Reclaiming Lives


Many organizations could be offering scholarships for young women-men's organizations do this all the time. Those of us with more experience need to make ourselves available as resource people and to assist younger women to organize around their own issues. We need to support their activities in any way we can. As a matter of course, women's organizations could be sending their information out to local schools, so students know what is available and happening in the women's community.

Domestic Angel

Wedged between stove and deep
freeze, I dream domestic,
tend herbs and poetry, snip
sage and Sexton, pick
parsley and Plath. I draw
lists as long as spaghettini, cook
soups and poems from scraps
of cabbage and snatched lines. I slice
onions into pale halos, moon rings
as round as cherubims' mouths singing, singing,
singing slick commercial jingles. They feed
me lines as I feed one man's
needs, his growing appetite.

I set the table for a feast,
light candles for this
ritual. The small gold flames leap
from matchstick to wick, a blushing
wine heats the space within us.

Words melt on my tongue
like the memory of something
familiar, vanilla or mace, the lingering
tastes. I forget the price of
bliss is silence.

Sylvie Bourassa
Montreal, Quebec

(Reprinted from WEdf, Fall 1995, Volume 11, No.4)

Speaking and writing contests, apprenticeships and other activities of this sort would help. But basically, women's organizations need to begin treating young women as a priority.

Susan: What in particular, can an organization like CCLOW do to incorporate young women and represent their interests?

Greta: CCLOW would need to redefine its focus to some extent. It is in a difficult position, as a national organization concerned with education, because so much education falls within provincial jurisdiction. There is a whole spectrum of education out there, to which CCLOW has not yet addressed itself, that of children and adolescents.

However, more emphasis could be placed on the development of teaching materials. CCLOW could act as a clearing house for ideas, materials and methodologies for appropriate education for young women. Collecting and distributing materials to front-line feminist educators and teachers would provide a valuable service. Scholarships could be set up for young women, as well. CCLOW networks could sponsor special events for young women in their geographic area. There is a great deal which needs to be done.

Reprinted from WEdf; Spring 1986, Volume 4, Number 3.


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