The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

gender formation, gender roles and sexual
diversity, expressed in the Native berdache
tradition. In the six years since his book's
first publication, the study of gender possibilities
and variance has greatly expanded,
he notes in his "Preface." At the same time,
he poses new avenues and questions for
additional study and fieldwork. His extensive
investigation of the "he-she male" as an
important figure in many Native societies
has contributed to both an understanding
of gender role construction, which in at
least some societies may be independent, to
a certain degree, of morphological sexual
characteristics, and to a theory of sexual
diversity which encompasses more possibilities
than conventional opposition of male
and female. Usually identified in childhood
by an interest in feminine pursuits, the
berdache, or feminized male, assumed a
woman's persona in dress, habits, work and
sexual role. Valued for his/her special relationship
to masculine and feminine spiritual
power, the berdache often became a
shaman or healer. These persons held a
special ceremonial position; were esteemed
for their community service and prosperity;
often married as second wives; or
served as an alternative sexual partners for
males. According to Williams, their traditional
mediating role between male and
female spiritual powers often extends today
to balancing and integrating Western and
traditional Indian cultural values.
Like Gunn Allen, Williams traces the
strong repressive influence of European
values on Native traditions, noting as do
Gunn Allen and Spretnak the effect of religion
and mythology on gender social status.
Degraded by Christianity, which
emphasized a male creator God, the
berdache was no longer valued for spiritual
powers but was seen as subverting natural
male superiority by adopting an inferior
female form. Williams also describes the
effects of the Western bias for "normality,"
as constructed by European standards and
transmitted through the influence of missionaries,
government agents, boarding
schools and European education. At the
same time, he, too, asserts that forms of
traditional Native culture, including linkages
between berdache/amazon traditions
and current gay/lesbian activism, have persisted
into modernity. The exploration of
flexible gender and sexual roles as evidenced
in Native cultures makes Williams'
study a contribution to the on-going construction
of gender theory. The importance
of cross-cultural research in developing
theories of human gender and sexual variance
is underscored by his closing summary
of various berdache, amazon,
woman-centered, and male-male bonding
patterns in cultures world-wide, including
not only tribal cultures but those of ancient
Greece, medieval Japan, and the modern
Ottoman empire.
Southern Dreaming
Elizabeth Hay
The Only Snow in Havana. Cormorant Books
$14-95
Stephen Henighan
Nights in the Yungas. Thistledown Press n.p.
Reviewed by Catherine Addison
The central motif shared by these two collections
is the opposition between north
and south. In both, the Canadian dream of
the Other is projected onto more southern
parts of the Americas, from Florida to Peru.
Both invoke many colonial clichs, but in
Elizabeth Hay's The Only Snow in Havana
these function dynamically as elements of a
complex personal symbolism, whereas in
Stephen Henighan's Nights in the Yungas
they represent a somewhat naif dabbling in
the exotic.
Hay's book is not so much a collection of
stories as a series of short lyrical passages
which "Draw a line from Yellowknife to