Freedom of Expression Through Narrative

What makes Thin Air, Winnipeg’s international writing festival so fantastic is the diverse list of authors who share their work during the week long September event. When Karen Press, my  Creative Writing instructor, told us CreCommers that we would hearing from Shawna Dempsey and Lori Millan, two lesbian women known for challenging conceptions of sexuality through explicit performance art, I was intrigued. And for some reason their names sounded vaguely familiar. 

I racked my brain and the pages of my old Women’s and Gender’s studies text books for the answer. After a little bit of search, I came across Creative Subversions, a text that pulls apart Canadian identity through examinations of minority experience.

Dempsey, Millan, and their project, Lesbian National Park’s and Services, was the focus of one of the chapters! 

I knew I had come across the two Winnipeg women’s names somewhere. And after rereading their chapter in Creative Subversions and remembering that Lesbian National Park’s and Services was not actually a government organization but a performance art piece designed to put in perspective common sense assumptions of what and who belong in wilderness spaces, I was very excited to listen to the women as part of Thin Air.

The work they red from for the festival was called Bedtime Stories for the End of the World. Like Lesbian National Park’s and Services, the content of this project does not conform to what its title suggests. Unless of course you feel comfortable reading to your kids from a collection of sexually explicit short stories. 

In their first reading, Dempsey and Millan told a tale of female pirates from the 1700’s brought together by a love for adventure, freedom and each other. The story was fiction but the characters had been real pirates.

Females are not typically associated with the rough and tough life of a pirate. Neither are lesbians. But of course, as Dempsey and Millan illustrate, females, lesbians and many other marginalized groups were present during all aspects of history. 

The work that these women do embodies the notion of sub-culture by forcing us to acknowledge the untold story. When we examine history, one or two narratives often dominant certain individuals and events. Stigmatized groups are virtually unheard from. 

I felt so lucky to be able to experience literature that challenges my stereotypes. Narrative is so powerful in it’s ability to create vividness and for this reason I think it is an amazing way to establish dialogue around certain sub-cultural elements of our society. 

Everyone has a story, not everyone has the freedom to share. The work of Dempsey and Millan gives voice to the untold story.