Janet Mason will launch her new book THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (Adelaide Books — New York/Lisbon) on Thursday, July 26, at 7 p.m., at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore, 551 Carpenter Lane in West Mt. Airy.
From the Chestnut Hill Local — interview by Len Lear:
“I hope the story lets everyone know that religion/spirituality is open to them,” said Janet, “whether or not they chose it. The story was in part inspired by a young woman who lived on my block and whose child transitioned genders at an early age. A few years ago, this young mother left her church in tears after a rather judgmental remark from another congregant.
“Of course, my neighbor never returned to that church. When I was writing, that story was in my head, and I think consciously it means that I wrote the book to let everyone know, especially that child, that there is room for them. They are valued.”
Note: This piece is airing worldwide this week on This Way Out (TWO), the syndicated LGBT radio show. Click here to listen to the entire show.
(TWO is the first international LGBTQ radio news magazine.)
Despite the fact that I am (still) filled with lesbian rage, I am a nonviolent person – if not by nature, then by principle.
But, at the same time, I have to admit that a woman hero avenging injustice gives me a little thrill. Lately, I’ve developed an intellectual reasoning to this: we need more feminist heroines. We need to keep believing that a woman protecting other women is possible and we need to keep thinking that it’s important.
Reading Chaser (a Jinx Ballou novel) published in 2018 by Pariah Press furthered my thinking on this. The book was written by Dharma Kelleher who is heralded as one of the top authors in transgender crime fiction.
I don’t ordinarily read mysteries. But when I do I am impressed with the suspense and tension inherent in the form, and I always learn something new. As a non-mystery reader, I found that the book was a delightful and suspenseful page turner with heart.
The narrator, Jinx Ballou, is a bounty hunter hired to bring a teenage disabled girl — charged with her mother’s murder — back to face her charges in court. The girl has skipped bail which is why Jinx was hired to find her.
Jinx takes on this case after she is outed by a local newspaper as transgender and is fired by her former agency.
Jinx is astounded to discover that simply by knowing she is transgender can make it now obvious that her employer is small minded. As the author writes:
“I sighed, even as my heart revved in my chest like a race car engine. ‘I’ve always been a girl, Sara Jean. It’s just that through some crazy mix-up of biochemistry or genetics, I was born with a boy’s body. It’s hard to explain.’
“She fixed her gaze on me once again. ‘Ain’t nothing to explain. Boys is boys, and girls is girls. God made you what you are. Ain’t no changing it.’
‘I wish it were that simple, Sara Jean, but it’s not. I’, — ‘
‘Perverts like you’s what’s wrong with this world. Making it dangerous for God-fearing folks to use public restrooms.’
‘A pervert? Seriously, Sara Jean, is that what you think I am?’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Want to know what trans people do in public restrooms? We pee. We poop. And we wash our hands which is more than I can say for some people.”
And so the author proves her point. Discrimination that can be proven with the prohibition of use of public restrooms, is absolutely ridiculous.
Jinx goes on to find new work, gets her girl who she develops great empathy toward. While doing so, she confronts a mobster running a human trafficking operation. I observed that in many ways this novel contained many mysteries including who outed Jinx to the reporter, and why should the fact that she is transgender matter anyway?
And so I learned a lot from Chaser, but perhaps most of all, I learned that yes, given the right circumstances, I can count myself as a fan of crime fiction.
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (just published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
This morning, I took part in Poetry Sunday, a Unitarian Universalist summer service that is a tradition. In my talk, I reflected on the nature of love and read from my recently completed novel The Unicorn, The Mystery. I also read a poem by Sappho and read my own work that it inspired (“Sapphics for Aphrodite”).
The YouTube video of my talk is below. The complete text of my talk is below that. The service took place at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration on Stenton Ave. in Philadelphia.
There are many types of love. I explore the many types of love in the novel that I just completed The Unicorn, The Mystery which I am going to read from briefly:
“The point I was going to make is that romantic love is far from the most important type of love,” said the Priest with his usual authority. “Christians believe that pure love—the kind of love that is selfless and creates goodness—is the way that God loves us. This is why the saying, ‘love you neighbor’ is so important. There are numerous references to this in the Bible. But the most important is from the Gospel According to Mark in which he says ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than this.
“This kind of love is called ‘agape,’” continued the priest. “Agape is the highest form of pure, selfless love. It is the kind of love that God has for us—and the kind of love that we strive to have for our fellow man.”
“I recognize the word,” I replied. “It’s Ancient Greek, from the time of Homer.”
The Priest narrowed his eyes.
Of course, many of the great poets have been inspired by romantic love, especially the Greeks. But some may argue–and I do–that love (regardless of the kind of love) is the inspiration for all poetry.
