The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction Read online

  To all those who struggle for human rights.

  Esta noche,

  entre todos los normales, te invito a cruzar el puente.

  Nos mirarán con curiosidad—estas dos muchachas—

  y quizás, si somos lo suficientemente sabias,

  discretas y sutiles

  perdonen nuestra subversión

  sin necesidad de llamar

  al médico al comisario político o al cura.

  Tonight, among all the normal people

  I invite you to cross the bridge.

  They’ll be curious about us—these two girls—

  and perhaps, if we are wise,

  secretive and subtle enough

  they will forgive our subversion

  without calling in the doctor

  the commissar or the priest.

  —CRISTINA PERI ROSSI

  Please keep asking about us. Ask about the lesbians. Ask for us by name—my name, the names of others. Remind them that we exist, that we’re here and we’re not going away.

  —RITA ARAUZ,

  lesbian-feminist activist

  from Nicaragua

  Contents

  Introduction

  MARY DORCEY, Ireland

  from A Noise from the Woodshed

  MAKEDA SILVERA, Jamaica

  Caribbean Chameleon

  MIREILLE BEST, France

  Stéphanie’s Book

  CRISTINA PERI ROSSI, Uruguay

  Final Judgment and

  Singing in the Desert

  SHANI MOOTOO, India-Trinidad-Canada

  Lemon Scent

  MARGUERITE YOURCENAR, Belgium

  Sappho or Suicide

  EMMA DONOGHUE, Ireland

  Looking for Petronilla

  SYLVIA MOLLOY, Argentina

  from Certificate of Absence

  DALE GUNTHORP, South Africa

  Gypsophila

  KAREN WILLIAMS, South Africa

  They Came at Dawn

  CYNTHIA PRICE, South Africa

  Lesbian Bedrooms

  ALIFA RIFAAT, Egypt

  My World of the Unknown

  YASMIN V. TAMBIAH, Sri Lanka

  The Civil War

  Sandalwood

  Transl(iter)ation I, and

  Transl(iter)ation II (for Aruna and Giti)

  DIONNE BRAND, Trinidad

  Madame Alaird’s Breasts

  VIOLETTE LEDUC, France

  from L’Asphyxie

  ANCHEE MIN, China

  from Red Azalea

  GERD BRANTENBERG, Norway

  from Four Winds

  ESTHER TUSQUETS, Spain

  from The Same Sea as Every Summer

  KAREN-SUSAN FESSEL, Germany

  Lost Faces

  MARÍA EUGENIA ALEGRÍA NUÑEZ, Cuba

  The Girl Typist Who Worked for a

  Provincial Ministry of Culture

  NGAHUIA TE AWEKOTUKU, Aotearoa/New Zealand

  Paretipua

  Old Man Tuna, and

  Watching the Big Girls

  DACIA MARAINI, Italy

  from Letters to Marina

  ROSAMARÍA ROFFIEL, Mexico

  Forever Lasts Only a Full Moon

  ANNA BLAMAN, Holland

  from Lonely Adventure

  CHRISTA WINSLOE, Germany

  from The Child Manuela

  ACHY OBEJAS, Cuba

  Waters

  NICOLE BROSSARD, Canada

  from Mauve Desert

  GILA SVIRSKY, Israel

  Meeting Natalia

  MAUREEN DUFFY, England

  from The Microcosm

  JEANNE D’ARC JUTRAS, Canada

  from Georgie

  SUZANA TRATNIK, Slovenia

  Under the Ironwood Trees

  ELENA GEORGIOU, Cyprus

  Aphrodite’s Vision

  ETEL ADNAN, Lebanon

  from In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country

  GINA SCHEIN, Australia

  Minnie Gets Married

  Bibliography

  Suggested Additional Reading

  Acknowledgments

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  —An Egyptian wife is greeted by mysterious forces at work in her new home.

  —An Irish woman travels through time in search of a wronged maiden.

  —A teacher in Spain locks herself up in her grandmother’s house with her young Colombian lover.

  —A woman moves through the night streets of apartheid-torn South Africa of the 1950s in quest of passion.

  Representing the work of thirty-four writers from twenty-seven different countries, The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction offers the reader an entry into a diversity of remarkable lives and imaginations. Growing out of vastly different personal and cultural backgrounds, ranging from straightforward storytelling to more experimental forms, the stories reflect an international lesbian sensibility. Desire and longing—for home, for language, for women’s bodies, for safety, for freedom—thread their way through these tales.

