Oscar of Between
A Memoir of Identity & IdeasIn Stock
ISBN: 9781987915167
Paperback
216 Pages
Subjects:
Autobiography: general
Memoirs
Gender studies: women
Gay & Lesbian studies
In 2007, at the age of sixty, Betsy Warland finds herself single and without a sense of family. On an impulse, she decides to travel to London to celebrate her birthday, where she experiences an odd compulsion to see an exhibit on the invention of military camouflage. Within the first five minutes of her visit, her lifelong feeling of being aberrant reveals its source: she had never learned the art of camouflage. This marked the beginning of this book. Taking the name Oscar, she embarks on an intimate, nine-year quest by telling her story as "a person of between. As Oscar, she is able to make sense of her self and the culture that shaped her. She traces this experience of in-betweenness from her childhood in the rural Midwest, through to her first queer kiss in 1978, divorce, coming out, writing life. In 1984, she and her lover wrote lesbian erotic love poetry collections in dialogue with one another, the first and only tandem collections on this subject in English Canada. After the two split, she experienced years of unacknowledged exclusion from a community in which she thought she belonged. In the process of writing Oscar's story, Warland considers our culture's rigid, even violent demarcations as she becomes at ease with never knowing what gender she will be addressed as: "In Oscar's daily life, when encountering someone, it goes like this: some address her as a male; some address her as a female; some begin with one and then switch (sometimes apologetically) to the other; some identify Oscar as lesbian and their faces harden, or open into a momentary glance of arousal; some know they don't know and openly scrutinise; some decide female but stare perplexedly at her now-sans-breast chest; some are bemused by or drawn to or relate to her androgyny; and for some none of this matters." A contemporary Orlando, this book extends beyond the author's personal narrative, pushing the boundaries of form, and by doing so, invents new ways to see ourselves.
Betsy Warland has published 13 books of poetry, creative nonfiction, and lyric prose. Warlands 2010 book of essays on new approaches to writing, Breathing the PageReading the Act of Writing became a bestseller. Author, mentor, teacher, manuscript consultant, editor, Warland received the City of Vancouver Mayors Award for Literary Excellence in 2016. Warland is the director of Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, co-founder of the national Creative Writing Nonfiction Collective, and established The Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University where per was director of the program from 20012012, a TWS Mentor in 20012003, 2005, and remains on TWS teaching faculty. In March of 2016, Warlands Oscar of BetweenA Memoir of Identity and Ideas launched Caitlin Press new imprint, Dagger Editions. The book evolved from pers new publishing template: an interactive online salon that features excerpts from per manuscript Oscar of Between, guest writers, artists work, and lively comments from readers. Oscar of Between was the basis for Lloyd Burritts chamber opera, The Art of Camouflage in 2018, which will be performed in the Indie Opera West festival (Vancouver) in 2020. Lost Lagoon/lost in thought is Warlands most recent book, published in Winter 2020.
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