One of the poets from antiquity who greatly inspired me was Sappho, who lived around 600 B.C.E. Of course, she lived before labels but many of Sappho’s love poems were written to women. And she was technically a Lesbian since she lived on the Isle of Lesbos, now called Lesvos. Most of what is left from Sappho is in fragments. One of the complete poems that survived is her “Hymn to Aphrodite” which I’ll read now:
On your dazzling throne. Aphrodite, Sly eternal daughter of Zeus, I beg you: do not crush me With grief
But come to me now – as once You heard my far cry, and yielded, slipping from your father’s house
to yoke the birds to your gold chariot, and came. Handsome sparrows brought you swiftly to the dark earth,
their wings whipping the middle sky Happy, with deathless lips, you smiled: “What is wrong, Sappho, why have You called me?
What does your mad heart desire? Whom shall I make love you, Who is turning her back on you?
Let her run away, soon she’ll chase you; Refuse your gifts, soon she’ll give them. She will love you, though unwillingly.”
Then come to me now and free me From fearful agony. Labor for my mad heart, and be my ally.
Almost twenty years ago, when I took a pilgrimage to Greece, including a stay in Sappho’s birthplace of Skala Eressos, a beach town on the Isle of Lesvos, I wrote the following response to Sappho’s hymn to the goddess of love. The title is “Sapphics for Aphrodite” —
Aphrodite, in your blazing chariot, I do not ask to be loved by anyone against her will, to be fled from or to be pursued.
I do not ask for anything that will sever my breath with anguish; I do not wish to destroy or to be destroyed. I do not wish for
anything other than for the stars to blaze in my pulse until breaking, shattered, and incandescent, I am consumed: the moon’s rays intent upon me.
Aphrodite this is all I ask of you, you who hold the Fates in my hands, and you, of the golden winged chariot, in whose temple I burn.
The priest in my novel has a point. Romantic love can have its limitations. But love is love – regardless of what it is called. And love can lead to goodness.
Janet Mason is holding her book launch for her novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon — 2018) at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore on July 26, a Thursday evening, at 7 p.m. The Big Blue Marble Bookstore is located at 551 Carpenter Lane, Philadelphia 19119.
Mason, who teaches at Temple University Center City and the Mt. Airy Learning Tree, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for a section of the novel.
Mason is also an award-winning creative writer, teacher, radio commentator, and blogger for The Huffington Post. She records commentary for This Way Out, the internationally-aired LGBTQ radio syndicate based in Los Angeles. Her book, Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters, published by Bella Books in 2012, was chosen by the American Library Association for its 2013 Over the Rainbow List. Tea Leaves also received a Goldie Award. She is the author of three poetry books. Mason is a lay minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of The Restoration located on Stenton Avenue in East Mt. Airy.
From the back cover of THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders:
Janet Mason has a storyteller’s gift, weaving rich imagery with provocative twists to create a world where gender is as complex and fluid as the emotional bond between twins. With its Biblical, Pagan, fantastical and modernist roots, THEY is not easily categorized – and even harder to put down.
Susan Gore, PhD, Editor, Coming Out in Faith: Voices of LGBTQ Unitarian Universalists
To read an excerpt from THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders,click here.
This morning, I took part in a Unitarian Universalist summer service. In my talk, I reflected on The Egyptian Cat Goddess the Goddess Bastet (a part of my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery) and on the spiritual practice of gardening.
The YouTube video of my talk is below. The complete text of my talk is below that. The service took place at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration on Stenton Ave. in Philadelphia.
In the summer, I garden. This is a common hobby for many, especially writers. It teaches patience, attention, and relentless hope. Not everything that we plant comes back – especially after a long icy winter. Not every seed sprouts and not every sprout makes it. In this way it makes me focus on the positive – on what does come back and on what does sprout.
Being a Unitarian Universalist gives me a spiritual context in which to think about gardening. Many of our flowers attract bees – such as bee balm, lavender and the butterfly bush. And bees, of course, are good for the planet.
Every now and then, a plant from my writing appears in my garden – seemingly out of nowhere but probably from a seed dropped by a bird. Last year it was a tall flowering weed known as a “sow’s ear” which was also in the manuscript I just finished writing, titled The Unicorn, The Mystery which is set in the 1500s in France. I was amazed, of course, at the sow’s ear in my backyard.
Recently, I planted catnip. Cats love our backyard and often we see one sleeping there – most often in the shade of the young hazel nut tree that my partner’s sister sent us. Inside, my office looks out to the backyard where the garden is. Our old cat Felix has taken to sleeping on the inside back windowsill – no doubt protecting his territory.
I have long been fascinated by the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bastet. In my novel, The Unicorn, The Mystery, my monk character (who in many ways is a Unitarian Universalist at heart) prays to the Goddess Bastet.
