Fifty Drops at a Time

• Walk Myself Home: An Anthology to End Violence Against Women
• Andrea Routley (editor)
• Caitlin Press (2010)

When I was growing up, I'd sometimes come home after school to find newspaper clippings placed on my bed. My mother would read the paper, find articles about rape, and then put them on my pillow. The stories were always tersely worded, horrifying and unforgettable: a single mother living in a basement suite raped while her young children were asleep nearby; a young woman found unconscious and sexually assaulted beneath a bush after a party; a 14-year-old girl imprisoned for months in her neighbour's cellar.

I assumed that my mother intended that these articles inform and warn me, and hence protect me from the fate suffered by the victims in the articles. I was supposed to refuse candy from strangers, walk warily around hedges, avoid ever sleeping in a main floor or basement suite, and decline invitations to large parties and rock concerts. My mother told me many times of how terrified the women in her family were during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong during the Second World War. She told me how puzzled she was as a child watching them smear themselves with feces and urine taken from their chamber pots before the soldiers came banging on the door on their hunt for women. Like many who had witnessed and survived war, my mother viewed the world as a dangerous, unpredictable place.

At the time, I didn't find this unusual -- thought all mothers cut out these kinds of articles and told stories like these to their daughters. In fact, I thought it was so normal to hear and read about sexual violence that I obliviously bought a paperback copy of Helter Skelter from the corner store once, as a present for a friend's birthday during grade six. My friend's mother immediately snatched it away, and eyed me suspiciously from then on. I don't recall being invited back to their home again.

When I tell this story to friends, they are often incredulous. They laugh, and I laugh with them. But the fact is, even after I moved away from home, the stories were everywhere. I didn't need to look on my pillow anymore. The stories of violence against women were there whenever I opened the newspaper or turned on the news, right through to my first year criminal law course at law school, when we discussed sexual assault cases like Pappajohn v. R. and Sansregret v. R. where judges and academics debated whether drunk or knife-wielding men had an "honest" and "reasonable" belief in their victims' consent. I heard it in the voice of a friend's father who muttered surreptitious threats in Korean (under the indifferent and impatient gaze of a police officer) to his 50-year-old wife as she frantically packed her bags, trying to flee before he tried to strangle her again. And of course, on Dec. 6, 1989, an armed gunman with a stated vendetta against feminists walked into a classroom at Montreal's École Polytechnique, separated the women engineering students from the men and systematically shot all the women, then went on a rampage through the school, targeting women specifically, murdering a total of 14 women and injuring ten other women and four men.

A hummingbird's example 

Twenty years later, although police and school protocols to handle armed intruders have improved, not much else has changed. The stories in the news are the same or worse, whether they are local or international -- about transcripts of Robert Pickton's conversations with an undercover cop, the recent trial of Colonel Russell Williams, the spread of images of the gang rape victim in Pitt Meadows that were posted on the internet, to continuing reports of soldiers using rape to destroy families and communities in the Sudan or the DRC. It doesn't seem as if the government, the police, the legal system, or the laws themselves can ever adequately address the consequences, let alone the root causes, of sexual violence.

Like many, I have often felt powerless because the problem seems entrenched and insurmountable. I have often wondered how to make a difference, how to understand and effectively address those root causes. I'd written only a few pieces on the subject. But then that fable came to mind, about the hummingbird who does all that it can flying back and forth between the river and a forest fire, picking up individual droplets of water to try to put out the flames. Eventually enough droplets from enough sources with concerted effort can make a difference.

In that spirit, Andrea Routley, the co-founder of the LoudSpeaker Festival of music, theatre and poetry in celebration of International Women's Day, had the idea of putting together a chapbook of poems and stories to sell at the next festival in Victoria, B.C. The project blossomed into a book-length anthology published this fall by Caitlin Press entitled Walk Myself Home: An Anthology to End Violence Against Women. In the introduction to the book, Routley states that "by identifying violence against women in all its forms -- from put-downs and inappropriate workplace humour to physical abuse -- we will recognize it when it happens.'' The 175 page anthology contains short fiction, non-fiction, poetry and interviews by 50 female and male authors, depicting a range of experience, from subtle forms of violence (e.g. derisive jokes, graffiti, and attitudes by doctors) to sexual assault by family members, teachers, neighbours, or strangers.

Out the other side

When I recently received my contributor's copy of the book and read the work of the other 49 writers, I could see how each piece, each voice -- whether lyrical or blunt, emerging or established -- added another layer or facet to an overall picture. Whether I was reading Kelly Pitman's story of being molested as a child by an elderly neighbour, or Susan Musgrave's sequence of poems, 'Heroines' (drawn from the stories of six women who were addicted to heroin and who worked as sex workers in Downtown Eastside), Sara Graefe's story of a student's sexual abuse by a popular teacher, or Susan Braley's wide-ranging poem about the treatment of women around the world, I felt grateful that other writers were able to communicate the multi-dimensionality and gravity of the subject matter so vividly and honestly to readers. And I also felt relief to read pieces by Journey prize-winner Yasuko Thanh, and veteran writers Madeline Sonik and Janet Marie Rogers that depict the experiences and perspectives of those who have passed through the tunnel of abuse and violence to come out the other side. I'm not sure that our 50 droplets of water can put out the forest fire -- but it's a start.

Today, Dec. 6, is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, marking the anniversary of the 14 women murdered at Montreal's École Polytechnique in 1989. To commemorate the day, the Vancouver launch of the anthology will be held this evening, Monday, Dec. 6 at 7:30 p.m. at Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue in Vancouver (details here). Additional readings from the anthology are scheduled at the Vancouver Public Library at 350 West Georgia Street on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., and at the Carnegie Centre in February 2011 (date TBA).

Royalties from the sale of the book will go to the BC Society of Transition Houses. Caitlin Press has recently partnered with the We Can BC Coalition, which works to combat violence against women, to distribute Walk Myself Home in the province as a resource in education and activism.