  Because of its international scope as well as its subject matter, this collection has at its heart the challenge of translation: translation in the literal sense, since so many of these stories first appeared in a language other than English, but also in the figurative sense as the reader moves from culture to culture, from coded to clear meaning, following the expression of desire in all its nuances. Issues of translation are often central to the stories themselves as author and character search for a way to express or “translate” experiences and emotions into words where words are lacking. In the selection by the Norwegian writer Gerd Brantenberg, the young narrator, arriving in Scotland, faces not only the frustrating difficulties of applying her classroom knowledge of English to “real life,” but discovers as well layers of meaning of words in her own language, layers which serve as a bridge to intimacy and self-awareness. In the story “My World of the Unknown” by the Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat, a woman’s sexuality is embodied symbolically, in the form of a seductive, womanly snake. While the protagonist struggles to understand the meaning of this serpent in her life, the Western reader must redefine a familiar sexual symbol in a totally new way. Such stories as these, which are shaped by and express so many different cultural nuances, carry the reader to new territories and often to different ways of reading, as language and lives are revealed to hold fresh and unexpected significance.

  Steeped in a sense of place, many of these stories offer the reader an unusual perspective on national regions. The sun-drenched streets of Cyprus, the luxuriant garden of a provincial French town, the intimate afternoons in a small Italian fishing village, the plazas and ancient ruins of Mexico all come alive, imbued with a special sensuality. These vivid settings both incorporate and reveal the intense longings and daily rituals that mold the lives of the women represented here.

  If place, words, and symbols take on new and sometimes mysterious meanings, one word emerges as particularly elusive. As we searched for “lesbian” texts, it became clear to us that the word only had meaning in particular cultures—that is, in the West. Originally referring to inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos, the word disappears from common usage along with Sappho’s texts, which were burned by the Catholic church in the 1300s. In the subsequent centuries, the term lesbian had little official existence except for a brief appearance as the name of a particularly flexible form of a mason’s ruler. The word re-emerged in the late nineteenth century in the West as a label for a woman engaged in a sexual relationship with another woman—that is, in a socially, legally, and psychologically stigmatized act. Thus, fo
r better or for worse, Western lesbian writers of the twentieth century have been given a category of identification that is not common to much of the rest of the world.

  While the word lesbian is not global in its use and significance, it is clear, as these stories show, that emotional and sexual intimacies between women do indeed exist throughout the world. Although most of the authors included here write out of a constant connection to a lesbian sense of self, a few extremely powerful works in this volume, deeply rooted in specific cultures and embodying lesbian themes, were written by authors who do not define themselves as lesbian. Indeed, such terminology would not even be meaningful to an author such as Alifa Rifaat. The excerpt from the novel Red Azalea by the Chinese author Anchee Min, who is not a lesbian, gives a complex and moving portrait of a relationship between two women living through the Cultural Revolution in China during the late sixties. Struggling to survive the demands of grueling physical labor, a young woman finds herself drawn to the strong presence of her female commander. As these stories suggest, the world of non-Western lesbian literature is often less constrained by categories and definitions, exploring what the Indian writer Ginu Kamani calls the “fluid sensualities” of the non-Western world.

  Such fluidity does of course appear in Western writing as well. Letters to Marina by Dacia Maraini from Italy reminds us of the rich possibilities of experience that may be opened once authors of any sensual persuasion are comfortable moving across sexual boundaries in their creation of characters and exploration of themes. The French lesbian writer Violette Leduc pushes the boundaries in other directions as she depicts the passionate sensuality of a young girl expressing her love for her grandmother, and a young schoolmate’s intense need for physical freedom.

  For many of our writers, the power of history is as strong as the power of desire. The three stories from South Africa offer an historical perspective on both how a public lesbian community fared during the height of apartheid and how personal commitment to political change enters a lesbian bedroom. For the Lebanese author Etel Adnan, moments of lesbian connection are absorbed into the suffering of Beirut. The rise of Nazism looms menacingly in the militaristic world of the German writer Christa Winsloe. It lives, too, as a painful memory in the work of the Israeli writer Gila Svirsky. The dislocation of exile and return is dramatized in “Waters” by the Cuban author Achy Obejas.