I stepped slowly and softly as if the soles of my feet had ears. I took another step. A branch snapped under my foot. I winced. That would never do. If my beloved unicorn heard that she would assume there was a human nearby – big enough to snap a branch under foot – and hide. It seemed like I would never find her. I decided to pray. But I had prayed to the One God before and it hadn’t worked. Who would I pray to? Who would help me?
Immediately, the Goddess Bastet leapt to mind. Bastet was an Egyptian Goddess who was half woman and half cat. I knew about her because when I was a boy, my mother would tell me the stories that her father had told her. He had loved Greek mythology and found out that the Goddess Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, was related to the earlier Goddess Bastet from Egypt who came from the even earlier fierce lioness Goddess Bast, the warrior goddess of the sun.
The followers of Bastet ruled ancient Egypt for a time in the land where cats were sacred. I remember that my mother’s emerald green eyes gleamed as if she were a cat herself when she told me about the Goddess Bastet who kept away disease and was the protector of pregnant women. The stories she told me about the fierce, soft, cat Goddess Bastet were so vivid that she made me want a cat for my very own pet.
My mother cautioned me, however, not to mention cats to anyone but her. People with cats were looked on with suspicion, she warned me. For some reason cats were looked down on by the Church as wily creatures associated with Satan. Again, my mother told me that it was very important never to anger the Church.
Surely, the Goddess Bastet would help me find my beloved unicorn. She of all the gods and goddesses would understand why I had to find my beloved unicorn to save her.
I closed my eyes tightly until I saw a slim woman, standing tall. She had very good posture, with the head of a cat. I knew it was Goddess Bastet, just as my mother had described her.
And so, the Goddess Bastet and other worlds – real, imagined and both – is something for me to mull over as I tend the soil and do the spiritual work of gardening.
Namaste
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (just published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
After hearing about the controversy on Samantha’s B’s Full Frontal, I decided to repost this blogpost featuring my poem, “The Cunt Sonnet.” I originally wrote it in about 1992 when I attended The Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. It was so long ago that Allen Ginsberg, alive and well, was on the panel when the poem was read by the theatrical Bobbie Louise Hawkins.
I heard that the word cunt — as in that “feckless cunt” — is regularly used in Canada (where Samantha is from) and in Europe. “Cunt” has a long and regal history. (Obviously Samantha was upset by the news — and justifiable so.) Let’s give her another chance. And let’s take back the word in the United States!
The cunts are coming, the cunts are coming!”
I heard that recently, on Face Book that there were some derogatory references going around containing the word “cunt.” Someone remembered my poem from the old days, “The Cunt Sonnet,” which I posted below. I came of age in a woman-affirming lesbian feminist community. No doubt that entered my thinking when I wrote “The Cunt Sonnet”. Now, more than a quarter of a century ago, I was at Naropa Institute for the summer in Boulder Colorado (when Allen Ginsberg was still there) when I was inspired to write the poem. After one of the faculty members, the writer Bobbie Louise Hawkins, read it on the farewell panel, I took a bow as “the cunt who wrote it.” Indeed. It is always time to reclaim the word “cunt” — perhaps now more than ever.
The Cunt Sonnet
The cathedral of my cunt is a real cunt-nundrum:
what and who it wants often I do not.
since the days of the cunt-iforms,
ancient Persia and Babylon,
this had been engraved in stone.
Still the English midwives,
those working class cunt-esses,
call a cunt a cunt.
Hark their cries in the dark night:
The cunts are coming!
The cunts are coming!
Join the cunt-ilinguists.
Scream it on the tastebuds of our common cunts
as they rise in my cunty swagger
for I am a cunting woman by day and by night
when those invited and not enter my dreams:
Cunts all, I embrace them warmly.
With my woman, cunt-ilingus is our pleasure boat
Sometimes slippery canoe or runaway yacht.
Each morning I hasten to salute:
My cunt-ry tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty.
by Janet Mason
first published in When I Was Straight, poems by Janet Mason from Insight To Riot Press (1995)
thanks to CA Conrad for encouraging me to submit to EOAGH, A Journal of the Arts
Note: This piece is airing worldwide this week on This Way Out (TWO), the syndicated LGBT radio show. Click here to listen to the entire show.
(TWO is the first international LGBTQ radio news magazine.)
I was just telling a friend that the Left Bank of Paris in the 1920s and 30s – and the lesbians that still live on in history and my imagination — is my favorite era. Then a copy of Never Anyone But You arrived. This book is heralded as “A literary tour de force,” is written by Rupert Thompson and published by Other Press in 2018. The writing does live up to its reputation and, just as importantly, the story holds together.
As the novel wanders through Paris, the reader glimpses cameos of legendary places and people – most notably the bookstore “Shakespeare and Company” run by Sylvia Beach and her partner Adrienne Monnier. But as I turned the last page and wiped the wetness from my eyes, I realized that it wasn’t the history that got to me. It was that the author exquisitely captured the life time of love that existed between these two women who are actual historic figures.
