Hecate's Australian Women's Book Review: Volume 13, Number 2 2001

Walker has returned full circle and, in her retirement, is seeking to settle again within the sweeping arc of the Byron light, `steady as a heartbeat, radiant as Home' (228). She has already confessed her `ability to see relationships, to make connections': she calls these her 'patterning skills' and they have underpinned her successful academic career in literary criticism and textual analysis.

It is these `patterning skills' that have enabled Walker to create this microcosmic narrative of her three-generational formative history (her personal mythopoeia) and, through the metaphorical 'Claude-glass' of her memoir, light has been shed on retrospective horizons, providing insights into that process of our collective, 'shaping perception' which creates out of the 'raw matter' of mere terrain that cultural artefact called 'landscape'.

Once the settler myth-making process has done with idealising the landtakers and has recognised the futility of scapegoating their victims, we may, with Walker, begin to read a different history into (and out of) this shared and sacred place.

Marilla North moved to Queensland from the Blue Mountains a couple of years ago. Following her publication of Yarn Spinners (UQP 2001), she is now completing a biography of Dymphna Cusack, and a Ph.D at the University of Queensland.

not in sepia today:

BORDER CONTROL

Faking Literature. By Ken Ruthven. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Reviewed by Kylie O'Connell

The recent Federal election saw both major parties speak of the 'need' for Australia to protect its National (and cultural) borders. The tropes of invasion, border protection and authentic identities are not of course confined to the political arena. Literature itself not only represents or reflects these issues in the story lines it creates, the actual issues also maintain themselves through their very structure as a legitimating system. Just as the people that the government aims to keep out reflects Australian's raced political process and the characteristics on which our National identity is based, literature maintains its cultural borders by rejecting those cultural texts and practices it finds threatening.

Ken Ruthven's recently published Faking Literature analyses literary studies' lack of engagement with literary forgeries. He suggests that this is because these fakes expose the very spuriosity of all literature and that accordingly, in an effort to maintain its originality and authenticity, it casts these literary forgeries aside. Ruthven questions the borders around such literary institutions as literary studies, the literary awards system, and book reviewing. He suggests that literary forgeries are opportunities to reflect on the nature of society itself - that if we reject literary forgeries from our field of analysis because they are inherently unethical, 'we will never get beyond the banalities of recognition and denunciation.' Forgeries disrupt the very basis of literature and its structures of intelligibility. By merely exposing the fakes we simply reinforce the primacy of 'originals'. Literary studies should include the study of forgeries in its project and in doing so it would have to acknowledge that literature is produced through fields of intelligibility. This would then allow for the analysis of such fields and a logical progression toward the creation of new types of literature - although Ruthven's analysis does not contemplate this conclusion.

Ruthven deconstructs the division between 'original' and 'fake' literature. Using postmodern theory he analyses the ways in which literature maintains its primacy as original artistry through the operation of authorship, authenticity, signature and autobiography. Literary institutions do not like texts that call their operations into question. Thus, even ficto-critical texts or those texts that question the boundaries of such institutions are criticised by the literary establishment. Admittedly this reader is not confronted with a huge range of ficto-critical texts when venturing into the local bookstore, but this does not mean that the borders between 'real' and 'fake' literature are patrolled that closely. Ruthven's citation of Brian Matthews' award winning Louisa is a poor choice since this was a text with much critical attention precisely because its construction questioned the borders between history, literature and biography. Ruthven may be over-valuing the power of the literary institutions to maintain their strict taxonomy of cultural assumptions. Indeed, one of the many unfortunate effects of incidents of literary forgery is that they diminish people's desire to engage in texts that question such forms of writing and in particular their relationship to identity. One should note that there are many reasons why literary forgeries, once exposed, are then ignored. For example, it may be that attention does not want to be given to the model of difference and identity on which the texts and the author's behaviour were ultimately based. While Ruthven's argument is a good one, it leaves this reader wanting to consider related issues about the complexity of representing raced and gender identity. Although Ruthven does make reference to the gendered nature of the signature and to receptions of cultural difference, he falls short of a complex analysis of these issues. The initial reception of these signatures and the subsequent denunciation of the texts once exposed as fraudulent are cynically reduced to 'politically correct responses' to the tyranny of identity politics.

This reader's desire for a more detailed analysis of these issues is partly due to my being schooled in feminist literary scholarship which has considered many of these questions. Ruthven does refer to some of this more interdisciplinary work, but nonetheless contains his analysis to arguing with the established Literary (with a capital L) discipline. While not wanting to detract from the very good argument he makes about literature, Faking Literature is one text in an ongoing debate. Ruthven's suggestion that literary forgeries demand serious attention from cultural analysts infers he does not fully acknowledge or value the significant contributions made in this area by postmodern feminist cultural analysts (despite the early intensive reading that led to the first book on Australian feminist literary criticism). Ruthven may need to heed his own criticism about positing origins.

Ruthven does provide one detailed analysis of what he insists is the key text for analysts of literary forgery, namely James Macpherson and his translations of Ossian texts. Ruthven calls this work 'Macphossian literature', indicating the controversy that surrounded Macpherson's 'translations' of these epic Scottish poems. Regardless of, or indeed because of this controversy, these texts became extremely popular and further translations were made in other languages. 'Macphossian literature' provides Ruthven with a model of how questions of history, authorship, translation and authenticity entwine with nationalism and the very establishment of literary institutions. A more detailed analysis of other examples of literary forgery would have enabled him to flesh out the very different ways in which these same categories - authorship, signature, authenticity and nationalism - enmesh themselves in the production of literature. The operation of these categories in the work of the 'first Aboriginal novelist' Mudrooroo and the creation of an Australian literary identity is very different to that which saw the establishment of the origins of a Gaelic poetic tradition. A more detailed analysis of significant literary forgeries, or the function of author identity (as in the case of Mudrooroo), is put aside in favour of a listing of different examples of literary forgery, fakes and farces. While this is in itself interesting it does not fully advance Ruthven's argument about the spuriosity of literature itself.

