Susanna J. Sturgis: Writer • Editor • Born-Again Horsegirl

The 1984 workshop was a wave that I caught at the exact right time. I expected it to deepen my commitment to my writing, and it did. I hadn't expected it to propel me toward a whole new life, but it did that too. When I boarded the northbound bus in Washington, I'd lived in D.C. for seven consecutive years. This was longer than I'd lived anywhere other than my hometown, and if I added in the three years I'd lived there as a college student -- well, I had a history in the city, and I knew my way around. For one who rarely plunged into unfamiliar waters, this was important. And I loved my bookstore job, was good at it, and deeply believed in its importance.

Nevertheless, on my semiannual pilgrimage to Martha's Vineyard late that August I tucked a bit of wampum into my empty blue amulet bag, and a few short weeks after I returned to D.C. I knew I was moving back to Massachusetts. Not "decided to move" or even "knew I was going to move": knew I was moving. Writing was my compass, my North Star, but the propulsive power came from an unexpected source. On the last night of the workshop, our fledgling community was attacked from within, and I found myself in an uncomfortable no-woman's-land, not knowing whose side I was supposed to be on.

Out of the writing we had shared, the stories we had told each other, all the meals and walks and trips into town we had taken, a close community had formed, one rooted in writing and populated by writers. Tomorrow we would be leaving these new friends behind and heading back to our old lives. Could we maintain the connections that had so sustained and challenged us over the past nine days? Would we be able to keep writing? The last night's re-entry meeting was meant to ease the transition back to our "real worlds."

After reading a passage from To Know Each Other and Be Known, Katharyn asked each of us to say a little about what we were going back to, and we did, our voices rising and falling around the circle, like the waves on Cayuga Lake. One woman said that the commitment she had made to her writing likely meant that she would not be able to stay in her current well-paying job. Another would soon be traveling to England with an ex-lover. A third was waiting to hear if she would receive the financial aid she needed to go back to school next month.

Then Katharyn asked, "What is the most vivid memory you will take home with you?" Where to start, where to start? The workshop on body image, meeting Marge Piercy, a chance remark that made a big impression, the class where my work was critiqued . . . Again, our voices rippled around the circle. So many of my memories were shared by others; their memories sparked more of mine. Just as a welling in my throat made me realize that I was close to tears, someone was saying aloud that she didn't think she could speak without crying. I was beginning to believe that the connections between us would last, even when we weren't sitting in the same circles.

Two-thirds of the way around, the circle broke. The speaker said she had written some things down in case she had a chance to say them. I sat up, wary: no one else had read from a script. The woman spoke of not finding community here, of her disappointment at what she called the emphasis on "professionalism" and at the small number of lesbians; she said she felt isolated as a lesbian. A second, and then a third lesbian said that they hadn't felt comfortable either.

Of the sixteen workshop participants, four were lesbians. I was the fourth. Had I missed something important? I was confused, but I had to say something, and I did: I said that I couldn't deny the importance of the issues raised, but that since the workshop's opening night, when one woman spoke of being sexually abused by her brother as a young girl, I had come to believe that this was a safe place to take risks. And I had, talking about stuff I usually kept to myself, like compulsive eating, my relationship with my alcoholic mother, and my mixed-class background.

After we finished going around the circle, the meeting broke up, but energies were frazzled. We dispersed in our various directions, but nine of us drifted back -- not, however, the three lesbians, or the director, or several other women who had had enough. Some brought the remains of their food caches to share with the rest of us. We formed a new circle and we talked through what had happened, drinking soda and munching fruit, and eventually we came round to what the workshop had meant to each of us. It was one of the most thrilling discussions I've ever been part of, thrilling and hopeful, because none of us knew exactly what we felt or thought but we spoke it anyway, and every risk taken encouraged us all to push a little further. And collectively we felt our way toward a place where previously unimaginable things seemed within our grasp. All of us knew that this wouldn't have been possible without the preceding nine days, so we went to the director's room to tell her so.

I needed to understand what had happened, and explore my own evolving response to it all, so over the following weeks and months, I wrote an essay about the workshop. The final draft was never published,[1] but I still have a copy -- extensively annotated by comments by a sister participant I shared it with.

In the weeks after the workshop ended, I learned that one of the three women who orchestrated the confrontation had been lobbying hard throughout the workshop to be appointed one of two assistant directors for the following year's workshop. The director had turned her down.[2] That helped explain why nothing about discomfort, homophobia, or professionalism had been said at the Sunday night "how's it going?" meeting. Or at any of the other times when it could have been brought up, either in conversation or in a private meeting with the director.

The one who had been disappointed by the emphasis on "professionalism" was by far the least proficient writer in the group. She was also one of the workshop's two commuters. So many connections were made and deepened around the dorm and after hours that this must have contributed to her feelings of isolation.

In that untitled, unpublished essay, my anger, checked somewhat by my attempt to be fair, comes through clearly. True, confrontational tactics are often necessary. Civil rights activists, labor organizers, woman suffragists, and countless others have learned over the years that polite requests and cogent arguments rarely move a well-entrenched opposition. The three women at the workshop, however, hadn't bothered with less drastic measures. Most of the rest of us had been testing the waters, cautiously disclosing truths that made us nervous or had made us unpopular -- and learning that it might be safe to take greater risks. In the process we created a little community based on the workshop's motto: "To know each other and be known." And these three women had lifted their labyris and brought it down hard on the web the rest of us had created.

But that night among the wreckage we re-spun our web, demonstrating what Adrienne Rich called "the passion to make and make again / where such unmaking reigns." The miracle didn't neutralize the anger. I had witnessed scenes like this before, but never had I been so emotionally engaged, or acknowledged that plenty of the unmaking in my home community was perpetuated not by men, the patriarchy, or the Reagan administration: it was being done by women to women, feminists to feminists, lesbians to lesbians. Some viewed proficiency with suspicion and were quick to accuse anyone who desired it of professionalism or elitism. Their feelings of inadequacy were always someone else's fault. In myriad ways the lesbian community had encouraged my writing. Now it seemed to my muses that the community's support was conditional. I followed my writing northward.

[1] I never submitted it for publication. I solicited comments from several workshop participants, including Katharyn. Katharyn either shared it with workshop founder Beverly Tanenhaus or told her about it. Katharyn told me that if I published the essay, Beverly would sue me. Beverly was now a lawyer. I've never met Beverly. I have no idea whether she actually threatened to sue me. Katharyn might have relayed a threat that Beverly never made, or Beverly might have made the threat based on Katharyn's description of my draft. It was an unpleasant coda, and not atypical of the power-tripping that went on in the women's community.

[2] Early the following spring, Katharyn asked me if I would serve as the second assistant director. I jumped at the chance, and did it for the next three years, till my combination of Vineyard jobs made it impossible to leave the island for ten days in midsummer.

Women's Writing Workshop II