  Caught up in the violence of history in the making, a number of the authors in this collection are writing from within the daily catastrophes of national upheavals. The contemporary Slovenian writer and lesbian activist Suzana Tratnik writes in a fevered voice that suggests both the desperation of war and of erotic attachment. Yasmin Tambiah contemplates her place as a lesbian and a writer in Sri Lanka, a country torn by ethnic civil war. The worldwide crisis of AIDS—an upheaval that has no national boundaries—invades Berlin in Karen-Susan Fessel’s story “Lost Faces.”

  Like many of the characters in these stories, the authors represented here fight to maintain their integrity of desire in the face of history. Their stories suggest that women’s desire—particularly for one another—can challenge boundaries and national identities from within. Makeda Silvera, born in Jamaica, describes the obstacles and conflicts faced by a “third world” author in her story “Her Head a Village.” In an imaginary dialogue between the villagers and the author, Silvera poses the challenges that many international lesbian writers face. The villagers demand that she:

  “Write about women in houses without electricity.”

  “Write about the dangers of living in a police state.”

  “Write about Third World issues.”

  “Write about …about …”

  “Stick to the real issues that face Black women writers.” They reprimand her: “Your sexuality is your personal business. We don’t want to hear about it.”

  They accused her of enjoying the luxury of being a lesbian in a decaying society, of forgetting about their problems.

  But the villagers’ voice is also very much the voice of the author. Silvera’s story “Caribbean Chameleon,” which is included in this volume, explodes with tension as a Caribbean woman arrives in Canada, her place of work and exile, and reaches the breaking point on an immigration line. Such varied and often conflicting identities vying for living space within one imagination may well be one of the hallmarks of the lesbian sensibility. Many of the stories in this collection are infused with the energy necessary to balance such a vigorous, often unruly, and sometimes maddening internal population.

  Like Silvera, who tells her story by breaking up language to reflect her narrator’s crisis, several other contributors use innovative narrative forms that both incorporate and transform national literary traditions: the Uruguayan Peri Rossi often works with surreal allegories, reminiscent of such Latin American writers as the Argentinean Luis Borges. Marguerite Yourcenar, who is well known for rewriting both history and classical myth, creates a new universe for the mythic figure of Sappho. A pioneering voice in French-Canadian feminist literary theory, Nicole Brossard, represented in this collection by an excerpt from her novel Mauve Desert, invents a unique structure to tell her story. Finally, Maureen Duffy puts a new twist on the Joycean technique of stream of consciousness.

  The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction is marked by firsts: An excerpt from Anna Blaman’s pioneer work, Lonely Adventure, often referred to as the Dutch Well of Loneliness, is published here in an English translation for the first time. The same is true for the contemporary French writer Mireille Best, the German author Karen-Susan Fessel, the Slovenian author Suzana Tratnik, and the French-Canadian writer Jeanne d’Arc Jutras. Another kind of first is the inclusion of the Cuban writer María Eugenia Alegría Nuñez. To include her work, both the writer and the editors had to overcome a series of obstacles such as the American embargo and the lack of direct telephone and mail contact.

  Many of the voices that meet here for the first time would not have reached us without the ground-breaking work of international lesbian and gay civil rights organizations. Because these organizations have fought for lesbian visibility and acceptance, the 1990s have seen an emergence of a dynamic international lesbian writers’ community that is of both artistic and political importance.

  Mary Dorcey, a longtime member of the Irish feminist and gay liberation movements, captures the sense of possibilities arising out of such work in her story “A Noise from the Woodshed.” We see her characters going about their lives: making love on a riverbank, repairing leaky gutters, and finding surprise allies where they least expect it. Like the river that runs through the story, Dorcey’s prose sparkles with hope. Gina Schein, an Australian writer, draws on a similar kind of energy in her story “Minnie Gets Married.” Echoing a young world filled with irreverent pioneers, Schein humorously turns a stately and conventional moment on its head.

