Author: womenwhosubmitlit

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A Review of Riva Lehrer’s Golem Girl: A Memoir

Sarita Sidhu

Golem Girl is a sweeping, stunning work of visual and literary art. It is the groundbreaking memoir of an artist who has refused to be erased by a society with a rigid, very short set of rules on who deserves to live and who can and cannot be human. 

Riva’s birth was a miracle, after her mother, Carole, had experienced the trauma of three miscarriages. But her life hung on a thread, a cord; her spinal cord to be specific. Riva was born with the worst type of spina bifida in which a section of her spinal cord billowed from her back “like a gruesome [red] birthday balloon.” This was 1958, when surgical interventions were reserved for only the ‘strongest’ 10% who made it to the age of two; to operate sooner would be ‘wasting’ medical resources.  Ironically, and very fortunately, Carole had worked as a medical researcher for a birth defect specialist who did not subscribe to this conventional wisdom. Riva was operated on by a surgeon trained in cutting-edge techniques to close the lesion in her spine. She says “Spina bifida babies are born open to the world.”.

She has undergone more than forty surgeries during her life, and each one delivered the message that she needed to be fixed. She was also given this message in other ways: “People kept giving me books about little crippled girls…All the books agreed on one point: all you really needed to get better was willpower.” The world also spoke to her directly:

Our bus was painted with CONDON SCHOOL in big block letters, so we were always 100 percent visible … Sometimes six or seven kids stood at the corner where we’d stop at the red light; other days, there would be teenagers or even a single vicious adult. There was no lack of people eager to scream ‘Retard!’ at the top of their lungs.

***

I was browsing the racks [of an upscale boutique] when a woman planted herself at my elbow, checked me up and down, and announced, ‘If I looked like you, I’d kill myself!

The source of Riva’s self-loathing―going so far as to call herself a monster― is no great mystery. She writes: “I began each day with an illusion. My last act before leaving the house was to take off my glasses … and let Chicago disappear in a smear and a blur. I dodged traffic and baby strollers, dogs and delivery men, all to ensure I wouldn’t see myself reflected in the city’s shop windows and plate-glass mirrors. The sight of me literally made me sick.” 

Riva’s avoidance of other disabled people enabled her denial of her own disability. But she admits that she selfishly joined the Illinois Spina Bifida Association when she developed novel frightening health issues, and she needed guidance. She realized that pretending she was ‘normal’ might lead to her death. At the organization’s picnic she tells us she “walked into a field populated by my own body. All of us short and barrel-chested, all of us limping, leaning on our braces, crutches, and canes, or wheeling our chairs over the grass.” She continues “A few brief conversations confirmed my worst suspicions. No one had a job, no one was married or even had a sweetheart, and everyone lived at home.” Propelled by her artistic creativity, this was the fate she had fought so resolutely to avoid.  

She writes of her time at Condon “I had memorized the times of the day when the art room was empty and I could work in peace. The art room had always been my room…Art was magical, and not just in the making: people would look at my work, then look at me with a changed expression. One far from the usual oh poor you.”

The author alternates with ease between the universal and the deeply personal throughout the book. She “discovered that there were satisfyingly weird people at DAA [the Department of Design, Art, and Architecture at the University of Cincinnati],” but it was in the Chicago Disabled Artists Collective that she found “[her] people.” As Riva takes us through her political awakening within this group, we are simultaneously educated: 

Our true obstacle was not how our bodies or minds functioned; it was having to wrangle with physical and social environments that ignored our existence. I’d always accepted that I wasn’t strong enough, tall enough, fast enough … I’d never considered that society derived benefits from ignoring the needs of the Disabled. Self-blame absolved the normate world for its failures of justice.

I had spent years fighting against misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism, yet I’d so easily believed that I should be ashamed of my body that I’d never understood that shame was both the product of and tool of injustice. I hadn’t just needed Disabled friends. I’d needed friends who could give my experiences context and analysis.

Many years prior, as a young art student, Riva’s overwhelmingly old white male professors had only valued conformist art which perpetuated their own subjective but long-   standing aesthetics; there was zero interest in feminist art, and the same total disregard for Riva’s subject matter. Her TA, Bryan, had explained that her task was to find universal subject matter: ‘“A viewer is never going to recognize himself in these pieces of self-indulgence. Yet it’s hardly feminine work, is it?”’ In typical form, Riva wonders “What (in Holy Penis Hell) is Universal Subject Matter?”  Bryan graces her with an expansion of his wisdom:

‘The themes that civilization has always chosen as basis for great art! Conflict! Think of Ruben’s Consequences of War…And beauty! Ingress’s Grande Odalisque.‘ 

Riva understood that the Universal was only “men at war and women in bed” and that “The fragile human body pertained only to [her].” She describes her surprise though with her own response to this realization: “Instead of sobbing, or quitting, I felt the beginnings of fuck you stirring in my soul.”

Through her immersion in disability portraiture, Riva’s indoctrination with conventional beauty standards is shattered:

For most of my life, I had glanced at impairment and looked away, afraid to see myself. Now I looked slowly and deliberately. I let the sight come to me. And beauty arrived … This was a beauty I couldn’t name. It startled me and didn’t, was familiar and unexpected. I remembered how it felt to love disability back at Condon School. I’d rejected that love ever since. “Normal” beauty is unmarked, smooth, shiny, upright; but my gaze began to slip past normal beauty as if it was coated in baby oil. I wanted crip beauty―variant, iconoclastic, unpredictable. Bodies that were lived in with intentionality and self-knowledge. Crip bodies were fresh. 

***

The division of the memoir into its two sections pivots on Carole’s tragic, untimely, and avoidable death, while Riva was still a high school student. Carole suffered with nerve pain that “[made] it hard to exist” following back surgery performed by a negligent doctor. This led to her addiction to painkillers. The family had become burdened with financial debt due to medical bills and also attorney fees, but justice never materialized. Carole died at the moment her dream career was beginning to blossom:

Twenty-two years after she’d been forced to relinquish fashion design, Carole Horwitz Lehrer would work to change how big women dressed. She left a trail of notepads all over the house, full of gowns that swirled with joy and dignity (and, of course, rhinestones). 

