All of Me Read online

  “All of Me celebrates rage as a way to reject a culture that isolates women from one another. Such a necessary read!”

  —Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

  “All of Me: Stories of Love, Anger, and the Female Body is not your typical feminist anthology, mostly because it busts open binaries, gender and otherwise, in brave and fierce ways. I have been thinking about the importance of feminism with regards to intimacy—in relation to ourselves, to our stories, to our work, to each other, and to the planet. This wide-ranging collection of stories and interviews is deeply intimate in all of these ways. All of Me brings you on a journey through people’s lives, connecting you to each story. Whether the writers and storytellers are sharing personal narratives or ideas, they are told in intimate, courageous, and beautiful ways. Bravo to Dani Burlison for creating the space for all these diverse and inclusive stories to be shared. By the way, reading this book will crack you open toward feeling more compassion and love. Read it. Read it out loud. Buy it for everyone you know. And then read it again.”

  —carla bergman, coauthor, Joyful Militancy: Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times

  “Visceral, raw, and personal, All of Me is the barbaric yawp of womanhood unrestrained. Ranging from the confessional to the call to action, this collection of deeply personal writings tears back the veil of womanhood to show the glorious and gritty guts of it all. Unfiltered, unadulterated, open; witness the wounds and the wisdom of what it means to be a woman today.”

  —Lasara Firefox Allen, author of Jailbreaking the Goddess: A Radical Revisioning of Feminist Spirituality

  “These stories of resilience center the voices and experiences often overlooked and unheard. All of Me: Stories of Love, Anger, and the Female Body is just what is needed in this time to balance the torrents of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and violence filling our everyday newsfeeds.”

  —Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

  “An incredible array of voices gather together in this tightly packed, raucous anthology. If ever you felt the need to focus feelings of deep anger, All of Me serves as an almost step-by-step manual of rage.”

  —Inga Muscio, author of Cunt: A Declaration of Independence and Rose: Love in Violent Times.

  All of Me: Stories of Love, Anger, and the Female Body

  Edited by Dani Burlison

  © 2019 the respective authors

  This edition © 2019 PM Press.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

  ISBN: 978–1–62963–705–1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019933011

  Cover by Mikayla Butchart

  Interior design by briandesign

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  PM Press

  PO Box 23912

  Oakland, CA 94623

  www.pmpress.org

  This edition first published in Canada in 2019 by Between the Lines

  401 Richmond Street West, Studio 281, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3A8, Canada

  1–800–718–7201

  www.btlbooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher or (for photocopying in Canada only) Access Copyright www.accesscopyright.ca.

  Canadian cataloguing information is available from Library and Archives Canada.

  ISBN 978–1–77113–466–8 All of Me paperback

  ISBN 978–1–77113–467–5 All of Me epub

  ISBN 978–1–77113–468–2 All of Me pdf

  Printed in the USA.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Dani Burlison

  Chama

  Christine No

  Explicit Violence

  Lidia Yuknavitch

  Grab My Pussy, I Dare You

  Michelle Cruz Gonzales

  On Anger and the Black Female Body

  an interview with Artist Kandis Williams

  Tales of a Culture-Straddling Resident Alien

  Vatan Doost

  Fear, Safety, and the Realities of an Undocumented Student in a Border State

  an interview with Deya

  I’m a Hysterical Woman

  Phoenix LeFae

  How the European Witch Hunts Continue to Influence Violence against Women around the World

  an interview with Silvia Federici

  Dear Man with the Indigo Cardigan

  Anna Silastre

  Fire and Ice

  Dani Burlison

  Fear, Anger, and Hexing the Patriarchy

  an interview with Ariel Gore

  Ink

  Michel Wing

  Merging Sacred and Mundane

  Bethany Ridenour

  Notes on Racism, Trauma, and Self-Care from a Woman of Color

  an interview with acupuncturist Lorelle Saxena

  Locking Doors

  Airial Clark

  Violence, Generational Trauma, and Women’s Empowerment in Indigenous Communities

  an interview with Patty Stonefish of Arming Sisters

  Thoughts on Mother’s Day

  Nayomi Munaweera

  On Sharing Our Stories

  an interview with Melissa Madera of The Abortion Diary Podcast

  In the Belly of Fuckability

  Margaret Elysia Garcia

  Last Drink

  Leilani Clark

  How to Be A Genderqueer Feminist

  Laurie Penny

  Coming Out as Trans in a Small Hometown

  an interview with artist Ariel Erskine

  Origin

  Wendy-O Matik

  Fucking Patriarchy through Radical Relationships

  Wendy-O Matik

  What’s Money Got to Do, Got to Do with It?

  Kara Vernor

  Demystifying Sex Work

  an interview with P.A.

  Auntie Starhawk’s Sex Advice for Troubled Times

  Starhawk

  Love as Political Resistance: Lessons from Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler

  adrienne maree brown

  Burnout, Sacred Leadership, and Finding Balance

  an interview with Gerri Ravyn Stanfield

  What Is a Home?

