Dropped Threads 3

Book excerpt: In the tradition of the bestselling Dropped Threads and Dropped Threads 2 comes this new collection of essays from well-known writers and new voices. Ever since the publication of the first two Dropped Threads books, readers and writers have longed for another installment — and here it is. For this collection, editor Marjorie Anderson took a new thematic path, searching out pieces that don’t necessarily focus on what women haven’t been told, but rather on what they have to tell. In Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle, thirty-five women open up their own small circles of experience to others in ways that not only illuminate the lives of individual women but add more threads to the already-rich tapestry of our collective conversation. These essays focus on personal discoveries that, for various reasons, need to be shared: the writers tell us about family secrets, sexuality, rebellion, crevices of deep joy or regret; about finding connections to nature, to animals, to a “tribe” to which one can belong; about embracing forgiveness, kindness, and new perspectives beyond the circle of individual sight. Barbara McLean tells us of the sister she never knew, and how recovering her story shed light on how grief can take so many different forms. June Callwood explores the continuity that flows between mothers and daughters, and the mysterious, chance happenings that form character. Frances Itani writes about how the voices of the women in her family – her aunts and grandmother relaying stories around the kitchen table – are as integral to her life as her own genetic code. Melanie Janzen sees connections between a Ugandan women’s collective and the neighbourhood women of her childhood, but has trouble finding a similar community of support in her own life today. And in all of the pieces, there is a powerful sense that the understanding that comes from writing and reading can enrich our lives beyond measure. As Marjorie Anderson writes in her foreword, we trust first-person narratives precisely because they give us an inside view into someone else’s world; here, as in the best of our personal conversations, there are “no assertions of absolute truth, no earth-shaking revelations or attempts to manipulate another’s belief, just individual voices making individual claims on the discovery of meaning.” With Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle, Anderson has created a forum in which Canadian women can share their personal discoveries with honesty, insight and humour. Marjorie Anderson (foreword) Margaret Atwood June Callwood Tracey Ann Coveart Lorna Crozier Andrea Curtis Norma DePledge Maggie de Vries M.A.C. Farrant Liane Faulder Natalie Fingerhut Lorri Neilsen Glenn Marie-Lynn Hammond Harriet Hart Frances Itani Melanie D. Janzen Gillian Kerr Chantal Kreviazuk Silken Laumann Jodi Lundgren Ann-Marie MacDonald (introduction) C.B. Mackintosh Heather Mallick Barbara McLean Barbara Mitchell Bernice Morgan Patricia Pearson Beth Powning Judy Rebick Susan Riley Lauri Sarkadi Barbara Scott Jodi Stone Cathy Stonehouse J. C. Szasz Aritha van Herk Janice Williamson