Along with the seismic loss, Riva had to contend with the guilt and regret she carried from their final heated conversations around her increasing desire for autonomy. She explains “Mom had been my librarian, my architect, my surgeon general, my curator. She had left me half-formed; for all my teenage rebellion, I was unprepared to take over the task of inventing myself.”

Having spent an unimaginable amount of time in hospital, (the first two years of her life, just for starters) it’s unsurprising―yet simultaneously surprising―that Riva’s first sexual encounter was in the courtyard garden at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, with a hospital employee. It occurred while she was battling with her mother over her need for greater independence. She writes about this awakening with the complexity that emerges over time. Riva also addresses the prevalence of sexual assault and abuse of disabled individuals, both at home and elsewhere.

Riva weighs in on the topic of forced sterilization of the vulnerable, in the context of her own sterilization, without her consent. In tandem with this question of who is allowed to reproduce, she questions, with obvious authority, the abortion of disabled fetuses. 

The life of any artist is often synonymous with struggle, and the challenges are multiplied by several orders of magnitude for disabled artists. Riva acknowledges the additional, significant obstacles, while also recognizing her own relative privileges as a white woman with a middle-class upbringing. 

I was drawn to this memoir because of my long-standing affinity with the underdog, whose life is rarely, if ever, portrayed with the complexity that is warranted. This is precisely why we must write our own stories. As someone who was born in India and raised in working-class England, the oppressive layers of the misogyny rooted in my own culture, the patriarchal constructs in wider society, racism, and classism, felt like a fire blanket on a life that was predetermined to be compacted and subjugated. As a radical feminist, I understand that there is still a long way to go in the creation of an egalitarian world, because change takes time. A really long time. But it starts with a repudiation of the lies we are told about who we are and all we can ever be.

This memoir is full of joy and humor. Each chapter is short and accessible. Each page is set as though it is itself a work of visual art. The reader is forced to consider their own complicity in the perpetuation of an ableist society through our own blind spots. And so this expansive, insightful book is also a call to much-needed action for the inclusion of the disabled community in all considerations of the greater good. 

Sarita Sidhu is a writer and activist in Irvine, California. She was born in India, raised in working-class England, and moved to the US in 1999. Her work has appeared in The Sun (Readers Write), 100 Word Story, Emerge Literary Journal, and elsewhere. She can be found on Instagram @saritaksid  

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Even a Time Traveler Can’t Escape the Patriarchy: Elizabeth Dement’s No Place Like Gandersheim

Drama Script Review

By Aronne Guy

The play is available through the New Play Exchange

The name Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but should be familiar to women artists. An abbess who lived in the 12th century, she was a prolific writer who courageously reworked the plays of Terence to bring them into line with Christian values. She defended the peculiarity of her profession—a woman writer—by reframing her ambition as a service to God. The Almighty wanted her to be a writer, and thus was willing to work with the humble clay of womanhood. Raised in the Pentecostal church, I am only too familiar with this argument, since I often heard it used by women preachers and church leaders in the 1980s. The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

The never-ending struggle to transcend ancient patriarchal values is a key theme of the play No Place Like Gandersheim by Elizabeth Dement, which had its world premiere at the Skylight Theater in Los Feliz in June 2023. Dement tells a fanciful story which takes as its launching point the life of Hrotsvitha, known here by the snappy nickname Roz. (This is a review of the play as a written work, not as a performance.) After her play is rejected by the Emperor Otto, Roz drifts through the ages—still writing, still waiting for a moment when women will be able to express themselves artistically without all the bullshit. In early 21st century Los Angeles, perhaps she will finally have her opportunity.

It is hard not to think of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando as it becomes clear in the second act that Roz is about a thousand years old. Roz does not switch genders, but she does make a transition that Orlando never attempts. While Virginia Woolf’s character is defined by a certain intractable Englishness, Roz throws off her German identity and becomes fully American—a divorced lesbian writer/producer with an emotionally neglected 15-year-old daughter and a hit show about nuns.

Bringing a character like Hrotsvitha to life—eternal life, even—is a fine enterprise that I can get behind. In spite of her well-deserved place setting in Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, she still needs all the press she can get. We stand on the shoulders of giants—or perhaps, as suggested by Chicago’s work, we eat off their shapely plates. She didn’t make the cut for Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, but No Place Like Gandersheim gives Hrotsvitha another chance to shine.

The first act is the closest to telling her actual story, as it takes place in a German abbey in the 12th century. While providing a useful quasi-historical framework for Dement’s fictional take, the dialogue in this section is hard to accept—there’s a flippancy that creates an uncomfortable feeling of tacked-on hipness. It’s jarring to read. As spoken on a stage, though, the contemporary-sounding dialogue is probably really funny, cool, and relatable to an audience. It’s not really history. I get it.

The second act, taking place in the present day, leaves the historical issues behind and suddenly the dialogue works on the page. Otto still exists, but instead of the emperor he is the head executive at an unnamed network. Throughout the play, men are an invisible force, always offstage, yet always in control. Like offstage violence in a Shakespeare play, the men’s invisibility enhances the perception of their power. The author is clearly at ease in the second act. The machinations of the network executives provide high intrigue and support the theme.  

The third act is also quite clever and has a twist that works seamlessly within the plot. The bittersweet ending is perhaps the most accurate way to sum up the life of Roz, as reimagined in a current faux-liberated milieu and a future techno-dystopia. A message comes through that without human liberation, there is no female liberation; furthermore, writing is an inherently selfish act that does not have much impact on the struggle for either. It’s a bit hopeless after all, but not inaccurate. 

No Place Like Gandersheim makes a valuable contribution to theater in its clear-eyed vision of the sacrifices necessary to live as a creative woman, regardless of era, while bringing attention to an under-recognized early female playwright. Here’s hoping we see another production soon.