Faking Literature does make a contribution to the ongoing debates surrounding writing, identity and difference. Ruthven's consideration does point out that these incidents in the world of literature are not to be ignored for they are a window onto our systems of signification and legitimacy. They provide insight into how literature (like politics) deceives us all.

Kylie O'Connell is a researcher with the South Australian Police. She recently completed her Ph.D in Women's Studies, at the Flinders University of South Australia. Her research was on 'performative identity' and representations of identity and difference through literary forgeries' questionable identities.

LOVE'S LABOURS

Love Upon the Chopping Board, by Marou Izumo and Claire Maree. Melbourne: Spinifex, 2000.

Reviewed by Tania Oost

Love Upon the Chopping Board is a biography, or duography, co-written by Japanese born Marou Izumo and Australian born Claire Maree (or JJ as she refers to herself). Meeting in a bar in Shinjuku Ni-Chome, Tokyo, Marou and Claire soon fall in love, move in together and become politically involved in gay liberation efforts in Japan. This book is their combined accounts of their relationship and of the subversive joys and oppressive hardships to be found when living as a gay couple in a heterosexist environment.

Love Upon the Chopping Board effectively elucidates the entrenched oppression inherent in heterosexist and patriarchal bureaucracy, and always these two women are inspiring for their uncompromising confrontation with the powers-that-be. In Japan, for example, it is unheard-of to live legitimately as a gay couple. While straight couples must marry to gain the full legal rights of a family, this is not an option open to, or even often desired by lesbian couples. However, those lesbian women who would prefer to be 'protected' under family law have occasionally adopted their partners in a pseudo mother-daughter relation in order to secure the legal papers and rights that would be afforded to a conventional Japanese family. This hardly seems ideal because the 'mother' could conceivably hold more power in the relationship than the 'daughter' and, if the relationship ended, who would have the right over property? Izumo explains that in order to gain the social recognition that they both need and have a right to, they must not participate in the very institutions which oppress them and that efface their real identities. Instead they follow closely the sentiments of Hashimoto Osamu who writes that 'lovers throw away conventions and promises of love, to fly beyond the earth. If these lovers fall to earth, it will be because of the gravitational pull of single pieces of paper.' (10)

Yet it is these small pieces of paper that make such a difference in their lives. Claire Maree provides an insight into being a 'gaijin' or foreigner in Japan and the problems of obtaining visas and accommodation as a foreign woman. She is forced to return to Australia to complete her degree before her visa can be extended in Japan. Finding accommodation back in Japan is difficult for 'single friends' living together, being apparently less reliable than a (presumably nuclear) family. Izumo must provide a respectable family seal, or stamp (either her doctor-father's or another professional's) which functions as a signature and guarantor for any lease.

In many ways living in a lesbian relationship demands that they reinvent the wheel. Together they create the first legal Joint Living Agreement for same-sex couples in Japan, which gives each partner the legal right to decide on what will be done with the property and body of the other upon her death. Their feelings of exclusion and invisibility, both as lesbian individuals and as a legitimate couple, lead them almost inevitably towards positive political action. From their tiny one room apartment, which they share with long-time feline companion Nyan Nyan, they instigate and organise protests, gay-pride parades, plays and underground magazines. In its detail these chapters resembles a 'how to' guide for arranging and staging such events.

Many of Izumo's chapters diverge from this theme and she provides a compelling and insightful account of her upbringing in a very traditional and patriarchal Japanese family. She was raised to be submissive and to use submissive language towards her father, and when she questioned her role in the family, she was told simply that it is her place because she is a girl. Secrecy and denial were the silent rule in her home and Izumo feels unable to ever discuss her own desires or sexuality within the family, for 'it is better to say nothing' than to disrupt the family. Her feelings of indignation, anger and frustration throughout her account are palpable. She also shares with the reader her first true love, her elopement and eventual abandonment as a young woman, and one gets the feeling her stories are told for their cathartic effect.

Each chapter shifts from one topic and voice to another in a kaleidoscope of personal childhood memories, experiences, Japanese lesbian history, and a 'how to' guide for political activism. Being mainly composed of several chapters originally published in Japanese and solely written by Izumo, Maree's own contribution comes only in this second edition published for English readers. Perhaps for this reason, it at times seems disjointed and unsure of what it means to say. Nevertheless it provides a nice insight into the women's relationship, and into their determined personalities. Its historical references are also a compelling read for the uninitiated.

Tania Oost is an Honours Student in Women's Studies at The University of Queensland.

THE NOVEL OF GOOD INTENTIONS

Faith Singer, by Rosie Scott. Sydney: Hodder, 2001. 327 pp.

Reviewed by Margaret Henderson

Given the potential subject matter of rock music and its importance to culture more generally, surprisingly few Australian novels about rock'n'roll have been written. There are satires by Linda Jaivin, Justine Ettler, and David Foster but (rather like musicians themselves) few writers use rock music as a vehicle for serious social critique. Rosie Scott's latest novel, Faith Singer, however, steps into this territory, as a continuation of Scott's role as novelist of social problems. So Faith Singer seemingly promises some welcome relief from the apolitical, personalist, and family-focussed narratives typifying recent Australian fictions of the contemporary.

Scott is very much a writer of heroines: strong, feisty, sisterly, yet staunchly hetero-sensual types with a political analysis and a social conscience, who do battle with a dehumanising society. For instance, in Feral City we had the two activist sisters, Faith and Violet, battling the wasteland of post-Rogernomics New Zealand. In Faith Singer there's the ex-rock star, Faith, our narrator, who works in a café in King's Cross and takes in homeless, drug-addicted youth. As her name suggests, Faith indeed 'sings' a particular kind of political faith, expressed through her mothering role that is also part of the healing process after losing her daughter to a drug overdose. She befriends a teenage prostitute, Angel, and tries to save her from a similar fate. Tempting dreams of Faith's past musical glories and a possible comeback provide interludes to this mother-daughter (melo)drama.

