Of Silent Girls and Goddesses

by Tricia Dower

Three years ago, following a visit to Colin’s point of origin on this planet, I started a story inspired by Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, and set it among the ranches of southern Alberta. A documentary on CBC’s Passionate Eye provided the locale for my second Shakespeare inspired story. Story by story, a collection grew around modern-day counterparts to Desdemona, Kate, Miranda and others.

I’m thrilled to announce that the collection has been accepted by Inanna Publications and Education, Inc., the feminist press out of York University. They will describe my collection in their spring 2008 catalogue comme ça:

Silent Girl takes us into the remarkable and poignant lives of fictional daughters, sisters, friends, lovers, wives, and mothers through a story collection inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. Set in twentieth and twenty-first century Canada, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand and the United States, these insightful stories portray girls and women dealing with a range of contemporary issues such as racism, social isolation, sexual slavery, kidnapping, violence, family dynamics and the fluid boundaries of gender.

Founded in 1978, Inanna publishes one of Canada’s oldest feminist journals, Canadian Woman Studies. Their publications are widely used in colleges and universities. In 2004 they began publishing a prose and poetry series and I’m excited to be part of this relatively new venture.

My characters drew me to Inanna. We fit there, they told me.

The press takes its name from the Goddess Inanna, ruler of the ancient Sumerians who created the first known written language. Among their literary works are the hymns and stories of Inanna. According to these, she descended twice: first from Heaven to Earth to rule her people; second, to the underworld, the domain of her sister Ereshkigal. The second descent was to confront her darker, shadow self. It led to her death and resurrection. She was the goddess of fertility, love, the family and sexual desire, of both truth and deceit, of both war and healing, the goddess of the prostitutes, artisans, musicians, singers and scribes. Kind of a Peggy Lee Cause I'm a woman! W-O-M-A-N, I'll say it again kind of goddess.

Next steps: editing, design, printing and promotion. Should be fun and easy with such a multi-tasking goddess in charge.

Image from: http://inanna.virtualave.net