Our Own Agendas: Autobiographical Essays by Women Associated with McGill University

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, Japan Foundation Fellow 1991-92, and the author of
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered:
Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Twenty-eight women from vastly different cultures, environments, and
professions discuss their lives, their goals, and their problems in
separate essays. Out of this diversity the editors discern recurring
themes, interests, and attitudes. The result is an intriguing composite
portrait of Canadian women in the 1990s.

In their introduction, co-editors Margaret Gillett, Macdonald professor
of education, and Ann Beer, an assistant professor of education, note
that personal stories have a value that goes well beyond the individual
and enables tellers to create a shared sense of history. Personal
narratives have always been significant for women. The personal is
political, and personal stories make patriarchy visible. Among shared
themes, gender is central.

The contributors include comedian Erika Ritter, artist Ann McCall,
former Health Minister Monique Bégin, Montreal bookseller Judith
Mappin, and composer Violet Archer as well as professors, physicians,
undergraduates, and scientists. They write of community and family ties,
of body experiences, of spirituality, of the psychology of growing up
female in various cultural contexts, of difficulties experienced in the
working world, and of violence against women. McCall writes of being
plagued with guilt feelings when working in her studio: “I wasn’t
offering anything to anybody but myself.”

Own Agendas is a valuable collection whose sum is greater than its
parts.