JUDITH ARCANA
Writer and Performer
Ideal Use: Reproductive Justice and Abortion Rights/Roe v. Wade Anniversary + Women's History Month + Mother's Day/Motherhood Issues ....Poetry/Creative Writing/Literature + National Poetry Month....Poetry & Politics
Listen to a sample of"You Don't Know"
Judith Arcana is a writer and performer whose poems, stories and essays appear widely. Her newest book is What if your mother, a collection of poems and monologues examining a constellation of rarely offered themes: abortion, adoption, miscarriage and the biotechnology of childbirth.
Judith was a "Jane", a member of the underground feminist clinic that helped more than eleven thousand women and girls in Chicago get safe illegal abortions before the US Supreme Court's Roe decision in January of 1973. Judith also taught women's health and sexuality classes for the Chicago Women's Union's Liberation School, and was part of the movement creating women's studies and campus women's centers. She is an activist who works with student and community groups performing her powerful writing, discussing reproductive justice and motherhood. Judith appears in the documentary video Jane: An Abortion Service by Nell Lundy & Kate Kirtz, and is quoted (as "Deborah") in The Story of Jane by Laura Kaplan.
Judith Arcana is also the author of two earlier books about motherhood, both of which have been read, taught and discussed avidly for many years in the USA, Canada and the UK: Our Mothers' Daughters (one of the first feminist analyses of the mother/daughter relationship) and Every Mother's Son (the first feminist book about the mother/son relationship published in the US). Among her prose books is the literary biography Grace Paley's Life Stories, in which she examines the relationship between Grace's stories and her personal/political history.
Judith's work has been funded by the Puffin Foundation, the Rockefeller Archive Center and the Union Graduate School doctoral faculty; supported by a Poetry Award from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and a Fellowship from Literary Arts, Inc; and fostered by writing residencies at Soapstone in Oregon, the Montana Artists Refuge, the Mesa Refuge in California and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in New Mexico.
A longtime teacher of literature, writing and interdisciplinary topics in women's studies, Judith has taught in high schools, colleges, libraries, living rooms, a prison and a jail. She is an experienced speaker and fine performer of her work with experience on tv and radio as well as many bookstores, campuses and community events. She holds a PhD in Literature, an MA in Women's Studies, an Urban Preceptorship in Preventive Medicine and a BA in English. A native of the Great Lakes region, she lives now in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaking and performing, discussing poetry and politics/art and action, Judith has worked with students, staff and faculty from women's centers, women's studies programs, gender studies programs, queer studies programs and departments of English, Creative Writing, History, Sociology, Political Science, Biology and others + Law Schools, Medical Schools, Medical Students for Choice, members of the Progressive Students Alliance and Student Activities Boards as well as the National Network of Abortion Funds, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, independent clinics and medical centers, local/regional abortion funds in the USA, and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service in the UK.
Here's what some of the people who've worked with her and read her writing have to say about JUDITH ARCANA and her new book, WHAT IF YOUR MOTHER ...
... Jacket blurbs:
Judith Arcana's fierce, funny and bold poetry about mothers, abortion - and us - is a page-turner that you can't put down. It's a passionate rush of language, hope in a hard time, truth in the middle of lies. This poetry sparks and burns with the hidden language and stories of women. —Minnie Bruce Pratt
Arcana has written poems about a subject so complex and difficult that I could not imagine them being written. And she tackles the whole range of situations and emotions, from all points of view. She's articulated the impossible and, therefore, given us a way to think about what couldn't have been thought. —Toi Derricotte
What I love about this important book is how the work Judith began in Chicago years ago has deepened in poetry and prose with love for the lives of women. —Grace Paley
... Review excerpts:
"This inspired collection of poems by a mother and long-time advocate for women's reproductive freedom both artfully and politically covers the gamut of reproductive issues from mothering to miscarriages and women's bodies to babies with a certain honesty that can only be delivered by a true poet." —Conscience, Spring 2006
This book is a "bold mix of prose and poetry that gives voice, voices, to all sides ... Arcana aims to be useful, and, in doing so, does not limit her scope to abortion, but entwines it with motherhood, poverty, fertility or barrenness, love, fear, desire, and obedience ..." There is "no one conclusion, except the importance of choice... The voices in this book - striking, direct, real - offer rich possibilities for the solitary reader as well as for an audience." —Judith H. Montgomery, Calyx, August 2006
"Read Judith Arcana's book for a lived and heart-felt discussion....She captures the voices of real women and speaks with compassion....sit down and have the complete experience. You will thank the author for her acutely powerful reporting. This is art that matters." —Penelope Scambly Schott, in Bridges Volume 11, #1
"This book....is about the reality of women's lives, as daughters, lovers, mothers, and women who choose not to be mothers....This book is what it is all about: the beauty, the pain, the tragedy, the joy and the power of women's reproductive lives." —NRO Newsletter, Fall 2005
This writing "...has the rare quality of being moving, artful and important all at the same time. It's the kind of work all writers strive for and Arcana's accomplishment here is tremendous." —The Portland Alliance, November 2005
... Praise from audiences:
I want everyone to see Judith Arcana perform her beautiful poems, giving voice to thousands of women who have abortions but do not have the freedom or safety to talk about their experience. —Kate Ojerio, Network for Reproductive Options
Enlightening and inspiring...students were impressed with her poetry, her presence, and her knowledge about reproductive issues. Judith does a superb job of reading her poetry! —Janet Wilson, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Illinois State University
Judith has the capacity to bring together the baby boomers of the 1960s and the generation of the 21st century. She reaches us all. —Stacie E. Geller, PhD. Director, National Center of Excellence in Women's Health; Associate Professor/Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Director, Center for Research on Women & Gender, University of Illinois at Chicago
The title poem of Judith Arcana's new book should be made into a poster and pinned up on the wall in every clinic in the United States. —Peter Bours, MD, longtime abortion provider
Judith Arcana was an extraordinary presence in her visit to our campus; her effect on our students was electrifying As a speaker and as a performer of her writing, she's a source of energy. —Marian Rodriguez, JD, [former] Director, Law and Diversity Program, Western Washington University
Judith is a warm and funny yet powerful and passionate voice for reproductive freedom. —David Greenberg, PhD, President and CEO, Planned Parenthood of the Columbia/Willamette
I met Judith Arcana when we both were scheduled to speak to a group of medical students about issues of reproductive choice...the students, who were all born post-Roe...were visibly shocked and moved by her words. As for me, listening to Judith helped me realize I'd become complacent, though I'd had an abortion myself, safely, in 1979. I have now a strong sense of the need to recommit to this struggle in light of the very real threats to women's reproductive freedom we now face. —Karen E. Adams, MD, Associate Professor and Residency Program Director, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Clinical Consultant, Center for Ethics in Health Care, Oregon Health and Sciences University
Judith Arcana ...is a gem - it's enormously important that she and her writings be made accessible to our students, programs and communities. —Wendy Judith Cutler, Women's Studies, Portland State University
Judith Arcana's visit to our campus was magical... providing our students with the opportunity to meet an important American poet and feminist activist, and to work with her on their semester long project. Her poetry reading and lecture [about] ... Jane ... brought to life reproductive rights issues for our women's history month programming. Arcana is a treasure! —Dr. Alison Bailey, Director, Women's Studies Program, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Illinois State University
See Judith's profile at womenarts.org; visit her publisher at chicorybluepress.com to read poems from What if your mother and a short essay about her writing, and to order books. You can also get Judith's books from your local independent bookseller or here at Amazon.com.
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