Aronne Guy is a freelance writer, teacher, and musician, performing as Aron Blue. Her writing was recently featured in The Common’s Dispatches section in collaboration with her father. Currently in Las Vegas, she is co-writing the scandalous memoirs of a professional gambler, occasionally releasing music, and teaching part-time at UNLV.    

aronblue.net

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Women Unearthed, Women at the Root

A Book Review of Rachel Lousie Snyder‘s Women We Buried, Women We Burned

by Camilia Cenek

Women–especially mothers–are at the root. Even–and especially–when they are dead, absent, or abused. Rachel Louise Snyder’s Women We Buried, Women We Burned beautifully evokes both the particular and the universal struggles of women who become, or desperately need, mothers. The memoir’s cascading disasters are first set off by the early loss of the author’s mother, an event which of itself is catastrophic but which triggers further collapses that could hardly have been imagined by then eight-year-old Snyder or her remaining family.

Snyder burns through her tormented teen years, rages down a treacherous path through violence, drugs, and trouble. Though her travails are extreme, in some ways they ring familiar to the reader who once also torched rules and reason as a teen. Through the crucible of suffering and abandonment, Snyder tests her mettle, walks through flames, and emerges smoldering but cleansed on the other side. Improbably, she discovers the transformative opportunities of education. Of discovery. Of spirituality. Later, midway through a sea voyage around the globe, where she finds herself straddling the two halves of the earth, Snyder reaches her inflection point:

“Be open. Be flexible. Move like the sea grass. There are no plans, only ideas.”

Snyder’s friends and classmates model these values which she sorely needs. For the first time, Snyder is introduced to the idea that the death of her mother, while undeserved, also offered a lesson in how to live. Curiosity, tenacity, and generosity of spirit, Snyder discovers, can be and often are the byproducts born from loss. In this moment, she opens a great gift bestowed by her mother, unknowingly stewarded by her friends. From here Snyder passes from one hemisphere to another, entering a second segment of her life. There she finds the power to author a new script for her developing story.

She travels. She enters deeply into the stories of mothers and cultures around the world, where she finds pain, cruelty, unimaginable hardship–and resilience. The stories of women the world over are unique. The stories of women the world over are the same.

Later in the middle zone of Snyder’s life and book, she herself becomes a mother. Readers (including myself) who have become mothers after losing mothers will know well the profound mystery of re-entering the mother-child relationship, this time from the other side. In that space there is joy, there is terror. There is the burden of avoiding one’s own death in order to prevent the repetition of the mother-loss cycle–and the knowledge that no matter what one does, such a risk can never be contained.

Snyder traces the cycle of her growth, the circle of her life, and gently, brilliantly, deposits the reader back where we started. The memoir culminates with the author’s ultimate wisdom: mourn the mothers that you lose; keep the mothers that you have. The substitutes, the surrogates. The unexpected stand-ins. Specifically, the stepmother that Snyder long rejected. As her stepmother approaches the end of her own life, Snyder once again faces undeserved pain and loss, both parallel and perpendicular to the mother-death story that she survived before. Parallel in its eerie similarities. Perpendicular in the profound shift of perspective, power, and personhood. This time, Snyder is ready. This time, Snyder can speak. In perhaps the most pivotal moment of the book, she calls her stepmother “Mom” for the first time. She asks her stepmother questions, tells her stories, discovers truths that had long been buried. Unearthing the pain stings–and heals.

Together they participate in the essential, crucial maternal exchange: the real economy of humanity. The foundation. Women, their daughters, and their stories.

Camilia Cenek is a writer and editor. She has BA and MA degrees in English and a BA in Psychology. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Madison Magazine, The Good Life Review, The Sunlight Press, and Creative Wisconsin Anthology. Find her at camiliacenek.com.

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Intersect: AWP Seattle: Make This Conference Work for You and Your Writing

Black woman speaking from podium in a conference room as other women in her black mother collective look on.

by Sakae Manning

It’s been three years since I attended my first AWP in Portland where I had the most incredible experience due to following Women Who Submit member, Bonnie Kaplan’s suggestion, “It all happens at the off-site events.” I took my new friend’s advice and attended every evening reading that resonated, starting in a cool, dark bar where I did my first open mic and drank a Moscow Mule mocktail named after Stalin; plus, I met new writer friends.

Then, I jumped in with Cave Canum, VONA, and attended the Freya Project reading in a high-ceilinged concrete-filled jewelry gallery where I spotted T. Kira Madden and thought she was someone I knew from Oakland. Yeah, I did that, but I got to meet, hug, and listen to Madden read from Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Daughters. I was embraced as a new Women Who Submit member when nervously showing up to their social hour where I ate cheese and mingled with writers whose work speaks to me. I mapped out discussions and panels and got teary-eyed when Maxine Hong Kingston took the main stage.

It was tough when I canceled San Antonio, went virtual for Kansas City, and skipped Philadelphia. This break has provided nonprofit AWP time to sort out how to host a conference, historically built on networking and personal connections, where literally thousands attend, and attempt to recreate a reasonably safe pre-pandemic experience. This year, AWP is hybrid, meaning one may attend in person or virtually. Since my writing partner and I are hosting a panel, we’re attending with precautions including masking (see recent AWP communication regarding health precautions).

How to choose? What to do? Noriko Nakada, WWS Leadership, suggests avoiding FOMO and narrowing in on personal experiences, “I attend only panels and lectures that feed me and my writing.” Kate Maruyama, WWS Board Member notes, “Whoever you are with at AWP is correct. Once you hit panels and readings you want to go to, the rest of your time is to go where the day takes you.” I echo both women’s advice, and add Yelping favorite restaurants ahead of time because it can be difficult to settle on sustenance when the feet are hollering from being on a concrete floor all day.

