Elana Dykewomon (1949–2022)

My grandlparents and great grandparents came to the US from Lithuania and Latvia in the first decade of the twentieth century. By the time I was born, only one great grandmother and one grandfather were still alive. I was very close to them. Reading BEYOND THE PALE made me regret all the questions I did not ask them about life in Europe and the US when I had the opportunity.
BEYOND THE PALE begins in Poland/Russia in the late 1880s. Gutke Gurvich was the daughter of a rape victim. Her mother left her home because of how she and her baby would be treated by their neighbors. She became a midwife because there would always be work. Using her knowledge of herbs, she also helped treat medical problems, including those to help women in labor.
One of her patients is the mother of Chava Meyer. After Chava’s parents were murdered in a progrom. Chava moved to New York City to escape the dangers of being Jewish in Russia.
BEYOND THE PALE is a wonderfully told story of the lives of these women, both personally and as members of the societies in which they lived: the poverty, work environments, and society. It speaks of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and of the growing labor movement. It also examines coming to terms with lesbianism.

Tidbits:

“My mother accepted bad and good luck on faith; it was all part of what God had laid out, the road she was meant to walk. Pesah’s understanding was more complicated. By her, you needed more than faith, you needed to admire yourself just as you came, God was in you...but your own self was also something you moved on your on. You decided to act, not just God–or, God forbid, the Tsar–decided for you.”
“Men must have a factory where they make disagreements. Ordinary ones sold for a couple of kopeks, big ones for a ruble. My family kept this factory in business. Women worked so men could argue.”
“Was it just an accident that Mama and Papa were in the wrong place at the wrong time? What about the real sins, the sins of the people who killed them?...God took to long to punish murderers. It was no wonder human beings invented vengeance.”
“It was always men who were remembered for what they wrote. Maybe in the new world things would be different, and women would be remembered too. No one remembered working girls–was that why women had children, so someone would remember us?”

Elana Dykewomon’s writing draws us into the lives of the women and keeps us there after the story is told.… (more)

I had no idea what to expect going into this book. I got it for free and I hadn’t heard a thing about it. However, I must have had some kind of expectations that I was unaware of since I was a little bit disappointed in the end.

The plot is kind of hard to explain because the story takes place over a lot of years, and it seems to jump around a lot. At least it seemed that way to me. I would be reading it and wondering if it was a few days later, a year later, or a few years later.

I don’t really even have much to say about the characters. They were kind of blah. That is the best way to describe them. Even though I was disappointed, confused, and didn’t find the characters that interesting, I just couldn’t give it the two stars I would usually give a book that I thought was just okay. Maybe it deserves three stars and maybe it doesn’t. This was a hard book for me to rate and review. Maybe if you see it for cheap or free you could give it a read and see what you think.

Have you read this book? If you have what did you think of it?… (more)

Flashback Friday: Young, wild and lesbian

Riverfinger Women: A Novel by Elana Dykewomon (Open Road Media, $14.99, ebook)

Open Road Media has been releasing a number of LGBTQ classics as ebooks, but this one really caught my eye. I’m so old that the first copy of this book I bought still had the author listed as Elana Nachman, rather than by the name she took in 1976, Elana Dykewomon.

Originally published by Daughters, Inc., a feminist press, in 1974, Riverfinger Women deals with a young woman’s coming to understand her sexual identity in—of course—the ’60s and ’70s.

It wasn’t all peace and love. Inez Riverfinger, Abby, Peggy, Rainbo Woman and Lucy Bear all come with their own stories and their own experiences with oppression and violence. What makes Riverfinger Women stand out, though, is the happy ending. The “lesbian novel” of the time almost always had women punished for daring to reject the trappings of the male-dominated world.

Riverfinger Women is also interesting for its use of notes, letters, posters, and other ephemera as a way to carry the narrative forward. Don’t mistake the value here as completely historical: Riverfinger Women is a rousing good story, flush with poetic language.

(Published on Lit/Rant on 2/28/2014: http://litrant.tumblr.com/post/78100703985/flashback-friday-young-wild-and-lesbi...… (more)