Hecate articles from October 1996

Hecate archives from October 1996

Editorial. (Australia as a republic)(Focus on Asia and Australia)(Editorial)
October 1, 1996... Questions of 'citizenship,' of participation in the public sphere are to the fore at present, with the idea of an Australian republic engendering debate about what such a republic would look like and, among progressives, about the position of...

Multivocality, Orientialism and New Age philosophy in 'Turtle Beach.'(Focus on Asia and Australia)(Editorial)
October 1, 1996... This article reads Blanche D'Alpuget's Turtle Beach (1981)(1) and its surrounding criticism in the contemporary context of the Malaysian government's recent detention of those who attended the 2nd Asia Pacific Conference on East Timor (APCET II)...

Asian culture and Australian identity.(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... The heroine of my first novel, A Change of Skies, happens to be of Asian origin, a lover of the arts with interests in music and literature. As is the case with most well-brought-up young women of her nationality and background, music has been...

Letter from Kalimantan. (Australian woman's observation on Indonesian culture)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... 9 October 1996 By the time you get this I'll be nearly home, and I'll confess I'm ready now, except I've got into writing mode as conditions are excellent here for me to do that. I'm staying in my daughter's host family's 'weekender' on the...

Composition. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... There was a woman here one morning making her poetry with her washing she had no other medium a crocodile came it didn't care for or understand poetry took her away to his lair ate her whole not realising she'd found the words at last The...

Head hunter. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... Yesterday I was utterly happy. Aduh! Why is it so difficult to catch a poem of happiness? Yesterday I drank from the waterfall of the morning, Yesterday I drank from the pitcher plant, kantor samar, round pocket. Fresh heads were the best, the...

Here and there. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... but let this small boy say something for himself he wasn't even sure whether here was better than there and could only think by comparison that the banana here was much longer larger and yellower than there that so many holidays and so long here...

Sacrificial rites. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... I Listening to the voice of the teacher in class she tells of the self-sacrificing behaviour of another woman and I wonder why women mothers feel obliged to eat leftovers: the rotten apple in a basket of fruit yesterday's unfinished pork...

Chasing perfection. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... Sprawling on the carpet I read the story of an impoverished artist one who was barely a youth discerning that like me he is filled with unspoken songs dreams of multi-coloured propensities an artist's Utopian vision and like me he is doomed to...

The price of justice. (low wage for Australian Aborigines)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... Introduction There is a very interesting internal minute on the files of the division of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs in Queensland. Dated December 1985, it details a meeting between Bob Katter junior, State Government Minister for...

Bandages. (short story)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... I could start this with whispered intimations of shock to come; a revelation under bandages which I would peel off, word by word, hoping to find you at the end of the page gathering your breathlesshess and unable to move. I could start this with...

I grieve for Audrey June. (adoption)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... The Participants: Zillah, my birth mother, deceased Audrey June, Faith Mum, my adoptive mother, deceased Dad, my adoptive father, deceased Edward Albert, Zillah's father, deceased Alice May Bell, Zillah's mother, deceased Beulah, Zillah's sister,...

Mabelled. (Australian feminist newspaper Mabel)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... I moved to Sydney from the North Coast in 1977 when I was 17. Two years later I joined my first women's collective. This puts me out of the time frame about which I am writing, 1975-1978, except for the fact that my subject, the newspaper...

Coming up for air. (short story)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... When I come to the white door it opens and she says, now don't cry, everything's going to be alright. The white door shuts and I am in this long room, so long it takes little bits away from me, scatters them down the long corridor and under the...

Today. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... today as you fly closer and closer to the land of your birth I who planned ceaseless activity sit at the beach watching clouds slow release the spring sun mist on the horizon where islands ought to be mosaic of light and shade on the sea...

Separation. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... Three pots of lavender clutter together, sharing the sun as it reaches through lattice. Three pots of lavender waft memories of you bending low to pluck each bloom, tying purple heads with string and hanging them in the dark dry cupboards of our...

Tadpoles. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... We found tadpoles Miraculously transported To an eroded sandstone basin after rain. Squatting by the edge We stirred mud to give colour to their days Felt their slimy sides with chubby hands and watched When in the heat of summer days Small legs...

Making the cordial. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... I'm in the tree, Making it give up its fruit. I'm in the tree's space, Plucking, reaching, leaning. The happy lemons smiling under the leaves, Dark, shiny leaves with points. Smelling the sharp, lick lemon, Sweating around my nose. Ddu...

Joeys in a sack. (short story)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... the shooters' terrier was starving, too small to get his teeth around the roo tails, so mum fed him noodles on the side, from a polystyrene container, behind a big old ironbark, mud up to her knees, her hair in rollers, the shooters' children...

Rice bud and the dark-dark. (short story)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... I was caring my rice bubbles and milk. Old lady's food, soft and mushy. His furry flank brushed my foot, his eyes fixed on my bowl and he meowed piteously. I poured dry rice bubbles into his dish. He touched them with his nose and looked up at...

What will you wear to the revolution? Thatcher's genderation and the fashioning of change.(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... A 1989 edition of Marxism Today, the journal derived from the Communist Party of Great Britain, headed a page with the slogan 'What will you wear to the revolution?'(1) This statement showed the impact of both Thatcherism and identity politics on...

Which bank. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... i was extracting money from a handy bank on Semaphore Road when out of the bank walked two teenage girls tall girls - long legged girls with make up trowelled on nearly thick enough to hide their skin blemishes tall girls with blonde hair & black...

Poor little rich girl. (poem)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... if i had ten dollars for every time a male has leered at me from a truck whistled from a building site called me love sweetheart honey dear girlie sheila bird chick baby talked to my breasts yelled show us your tits lift up your skirt and show us...

The race for race: feminist scholarship and the positionality impasse.(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... My title recalls an article by the African American feminist critic Barbara Christian. In 'The Race for Theory,' written at the start of the 1990s, Christian suggested that the 'Other' - by then firmly present in much critical work on the...

Ophelia: a theory. (short story)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... I have a theory that Ophelia wasn't such a wholesome girl... In fact, she was bonking the entire male half of the cast of Hamlet. She was the best kept secret in the palace brothel, except for when she went mad and all that hidden whoredom...

'It's my party and I'll cry if I want to': recent autobiographical writings of Australian women communists.(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... The title of this paper came about as a response to a friendly suggestion that the titles of my papers were a bit dull. By way of answering the challenge I came up with this one in a spirit of fun. But the more I thought about it the more it came...

The river Ophelia: a licence to fish? (response to article by Gillian Whitlock, Hecate, vol. 22, 1996)(Focus on Asia and Australia)
October 1, 1996... From: RSTRATTO@ALPHA2.CURTIN.EDU.AU Subject: Re: Hecate Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 16:37:56+0800 Having just had a quick squizz at Gillian's piece in Hecate, I'm wondering if some of the outrage being shown by members of this list may have more to...