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Nov. 7 - Nov.14, 2004 |
Unearthing family tales
Anna Camilleri revisits past pains with I Am A Red Dress
By Jennifer Febbraro
Red has the power to signify. In most cases this means drama, funneled through the clichés of roses, flags or blood. But for Anna Camilleri, red equals defiance. In her first full-length book, I am a Red Dress: Incantations on a Grandmother, a Mother and a Daughter, Anna Camilleri offers a post-modern look back on the web of family relations that both bound her and freed her towards a future of empowerment.
Though Camilleri confesses she was always a writer at heart, she came first to the world of publishing through her performance work with Taste This!, the now-defunct queer performance group she co-founded years ago. It later morphed into the book project Boys Like Her, a collection of fiction and photos by people in the group, including Camilleri, Ivan Coyote, Zoe Eakle and Lyndell Mongomery. While writing and editing, she also worked as a curator for the 2002 Strange Sisters Cabaret at Buddies in Bad Times and is currently the Performing Arts Program Coordinator with Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts.
Brazen Femme was Camilleri's second book venture, in which the interdict artist gathered together writings and artwork dedicated to the celebration of the "femme" label and all its latent and active possibilities, pleasures and pains. Short-listed for a Lambda literary award, the book garnered rave reviews and gave Camilleri the confidence to pitch an idea for a solo writing project to Arsenal Pulp.
When asked about the writing process and the pressures of going at it alone, Camilleri noted: "After they had accepted the idea, I let the project sit for about a year because I wanted to make sure I did it right. The subject matter was so important and personal to me. And I'm very happy with how its turned out." Readers will probably agree. Part of I am a Red Dress' success is the manner in which the fragmented narrative mirrors its subject matter. Part memoir, part storytelling, the book works as a catharsis and deconstruction of traumatic abuse which has haunted a family.
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