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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1987)
R E A D I N G W I N T E R Women's potpourri "Move on up to Professionals 100 . . . You deserve the best." Space travelers, a poor black woman struggling against otla Southern women, white and black heroines all. — love scenes) and comes to its conclusion in City o f Sorcery. The Darkover series is pub lished by DAW Books, Inc. his article could be entitled. "Looking A second trilogy, well-known among les for a Heroine on Earth and Other bian science fiction fans, is the Titan trilogy Planets." It encompasses a diverse selection by John Varley. The Titan trilogy is similar to o f books about a diverse group of women the Darkover series in its adventuresome who are not all Earth-bound. Most impor pace and thorough detailing of another tantly. this selection represents women as world. The world is Gaea, but what or who is neroines. These fictional characters mirror G aea? The question plummets Cirroco Jones, back to us images of women who are commander of the spaceship Ringmaster and independent, resourceful, adventuresome her crew into their first Gaean adventure. and human. Cirroco is the epitome of the brave space If you enjoy escaping the boundaries of captain: but she loses all courage when she ordinary Earth when you read, join Marion discovers that her science officer. Gaby Zim m er Bradley on the planet Darkover of Plauget. is in love with her. Does Gaby's the adventures o f the Free Ama/ons. Bradley persistent romancing of Cirroco result in is well known among science fiction aficio love, friendship and wonderful sex'* Read nados for her many books detailing the life Titan. Wizard, and Demon to leam this and and times of that mysterious planet. Dark- much more about living, loving, and surviv over. Woven among this series is a trilogy ing in the strange world of Gaea. Berkley focusing on the lives of the women known as Books publishes the Titan trilogy. the Guild of Free Ama/ons. Leaving all these wonderful lesbians in In particular, the trilogy is the story of two space is difficult to do. but dow n on the women. Magda Lome, aTerran. and Jaelle planet Earth there are more heroines. One of n'ha Melora (Zayella. daughter of Melora). a them is Janie, a black woman living ir. the Free Amazon, whose lives first become en rural South in the early 1920s and '30s. Janie tangled in "T he Shattered Chain” when is the heroine of Zora Neale Hurston's classic M agda, m great confusion and under less story Their Eyes Were Watching God [Univer than ideal circumstances, » takes the Oath of sity of Illinois Press]. Early in life Janie learns the Free Amazons. what awaits her in this world as a bijck The binding oath requires Magda to live in woman. Her grandmother explains: "Honey, a Guild House w ith many other women and de white man is de ruler of everything as fur undergo a rigorous apprenticeship to leam as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some the way o f life o f a Free Amazon. Magda is place w ay off in de ocean where de black challenged in main wavs at the fhendara man is in power, but we don't know nothin’ Guild House to the delight of readers and but what we see. So de white man throw Guild sisters she discovers she is definitely down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick w om an-idenffieu. rhis discovery, and the it up. He pick it up because he have to. but he impact u has on both Magda and Jaella. is don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. detailed in Theodora House (some wonderful B Y K E L L Y M A S E K T Kathy Tysinger 287-8989 665-2936 • Residential, HUD Properties, Business Opportumties/Commercial • Free consultation: The Buying Process, Earnest Money Agreements, Competitive Market Analysis, Financing. • Buying or Selling • City or Country. "Professional and Quality Service for your special needs” (P&JftgKXiALT ICO) Professionals 100 Inc. Realtors 2100 N.E. Broadway Suite 2-A Portland, Oregon 97232 287-8989 | BIRD MARKETPLACE You can't go home again Driven from his native homeland by the Nazi barbarians, Klaus Mann wandered the world in disillusionment and died, by his own hand, a foreigner. B Y Tues-Sat 10-6 Sun 11-5 Closed Monday COME SEE OUR NEWLY REMODELLED SH O P WITH MORE PRODUCTS AND GIFTS FOR YOU AND YOUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. D ecem b er S p ecia l Fancy Parakeets (with cage purchase) $6.99 New Arrivals N o rm a l a n d S ilv er D ia m o n d D o v e s SKIDM ORE FOUNTAIN BLDG. 2 8 SW 1st (next to Saturday Market) 227-1410 Just Out • 16 • December. 1487 F. L __R E D O N laus Mann, author of the novel Mephisto . committed suicide in 1949. The son of Thomas Mann. Klaus Mann, a homosexual, left Germany forever in 1933 during the rise of the Third Reich. He explained later: "Since I w as 19 I have never ceased to protest — though w ith too weak a voice and w ith inadequate arguments — against reaction, imperialism, m ilitarism , against nationalism and exploita tion ” Like his French counterpart Rene Crevel. Mann wrote several novels before his ultimate political disillusionment set in Mann and his sister Erika Auden (married to poet W. H. Auden in order to obtain foreign citizen ship) performed a cabaret act together in Berlin during the so-called decadent period o f the twenties — the period Christopher Isherwood wrote o f in The Berlin Stories. Dorothy Thompson said: "Practically every body who in world opinion had stood for what w as currently called German culture prior to 1933 is now a refugee ” Klaus Mann was at the forefront o f German culture throughout the twenties. In 1925 he published his first novel. The Pious Dance: The Adventure Story o f a Young Man The protagonist. Andreas, goes out into the