  Sanam Mahloudji

  Discovering the Radical Possibility of Love

  Melissa Chadburn

  Desert Rain

  Avery Erickson

  Transmigration

  Milla Prince

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CONTRIBUTORS

  Introduction

  Dani Burlison

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for opening this book. In it, I hope you will find stories that resonate with you and inform your work in the world. Inspired by my two-volume zine Lady Parts, my intention with this collection of essays and interviews is to provide a space for the gritty and honest reality of living as a woman in these times; a time when binary gender lines are gorgeously blurred and embraced, where the voices of queer women, poor women, and women of color are being amplified and where women—the whole warrior lot of us—can share our pain and joy and revel in the strength that comes with being survivors.

  When the Lady Parts zine was first created in 2015, I was preparing for and recovering from a hysterectomy. Having my uterus removed led me to reflect on all of the things women’s bodies go through, like complicated relationships with menstruation, reproductive issues like abortion and infertility, body dysmorphia, childbirth, gender confirmation surgeries, and more. I also thought about the various traumas women experience from the
outside world, the physical and emotional violence and violation we carry in our bodies, and how voicing our feelings of anger about these traumas is often unwelcome in the world and frequently met with dismissal; we are seen as nothing more than “Angry Feminists.” We need to calm down. We need to tone police ourselves and each other. We need to remember our place.

  As if we have nothing to be angry about.

  Naturally, this pisses me off. So I put together a second zine, focusing entirely on anger.

  Working on that issue was eye-opening. At the time, the only resources I could find about women and anger were workbooks for women about how to banish anger from our lives. There were few similar resources for men, though I did find a handful of books marketed toward men about how to tame the lady rage (funny to note that as I write this, times are changing: I know of at least two books about women and anger recently published by amazing feminist writers).

  Upon completion of a year of writing and collecting tales of women’s anger for that project, I immediately felt a knee-jerk response to wash over the rage in those stories with a follow-up zine all about love; there remains some uncomfortable knot in the depths of my nervous system about the stigma that comes with being a woman expressing anger and the societally ingrained need to suture that “bad” emotion and to soothe it with a sweet healing salve. We read account after account of women being raked across the proverbial coals for calling out abuse and injustice, yet very few accounts of that same criticism for the abuser or the act of injustice itself. Dylan Farrow was often called out as simply wanting to ruin the career of her abusive father Woody Allen. “Why wouldn’t I want to take him down?” she asked in a televised interview. “Why shouldn’t I be angry?” On another point in the spectrum, international media spent weeks critiquing tennis goddess Serena Williams after she confronted an umpire during the 2018 U.S. Open (and much of it was fueled by racism), yet her male counterparts have historically lost their shit on the court with not so much as the bat of an eye from the media. And the world watched as Trump dismissed the rage of anti-Kavanaugh activists as they confronted Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator; Trump claimed they were paid actors. And the most frustrating part of this is that much of the critique comes from other women, even self-proclaimed feminists. It feels unsafe to be a woman with anger, yet I feel it is a necessary emotion that can create amazing things if channeled effectively. As I wrote in the introduction to Lady Parts no. 2:

  We need more outlets. We need each other. We need the more privileged in our communities to step up and help unload some of the burden of the folks who are struggling or targeted or living in fear because of the anger of dominant culture. And most of all, in my opinion, we need our righteous anger to change the systems that brought us here in the first place—through direct action and magic spells and community building and through listening to each other.

  You’ll find stories of anger in these pages. I hope you can hear them, hold them, and use them to inspire your own storytelling.

  And, of course, we need stories of love in our lives too. You’ll also find those here, whole stories of love and intimacy and what it means to work on loving our bodies, our communities, and our families—both of origin and of choice.

  This project also occupies a specific location in the feminist spectrum.

  Growing up poor, I always felt a little twinge of awkwardness calling myself a feminist. From where I sat—either in a working poor agricultural corner of the hot Sacramento Valley during my childhood, and later as a twenty-something single mother in line at a food bank or fumbling my way through an education as a first-generation college student in my thirties (while cleaning houses and working low-wage jobs)—the feminism I saw portrayed in the media often felt like a foreign land that I couldn’t afford to enter. I felt out of place, like something bigger and deeper was missing.

  So I sought out and found my people in the margins.

  The version of feminism where I currently reside has always felt deliciously magical and scrappy, maybe too far left for the masses, with its imperfect utopia and inclusion of women of color, poor women, sex workers, trans women, witches, anarchists, queer moms, women with disabilities, recovering addicts, abuse survivors, “spinsters,” and women whose bodies don’t fit the mold of what society deems valuable. Ultimately, women who have fought to find a space in this world and who have often experienced unbearable trauma yet have found courage and support in sharing their stories of love and anger and the history of their bodies.

  These are the people who make this book what it is.

  Admittedly, I put together this collection for selfish reasons too. Every voice in this anthology comes from someone I deeply admire, and I wanted to gather them together in one place so I can visit in the dark and trying moments of these times and be reminded of the power in vulnerability and the beauty in resilience.