Unfortunately, one of the book's major weaknesses is how Faith is written. While she is meant to be colourful, warm, complex, astute, a bit of wild girl, Faith ends up as a character riddled with clichés. There is a heavy reliance on her overly descriptive monologues, and some of these are absolute cringe material, for example, at her comeback concert: 'It was as if the music had stirred up the dumb grieving that lies at the heart of all of us; our inarticulate longing for understanding and forgiveness. That hopeful ragged singing out of the darkness seemed to be coming from the very depths of the people there, direct from some universal place of yearning tenderness' (318-19). (Compare this with the climax to Feral City - the similarities are uncanny.) This typifies our Faith: sentimental, a bit overwritten, straining for the poetic image, and with lashings of stodgy humanistic pop psycho-philosophy. Our wild woman actually is fairly predictable, and in her self-help platitudes masquerading as worldly wisdom, she becomes pretty annoying.

Another weakness is the lack of a convincing sense of Faith's career in rock music. Given our Australian indie rock heroines of Faith's generation such as Chrissie Amphlett or Annaliese Morrow, or further afield, Chrissie Hynde or Debra Harry, or even in less alternative genres such as Stevie Nicks, it's hard to make any connection with Faith's rendering of rock'n'roll life and how it affects the girls. It's quite an achievement to make someone who is supposedly an ex-star sound so dull and nice. I sure wouldn't have bought her records or have written her name on my pencil case. On a more pedantic note (though it is symptomatic of the lack of authenticity that troubles the rock narrative), some of Scott's references to rock music are suspect. Faith reminisces about Bruce Springsteen's album The Ghost of Tom Joad as if it was in the dim distant past, but it was only released in 1995. I think she got it mixed up with the far more canonical Nebraska.

The mother-daughter/savior-junkie plot allows Scott to evoke place graphically: there's plenty about King's Cross's underbelly but also its vitality, and this is one of the book's stronger aspects. This setting also gives Scott a range of semi-exotic character types to work with: trannies, junkies, pimps, pushers, the kind-hearted café proprietor, the waitress-observer of the Cross's rich pageant, and the respectable establishment types who feed on this sub-economy. As was the case with Faith, however, the description of characters is marred by cliché. For instance, the recurrence of descriptions of street kids being 'as beautiful as angels', 'angelic', 'angel-like', and a penchant for the word 'primal'. And of course her adopted daughter Angel is beautiful, imaginative, dreamy, and needs a mother. But will she succeed in giving up smack, or will she go the way of Faith's daughter? The problem is the predicable handling of the material and the intrusive narration by Faith. In this book, the moral universe is clear cut.

Scott uses the Cross to expose not only the tragedy of teenage homelessness, prostitution, and drug addiction but to locate it as part of a wider social decay and malaise, which could be termed the heartlessness at the core of capitalism. The solution offered by Scott is Faith's 'good works': that is, an ability to construct nurturing spaces and relationships, and a valorisation of an inherent human creativity. Faith as mother figure, an alternative to the nuclear family, and her own idiosyncratic career path/life is a stark counterpoint to the victims of the system that surround her. Hence the book's emphases on female friendship, art, and the domestic. This importance of alternative modes of family, nurturing, and so on, was central to Scott's vision for an emancipatory political future in Feral City and has much to commend it. And Scott is one of the few contemporary novelists who can be bothered getting angry and trying to write political novels. Although in both Feral City and Faith Singer, it is a politics with a too sweet, too soft heart: bordering on the sentimental and the feminine rather than the feminist. I suspect that this softness arises from Scott's mode of representing politics as a strange mix of nineteenth century naturalist prose, soft left ideology, and social workerly concern. The result is a politics that seems outdated and overly optimistic for the realities it confronts. Scott's anger at the injustices of the system is genuine; I'm just not sure that heroines like Faith and highly descriptive mimetic writing are the answer. And I still find it weird and disappointing that a book covering this kind of subject matter in such a setting can end up dull and predictable, for all Faith's passionate pronouncements about life, politics, and art. The language of punk was invented for just such a historical conjuncture.

Margaret Henderson is a lecturer in Contemporary Studies at the Ipswich Campus of The University of Queensland. Since completing her Ph.D on feminist literary and cultural theory she has published widely in that area and is currently working on a project on the history of Australian Feminism.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN MANDAMOOKA

Bitin' Back. By Vivienne Cleven, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2001.

Reviewed by Barb King

Cross-dressing, drug taking, mental breakdown are not what they seem - or are they? in Cleven's hilarious, quirky narrative about a woman determined to protect her son from the ridicule of a rural community when he starts to dress as a woman. The matriarchal main protagonist, Mavis Dooley, endures crazy experiences, her only relief coming from bingo or watching Ricki Lake on television. Cleven has written a racy novel about an adoring, but confused mother, and her relationship with her son, Nevil; introducing - or maybe not - the issue of gay male sexuality, a relatively unexplored one in Aboriginal women's writing.

Cleven throws the reader straight into the story with Mavis entering her son's bedroom. Through the opening pages Mavis and the reader are introduced to Nevil's new cross-dressed identity. Mavis, at first entertained by what she thinks is playfulness, soon realises that her son is convinced he really is Jean Rhys. Mavis' initial reaction is: '“Are you on drugs, son? Hard shit, eh?” I peer at his face, waitin for a confession. The boy flyin high or what' (3). For Mavis there can be no other explanation as to why her son, the local football hero, could suddenly wake up one morning and declare he is no longer Nevil Dooley, but Jean Rhys the famous, white woman writer. Unless of course, Nevil has decided he is a homosexual. 'There's somethin wrong whit the way he walks, steppin ballerina like as he goes down the hallway. Suddenly I wonder if our Nev is one a those. One of em homos. Well, they don't call em that any more. Gay, that's the word people use. Jesus Christ! Can ya wake up gay?' (6).