From WWS Director, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, “If you’re like me and get nervous about being around a bunch of new people or saying something dumb in front of literati, I suggest using your hours at the convention to support the people you already know. I did this at AWP Portland, and it made a world of difference. I was at events with people I genuinely enjoy and admire.” Xochitl wrote about her experience on the Women Who Submit blog, Transforming AWP Through Our Collective Power.

How to organize your schedule: Like most nonprofits, AWP has a small, core staff, but they try to make technology user-friendly. Here’s how I do it. First, I downloaded the conference program on my laptop, and carefully reviewed and selected events by marking them before saving them on my AWP account. Then, I downloaded the app on my smartphone and did the same. I give this process a 3.5 in functionality, because the app and computer are unable to sync, which means I had to choose all the workshops again on the app, schedule, and set reminder alarms. On the floor, I find the app intuitive, and easily accessible, as I can toggle between the entire conference schedule and what I’ve pre-set for myself.

Where is the Conference?  I suggest checking out the Seattle Convention Center layout prior to arrival, understanding the parking and public transport systems, as this makes for more time enjoying the conference and saves feet (aww, packing compression socks), and identifying specific locations where one can get away from the hustle and noise. For more, visit, https://seattleconventioncenter.com. 

If one does not need elevators, please use stairs and escalators, so attendees using mobility scooters, or wheelchairs, or who have other mobility challenges can easily navigate and get to events on time.

Is the book fair a thing? Yes, the book fair is huge, loud (earplugs are helpful), and feels like a trade show floor filled with Red Bull on steroids. Noriko pre-plans and sets goals, “I limit my time walking around the book fair to visiting and meeting in person presses who published my work or tabling for presses/organizations where I want to connect. I still spend more time than I want there, but when presses show me who they are (not friendly to women/BIPOC), this is confirmed in that book room!” Alyss Dixon, Women Who Submit co-founder/advisor, suggests buying indie press books early because they sell out fast. Alyss also suggests doing one final book fair lap on the last day, “Bring a piece of luggage with wheels so you can scoop all the freebies and books.” AWP board member, Rachelle Yousuf did this in Portland, and she scored big time. 

Got questions? Phoning AWP is tough closer to the conference launch, so email, call, and wait 24-48 hours for a response before communicating again. They’re literally drowning in emails and voice mail; plus, at some point, they’re traveling and on location.

Trained people, including locals hired for the conference, are stationed as guides. If arriving on Wednesday, a big tip is to pick up registration at the SCC from 12 noon until 7 pm. Thursday and Friday will look like the opening day of Harry’s House on La Cienega without sunshine and good vibes.

Self-care? A resounding YES!  AWP offers quiet places (Wellness Rooms for private quiet time; keys available at AWP help desk) and the (Emily) Dickinson Quiet Space (8 am-5 pm each day) to give over-stimulated brains and souls a break. Morning offerings include AWP’s 9 am writers’ yoga sessions, and the Sober AWP, 12-step meeting, (7:30-8:45 am each day). There are also nursing mothers’ rooms (8 am-5 pm each day). All details are provided in AWP’s full schedule, which is now living on my phone.

Alyss reminds attendees to pack high-protein snacks (bars and nuts are perfect), hydrate, stay hydrated, and hydrate some more. This is especially critical during the day when traversing literally miles and finishing off the evening with libations.

Bring a reusable water bottle, because the SCC has filling stations throughout. Tip: Avoid buying anything, including coffee, inside the SCC to save money and time. Lines get really long, but if the caffeine or munchy cravings are a must, and one is stuck in a snaky line, make a friend. We’re all there to talk words, books, and writing.

I end with long-timer Kate’s sage advice, “if you’re a seasoned pro, find the newer, overwhelmed writer and introduce them to a few folks, take them to tables to meet people, give them a head start on the networking.” This, my writerly friends, is what Women Who Submit are all about!

Following are past WWS blog posts related to attending AWP:

Pushing Publishing at the AWP Book Fair: A Choose Your Own Adventure!

WWS at AWP20 San Antonio

Attending the AWP You Want to Create

Transforming AWP Through Our Collective Power

Women Who Submit at AWP Portland

Sakae Manning’s (they/them) fiction lives in The Tahoma Literary Review (Pushcart nod), Carve Magazine, Dryland Lit, and Blood Orange Review. As writer-in-residence at The Annenberg Community Beach House, Manning produced programs amplifying BIWOC writers. They are on the leadership team for Women Who Submit, an alum of the AWP Writer-to-Writer Program, and an Anaphora Arts fellow.

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Intersect: 5 Common Questions and Answers at WWS Submission Parties

By Rebecca Gomez Farrell

At the end of 2022, I stepped down from leading the long-running Bay Area chapter of Women Who Submit (WWS). Over the five years that I organized the chapter, I noticed that the same questions came up time and time again. Our answers to those questions illustrate what makes WWS submission parties so encouraging and productive. The positive reinforcement they provide turns the drudgery of the submission process into inspiration.

When we meet, our members ring a call bell whenever they hit “send” on a submission and everyone bursts into cheers. Doing so fulfills an important purpose by providing an easy way to inject excitement into the room. You might even call it Pavlovian: endorphins surge once the bell rings, bringing affirmation with them and a smile on all the faces as we celebrate the person who submitted a manuscript or query, or fellowship application. Everyone else is energized to earn their turn to ring the bell by submitting again. It’s so simple, yet such a beautiful way to support each other.

Like ringing the bell, WWS members encourage each other through useful and uplifting answers to those common questions that crop up at each submission party. Through reframing the submission process as part of a writer’s work, rather than something to dread, each click of a “submit” button becomes something that validates, rather than dulls, our creative dreams.

Here are the common questions and answers I’ve encountered at Bay Area chapter submission parties over the years.

