An Honest Woman
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: May 17, 2017 9:03 PM | Last Updated: July 10, 2017
Jónína Kirton
An Honest Woman by Jónína Kirton confronts us with beauty and ugliness in the wholesome riot that is sex, love and marriage. From the perspective of a mixed-race woman, Kirton engages with Simone de Beauvoir and Donald Trump to unravel the norms of femininity and sexuality that continue to adhere today.
Kirton recalls her own upbringing, during which she was told to find a good husband who would "make an honest woman" out of her. Exploring the lives of many women, including her mother, her contemporaries and well-known sex-crime stories such as the case of Elisabeth Fritzl, Kirton mines the personal to loosen the grip of patriarchal and colonial impositions. (From Talonbooks)
From the book
declared a day of mourning
for the missing
I hang REDress on my balcony
go outside to look for others
nothing all balconies clear of red
so I walk the streets
hoping to find others
few know that I am one
of the "lucky ones"
raped never murdered
only parts of me are missing
now sixty
I worry for the lost
for the "lucky ones"
aware that porn producer once said
every day another girl turns eighteen
so many bus stops truck stops with one-way tickets
grief cuts bone
the daily dismemberment of our hearts
as our girls are manipulated
reported missing
and their loved ones left
to drag rivers in Winnipeg
while others walk highways of tears
where it has been said
you can feel
the spirits of the missing
and today in this city on this day of mourning
their redress arms empty
they wave to the cars that pass them by
on roadsides on balconies
all reminders of what we are missing
"REDress" by Jónína Kirton, from An Honest Woman ©2017. Published by Talonbooks.