AustLit

'What was it like to participate in the Women’s Liberation Movement? What made millions of women step forward from the 1960s onwards and join it in different ways? Many of the 56 women in this book were there. They describe how they have contributed in multitudinous ways across politics, the arts, health, education, environmentalism, economics and science and created wonderfully rebellious activism. And how they continue this activism today with determined grittiness. Here are women – all over 70 years of age – still railing against the patriarchal systemic oppression of women, still fighting back. “Don’t Call Me Sweetie,” “Never Waste a Good Crisis” and “Still Here, Still Clear and Still Lesbian” is some of what they want us to know.

'The contributors to Not Dead Yet have created new analyses with new language and new kinds of organisations always aware of the ways in which the system is stacked against us, particularly against radical feminists. But we persist. We share the revolutionary zest we have carried with us over many decades. There is history, there is subversion and there are many extraordinary acts of courage. The language is full of irony and wit – as well as deadly serious.

'The Women’s Liberation Movement has had a profound effect on the lives of millions of women and in turn those women have changed our world. But the struggle continues. May these riveting tales by the foremothers of the movement inspire young women readers. #NotDeadYet'

Source : publisher's blurb

'The imaginative scope of Australian lesbian writing is literally boundless. It takes in urban space as well as the outback; contemporary time to prehistory; inner voice to unlimited universe of galaxies and stars. Through close reading of the novels by Susan Hawthorne, Finola Moorehead, Dorothy Porter and others, the essay opens up new vistas of reading and critiquing lesbian writing. Myth, mathematics, physics, travel to inner and outer places is at the heart of Australian lesbian writing—whether fiction or poetry (or for that matter self-reflective prose about literature and writing). The chapter aims to assert that creating a lesbian world against the stereotypes of the mainstream view of lesbians is in itself an integral part of that experimentation.'

Source: Abstract.

'In a dawn raid, Ekaterina is arrested. She is imprisoned, beaten, kept awake and tortured. She has no idea what has happened to her partner, Mercedes. The uncertainty plagues her. It is as if she has no history. Trying to retain her sense of self in swirling psychic state, she invents stories. And she remembers stories of her mother, her grandmothers and aunts, the rich mythic traditions of Greece. She rearranges them writes poems in her head. Thirty years later, her niece Desi is going through Kate's papers after her death trying to make sense of her aunts life. Susan Hawthorne's dark story uncovers hidden history of organised violence. She traces fear and uncertainty, and finds a narrative of resilience created through the writing of poems. The author asks: how do we pass on stories hidden by shame and resistance to shame? A novel that is both poetic and terrifying.' (Synopsis)