Cleven's amusing story becomes more captivating as Mavis desperately tries to hide Nevil from the rest of the community until he comes to his senses. She is terrified of what her brother, Booty, and Nevil's football team mates will do to him if they found out he was wearing 'frocks' - let alone make-up. To cover for Nevil's absence Mavis starts to make up lies about his whereabouts: from suffering from a mystery illness to studying at TAFE. Mavis keeps the inquisitive, and often meddlesome locals at bay for a while, but when Nevil doesn't turn up for football training, some members of the community drop by unannounced to see what's going on. Mavis is confronted by rumours initiated by her nosy neighbour, Mrs Warby, who freely shares it around that she has seen a strange looking female hanging out the washing in Mavis' backyard and she is determined to work out who this mystery woman is.

To make matters worse for Mavis, the arrival on her doorstep of a stranger looking for Nevil further sets tongues wagging. 'The white hatchback crawls down the street, slowing every now and then, the skinnythin wheels crunchin the gravel as it creeps along. Straight out I knowed this car don't belong in this town… A tall blonde-haired man gets out. Leanin one arm on the car door he yells out, “I'm after Nev Dooley”…' (42). Convinced that this must be Nevil's 'friend' (because he is wearing sandals) Mavis invites him inside to try to make sense of her son's recent behaviour. Nosy Mrs Warby thoughtfully offers Mavis advice on how to get rid of this suspicious character. Owing to the briefcase he is carrying, Mrs Warby concludes that he must, of course, be a drug dealer: 'It's all been going on behind your back, Mavis. Drug dealers are here, right in your house! All these years in Mandamooka I've never seen what those sorts of people look like. Today I have… Some bloke walked right in there a with a black port thing, a briefcase. I know a druggie when I see him. They always carry a briefcase!' (75).

Cleven effectively builds suspense and amusement while managing further to develop the comical and off-beat characters and maintain the bizarre, yet humorous, situations in which the reader finds them. Concerned about Nevil's apparent disappearance, his crazy girlfriend, Gracie, is convinced something sinister must have happened to him. In an attempt to get national television coverage of her missing boyfriend, Gracie participates in a land rights rally carrying an enormous photograph of Nevil. Mavis awakes from a nap in front of the TV to hear Gracie's voice. 'Gracie stands in front on protestors holdin a big sign whit the words: Have you seen this man? And a blown-up photo of Nevil holdin a stubbie in one hand a fish in the other' (54). Too late to get Nevil to see for himself, it is Mavis that is, ironically, turned into the mad woman who is seeing things. Cleven propels the reader through the text, encouraged to keep reading to discover not only how the characters got involved in certain predicaments but, even more entertainingly, how they will manage to escape from them.

Cleven's representations of hyper-femininity and hyper-masculinity not only amuse but also challenge assumptions about gender and question sexual stereotypes. Mavis' brother, Booty, organises some activities that he is convinced will effectively change Nevil's mind about wanting to be female. Hearing of Nevil's preposterous desire to be treated as a woman, Booty takes Nevil pig shooting and later arranges boxing matches in the hope of resurrecting Nevil's ultra-masculine image as local football hero. Nevil's perception of femininity is consistent with a hyper-feminised construction and he desires certain womanly accessories such as frocks, heavy make up and a feminine posture and walking style.

Although the narrative is very humorous, issues of particular concern to the Indigenous community, ranging from land rights to undue police attention are intentionally, albeit subtly, referred to in Cleven's text. The volatile relationship between Black and white frequently found in Australian communities has been originally presented in Bitin' Back, in terms of the levels on which its ironies operate. The blatant racism in Mandamooka is accepted as the way things are expected to be. The assumption of white superiority is further expressed when representations of race are presented in conjunction with ideologies of sexuality, in particular, female and non-heterosexual sexuality. The reliance of some characters on uninformed and inaccurate stereotypical images, that are readily accepted by mainstream Mandamooka, lead to suggestions of inappropriate sexuality and drug involvement.

Cleven's representations of the tense interracial relationships in conjunction with perceptions of female sexuality and attractiveness in the text are also reflective of the broader Australian community. The text engages with historical perceptions of Black women's sexual behaviour as promiscuous. When Mavis' best friend Gwen Hinch confronts the wife of the man with whom she has been having an affair with, the wife flatly refuses any possibility her husband was involved in such an affair because 'Darryl doesn't do that with…with black women!' (98-9). Consistent with patriarchal expectations of sexuality the adulterous Darryl was not ridiculed by the community in the way that Gwen was. As it was he who initiated the vicious and derogatory rumours about Gwen his reputation is not marred, although his masculine ego was bruised by Mavis when she publicly humiliated him in the bar following the altercation between Gwen and his wife.

Notions of beauty in relation to Black and white also reiterate hegemonic concepts of white as appealing and Black as unattractive. Mavis describes her face as 'wide as Dotty's arse, plain, fat whit gooby lips, fuzzy hair like a pot scourer, a boxer's nose, thin black moustache on me top lip n skin like sandpaper' (95). Yet, interestingly, Mavis' dialogue with herself subverts the concept of feminine beauty by describing such stereotypical notions of beauty, for example, blond hair and make-up, in an abstract and, in a way, crude manner. For example, although Mavis perceives the appearance of her rival, Dotty Reedman, as unappealing she does concede that Dotty does represent an image of feminine sex appeal. 'She's all tarted up. Dirty blonde hair high as an ant hill. Mini-skirt so short I can almost see her bloomers pokin out. Face painted up like a crayon picture. Blood-red lips, blue eyeshada, rust-coloured cheeks painted round like half bad apples, n eyelashes so long they look like gonna sweep the floor' (95).

