BETTER HEALTH CHIROPRACTIC CLINIC
Love letters
"A Total Personal Health Concept"
Sometimes1 these columns feel like love letters to some o f the
important women in our lesbian world
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Coming to Portland!
Saturday, January 28,1989
7:30 PM
Jane Jhiie
Author of "Desert of the Heart"
which became the movie "'Desert ^Hearts'
Good Sam Auditorium
2255 NW Northrup
Advance tickets available
A Woman's Place Bookstore
and A Catbird Seat Books
Donation- $10.00
A Benefit for LCP sponsored By ‘W.OfVP. a n d LinfieCd Cottege
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THANK YOU
just out •
24 • January 1989
offered The Fat Woman Poems to a living room
overflowing with forty women.
Anna read from her new book. Bulldozer
s much as I enjoy and am bouyed by
Rising, a challenging science fiction novel
receiving fan mail. I’ve found it just as
exciting to send the stuff. Often, it results in about a misogynist and ageist society
frighteningly like our own. She noted that this
unanticipated joys. Sometimes it doesn’t even
work, possibly her angriest, has been the first,
take a fan letter, just a word or two of
strangely enough, to attract favorable notice in
appreciation.
the straight press.
A few years ago I was compiling data for a
We all talked about our careers in a kind of
small guide to lesbian publishers. In the pro­
panel discussion. As I spoke. I realized I had
cess. I wrote a letter to Only women Press, a
come
full circle that evening, to be reading at
London - based lesbian feminist company. Lilian
Alana’s side. There was a time when I’d
stopped writing. I worked in a grocery store,
drank a lot, refused to give up my dream, but no
one wanted to read about lesbians. I was on the
shelf. Maybe forever.
Then Sinister Wisdom came along. It had the
lesbian content and the integrity of The Ladder.
I sent the founding editors, Katherine Nicholson
and Harriet Ellenberger. a story inspired by the
existence of the magazine. They printed it. I
was on my way again and haven’t stopped since.
Now Alana is carrying on that tradition and I
sat with her as a peer. Sometimes these columns
feel like love letters to some of the important
women in our lesbian world.
There is a place on Girlfriend’s land, equi­
distant from the house and my trailer, where a
bench sits in aclearing. Earlier in the afternoon,
Alana had sat in the sunlight looking at peace,
Mohin and Anna Livia are the publisher-
like a Jewish lesbian Buddha, if that’s not too
editors. But I didn’t know this. I didn’t know
much o f a contradiction in terms. After leaving
that Anna, the author of one of my favorite
my trailer, Anna took her place on the bench, a
books. Relatively Norma, was also a publisher
contrast with her longish dark hair falling over
until she responded to my business-like query
her face, as she intently selected her reading for
with a gratifying familiarity about my own
the night. Poets in our garden, like exotic
books. It was probably the first praise I’d ever
flowers blooming.
gotten from a non-American.
So that's my tale of where one fan letter can
“ Oh, boy!” I said to Girlfriend. I then wrote
lead. Anna is back in London again being a
a rather restrained fan letter back to Anna. She
publisher
and a writer, and I’m penning her
is, after all, British, and I didn’t want to act the
letters as a friend, a new feeling. I look at fan
gushy Yankee. Though our correspondence has
letters a little differently now. Like these from
been fun and elucidating, I never thought I’d
readers of my new book;
meet this highly literate, quick-witted writer in
A woman in the south (Maybe I shouldn’t
the flesh. Certainly never thought to be talking
count this as a fan letter, but I do). I’d written
to her across the fold-out table in my trailer.
about Hawk Madrone, a friend here in Oregon
But there she was last fall, real and with an
who, among many other things, hand-knits
unexpected warmth and lovely eyes.
socks. The reader wanted to order some, as
It all began when she went to visit her
most footwear is not made to fit fat women.
“ mum” in Australia. She happened to have one
A woman in my own community, basically
of those tickets which would either fly her back
saying. Go, Frenchy! when she read Frenchy
to London after her visit, or, for the same price,
fly her home the long way, via the West Coast of
Tonneau’s expert comments on the butch-
the United States. Via Oakland to be exact. So
femme controversy.
An older woman in the Midwest who
Anna arranged to stay with Alana Dykewomon,
poet, author o f Riverftnger Women, They Will
surprised herself by telling me her lesbian-life
Know Me By My Teeth, and editor of Sinister
story. That missive reminded me of the letters
Wisdom magazine. They’d met at the 1988
Ann Bannon and Valerie Taylor refer to so
International Feminist Book Fair in Montreal.
fondly, sent to them back in the sixties when
Both in their thirties, both separatists, both
women would read their books and write.
brilliant, both possessing wonderful senses of
Thank you! / thought I was the only one in the
humor, it seemed perfectly logical for them to
world!
expand their friendship by arranging a flight
But best of all, the letter from the shy woman
path which would, in the end, take Anna all the
I’d described in an earlier column: she’d
way around the world.
hovered in the background at a book signing and
When I got wind of this adventure, my first
finally came to the table for a signature. I
thought was to zip down to Oakland to see
mentioned in the column that she was one of the
Alana again and to meet my longtime
women I most wanted to write for, a reader
correspondent. Anna. What was an eight hour
who. “ When she le ft. . . backed out all the
drive, after all, to Anna’s marathon, not to
way, grinning. Toothpick House against her
mention Alana’s hectic balancing of a visitor, a
cheek like a prize,” She recognized herself in
full-time job. and full-time editing. But
the column and reached out once more.
scheduling made the trip impossible for me; I
As I reached out to Anna, she to me; as the
would be just getting back from the East Coast.
Southern woman reached out to Madrone; as
As fortune would have it, Alana Dyke­
Alana and Anna connected; as we all dare to
womon turned out to be a trooper. She rounded
reach out to one another. This is how we build
up a couple of friends. Dolphin and Jasmine,
our community. And our community has no
whisked Anna out of the air and into a car, and
boundaries that can’t be crossed, whether it
they all set out for the mountains of Oregon to
takes a trip around the world to do it or a shy
attend our book party for Girlfriend’s re-issued
letter saying thanks for being there for me.
•
The Cunt Coloring Book and my collection of
these columns. The Amazon Trail.
Alana is a quiet woman, with a beautiful
Lee Lynch's newest book is The Amazon Trail,
smile and manner. Her poetry is passionate. We
a collection o f her syndicated columns. (Naiad,
had asked the guests to read, too, and Alana
1988, $8.95)
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