The story opens in 1909 when teenage Suzanne Malherbe and Lucie Schwob meet, fall in love and scheme about how to have a life together. Through a series of events, Suzanne’s mother marries Lucie’s father. This renders the two teens step sisters, a convenient cover for the social mores of the time. Suzanne paints and Lucie writes.
The two “sisters” reinvent themselves with male names. Lucie takes the name Claude and Suzanne goes by Marcel. They move to Paris (from a provincial town in France where they were from) and become involved with the Surrealist movement. In the 1930s with anti-Semitism on the rise (Claude is from a Jewish family), they leave Paris for the island of Jersey, off the coast of France, where eventually they are forced to deal with Nazi occupation.
Along the way are interesting asides, such as this quote from the well-known writer of the time and place Djuna Barnes, who described Paris as having “the fame of a-too-beautiful woman” meaning that as Thomas wrote, “One could be overwhelmed by Paris. One could become sated. And it was hard for a city to retain that kind of allure.”
Early in their relationship when the two girls chose their male names, the author writes:
“And then, in a finger snap, my new name came to me, the name that would be mentioned in the same breath as hers, and it flew straight from my brain into my mouth and out into the air. “Marcel Moore.”
“What?” Claude too, it seemed, had been in something of a trance. I repeated what I had said. Marcel, after her uncle. I had never met him, but I admired him, both as a writer and as a spirit. And there was another factor. Marcel was a man’s name, and yet it sounded feminine. I liked the way it loitered between the genders, as if it couldn’t make up its mind. Claude was nodding. “And Moore?” “It’s an English name.” “You wanted to set yourself apart … “ “Yes.” Though the truth was, I had chosen the name to appeal to the Anglophile in her. Also, she claimed she was related to George Moore, the Irish novelist. “How did you think of it?” “I don’t know. It just arrived.” Claude leaned her elbows on the table, her slender forearms upright and considered me. “Marcel Moore,” she said. “That sounds like someone I could love.”
The novel covers a fair amount of history. And while it is obviously well-researched, enlightening and the thing that first hooked me, it was the love that I remember, the love between these two women Suzanne and Lucie and the names they gave themselves, Marcel and Claude.
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (just published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders reviewed by Amos Lassen — “liberating to us who have lived in a binary worl… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…Follow me on Twitter! 4 hours ago
I have long been fascinated by the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bastet. In my novel, The Unicorn, The Mystery, my monk character (who in many ways is a Unitarian Universalist at heart) prays to the Goddess Bastet.
lesbians that still live on in history and my imagination — is my favorite era. Then a copy of Never Anyone But You arrived. This book is heralded as “A literary tour de force,” is written by Rupert Thompson and published by Other Press in 2018. The writing does live up to its reputation and, just as importantly, the story holds together.
“Chaser” — a trans detective story with a feminist heroine — #amreading #LGBTQ
July 24, 2018 by Janet Mason
Note: This piece is airing worldwide this week on This Way Out (TWO), the syndicated LGBT radio show. Click here to listen to the entire show.
(TWO is the first international LGBTQ radio news magazine.)
Despite the fact that I am (still) filled with lesbian rage, I am a nonviolent person – if not by nature, then by principle.
But, at the same time, I have to admit that a woman hero avenging injustice gives me a
little thrill. Lately, I’ve developed an intellectual reasoning to this: we need more feminist heroines. We need to keep believing that a woman protecting other women is possible and we need to keep thinking that it’s important.
Reading Chaser (a Jinx Ballou novel) published in 2018 by Pariah Press furthered my thinking on this. The book was written by Dharma Kelleher who is heralded as one of the top authors in transgender crime fiction.
I don’t ordinarily read mysteries. But when I do I am impressed with the suspense and tension inherent in the form, and I always learn something new. As a non-mystery reader, I found that the book was a delightful and suspenseful page turner with heart.
The narrator, Jinx Ballou, is a bounty hunter hired to bring a teenage disabled girl — charged with her mother’s murder — back to face her charges in court. The girl has skipped bail which is why Jinx was hired to find her.
Jinx takes on this case after she is outed by a local newspaper as transgender and is fired by her former agency.
Jinx is astounded to discover that simply by knowing she is transgender can make it now obvious that her employer is small minded. As the author writes:
And so the author proves her point. Discrimination that can be proven with the prohibition of use of public restrooms, is absolutely ridiculous.
Jinx goes on to find new work, gets her girl who she develops great empathy toward. While doing so, she confronts a mobster running a human trafficking operation. I observed that in many ways this novel contained many mysteries including who outed Jinx to the reporter, and why should the fact that she is transgender matter anyway?
And so I learned a lot from Chaser, but perhaps most of all, I learned that yes, given the right circumstances, I can count myself as a fan of crime fiction.
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (just published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
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