While Mavis may assert that Dotty looks ridiculous, she still feels physically inadequate herself and wonders if she should make an effort to conform to such concepts of beauty. After seeing Dotty 'all tarted up' Mavis thinks to herself: 'A woman jus can't win, no matter which way I cut it. I glance down at the ol house dress I got on, small holes in the hem, faded, too big for me; jus flat out ugly' (95). Mavis does later conform to the perceived image of femininity and, although she does not consider herself 'sexy like that piece a meat cross there' (155), she thinks of herself as feminine and appealing. 'But all the same I look all right, I do. The dress I got on is new - Nevil n Trevor got it for me. Bright, covered in flower patterns, all colours…drop-down neckline, part of me chest showin…before I left home, Nev put some shit on me face; lipstick, eyeshada stuff, n done me hair up in a braid' (155).

The conclusion of the novel apparently divulges the reason why Nevil has assumed a different self which, on the surface, appears to be in complete contradiction to his own. Through his expression of a new, and strikingly unorthodox identity, Nevil attempts to subvert the repressive hegemonic ideologies by which he feels trapped. The correlation between Jean Rhys the writer and Nevil becomes somewhat clearer as Nevil identifies with aspects of her life and also with the protagonist, Antoinette, in her 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea that re-writes Jane Eyre from the standpoint of 'the madwoman in the attic'. Cleven, in an interview, explained that she chose the pseudo-identity of Jean Rhys for Nevil to exemplify the isolation felt (perhaps sometimes felt by herself) in that community, and the frustration of not being able to express oneself in the way one wants.* Notions of madness are also a reflection of Rhys' characters, by in particular, the confused and disorientated Antoinette.

Cleven's David Unaipon Award-winning novel extends the ever-increasing and eclectic genre of Australian Indigenous writing. On the surface Bitin' Back is a pleasant, entertaining novel, yet its strategically presented subtle ironies challenge the reader to question the racial and sexual stereotypes that act to secure conformity and limit individual expression in contemporary Australian society.

Barb King recently completed Honours in Women's Studies at The University of Queensland and is currently working there as a Research Assistant.

* Vivienne Cleven, 'Writing Bitin' Back' in Writing Queensland Vol. 96, 2001:7

LIFE IN A WORLD OF MIRRORS

Playing Madame Mao. By Lau Siew Mei. Rose Bay NSW: Brandl and Schlesinger, 2000. 316 pp.

Reviewed by Shirley Tucker

History has cast Madame Mao as an enthusiastic instigator of many of the “excesses” of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Tried as a member of the “Gang of Four” in 1980, Jiang Ching, aka Madame Mao, ex-actress and driving force behind the proletarian operas and films that inspired millions, was sentenced to life imprisonment for her part in the murders, imprisonments and desecration of culture that characterized her husband's rule of China. I don't recall hearing of a Mrs. Mao during Mao's reign and, even today, little has been written about her. Apart from Ross Terrill's highly regarded biography, Madame Mao: The White-Boned Demon, which attempts to present her as an archetypal woman warrior, most accounts agree that the woman who no longer appears in Chinese history books was a most unpleasant, vindictive and opportunistic creature with few, if any, redeeming qualities.*

Despite having such a reviled subject as her main character, Lau Siew Mei skillfully manages to avoid the question of whether Madame Mao was as bad as all that. Instead, she presents her in many contradictory roles played by an actress in Singapore who eventually takes over the character and the writing of her script. Playing Madame Mao is a novel about life as theatre with an intensely personal narrative set against a larger than life but not nostalgic history of dynastic China. The reader is presented with a sequence of appearances and illusions created by the shifting perspectives of the key players; actress Chiang Ching, her dissident husband Tang Na Juan, and her journalist friend Roxanne (a character based on Roxanne Witke, author of Comrade Chiang Ch'ing). The movement between each first person point of view is mediated by third person narrative, and this enables a merging of history and legend, myth and fiction to create a world filled with uncertainty and change that is reflected in the characters' lives.

Despite its focus on such an enigmatic figure, Lau also avoids delivering the sort of autobiographical text that Australian audiences have come to expect from diasporic Asian women writers. In Playing Madam Mao, identities and any politics that attach to them are undermined by Lau's fascinating foregrounding of the complexities of representation itself and its role in oppressive social and political practices. Chiang Ching, an actress who struggles to see herself in the mirror, acts the part of ex-actress Madame Mao. Tang has difficulty recognizing himself in his roles as husband, dissident writer for a Catholic newspaper and political activist. Roxanne's ambition, mirrored in her husband's treachery to Tang, similarly strives in her roles as well-respected and well-paid journalist and one-time friend to Chiang Ching. One of the many strengths of this narrative noir, therefore, lies in its highly literary enactment of each character's search for freedom and love against an impossibly constrained and regulated political and social world.

Playing Madame Mao is also a novel of insinuation. The line between the real and the imagined is blurred as Ching struggles to retain a sense of self that is set apart from the woman that she plays each night. They share many similarities apart from their names, as Ching appears to adopt some of Madame Mao's idiosyncratic behaviours, and as she becomes increasingly aware of the mirror people; the same vengeful creatures of the underworld that once influenced the thoughts and actions of Madame Mao. While Madame Mao was exiled in prison, Ching is exiled in Sunnybank Hills, Brisbane, in what seems an ironic choice of location for her demise as the reviled Madame Mao.