  Children with their innocence and enthusiasm bring another dimension to this energy of resistance. In Christa Winsloe’s novel, a young girl follows her passionate attraction for a teacher, despite the rigid and punishing rules that threaten to break her spirit. Violette Leduc gives a portrait of an endangered youthful energy that almost springs from the page. Dionne Brand’s children turn a rural classroom into a theater of joyous curiosity. And finally, the Maori writer Ngahuia Te Awekotuku follows her adolescent character as she experiences both the power of her own lust and the abuses of the adult world. Taken as whole, these images of young girls prefigure the adult lesbian woman who is marked by a refusal to submit to the mutilating social forces that would confine her.

  Writing about childhood is emblematic of the need to keep the past alive. For the lesbian writer, as for any marginalized artist, documenting the past and imagining a future takes a particular kind of stubborn courage. As Monique Wittig, the French lesbian feminist author, has written in her influential book, Les Guérillères: “You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remem
ber. Or failing that, invent.” Without a past—remembered or invented—the present lacks meaning and the future is unimaginable. By exploring the unspoken and creating a bridge between memory and hope, the stories contained herein respond to the urgency of Wittig’s call to break history’s hold on women’s imagination.

  Both the fiction and the editorial comments represented here necessarily reflect only a part of the story. We are sure that in the future, the boundaries formed by the covers of this book will be expanded—there is so much more to be done, so many worlds that remain unspoken. Yet we hope this collection and the writers in it will contribute to the realization of a compelling dream: in the words of the Spanish author Esther Tusquets, “The old dream of seeing art, love, and revolution joined.”

  Mary Dorcey

  In “A Noise from the Woodshed” (1989), the Irish-born writer Mary Dorcey captures, as she describes it, the “fertile chaos” that accompanies the balancing act as women go about the business of living “the practical, the emotional, the political, and the sensual” all at the same time. An internationally recognized poet, short-story writer, and novelist, Dorcey continues to be an influential voice in the development of the Irish feminist and lesbian movement. We have chosen this story to open the collection because it depicts both in its form and content the rush of possibilities open to women when they leave the well-worn path of social expectations far behind. Irish to its bones and yet international in its depiction of the worldwide communities of politically active lesbians and other concerned women, “A Noise from the Woodshed” is a story of hope—sensual, resilient hope.

  from A NOISE FROM THE WOODSHED

  So it was one of those days, it might have been the third or the fourth or some other day entirely but one of those days anyway. You were up on a ladder fixing a leaking gutter, and she was at the bottom holding the middle rung to keep it steady and passing you up hammers and nails and putty and saws and books and photographs and anything else you might need, and she was explaining to you her problems as a painter—an artistic painter, let it be known, and you were listening, and saying, every now and again, such useful, empathetic things about wall painting and ceiling painting and floor painting and things undreamed of by Michelangelo and in between times, as she handed up the hammer and the putty and the photographs of the one before and the one before her, of her aunt and her sister and one of her brothers—the better one—she was telling you about her mother, about the problem she was making for herself by leaving her unphoned for as long as it was taking to tell you about the problem, and what with going up and down rungs for inspiration and consolation and slices of Bavarian cheesecake—her sister’s recipe, for bites and embraces, it was surprising how much of the gutter got fixed. And then the cat came along, or two or three: an uncle, a grandniece, and a half sister, and they walked along the roof, two paws on the slates, the other two in the gutter, which is the only way a cat knows to walk along a sloping roof, unless at the very crest of it which, in this occasion what with hammer and nails and ladders and photographs, was far beyond reach. Get down, Uncle Ivor, she said, or Bluebell or Poppy or whoever it was, and it might have been any one of a number too awful to contemplate (so you didn’t) not to mention the damn dog. It’s as well we’re not painting it, she said, and it was, because on other occasions when she had been, one or other, two or four (cats) not to mention the damn dog—and you didn’t—had ambled along and done their cat thing and the paw trail led over and in, up stairs and down to your lady’s chamber in blotches of scarlet and mediterranean blue. And when the goats devoured the ivy and the hens laid eggs in the chimney, you laughed and went on working, and the phone rang unanswered and the letters lay unposted and you forgot them and old quarrels—for already you had had them—old quarrels when she behaved like her father, whose behavior she hated, or you behaved like your mother, a thing you feared was slowly creeping up on you infecting small gestures and phrases. Not that your mother’s hereditary taint was the worst taint you could imagine. Oh no very much indeed, no. After all, you might have resembled your brother, the wrong brother. Or you rehashed or revived older quarrels of other lovers and times, who had left their stain like cat paws in the wet paint of an earlier heart.