1. My short story doesn’t quite fit this magazine’s guidelines. I shouldn’t send it, right?

Yes, you should! It’s one thing to submit a novel-length work to a submission call for 5,000 words (don’t do that), but if a market lists a flash fiction limit of 1,500 words and you’re at 1,610? Send that manuscript. Or maybe an anthology’s theme is surrealism, and your piece feels closer to abstract and you’re not sure it qualifies. The worst an editor can do is reject it, and the best? Well, you may just make it into one of your top markets! All because you had a slightly different understanding of those styles than the editor did. It’s their job to decide what submissions fit their call, and it’s your job to give them your piece to consider.  

2. Does anyone know what markets might take a funny novella about cello-playing vampires?

Many of our Bay Area chapter members are seasoned writers and quite willing to share their experiences with newer ones. They also dabble in multiple forms, from speculative fiction to personal essays to haiku memoirs. Part of the value of our submission parties is learning that we are each other’s greatest resources! Nearly every time this question is asked, another writer in attendance will have a suggestion. And it’s almost assured that another member will then also submit something to that market they just learned about. Everybody benefits from asking questions and taking the leap.

3. I can’t take another rejection. How do you deal?

By celebrating them! Or at least contextualizing them. Inspired by another member’s suggestion, I offered fifty-rejections stamp cards to our members, redeemable for a free beverage on me once those cards were filled. That’s a fun, tangible motivation, but the real one is this: rolling with rejection is part of a writer’s work, or at least the work of a writer who wants to be published.

Creative pursuits are emotional minefields, for sure, but if you’ve decided you want your masterpiece to appear in the pages of an esteemed publication? You have to keep sending it out. Making the publication happen is a numbers game. If the piece hasn’t been accepted yet, then you haven’t pulled the right number yet. What’s that number? The right editor reads your piece for the right publication on the right day when they are in the right mood. All that has to come together for an acceptance to come in, and none of it is controllable. So control what you can: the quality of your writing and placing it in that editor’s hands in the first place by submitting a rejected manuscript out yet again.

If you think of rejection as part of a writer’s work, it becomes routine, just another task to be managed. Another rejection? Another opportunity to send that manuscript out into the world. Then…Ding! Ding! Ding! Ring that bell! You’re doing the work of a writer. And you totally deserve that extra scoop of double-chip mint, too.

4. Is it okay if I don’t submit anything and just work on this poem?

Absolutely. Yes, WWS submission parties run on peer pressure to submit our pieces. When eyes light up, applause breaks out, and another member gets their deserved praise, it’s infectious! But sometimes, you don’t have the emotional reserves to keep hitting those “send” buttons. Sometimes, you need to refill your well first, and allowing yourself to do that is also the work of a writer. Sometimes you just want to bask in the presence of other women taking those leaps and use it as motivation to get that poem into shape. Even if you’re not taking part in the submission process right now, you’re taking part in the creation of that supportive atmosphere at the party. Maybe next time will be the one when you hit the send button and finally ring that bell.

5. Yes, you did it! You submitted! Now, where will I read that essay once your acceptance comes in?

I admit it, I’m the one asking this question whenever someone rings the bell. Sure, we need to harden our exteriors to deal with all the noes that writers accrue. But it’s okay to let ourselves dream of yesses, too. Ringing that bell generates happy feelings, and so does allowing ourselves that glimmer of possibility, welcoming the potential that this time this piece is going to win the numbers game. I’ve seen it happen for so many chapter members over the years, with a lengthy list of credits to their names. I’ve had at least twenty publications of pieces I’ve sent out during a submission party. If we control what we can—the quality of our writing and our willingness to risk acceptance—sometimes the magic comes together in just the right way and our number is pulled.

Making the choice to step down from the Bay Area WWS chapter was hard. But I’ve been neglecting a different part of the work of a writer in recent years: the writing itself. With the pandemic and a new day job, and the life changes that came with both, I stopped prioritizing writing new fiction. So I need to reclaim that writing time first before I’ll have submissions to send out again.

I know that when those new pieces are ready, my local chapter of Women Who Submit will be too, ready to welcome me back and cheer me on as I ring that bell.

Rebecca Gomez Farrell’s Wings Rising epic fantasy duology, Wings Unseen and Wings Unfurled, is published by Meerkat Press. Her short works have appeared over 30 times in magazines, websites, and anthologies such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, It Calls From the Sky, PULP Literature, and A Quiet Afternoon 1 & 2. Website: RebeccaGomezFarrell.com. Social Media: @theGourmez. 

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On Bearing Witness

a book review of Melissa Chadburn’s A Tiny Upward Shove  

By Hazel Kight Witham 

The title of Melissa Chadburn’s debut novel comes from a flashback in which young Marina, the main character, attempts to rescue a bird stuck in the drain valve of a water heater. Her mother, Mutya, comes along, in a hurry to get to the beach with her boyfriend. She needs Marina to abandon the girl’s vital mission, but Marina is too worried about the bird to leave it. Mutya, not to be slowed by some doomed bird’s plight, first tries to pull it out, but cannot get a good grip, and instead shoves upward, breaking its wing, and not so much freeing it as mortally wounding it. The bird flaps in pained circles before falling still. Marina is crushed, but Mutya brushes it off as “helping a hurt thing” along with a “tiny upward shove.” 

A copy of the colorful hardback cover of A Tiny Upward Shove by Melissa Chadburn next to a candle and a plant.

Through its many twists and turns, this novel jolts the reader in a manner similar to Mutya’s no-bullshit approach to bird-rescue. The novel’s vivid, disorienting, furious opening paragraph introduces us to the singular voice of an Aswang—a protective, vengeful spirit from Filipino folklore— who takes us from the world of the living into another realm to bring justice for Marina’s murder. This omniscient Aswang fills in Marina’s battered backstory, introduces several supporting characters, and then hopscotches through the six previous generations of the Salles family the spirit inhabited. The Aswang also delves into the neglected childhood of the murderer: the real-life Willie Pickton, a man who killed 49 vulnerable women—or more—on his pig farm in Vancouver, British Colombia. These characters’ fates are intertwined and offer wrenching views at the damage we do to each other, particularly to children, when we do not pay attention, when we are too consumed with our own busy lives to stop for the fragile birds. 