Given the extraordinarily large thematic tapestry that Lau has chosen; freedom, oppression, political intrigue, betrayal, change and stasis, the real and the imagined, it is perhaps not surprising that this first novel from an undoubtedly talented writer has some minor flaws. While surface observations beautifully reflect the inner worlds of each character, I found some of the symbolism a little obscure. For example, during Roxanne's final visit, Ching accuses her of smelling of fish. As fish are associated with perfection and the presence of the mirror people, it is unclear what conclusion to draw from Ching's accusation. While slipperiness is itself an important part of this narrative, sometimes there was not quite enough (for me) to grasp. But perhaps this is the point and Lau has simply drawn a line under any more tiresome explanations of Chinese cultural customs. In view of this I suspect that this novel will not attract the kind of popularity that many other novels by young Brisbane-based authors enjoy and it may not make its way onto university reading lists. Rather than lending itself to readings based on purely on the politics of identity, Playing Madame Mao provides a more complex examination of power, politics and the personal in its finely crafted appraisal of how representation is an inherent component of political and social oppression.

Shirley Tucker is a lecturer in Contemporary Studies at the Ipswich Campus of The University of Queensland.

* Hecate readers, as usual, will have been better informed, in this case by Susan Gardner's article '"The Enemy of Women's Liberation": A Response to Roxane Witke's Comrade Chiang Ching,' Hecate 4.1 (1978): 25-46.

PRECARIOUS POWER

A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis - A Literary Life. By Jacqueline Kent. Melbourne: Viking Books, 2001.

Reviewed by Maryanne Dever

The Literature Fund of the Australia Council recently granted $20,000 to Penguin Books to fund 'intensive one-to-one professional support' from freelance editors for ten newly emerging writers. It seems that important developmental editorial work - once a core publishing activity - can now only be provided by publishing houses when it is subsidised by the federal government. In an era of commodity publishing, the multinational conglomerates that dominate the Australian scene have sought to improve profit margins by cutting back on full-time editorial staff, so that in-house editing is now rare and proof-reading almost non-existent. In this world of skimping and outsourcing, neither emerging nor stablished writers have much prospect of building a long-term professional relationship with company staff. Jacqueline Kent's biography of Beatrice Davis (1909 - 1992), one of Australia's foremost literary editors, takes readers into a world of writing, editing and publishing far removed from today's market-driven imperatives. While those working within the publishing industry have long recognised the influence and legacy of Beatrice Davis, Kent's biography will do much to consolidate wider understanding of her impact on generations of Australian writers.

After completing her BA at the University of Sydney and serving an editorial apprenticeship on the Medical Journal of Australia, Davis joined Angus and Robertson in 1937. Working first as a proof-reader and sales assistant, she was soon after appointed as Angus & Robertson's first full-time in-house book editor. Kent's account of Davis' subsequent career is a story of change, not only for Davis personally, but for Australian publishing: her story is inextricably entwined with that of Angus & Robertson, and the rise and subsequent decline of what was once Australia's leading publishing house. In this way, Kent's study joins important works like A History of the Book in Australia 1891-1945 (UQP 2001) edited by Martyn Lyons and John Arnold in making a welcome contribution to our understanding of the history of publishing and book production in Australia.

Although the greater part of her work at Angus & Robertson involved editing non-fiction works like The Australian Blood Horse, it is to the literary side of Davis' professional life that Kent pays greatest attention. As general editor at Angus & Robertson from the late 1930s through to the early 1970s, Davis played a formidable role in the fostering of Australian literary talent across those decades. A Certain Style is structured largely around Davis' relationships with prominent Australian writers such as Eve Langley, Ernestine Hill, Xavier Herbert, Hal Porter, Ruth Park and Darcy Niland. Drawing heavily on archival sources, Kent teases out the often intense and complicated working relationships that Davis developed with these figures. A prolific letter writer, she was extraordinarily diligent in keeping up communication with her authors, encouraging, cajoling, hectoring, and admonishing them by turns. Through her letters to different writers we gain a sense of her capacity to bolster inexperienced young authors, to deliver measured criticism to those who sought her professional opinion, and to balance firmness with flirtation. Some like Niland and Park found in Davis a mentor whose judgement was critical to their developing sense of themselves as professional writers as they struggled to earn a living. 'A bit of encouragement and advice from the right person', Park wrote to her, 'does so much to smooth out the rough places, of which we've had quite a few lately.'

Other relationships however, proved less straightforward. After discovering Eve Langley's The Pea Pickers among the entries for the 1941 S.H. Prior Memorial Prize and strongly advocating its publication by Angus & Robertson, Davis was then faced with Langley's lengthy disintegration and the delicate job of corresponding over many years with a troubled woman whose subsequent manuscripts - sometimes delivered in enormous batches - were not publishable then, even with the most sensitive editing.* A different order of difficulty existed in relation to authors such as Xavier Herbert and Hal Porter whose egos were only matched by their petulance and occasional perfidy. Davis exhibited enormous skill and patience in managing these authors who proved to be at once demanding, manipulative, sulking and bullying and who clearly never doubted for a moment that they should be accorded priority in their dealings with her or that, in addition to regular editorial duties, she would happily serve as selfless mentor, muse, mother, part-time analyst - and, according to some, occasional lover. The glimpses Kent offers into various writers' careers through their relationships with Davis will likely send many readers back to full-length biographies and memoirs to discover more. But what is communicated here is a measure of the often unacknowledged work that went into the making of Australian fiction in these years, particularly how individual works that now form part of the canon of Australian fiction were shaped through these intense and sometimes difficult exchanges between an individual author and an editor.

