Bøger udgivet af Spinifex Press

Ann Hannah was an ordinary, no-nonsense, practical woman. While a constant and caring presence in the life of her granddaughter Betty McLellan, she remained emotionally distant. In an effort to understand her grandmother, Betty has used Ann Hannah's everyday expressions as a starting point to uncover the truth about her life. These words and phrases, heard countless times during Betty's childhood, are the clues to a life that, like those of many working-class women in the early 1900s, was fraught with challenges and difficulties and ignored by historians. What did Ann Hannah mean when she said that she was forced to migrate to Australia from England in the 1920s? Why did she remember her husband as a ‘wickid' man? How did she cope with the death of those close to her, including her own son? How did she manage to overcome the struggles and disappointments that punctuated her life? Written with a sharp feminist consciousness that displays both compassion and intellect, this astute psychological biography tells the story of a resilient woman who, when placed in circumstances beyond her control, managed to live a good life. It provides valuable insight into the lives of many (un)remarkable women whose lives may have gone unnoticed but whose experiences shed so much light on the realities faced by women throughout the 1900s.

One day there will be peace in Vietnam. But not before more war. Touched by the Lady of the Realm, Liên dreams of bones and bodies under the sea. The prescient warnings from the Lady weigh heavily on Liên, who is burdened by her inability to save everyone. But she knows that the Lady speaks most to those who listen. Set against the background of the Vietnam war and in its aftermath the rule by the Communist regime, in The Lady of the Realm, we follow Liên's path across many decades that are punctuated by endless war and suffering. Yet even in the most desperate of times, Liên refuses to be ruled by fear and anger and persists in her hope for a peaceful future. For some, it will be too late.

In Gardasil: Fast-Tracked and Flawed, the author argues that there is no evidence of how much cervical cancer the HPV vaccine will prevent. What is emerging, however, is evidence of its harmful effects. In the nine years since the experimental HPV vaccination program began, there have been 255 deaths worldwide and 43,000 adverse events. Gardasil was fast-tracked through the FDA, a process usually reserved for serious diseases where a new drug is required to fill an unmet and urgent medical need. Yet the incidence of cervical cancer had been markedly in decline due to Pap smear programs. This in-depth investigation of the approval of a vaccine exposes the cracks in the pharmaceutical industry and highlights the problems that arise when government regulators and corporate interests are prioritized ahead of patient safety and independent science.

Have you ever wondered how it might feel to have been adopted in Australia during the pre-1980s era in which vulnerable young mothers were coerced into relinquishing their babies? How it might feel to have grown up, become a social worker and worked with vulnerable children and families? How it might have felt to hear Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's moving speech in March 2013, which apologized to the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the unethical adoption policies and practices prior to the 1980s and vowed to ensure that such practices are never repeated? How it might have felt to hear the announcement made only nine months later by new Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who had given his party's support to the Gillard Apology, of his intention to expand and expedite intercountry adoptions by Australians? How could someone in such a position respond to the re-popularization and deregulation of adoption in Australia? This book provides answers to those difficult questions. Adoption Deception presents the personal and professional reflections of Penny Mackieson, an Australian adoptee and social worker, on issues associated with adoption – many of which are shared with donor conception and surrogacy. For anyone with an experience of or interest in adoption, whether personal or professional, who is open to perspectives other than those selectively portrayed by populist mainstream media, this book will provide invaluable insights.

Pared down to cold hard facts, surrogacy is the commissioning/buying/ renting of a woman into whose womb an embryo is inserted and who thus becomes a 'breeder' for a third party. Surrogacy is heavily promoted by the stagnating IVF industry which seeks new markets for women over 40, and gay men who believe they have a 'right' to their own children and 'family foundation'. Pro-surrogacy groups in rich countries such as Australia and Western Europe lobby for the shift to commercial surrogacy. Their capitalist neo-liberal argument is that a well-regulated fertility industry would avoid the exploitative practices of poor countries. Central to the project of cross-border surrogacy is the ideology that legalised commercial surrogacy is a legitimate means to provide infertile couples and gay men with children who share all or part of their genes. Women, without whose bodies this project is not possible are reduced to incubators, to ovens, to suitcases. And the 'product child' is a tradable commodity who has never consented to being a 'take away baby' removed from their birth mother and given to strangers aka 'intended parents'. Still, those in favour of this practice of reproductive slavery speak of 'Fair Trade Surrogacy' and 'responsible surrogacy'. In Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation Renate Klein details her objections to surrogacy by examining the short- and long-term harms done to the so-called surrogate mothers, egg providers and the female partner in a heterosexual commissioning couple. Klein also looks at the rights of children and compares surrogacy to (forced) adoption practices. She concludes that surrogacy, whether so-called altruistic or commercial can never be ethical and outlines forms of resistance to Stop Surrogacy Now. www.stopsurrogacynow.com It is the global advertising campaigns that groom infertile couples and gay men that have led to the establishment of multibillion cross-border industries: money made literally from women's flesh.