  Someone once said that love and anger are two sides of the same coin, and for women, there are worlds to be explored with every flip of that coin and countless ways in which our bodies experience, process, and express that love and anger. My hope is that readers find a sliver of that truth in these stories and interviews.

  Thank you for reading. Now go smash the patriarchy.

  Dani Burlison

  Santa Rosa, California 2018

  For my mom, the ultimate survivor.

  Chama

  Christine No

  There is a word in my language: Chama. It is an imperative and an imploration. It means “be patient” in the utmost sense: hold it in, push it down, repress it. It means take it, bear it. Do not react. A good woman is obedient. Chama, chama—my grandmother’s two hands press down on her solar plexus. Tsk! Chama, when I tell her, the first time, that my stepfather touches me down there.

  Chama—because you are a woman.

  Chama—because women bear the whole wet world.

  Chama—why are you surprised?

  This is why we exist: as vessel, as repository—

  I grew up in a violent, abusive household—like classic, like textbook.

  My stepfather was (is) an alcoholic narcissist (calls himself Zen Buddhist, Poet, Philosopher).

  He once held a knife to—

  He came into my room many nights and—

  This went on for over a decade. I grew up in constant fear of—

  And I tried to break the rule. I did not stay silent. I did not chama.

  I was not prepared for the repercussions:

  My mother told me, Watch your mouth! Sent me away for three months.

  My aunt said she’d pray for me.

  My grandmother murmured chama, chama, chama when I appeared at her door—scraped, bruised, hysterical with disbelief.

  What else did they know to do?

  It has taken me a long time to come to this answer: nothing.

  They were raised to abide by the same rules.

  I’ve spent years on concrete floors, in motel bathrooms, trying to smash, snort, slice through my body and cut out my heart—to purge myself of chama. This singular phrase kept my mother in bed for days, practically comatose—eyes wide, unblinking fish, belly-up. Or she would disappear for weeks away at a time; pulling lever after slot machine lever—hoping for a miracle.

  Chama landed me in psychiatric care: no shoes and a flimsy gown. Shattered glass girl; weakling, so ashamed. I named my broken vessel Chama. I named my stuffed animal, my ugly feelings, Chama. What facilities are we given to cope with so much abuse, such violence, other than a mouth trained to keep shut? A heart disciplined to take it, because—

  This is why I write.

  This is why I mine old wounds and leave fresh scars. This is why I speak up about abuse, why I participate. This is why I tell my story over and over again, even though it leaves me emptied, each time. I tell my story in order to live.

  When kept quiet, unaddressed, domestic abuse perpetuates like brushfire; manifests in new faces, new generations. We entangle ourselves in partners who will do what
our stepfathers did.

  After all, this is how we learned to touch and be touched—

  I know too many survivors who have had to chama, still do. After all, the further embedded a stake, a coping mechanism, a broken mantra, the more excruciating it is to find and remove, unlearn.

  But here you are, elbow deep in your own wounds; careful not to break further your tender self.

  And here you are—fighting to heal. How brave you are.

  Keep Going. You are not alone. You are not invisible.

  I see ya—

  As far as I am concerned, there is no chama. There is no need to hide a chasm behind a smile, no need to turn rage inward, anymore. What happened to me is not my fault. That it kept happening is not my fault. That I loved men who repeated these patterns is not my fault. It has taken me nearly two decades of chama to learn these lessons, to break away from toxic unions, to unbreak my heart. But I did it.

  I broke the cycle.

  Should I have a little girl, she will never have to chama in the face of violence. She will never sleep in a closet. She will never remember her mother as a fish, belly-up, look in her eyes far away gone.

  And if anyone tries to hurt her, silence her, they will have her mother—I am a Destroyer of Worlds—to get through, first.

  And believe me, I will have questions—

  And whoever messes with my Baby Girl

  —they’d better have answers.

  Explicit Violence

  Lidia Yuknavitch

  In a bar, with friends, listening to a man I’ve admired for years saying this: “Enough with the sob stories, ladies. We get it. If I hear one more story about some fucked up sad violent shit that happened to you, I’m going to walk. You win! You win the sad shit happened to me award! On behalf of my gender, I decree: we suck!” Laughter. The clinking of glasses. Again, the secret crack in my heart. Stop telling.

  The first time I saw my father’s specific sadistic brutality manifest in physical terms, I was four. My sister was flopped across his lap, bare bottom. He hit her thirteen times with his leather belt. I counted. That’s all I was old enough to do. It took a very long time. She was twelve and had the beginning of boobs. I was in the bedroom down the hall, peeking out from a faithlessly thin line through my barely open bedroom door. The first two great thwacks left red welts across her ass. I couldn’t keep watching, but I couldn’t move or breathe either. I closed my eyes. I drew on the wall by my door with an oversized purple crayon—large aimless circles and scribbles. Not the sound of the belt—but her soundlessness is what shattered me. Still.