Chadburn starts the novel with Marina dead but renders her vividly alive through the whole of the book: as a child with her lola and mother, as a smart girl in a new school and a new city, trying to care for and contain her restless, reckless college student mother, and later, as a girl navigating the wilds of the foster care system, with all its lonely rituals and rhythms. Chadburn peppers in Tagalog terms for some of the most explicit words, deftly offering context, but then moving forward, trusting the reader to remember them. The Aswang brings us into the most pivotal moments—scenes of hideous cruelty and carelessness that follow Marina into places she never should have gone, places where her mother and others do not protect her. Eventually we meet Alex at a foster care campus, who brings warmth into Marina’s life, but who also carries some of the worst trauma children endure. 

A Tiny Upward Shove reveals the vital work fiction can do to expose corrupted systems and spotlight abuse in a way that is a call to action for the reader. To do so in this case required a depth of knowledge on the part of the author, and the courage to mosaic lived experience and careful research into a propulsive story, rendering something new and transformative. In Chadburn’s case with A Tiny Upward Shove, it required delving into the brokenness of our foster care systems and researching the horror of Willie Pickton, his victims, and, even in the midst of so much wreckage, finding a way to have curiosity and compassion enough to explore what led Willie to such violence.  

Chadburn’s use of the Aswang narrator, Tagalog words and phrases, and her extensive research renders a world of wrenching stories so real that they become a part of us and force us to look at the awful when we so often choose comfort by averting our gaze.  

For readers who seek escape, a splash in the shallows of a beach read, a bird easily freed from entanglement, this may not be the book for you right now. But for those able to trust an author as skilled, caring, and badass as Chadburn to take us into the deepest woods, to bear witness to callous sexual violence, remorseless slaughter, and crushing systems, but then lead us back out again, is a way of honoring the women at the heart of this story, as well as their real-life counterparts. Chadburn, righteous Aswang writer, memorializes women unable to share their stories and urges us to take more care in this world of beauty and devastation.  

As a Women Who Submit board member, Chadburn continues to support this network in submitting writing to agents, journals, contests, and presses. In 2020, Chadburn offered the WWS community a workshop on literary citizenship—modeling ways writers can support authors with reviews, and nudging us to find ways to uplift and nurture each other’s literary pursuits in the midst of deeply challenging times.  

Chadburn’s debut novel asks readers and artists: where do we put our money, our time, our creative efforts to make change, to spotlight injustice, to bear witness?  In what ways can we—especially those of us with the privilege to have avoided systems like the ones Chadburn explores—channel our energies for good? The courage it takes to stay with Chadburn’s narrator is just one small step toward greater courage in honoring and protecting women’s lives and caring for those on the margins and in the shadows. Melissa Chadburn’s A Tiny Upward Shove is a powerful catalyst for holding accountable the systems designed to support our most vulnerable.  

Hazel Kight Witham is a mother, teacher, slam poetry coach, and writer who was made in Los Angeles and still calls it home. She has published work in The Sun, Bellevue Literary Review, Integrated Schools, Mutha Magazine, Cultural Weekly, Rising Phoenix Review and other journals. She is a proud public school teacher in LAUSD and was a 2020 finalist for California Teacher of the Year. She is a member of Women Who Submit, and gathering with them throughout the high seas of pandemic kept her afloat as a writer. Find her work here: www.hazelkightwitham.com.

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Together We Thrive: Encouraging Women Through Writing and Workplace Communities

By Daria E. Topousis

In 2015, I felt like my whole world was coming apart. I had spent ten years writing a memoir that never came together and had finally made the hard decision to abandon it. I had returned to my first love, fiction, but all of the stories I sent out were being rejected. I was a failure as a writer. I started to wonder if I should give up on my life-long dream. And then I read an article in Poets & Writers Magazine about an organization called Women Who Submit. The story of how women stop submitting after a few rejections hit close to home, and I loved how the founders wanted to change that. I showed up to my first meeting about a year later and knew I wanted to be part of this community. 

Around the same time, I was floundering at work. I had worked in software at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for twenty years. It was the lifeline that kept me financially and intellectually tethered, despite the vicissitudes of my writing life. A group of new managers were hired in my organization, and I was suddenly feeling unwelcome in the male-dominated technology world. I was starting to wonder if I should leave my software project management career altogether and find something else to do to earn a living. This struggle went on for a couple of years, and in the heart of it I went to a conference called the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). I was blown away by how welcoming everyone was, despite the fact that it was an enormous conference (15,000 attendees that year). I went to tracks where women told stories similar to my own. By the end of the event, I decided I was not going to walk away from my career. No, I was going to stay and try to bring this spirit of support back with me. I wanted to have that encouragement and enthusiasm every day, not just once per year. So I organized a meeting of women who had attended GHC to see if they were interested in forming some kind of community at JPL.

Fifteen women showed up to our first meeting. We talked about the conference, and about how it had been a morale booster for all of us when we attended (all at different times). We decided we wanted to continue meeting, but what would we focus on? We scheduled a second meeting to figure that out. Women who had attended the first meeting started spreading the word so that by our second meeting forty people showed up. We talked about our struggles, our achievements, and suggestions for future meeting topics. I also asked if anyone would be willing to help manage the group, and several volunteered. And so Women in Tech began. 