But no matter how clearly Davis' voice emerges from the fragments of correspondence quoted here, she nevertheless remains a somewhat enigmatic figure. Behind the well-honed professional persona, significant and interesting contradictions persist. Even while Davis was accorded considerable influence within her own department, men with less experience and talent were routinely granted greater status and influence within the firm and one is left wondering how she really felt about this. The same Davis who could be prissy and prim with respect to a novel's content, appears to have been anything but prim after a few whiskeys of an evening and rumours circulated as to the more colourful aspects of her private life. At times there is a slightly voyeuristic element to the attempts the biography makes to reconcile the professional woman and the private being and perhaps more attention might have been paid to drawing out the tensions Davis inevitably experienced in her endeavours to be taken seriously in an industry unused at that time to women, let alone a married woman, exercising relative power and autonomy in a world where considerable sanctions remained for women who stepped beyond the bounds of convention. The account of the final years of Davis' career in publishing is a poignant one. Her personal travails mirror shifts in the publishing industry itself from being a rather genteel profession with little concern for commercial imperatives to becoming a market-driven industry where books are simply products like any other. While Davis may have had some minor successes in battling with the changing ownership and management structures as Angus & Robertson moved into the 1970s, publishing as she knew it and her place in it had changed irrevocably. But it is the blending of a study of a single career with an effective mapping of the history of a firm and of an industry that is Kent's particular achievement in this book.

Maryanne Dever is Director of the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research at Monash University.

* For a full account of these, see Robyn Colwill's recently completed PhD thesis, 'Corridors of Memory, Passages of the Past: The Retrieval of Eve Langley', School of English, Media Studies and Art History, The University of Queensland, 2001.

COWRIE RIDES AGAIN

Song of the Selkies. By Cathie Dunsford. Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2001.

Reviewed by Meriel Watts

In this fourth novel in the Cowrie series, our hero Cowrie takes us on a journey through the ancient mysteries of the Orkney Islands. Song of the Selkies provides a diversion from the political activism that is central to the previous books in the series. Here, the underlying traditional storytelling theme of the previous books finds prominence and Cowrie as warrior woman takes a back row seat. The talkstory tradition of the indigenous people of Aotearoa, Hawaii and North America emerges as a binding element between the various characters, most of whom have met through their performances at the Edinburgh Festival. Add to the chemistry an Inuit woman and a conservative Brit and you have an unusual mix of lesbian and heterosexual women that takes some time to gel as they learn each other's ways.

After the festival the group journeys together to the Orkney Islands to stay with Ellen, one of their number. But when Ellen becomes Morrigan on her return home, Cowrie begins slowly to unravel the ancient mythology of the Selkies. Is it possible that Selkies really exist, living sometimes as seals and sometimes as humans? Why does fisherwoman Morrigan disappear for long stretches at nights? The superb descriptions of swimming through the sea, twisting and turning and dodging each other through the water, hiding in the seaweed to avoid the great predatory sharks, and of seal bodies slipping sensuously about each other leave the reader longing to share this watery world with the Selkies. Whilst in previous novels we have feasted upon by Dunsford's superlative descriptions of food, this time we are treated to equally wonderful imagery of the sea, biting winds, soaring and swooping birds, barren landscape, and all that is the natural beauty of these wild and magical islands far away in the cold North Sea. As we imbibe the magic of nature, so too we take in the magic of the standing stones and the long ago women's community at Skara Brae. Our band of modern day storytellers involves many of the locals in a talkstory session beside this ancient monument to a long forgotten culture, and gradually the mythology of these lands emerges, including that of the Selkies.

Song of the Selkies is set entirely in the harsh climate of these northern islands, and the reader might miss the warmth of the Pacific and the camaraderie of Cowrie's marae in Aotearoa. But while we must wait for the next book for a return to her home, this one provides us with a delightful and different experience - yet one with dreams that feed the soul and imagery that nourishes the senses just as much as the previous books in the Cowrie series. Even the reader who has never been to the Orkney Islands will come to feel she knows this wild and enchanting place.

Meriel Watts is author of several books including Poisons in Paradise, director of S&H: Organic New Zealand and is an activist leader in the fight to keep New Zealand GE Free: www.organicnz.pl.net

'TALKING DIRTY': SITUATING POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH

Postgraduate Research Supervision. Transforming (R)Elations. Alison Bartlett and Gina Mercer, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.

By Gillian Whitlock

Last year a colleague discussed with me his plans for a large international conference to be held here in Australia in mid 2002. From the very start the idea of a day set aside for postgraduate students was one of the priorities. This day was, in his view, a unique opportunity to place postgraduate research and the needs of postgraduate students at centre-stage, and as the focus of attention for researchers renowned for their work in our sub-discipline. And so the fourth and last day of the conference was set aside for this purpose.

A week or so ago at the end of a session when we had discussed several chapters of her thesis which had excited us both, one of my PhD students raised an issue which was causing her some grief. A conference which would gather the very best people in our research area here next year was organised in a way that made postgraduate students second class citizens. She regretted identifying herself to organisers as a postgraduate student, for this meant she was scheduled to give her paper on the last day of the conference, and at a more remote campus location. She felt sure many delegates would leave early, shop for books, or otherwise avoid the day. From her perspective, the plans for postgraduates produced an awkward and unnecessary split in what should function as an integrated research community.

Thankfully the dilemma was quickly sorted out. She (and others) made their case to conference organisers in a way which led to a rapid reshaping of plans for the conference sessions. The postgraduate day remains, but postgraduate students will present papers throughout the conference.

This incident raises issues which are at the heart of Bartlett and Mercer's collection of essays about the codes and conduct of postgraduate research in Australian universities. How are relations between postgraduate students, their supervisors and the larger research community best conceptualised? What are the needs of postgraduate students in a tertiary sector which is ongoing rapid transformation? How are good working relations established and sustained during the long passage of the research thesis? As the small story above indicates, good intentions do not necessarily produce good results. Gestures of respect and concern can have unintended outcomes. And this is so because this relationship is situated in a nexus of power relations which need to be negotiated with care by both supervisor and supervisee. It is a highly complex and vulnerable personal, social, institutional relationship.

