collective biography. (workshops on women's stories about silence)
May 1, 1997... She walks from the car, gathering and sorting. There is a deep quiet in the shade of the verandah that welcomes her home. Her skin is salted with sweat and sea from the walk. A breeze rustles all the leaves about. In someone else's garden a bird...

Been workin' been workin': Labour and the lesbian librarian. (short story)
May 1, 1997... It's 1996 and TAFE is restructuring for the third time in six years. Maggie, my boss, totters into our open-plan office and tosses her bag across the desk. Morning Maggie, I nod, Monday again. She stomps over to the mirror we keep propped...

A day in the life. (poem)
May 1, 1997... Breakfasts of cereal and toast and bacon and eggs not quite as regular as bran but regimented all the same and besides the sun-dried fruit quota is fulfilled at 10 even if nothing else is the communal coffee's getting low again no 1 knows where...

The ice cream van. (poem)
May 1, 1997... One afternoon I heard the eerie siren of the ice-cream van screaming its way into my street with its gaily painted signs and sweet enticements its appearance only to make me sit and recall all the times I thought about the worth of an ice-cream...

If. (poem)
May 1, 1997... I had a dollar for every time a woman said to me 'you've got a cute arse' if i had a dollar for every time a woman said to me 'you're a handsome bastard' if i had a dollar for every time a woman said to me 'i'd love to fuck your brains out'...

My grandmother's mouth. (poem)
May 1, 1997... there was this absence of belonging, of not having a proper school uniform, because we couldn't afford one, even though the class photos were black & white, you could tell i had a tartan skirt & red jumper on, so i tried to smile the largest to...

The dancer. (poem)
May 1, 1997... when you woke up you had to move forward, you couldn't turn backwards into the wall and stay vertical looking at the world from inside a room. you had to moan as you bent to tie hand-weary laces, frayed like hysteria and move your legs that...

Schizophrenia. (short story)
May 1, 1997... At the back of the bus Sally saw a pair of emerald green eyes under a shock of jet black hair. He peered at her suspiciously, through his too-long dark fringe. Johnny, the most handsome boy .at school, but everyone knew he was a little wild....

A cheap shot at Frocks? a reply to Tara Brabazon.
May 1, 1997... In her article, 'What Will You Wear to the Revolution? Thatcher's Genderation and the Fashioning of Change,' Tara Brabazon criticizes me for failing to acknowledge the importance of style and fashion in the process and formulation of social...

Writing space. (short story)
May 1, 1997... It's Monday and I'm writing in fruit-loops and ironing boards . . . Folding towels, a face appears. I find words tucked between the pillow cases and the bed linen. I retrieve them and hide them within the strands of my hair for safe keeping....

Interview with Ruth Indiah Rahayu and Nugroho Katjasungkana. (members of Indonesian women's rights group Kalyanamitra)(Interview)
May 1, 1997... In the transition from the Sukarno era to the Suharto era, the New Order crushed independent women's organisations. It imposed a 'national consensus' between the government and various social and political organisations around the official...

A strike report from the shop floor. (strike by women workers at Tanashin Indonesia factory)
May 1, 1997... Around 500 women workers struck at the Tanashin Indonesia factory in February 1995. The strikers demanded food money in lieu of lunch during Ramadan,(6) which the bosses had replaced with packaged snacks. All the workers disagreed with what the...

Mission life. (short story)
May 1, 1997... I have been in a number of missions in my lifetime, a life that was and had been taken, taken without a word that I cannot put into words, all the words were taken from a young boy's cry, a cry that a lot of mothers and fathers had heard that I...

Helpless. (short story)
May 1, 1997... I have been siring in another world a world of four walls, helpless of news I do not like to hear of. The news that families do not want to hear and that's bad news, news of loved ones, something has gone wrong or even badder. I have felt...

This place. (short story)
May 1, 1997... I sit in a place where a lot of people are afraid to come to, this place I can only see out of. This place with barbed wire and razor wire that stands 12 feet high and has bars. I come here for a crime I have done and I'm ashamed of it and this...

Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska.
May 1, 1997... On October 30 1996, 73-year-old Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for Literature 'for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.'(*)...

Nga ahorangi. (bibliography of creative writing by Maori women)(Bibliography)
May 1, 1997... A Bibliography of Maori Women's Creative Writing Whakatapunga tenei mo nga whaea, tamahine, tamariki This bibliography is published in two parts. Part One A-G is found in this issue, and Part Two H-Z will appear in the next issue. GLOSSARY...