world, sees the nightlife of Berlin and Parts, peopled w ith Firbankian characters and situations: he sees the passions that exist between two men. the disappointments and the \ irtues Then when he has exhausted his capa city for passion, he goes on to travel the world, determined in the end to return home and m am his chi lh<H»d sweetheart. The Pious Dance is a K Specializing in Hand Fed Baby Birds J JJ naive book but it is richly evocative of the period in which it was written. At 19. Mann had yet to write his greatest works. When the Nazis deprived Klaus Mann of his citizenship he became a citizen of the Czecho slovakian Republic ir. the days just before it fell under Nazi domination. He also lived in France. Switzerland and Holland. In Amster dam. Mann edited a journal which he used not only for literary purposes, but also to fight fas cism. His patrons were Auden. Isherwood. Sartre, and Gide. Publication was suspended w hen his lather, still in Germany, was threatened by the Nazis. Klaus Mann came to America in 1936 and began to make the lecture tour with his sister. Klaus and Erika had been to America only once before in 1927. at which time they wrote: "P ro hibition we find absurd and the speakeasies very amusing and interesting.'' But in the late thirties the Manns were talking and writing books about other things. In The Other Germans, pub lished in 1940. tliey wrote: " . . it is essential and necessary to explain, if not to justify, the tragic failure o f our people . . Alas, we shall not always be able to find gentie and under standing w ords for the deeds and attitudes of our brooding nation. We shall have much to com plain of. and on occasion we shall have to indict it ” They wrote that their homeland had been lost to them, for as long as the "barbarian" ruled, it could be their homeland no more. While they asked people that "under no circumstances must you accept the monstrous thing that Fas cism as something which just happens to exist.' which unfortunately cannot be changed.' It can De nigger woman is de mule uh do world so fur as \ h can see. Ah been prayin' fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd. Lawd, Lawd!" Life will be different for Janie, but not without great doses o f courage, humor, and self- determination. This woman and her story will stay in your heart. Sometimes it takes courage plus that little something extra to make it in this world. It’s called sass, chutzpah, a spit-in-their-eye kind o f attitude. The women who speak through author Ellen Gilchrist are these kinds of w. men There's Rhoda. wild, stubborn, and spoiled rotten by her very southern daddy; and Nora Jane Whittington, a "nineteen - year-old self-taught anarchist"; and Trace- leen taking care o f wealthy Miss Crystal and the baby. Crystal Anne. These women begin their adventures in G ilchrist's book Victory Over Japan and con tinue on in the next two collections of stories In the Land o f Dreamy Dreams and Drunk with Love. We meet Nora Jane after she has robbed a bar in the Irish Channel section of New Orleans disguised as a Dominican nun. She flees to San Francisco in search of Sandy, her former boyfriend, and eventually becomes a heroine on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge during a San Francisco earthquake. Rhoda is introduced in a series of three tales in Victory Over Japan. The first is told in first person »angular, a perfect way to introduce the self- centered Rhoda. And finally, we meet Traceleen, wise young woman, maid, and best friend to Miss Crystal. Traceleen begins her record o f all their mishaps in the aptly titled "M iss Crys tal’s Maid Name Traceleen. She's Talking. She's Telling Everything She Knows.” When Traceleen talks, you'll want to listen. Ellen Gilchrist's short story collections are published by Little. Brown and Company. • be changed — but only u die resistance le. this evil remains as strong as does the evil itself.” They also asked people in America to see that Hitler did not represent the German nation: "lik e satanic caricature, he merely embodies its worst and most dangerous qualities. Thus we call out to our American friends: DO NOT HATE THE GERM ANS!” In Escape to Life, published in 1939, Mann wrote: "In the autumn of 1939 I shall be thirty- three. Looking back, it seems a long way to have come, yet what is ahead may be twice as long, if nothing untoward happens. The end might come with startling suddenness and in horrible guise. It's always good to count on a sudden ending. For that matter, the circum stances we grew up in, and are living in today, have robbed us o f any confidence in the stability o f things. It was a gruesome feeling, which had its amusing side all the same, not unlike the amused yet profound terror people feel in an earthquake. If at the end someone were to ask me: Are you glad you lived? then, still exhausted by the wear and tear of earthly life, or already refreshed by joys no mortal can con ceive I would reply: Life on earth was a vile business. I shall be eternally grateful for having been allowed to share it. For, very strange to say. a human being, that transient creature who has to live minute by minute, year by year, as an unending ordeal, can imagine nothing worse and nothing more glorious than his life.” Why did Mann kill himself? Not all of the exiles from Hitler's Germany were able to adapt to other countries easily. There would come a time, after World War 11 when many would want to return to their homelands. But as Mann wrote in the essay "A n American Soldier Re visiting his Former Homeland: ‘Yes, I felt a stranger in my former fatherland. There was an abyss separating me from those who used to be my country men. Whenever I went to Germany, the melancholy tune and nostalgic leitmotiv followed me: YOU C A N 'T GO HOME AC. A. ' •