The intention of this collection is to bring a cluster of different approaches and ways of thinking about this relationship together. Many of the essays are personal, and the collection begins with Bartlett and Mercer's subjective discussion of their own relationship as student and supervisor. In the past decade there has been a growing body of literature on postgraduate research supervision. Some of this is the 'how to' genre and, as Mercer points out, when we set out to become supervisors many of us feel overwhelmed by the commitment and responsibility which it involves, and in need of good guidance. Most importantly, we also set out with our own history as a postgraduate student, and this shapes our practices in powerful ways. The editors argue that much of the material currently available fails to recognise how supervision is embedded in various forms of inequality and difference. Characteristically this literature deals with academic preoccupations about topic, research methodology and thesis writing, with little attention to the commitments, identifications and complexities that arise due to the impact of family responsibilities, cultural and racial difference, differently-abled bodies, and sexualities. The point is, that the nature of the relationship between supervisor and supervisee in the Australian system of postgraduate research, a close and exclusive working relationship over a long period of time, means that these considerations are vital.

The intention here is to trigger a particular kind of thinking about postgraduate pedagogy. By drawing on metaphors and notions of mutual and cooperative interrelationship – the conversation for example, or the narrative made up together – and by focussing on intimate and detailed stories about actual postgraduate supervision experiences which become emblematic stories the editors seek to develop a situated knowledge. “We want to make space for 'talking dirty'… for slipping beneath the 'cleaned up'official discourses of the institution, for going beyond the hygenic checklists of the 'how-to' guides'(5). Clearly, and quite specifically, feminist methodologies are important in generating this approach to postgraduate pedagogy. For example the concern with difference, and the importance of the subjective and experiential as important ways of knowing, the interest in the specifics of social, cultural and corporeal circumstances, and the search for more egalitarian ways of representing this relationship suggest the influence of feminist thinking. Germinal here is the idea that current dominant ways of conceptualising postgraduate teaching and learning, organised in terms of the master/apprentice model, simply don't work for women academics. In this way, rethinking postgraduate pedagogy is part of a more wide-ranging attempt to dismantle the fiction of the disembodied scholar. Much of the existing literature on supervision presumes a highly generalised 'student' and 'supervisor'as the rational and autonomous individuals of liberal discourse, and this eschews the importance of desire and anxiety, pleasure and emotion in the work of pedagogy.

Inevitably power is an important issue here. As Barbara Grant points out in the essay which introduces the notion of 'dirty talk'to the collection, two senses of power are relevant to an analysis of supervision. The first is the notion of power as structured and unequal – supervisors, because of their institutional position and function, have more power than students. Second, the more interactive and intersubjective sense of power is important in conceptualising this relationship, for it figures a power relation which is lived out in productive but constrained ways. The desire to shift thinking about postgraduate supervision to that more interactive and situated model is the recurrent theme and purpose of these essays. Grant, for example, points out how codes of student conduct legitimate unrealistic pictures of supervision as a fundamentally reasonable practice rather than risky business. Bob Smith's essay also reframes postgraduate pedagogy with particular attention to the limitations of administrative discourses of 'best practice.' The instrumental logic that reduces supervision to roles, responsibilities, attributes of quality, and structured teaching strategies also works to obscure and deny that power/ knowledge nexus which is at the heart of postgraduate work, and it also installs the rational subject in centre stage.

As a collection of emblematic stories these chapters work brilliantly to produce a more situated perspective. Balatti and Whitehouse discuss eloquently the loss of power they experienced as they moved from busy careers to postgraduate studies, 'out of the loop and into the dark'. Here, in the 'dark', they learn the currency of photocopier pin numbers, the various codes which regulate access to badly needed resources in resource depleted departments, and the all-important hidden curriculum. Kelly and Ling place postgraduate studies in the context of a 'posttraditional era', a time when rapid technological advances blur boundaries between groups, nations and identities, where relationships take on new meanings and require new skills and understandings. They argue that postgraduate studies need to be rearranged accordingly. Other agents of change are shifts in the substance of postgraduate studies, and so Perry and Brophy consider the ways that creative writing has entered tertiary Arts courses, and other contributors point to the ways that different histories, shaped by Indigeneity or migrations, for example, fundamentally affect the construction of postgraduate subjectivities.

Altogether some fifty contributors are included in this collection. Together they take up in very diverse ways the desire of the editors to reconfigure ways of thinking about postgraduate supervision. In their own chapter, Bartlett and Mercer offer some ways of imagining new narratives of creative and interactive work between supervisor and supervisee. And so they imagine the supervisor and candidate positioned in the kitchen, cooking up a feast. Or the candidature is analogous to creating a garden/thesis on a patch of spare ground, with the supervisor as the kindly experienced neighbour. Or the postgraduate candidate and supervisor are companions setting out on a lengthy bushwalk together. They suggest that creating a metaphor to represent their relationship is a useful teaching tool to initiate discussion between potential and existing candidates and supervisors. In this way at least a supervisor eager to set out on a bushwalk and a candidate who desires a formal, hierarchical relationship more in the nature of a waltz can quickly establish their difference, and explore ways of accomodating their preferences.

It is a strength of this collection that it does explore consistently various ways towards more collegial and egalitarian postgraduate pedagogies. These alternative narratives do not always recognise the impotence of good intentions against the overwhelming realities of the power relations that structure postgraduate studies (I write this review in the week where postgraduate rankings for Australian Postgraduate Awards are determined.) Nor do they establish clear models of alternative practices in a 'how-to' fashion. But this is as it should be, for the work of essays like this is to encourage a self-reflective approach to postgraduate supervision. The challenge is to invent one's own narrative, metaphor and praxis not just through introspection, in theory and in solitude, but through dialogue with that other half that coexists with you in supervision.

Gillian Whitlock is Director of Graduate Studies in English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland. She was supervised by Professor John Matthews at Queen's University, a supervisor with a formidable reputation for assisting candidates to complete the PhD through meetings which were timed always by the act of filling, lighting and smoking a pipe.