Sacha Jones's Blog, page 23

Glorious Steinem

Gloria Steinem at the Aotea Centre in Auckland last night was extraordinary. She made me feel proud to be a feminist again. Sometimes feminists are made to feel less than heroic (believe me).

Steinem knows how it is and is not afraid to tell it true. You'd never believe she is 82, except by how much she knows.

Questions from the audience covered everything from does 'liberal' or 'cultural' feminism (white feminism) have anything to say to Muslim women, to abortion hypocrisies and the value of stay-at-home mums. Steinem had an intelligent and nuanced response to each of them.

Steinem is the first to say things, you don't hear cliché or jargon from her. She coined the term 'reproductive freedom' and suggested people should have rights to such a freedom.

She dedicated her latest book to her abortionist.

She doesn't accept that in not having children she sacrificed motherhood to the cause. She says she has not one ounce of regret about the life she has led, and when she says it, you believe her. Who wouldn't want Gloria Steinem's life? Most women would -- particularly if it included her face and legs.

So go glorious Gloria, the original second-waver. If women ever do achieve reproductive freedom around the world, it will be very much thanks to you.

** The link 'Gloria Steinem' in the first line of this post takes you to an interview with present-day Gloria. Check it out.

Winterson and Wife

I stalked them along Queen Street, having caught a glimpse of Winterson's profile and feeling sure, or almost sure, it was her, snapped around and followed them back to the Aotea centre (we had been going for a walk).

My husband wondered if I'd forgotten which way we were walking. When I told him, he made us cross the street (only six lanes of it), worried I was going to approach them. He doesn't like scenes...

Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? was with her wife, Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue among other powerful academic treatise on women and bodies and emotional health. They were both invited to the Auckland Writers' Festival to talk separately and together about their books and lives. They don't live together, Jeanette and Susie, one likes the light, the other the dark, as they revealed to us at an intimate gathering of 150 or so people last night, but they are partners, and I think are officially wed.
Susie Orbach's most recent book
I have been a fan of both authors and women separately, for a long time. Orbach was first. All the way back in 1992, I wrote a 5,000-word essay on eating disorders in my third year of university -- whilst a practising bulimic. Her book was almost foundational in the discipline of medical sociology I was studying that year, though the doctors, and some academics, did not necessarily acknowledge that.

Winterson came later for me when I became interested in life writing. Her memoir and autobiographical novel about growing up tough and strange in the north of England were highly influential on my approach to the task of writing my own, somewhat strange if not exactly tough memoir about growing up in Sydney. I guess she taught me it's okay to be strange.

... Sure enough, I stalked them all the way to the Aotea Centre, where they disappeared, without being noticed by anyone else, underground like a couple of literary gnomes, small, light and springy, and each with a similarly abundant head of fuzzy hair, as if they are equally matched in the power of their brains that are so hot-wired they frazzle the hair that grows out of them.

Their 'pop-up' demand-driven talk as an extra feature of the Auckland Writers' Festival and set up underneath the Aotea Centre, was fabulous: intimate, funny and insightful. Unfortunately their solo talks for the festival were sold out before we got there, but tomorrow night we go to see -- or rather to hear -- Gloria Steinem, so mustn't grumble.

And a big hip-hop-hooray to the Auckland Writers' Festival for hosting all these great writers!!!

Orange grass

The grass is so thick
with autumn,
you imagine it minds
its lush green skin
dulled and dampened
beneath that shaggy,
burnt orange coat --
no doubt sweating.


There are so many fallen leaves
all flicked and flecked about,
like waves on an orange sea,
or butter icing on a cake,
they almost taste and tickle.

Mothers' Day Night

At Tok Tok -- Asian fusion for talk talk perhaps; I have no actual idea. A lot of tok tok was had, though.

Two poems inspired by the day and night (Sunday 8 May) of celebrating mothers the world over.



Mothers' Day

Listening to my new
Mothers Day Beethoven
is walking through
a fresh garden,
familiar yet surprising.

Leaves fall
carefully to the ground
as if selecting where on the grass
they want to come to rest.

One nose-dives now
showing off
caring not,
unless we should think leaves all alike.

How sad when the power runs out
and there are
no more mums;
no more leaves,
and no more Beethoven!

When Beethoven is switched off forever,
that will be
in itself
almost sadder
than the end of the whole world --

Beethoven, mums (my husband and children), and autumn leaves...
Mothers' Night
I put on my glassesto better see the darkness; we could be in outer space.
I'm not sureif the glasses help;my instincts are rather dulledby the early hour.
After a whilethey sharpenand I begin to seeand hear the darkness. 
A car whooshes past;a truckmuch more distantroars and whispers both,grunts made sighs on the wings of distance.

Happy Mothers Day Night to one and all rock 'n' roll mutters!

Launch in fast motion

I was so nervous for my book launch I'm blurry in just about all the photos taken. But it was a great Tuesday night, enjoyed by many (50-60) and by me, once the worst of the the talking and reading from Chapter Three was done. I even gave, and got, a few laughs. But sorry about the blur.

A nervous start. 

A good turnout. 

All very serious, pre-talk (mother and son).

The fabulous Stephanie Johnson 'introducing' me.

Rachel from Paradox Books reading a launch statement from the publishers, Finch Sydney.

Reading my book, the most nerve-wracking aspect of the night, though the audience laughed in all the right places.

Now I can laugh: book signing.

The camera hasn't quite figured out that I'm no longer nervous.

Sold!

The other woman

Meet Sacha Jones. She is a tennis star, a New Zealand tennis star, who recently defected to Australia in the hope of becoming an Australian tennis star (hasn't happened yet, but you never know). Check out the link.

Meet me, Sacha Jones, an Australian dancing star who some years back defected to New Zealand, perhaps not in the hope of becoming a New Zealand dancing star -- it was too late for that -- but otherwise the parallels are uncanny. I look just like this in my black Nike singlet, though my snarl is much more fierce; perhaps the Australians can work on that for her.

There's no media link to my defection story, mind, indeed nobody seemed to miss me when I left Australia, and Sacha is not my real name, but otherwise it seems this other Sacha Jones is living my life in geographic reverse, and in sport instead of the arts.

I don't know who got the better end of the bargain, Australia or New Zealand; I guess time will tell.

In the meantime, I'm off to work on my backhand.