From the beginning, we wanted to be a peer-to-peer network that would foster each other’s careers, support each other at work, and learn from each other. In dialog with some of the early members, I realized how much women in science and technology have in common with writers. Like women who give up after their writing is rejected, women will not apply for a job if they don’t get it on the first attempt. An internal report at Hewlett Packard, which was widely publicized through books like Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, showed that women wait until they’re 100 percent qualified for a position (men apply when they are 60 percent qualified) before they apply. I realized many of us were suffering from imposter syndrome and self-doubt. One of my favorite parts of Women Who Submit is the submission party: a coworking space where when someone sends a piece of writing off to a journal, everyone in the room cheers. It helps us associate positivity with the normally nerve-wracking process of sending our work into the world, and also gives us control of when and how we submit. I decided we needed something similar at JPL. I loved that submitting work had become something to brag about, as had rejections (the WWS monthly submission brag is a comment board where members can share their latest rejections for support). So, in one of our early Women in Tech meetings, we asked anyone who had taken a risk in their career to stand up. A risk could be applying for a new job, sending a paper in for a conference or peer-reviewed journal, or having a talk with your manager about your career. When the risk-takers stood up, we applauded. This was a huge success, and at our next meeting women wanted to share what kind of risk they took. After that we spent time hearing about what women were doing and celebrating their bravery. They can’t control whether they get a job or whether their paper gets accepted in a peer-reviewed journal, but they can control whether or not they try. 

Soon women were approaching me at work to introduce themselves and tell me about a risk they took because they heard other women’s stories. Women were applying to be conference chairs, to be part of big initiatives in their field, and were starting to stand up for each other in meetings when they felt like another woman’s voice wasn’t being heard. We were encouraging each other to be brave. 

We also introduced the idea of giving a shout-out to anyone who had done something as an advocate or ally. Maybe they stood up for your ideas in a meeting. Maybe they pushed you to apply for a role you didn’t think about going for yourself. We also started peer-to-peer training on impostor syndrome, negotiating for yourself, and tips for applying for jobs within JPL. 

Now, three years after starting, we have 350 members who are supporting each other, building each other up, and connecting with mentors. When the pandemic hit, we moved to virtual meetings. We now have anywhere from 75-250 people on our calls. And they aren’t just women. We are also open to non-binary professionals and to any men who want to be allies. Even when we are alone in our homes working, we know we have colleagues who have our backs and who are there to lend an ear or give advice. New employees are building their networks and finding friends through our community. 

As for me, I know I will stick it out in this field. This year I celebrated my 25th anniversary working at JPL. I am still writing too. I’m sending work out, both fiction and nonfiction. I have learned to celebrate my successes and my failures. I have my confidence back and I owe it to all the amazing women in my life, both in Women Who Submit and Women in Tech. I am grateful for Women Who Submit for providing this model of how to build supportive communities that believe in a tide that raises all ships. Together we thrive.

Women writer with two tone hair and a teal shirt in front of a light colored wall

Daria E. Topousis is a prose writer and a software project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 2020 she received the Equal Opportunity Medal, a NASA Honor Award, for her work building Women in Tech. 

This work was done as a private venture and not in the author’s capacity as an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. The content has not been approved or adopted by NASA, JPL, or the California Institute of Technology. Any views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of NASA, JPL, or the California Institute of Technology.

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Women Who Submit uplifts and affirms Asian American and Pacific Islander voices

by Women Who Submit Leadership Team
Cover image from the media toolkit for Asian American Day of Action.

Xiaojie Tan
Daoyou Feng
Soon Chung Park
Hyun Jung Grant
Suncha Kim
Yong Ae Yue
Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez
Paul Andre Michels

Rest in power.

Another act of white supremacist misogynist violence has torn a hole in the world.

Again, women who should be living, loving, creating, eating, laughing, hugging their families, working, writing, resting, women who should still be here to live their cherished and beloved lives, are gone.

Again, the institution of policing extends its empathy to a man who acted out of white entitlement.

Again, those in power throw around insulting excuses. “A bad day.” “Sexual temptation.”

Again, a white-centered media tries to gaslight us by hesitating to call the gunmen’s murder of eight people, seven of them women, six of them Asian women, as anything other than white supremacist and misogynist. 

Again, Women Who Submit mourns the lives of the women whose lives were cruelly cut short by a man who viewed them as disposable, a man who was cushioned and encouraged by a system that confirmed those views and abetted his actions.

WWS members are AAPI. We are mothers and grandmothers. We are workers. Immigrants. The children of immigrants. We reject a world where women of color are expected to live in fear of their lives being severed at the hands of a violent white person. We reject surveillance and policing “solutions” that only increase harm done to Black, brown and indigenous communities. These responses only increase the harm done to AAPI women and all women of color already made vulnerable by jobs that demand enormous emotional labor with scarce protection in return: hospitality, personal care, sex work. Our hearts are with the loved ones of Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, and Paul Andre Michels. We reject their erasure. We affirm their irreplaceable humanity.

We know that no words can bring them back and make the world whole again. We know that this is not the first act of violence towards Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, that this violence is older than the United States, and has increased dramatically over the past year, and that denouncing the pattern of racism, harassment and assault is not enough. Declarations are not enough. They must be paired with action. We encourage all of our readers to take action with us.

We want to amplify the voices of those in our literary community who celebrate AAPI life and resist white supremacy culture. Please join us in showing love and gratitude to these organizations:

Kaya Press

Kundiman

EastWest Players

Asian American Writers’ Workshop

Asian American Literary Review

Arkipelago Books

Bamboo Ridge Press

Hyphen Magazine

Hmong American Writers’ Circle

We believe words can be a balm and a fire. We have deep love and respect for these writers and we hope you will let their words ignite you to demand transformative change:

Sex Work is Care Work by Jean Chen Ho

A Letter to My Fellow Asian Women Whose Hearts are Still Breaking by R.O. Kwon

The Atlanta Shooting is Another Reminder that the Police are Not Our Friends by Steph Cha

Sundress Publications Interview with WWS Member Muriel Leung, by Julie Leung

Anti-Asian Violence must be a bigger part of America’s racial discourse, a conversation between Alexander Chee and Cathy Park Hong

They Pretend to Be Us While Pretending We Don’t Exist by Jenny Zhang

We encourage everyone to follow and support these organizations that advance justice for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Stop AAPI Hate

Red Canary Song

Asian Americans Advancing Justice

Tsuru for Solidarity

Japanese Americans for Justice

We will continue working for a world that uplifts the dignity and humanity of AAPI women.

