Janice Gould

"The purpose of ritual, ceremony, and prayer is to open ourselves to that power, to bring into our everyday, existence the knowledge and memory of that time, to reinvoke it and reparticipate in it. And the gate through which we enter the dream world, the world of time immemorial; the place of inception, conception, and perception, is language. For without language, there are no stories; there is no speaking and singing the world into existence."

"I would suggest that any time a group of people participates in an antilinear thinking, any time a group of people practices customs and beliefs, contrary to the norm, any time a group of people begins to speak negatively and unflatteringly of God and the state, any time a group of people organizes itself into a cohesive whole with a language that tells the truth as it knows it and experiences it-and calls that language art, poetry, song, sculpture, work, study, lovemaking, child-rearing, or what have you then the powers that be order in the troops. And the troops stand guard, infiltrate, imprison, and in various ways attempt to control all of those who would subvert the "natural" order of things, the construction of the world as we know it today: patriarchal and imperious, bloated on its own self-importance, pompous, cruel, and dominating."

"Lesbian images and language, especially the images and language of lesbians of color-because we have lost more than many others may be some of the most subversive texts being written today. It isn't just the challenge to the state's notions of normalcy as represented by someone like Jesse Helms. Our challenge to authority does not come alone in the area of reimagining and reconstituting our sexuality. For years now we have reconstituted on some level the family, the community, the schools, and perhaps even the military. The meaning and value of these institutions have come under scrutiny and reevaluation and change by those of us who have functioned in and survived them. We lesbian writers have taken it as our responsibility to articulate our survivals and transformations in this war on our integrity. We represent a challenge to the Western way of thinking at a primal level. The more we tap into those tribal roots and quench our thirst on the milk and honey of our mother tongue, the more we can withstand the shock of living in this deadly and soul-annihilating system. We have to scramble their messages and learn to read the code we devise out of it. We have to go into the place of the great solitary vision of our own being - a being intimately attached to and integrated with the net of all being and beings - and humble ourselves and ask for a song, a vision, a dream, a language that promotes and heals, that nurtures and provides. We have to humble ourselves, perhaps before the little bug that causes the mirage or before the northern flight of birds, on whose shiny backs we may find the words that ensure our survival and the survival of those who come after us."