Is it the sun a hole sucking in a bird or Icarus about to singe the sun? Which composes which? The poet asks as she circumnavigates the globe, history, and an inner universe. When it responds, there's the small shudder, the sprawl of a spin, or the quiet before and after a full circle. The eyes catch a black bird close to an eerie sun. Instantly, a poem: an accident of composition. Or a tree, rock, light from a story heard, dreamt, read or remembered returns as if it were the only tree, rock, light in the planet. The poet is caught, returned to her first heart: poetry. After four novels, Merlinda offers poems from the stillness of contemplation to the spinning of tales, then to passage across different histories. Glass becomes eternal greens underwater, fish gossip about colonisation, a gumnut turns dissident, and the dreams of Captain Cook and Pigafetta circumnavigate the globe leaving a trail of blood, beads, and the scent of cloves. But in between, the poet hopes: ‘there could be accidents / of kindness here.'

I remember how you were, not how you are. We were we until we became you and I. Midori and Âu Cô are international university students tasting freedom from family for the first time. They discover Melbourne and each other. All is well until the tsunami that swamps their world... Midori and Âu Cô are international university students in Melbourne. They play at being silver dragons birthing pearls from their mouths. They are united by loneliness. Midori's parents are killed by the tsunami in Fukushima and soon after Midori and Âu Cô witness a university shooting. Midori ends up in a psychiatric hospital, not able to cope with the double blow.Âu Cô is courted by a Vietnamese-Australian boy (Dzung) who has also survived the shooting. Dzung is unaware of Midori and Âu Cô's relationship and pressured by his parents asks Au Co to marry him. Midori is silenced and unable to out herself and Âu Cô she understands too well the pressures of family. Âu Cô accepts since her own family wants to migrate to Australia. Midori absconds before the wedding to the Blue Mountains. She suicides close to the Three Sisters. Âu Cô is left to work through her guilt.

the Great Barrier Reef is still the closest most people will come to Eden, 'Judith Wright The Great Barrier Reef lies off the coast of Queensland: 2000 kilometres of spectacular coral reefs, sand cays and islands, Australia's most precious marine possession. Teeming with life, it covers 350,000 square kilometres. In the late 1960s the Reef was threatened with limestone mining and oil drilling. A small group of dedicated conservationists in Queensland - John B'sst, Judith Wright, Len Webb and others - battled to save the Ellison Reef from coral-limestone mining and the Swain Reefs from oil exploration. The group later swelled to encompass scientists, trade unionists and politicians throughout Australia, and led in 1976 to the establishment of a guardian body: the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. That it still survives is a legacy of activists, artists, poets, ecologists and students. In 1967 they were branded as 'cranks'; now they should be recognised as 'visionaries'. There are not many success stories in the attempts we make to save especially important elements of the natural world from our own greeds and needs. Here at the end of the twentieth century, we have lost or destroyed a great deal already, and we know that much more is likely to vanish. But the story of the rescue of the Great Barrier Reef still throws a light on the present and gives hope for the future.

'Surviving Peace' is one woman's story of courage that echoes the stories of millions of people whose lives have been displaced by war. As we still face a world rife with armed conflict, this book is a timely reminder that once the last gunshot has been fired and the last bomb dropped, the new challenge of surviving peace begins.

This collection of imagist poems combines mythology, archaeology and translation. Susan Hawthorne draws on the history and prehistory of Rome and its neighbours to explore how the past is remembered. Under the guidance of Curatrix, Director of the Museum Matricum, and Latin poet, Sulpicia, travellers Diana and Agnese are led through the mythic archives about wolves and sheep before attending an epoch-breaking party to which they are invited by Empress Livia.