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Breathe and Push: Threatened Abortion

 I didn’t realize I was pregnant until we were moving out of the duplex and into our new condo. After a long day of hauling boxes, I collapsed on the new hardwood floors and tried to understand my exhaustion. It was a new kind of tired—like I couldn’t get up off the floor—and I tried to remember the last time I had my period. That was when I asked my partner to pick up a test. It was New Year’s Eve.

It was the two of us with our puppy and a + sign that told us there was a baby on the way. The condo was new with white walls and no history. It was the height of the real estate bubble, and we believed we were settling into a fresh new start, and our little family was sprouting new life.

Image of the author lying on the floor next to a brown dog.

So, if you believe a pregnancy is the universe’s way of telling you to stay with someone, to work through things; what exactly is the universe trying to tell you if you miscarry?

It was the beginning of February and the gloom of winter that never usually settles into LA, settled into LA. I was nearing the end of my first trimester. This was confirmed at an appointment with my OBGYN. I was relieved to be happy, to know that I wanted to have kids. I asked the doctor about the drinking I did over Thanksgiving, before I had any idea I was pregnant. Her response: “There’s nothing you can do about it now. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Make sure you’re taking a prenatal vitamin and stop drinking/smoking.”

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the bacchanalia that was that Thanksgiving. It was the year our friend was dating the wine maker and at our Friendsgiving we drank. We Drank. And there was lots of second hand smoke. We ate so much delicious food and we drank some of tastiest wines, but now I couldn’t help but wonder the impact those three days of gluttony might have had on the baby.

So, when I saw spotting toward the end of that first trimester, and then the spotting got worse, I called my friend who was also a doctor, and he told me to go to the emergency room.

Atop the exam room table, the lab tech searched, searched, searched inside me for a heartbeat and he found nothing, nothing, nothing. It was over.

The Urgent Care doctor said I could choose a D & C or allow my body to take care of it on its own. Either way, I already had my next prenatal appointment scheduled; I could decide then. My discharge papers from Urgent Care said “Threatened Abortion.” Abortion. Not miscarriage, abortion. The issue suddenly came into new, sharper focus, because if abortion was murder, I had just killed my baby. The injustice of the loss and this loaded term overwhelmed me. As my partner drove me home, I started to grieve. I had already imagined the timing of this baby, had imagined the future of our family, but I also breathed with relief. Maybe we weren’t ready. Maybe this pregnancy wasn’t meant to be.

When I got home, I looked up threatened abortion: vaginal bleeding when the diagnostic for a spontaneous abortion has not been met. Spontaneous abortion: miscarriage, pregnancy loss. These are all the pregnancies that aren’t meant to be. Despite what anti-abortion activists want this word to mean, pregnancy loss is loss. Abortion is a pregnancy that isn’t meant to be.

That was twelve years ago. I can do the math in my head. I can tell you how old that baby might be, and friends I have who have experienced any of the many types of pregnancy loss hold that math in their bodies.

As abortion access and rights are systematically stripped away from women all over our country, I think of my unplanned pregnancy. I remember my threatened abortion and how sick I was for months after, but when so much was out of my control, I still had a choice. Our country protects that choice, and we will continue to fight for it, for all women.

We are women and non binary creatives. We write our own stories and control every word on the page. We maintain our narratives and we will breathe and push the stories we choose to tell into the world. We choose our words, our bodies, and our lives.

Noriko Nakada, a racially ambiguous writer's headshot

Noriko Nakada is a public school teacher and the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.



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Breathe and Push: Attending the AWP You Want to Create

by Noriko Nakada

Ever since I first became aware of the AWP conference, I have avoided attending. Part of my avoidance had to do with my MFA experience. I attended Antioch University LA’s low residency program from 2003-2005 where I worked with amazing mentors and created bonds with talented writers, but like most MFA programs, it had/has a diversity problem. I sought out what diversity did exist in the program, and super-appreciated that Terrence Hayes was our commencement speaker, but I wasn’t brave enough to leave my MFA like Kima Jones did and wrote about in her “Flood Is Water” piece for Poets and Writers.

Throughout the program, I found residencies stressful, and when I glanced through the schedule of lectures and readings, most topics weren’t for me. I realize now, I was suffering from MFA-so-white, so-male, so-straight, so fiction-valuing, so I avoided AWP. I imagined it would be a fun-house mirror of my MFA experience. I also dislike crowds and paying fees for professional organizations/ conferences. I didn’t even go to AWP or its associated events when it was in LA. Yeah. I just never wanted to go.

But 15 years later, a small tweet from Jack Jones Literary Arts asking for volunteers to table for them, and a post from Women Who Submit asking for a roll call of members attending, I got myself there.

In the weeks leading up to the conference, I heard from writers who struggled at AWPs in the past. They gave advice for making the most of the conference, and I listened. And then I cast a spell over myself to be positive (while still critical) within my AWP experience. My first test came in the form of a LONG registration line. A long, white line. But I stayed inside my little spell and quietly observed the AWP happening around me.

The line moved quickly, and I signed in, but they didn’t have my badge. A volunteer there told me the organization who registered me must have printed it. Okay. So instead of lingering inside that chaos, I got to seek out Jack Jones. I pushed my way onto the floor of the book fair and at the end of a brilliant red carpet, there was Kima setting up the JJLA table. She welcomed me with a hug, introduced me to her staff, passed on my badge, and then I created the AWP I wanted to attend. I went to panels with women and writers of color talking about issues I wanted to think about and readings by writers I admired and wanted to hear.

A few weeks have passed, and I don’t know if I’ll ever attend AWP again. I know there were other versions of AWP happening in Portland last month, but my AWP was fierce writer-activists creating the literary world they want and demanding better from the community that exists. We all need and deserve more from the literary community: we have work to do, so for now, I’ll stay writing.

Noriko Nakada, a racially ambiguous writer's headshot

Noriko Nakada is a public school teacher and the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.