Sydney, Milsons Point, 1926. Entire streets are being demolished for the building of the Harbour Bridge. Ellis Gilbey, landlady by day, gardening writer by night, is set to lose everything. Only the faith in the book she's writing, and hopes for a garden of her own, stave off despair. As the tight-knit community splinters and her familiar world crumbles, Ellis relives her escape to the city at sixteen, landing in the unlikely care of self-styled theosophist Minerva Stranks. When artist Rennie Howarth knocks on her door seeking refuge from a stifling upper-class life and an abusive husband, Ellis glimpses a chance to fulfil her dreams. The future looms uncertain while the past stays uncannily in pursuit.

this tiny crack in our lives wind and rain strewn stranded on the limen that space between water and sky rain and sun cold and heat When two women and a dog set off on a holiday they have no inkling of what's to come. They wake to find the river has crept up silently during the night. Trapped by floodwater, they devise escape routes only to be faced with more obstacles at every turn. Only the dog remains calm. This novella grips you with its language, its pace, its anxieties.

A classic text for health activists and feminists interested in the complexities of how drugs are developed, marketed, and sold to women around the world, this book reviews the unusual history of the French abortion pill RU-486. Critical of the positive claims made for RU-486, it argues that its promotion is filled with myths and misconceptions. Scrutinizing the science and politics behind RU-486, this account examines how the pill benefits the medical profession, drug companies, and government health economies and offers no advantage to women. Topics include the safety and effectiveness of RU-486, whether or not RU-486 privatizes and de-medicalizes abortion, and the dangerous effects of prostaglandins. This updated edition includes a new introduction.

In the tradition of Gertrude Stein, Finola Moorhead set about writing A Handwritten Modern Classic in 1977. The result is musings and criticisms on protestors clashing with police over freeways, political change, conservatism, Malcolm Fraser, what love can do for you, and whether the old hate the young. With discussions on the politics of suicide and unshaven armpits, one of Australia's most intriguing experimental writers has set her thoughts to writing.

Showing that a radical feminist analysis cuts across class, race, sexuality, region, and religion, the varied contributors in this collection reveal the global reach of radical feminism and analyze the causes and solutions to patriarchal oppression.

Remember The Tarantella is a remarkable work. It's learned and frivolous, female not feminine, silly and serious. Written in several strands of narrative, the many characters create a space as if reading were a dance party. Story is not the main objective. Private conversations and thoughts are always within earshot of the rhythm of others, like the stamping of feet and the beat of the music. This is concerto-like poetry; many instruments of different tones assist the reader to know who is who.

Misogyny Re-loaded' is an explosive manifesto against the resurgent sexual fascism of the new world order. By exposing the casual acceptance of snuff pornography in 'gore' culture through to the framing of rape as slapstick, Abigail Bray links the celebration of sexual sadism to the rise of an authoritarian culture of militarised violence. Arguing that a meaningful collective resistance has been scattered by the mass destruction of genuine social and economic security for ordinary women, Misogyny Re-loaded presents a scathing critique of the political drool of mainstream billionaire-friendly feminism.

'A rigorous, savvy contemporary intellectual history, Read this book.' Andrea Dworkin The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s is remembered as a time of great freedom for women. But did the sexual revolution have the same goals as the Women's Liberation Movement? Was it truly liberation for women or just another insidious form of oppression? In this provocative book, Sheila Jeffreys argues that sexual freedom sometimes directly opposed actual freedom for women. Anticlimax traces sexual mores and attitudes from the 1950s to the 1990s, exploring the nature of both straight and gay relationships and offering original and compelling commentary on Lolita, Naked Lunch, The Joy of Sex, the Masters/Johnson report, and other representations in the literature on sexuality. At the root of sexual liberation, Sheila Jeffreys finds an increasing eroticisation of power differences within heterosexual, lesbian and gay communities. Her alternative vision of sexual relations based on equality is a major statement in the debates over sex and violence, that remain relevant in discussions over SlutWalk, sexualisation of girls and the pervasiveness of porn culture. "e;Anticlimax' laid bare the myth of the 1960s sexual revolution."e; 'Julie Bindel

Invisible Women of Prehistory opens up the unknown and suppressed histories of women. Based on many years research into ancient history and prehistory, Judy Foster takes on the whole world. She argues that three million years of peace, a period when womenOs position is society was much higher than it is now, preceded the last six thousand years of war in which men have come to hold power. Her work is based on close readings of archaeological evidence from around the world, much of it appearing in the last decade or two. She also writes about the academic resistance to these ideas and to the archaeological work of Marija Gimbutas.

The Abbotsford Convent becomes more than the setting, 'the grey mince-meat walls', of this collection. It emerges as presence, intimate and familiar as well as constraining and forbidding. But it is childhood itself which becomes the subterranean geography and pulse. Subject to an overworld of lay and religious adults, 'the razor of power having such adult force', the voices in these poems create multiple pathways through memory and time as they map and navigate the many-stranded mysteries of their institutionalised lives.