tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post6469140088142568201..comments2017-08-08T08:25:13.746-07:00Comments on Remembering Anna Livia: For AnnaUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-11931031346493296082017-08-08T08:25:13.746-07:002017-08-08T08:25:13.746-07:00Ten years since I wrote Anna's obituary for Th...Ten years since I wrote Anna's obituary for The Guardian. Often thinking of her generous friendship (including trying to teach me to drive on a trip from Berkeley to Santa Cruz!). Today trying to find where her papers or estate might be. If anyone knows, please contact me c/o Goldsmiths, University of London. Ninanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-35662243916615262852017-08-05T01:40:31.260-07:002017-08-05T01:40:31.260-07:00I watched Celine And Julie Go Boating again recent...I watched Celine And Julie Go Boating again recently and remembered it was Anna who first told me about that wonderful film, some four decades ago. But by the time I got to see it we'd gone different ways so never had an opportunity to talk about it. I can imagine it must always have been one of her favourites though.<br /><br />Ten years now since she died.<br />TLnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-8207765940640004702016-10-11T23:46:07.921-07:002016-10-11T23:46:07.921-07:00I still miss Anna and wish I could take another lo...I still miss Anna and wish I could take another long evening stroll with her to talk about the kids growing up and everything else.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-72618963331331338182016-10-11T23:43:07.176-07:002016-10-11T23:43:07.176-07:00She loved you so much.She loved you so much.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-49565159774913441102015-05-04T00:53:14.221-07:002015-05-04T00:53:14.221-07:00I'd no idea Anna was gone. I knew her at Water...I'd no idea Anna was gone. I knew her at Waterford in 1968. She had a dry wit even then. I lost touch completely and had no idea of her later career as a writer like her mum who was our HouseMother. All the best to her children.elderflowerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14296071536546740422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-56765971498724871112014-11-29T15:07:59.740-08:002014-11-29T15:07:59.740-08:00Its nice to hear such great memories of my mama. I...Its nice to hear such great memories of my mama. I wish I got to know her longer.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-1142039413284472782014-08-15T17:43:01.703-07:002014-08-15T17:43:01.703-07:00Oddly enough I rented a flat near Covent Garden fo...Oddly enough I rented a flat near Covent Garden for a few days, en route to celebrate the 70th of an eminent and formidable London lesbian activist (as she once was) and it is right opposite, overlooking, the old, the very old A Women's Place, and I find myself, assisted by a bottle of Spanish red wine in tears again. Of course Anna is not the only loss but she is a terrible loss. She was not terrible of course, well perhaps en enfant terrible, but she was formidable, and committed and could laugh and debate and be sincere in an honest but not annoying way. And I'm so sorry I can't just email her or ring her and tall her that AWP is right outside my window and does she remember that terrible meeting? and all that gestetnering, and all those marches, and taking back the night? And I know she did, even though she was far away from that. It was part of who we were. And I wish she were here to share a bottle of wine and talk about those times. Because I would love to hear her 58 or 59 year old self talk about those times and these times.Megan Ellishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17830748038886797918noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-50169676175390093962011-08-06T13:48:11.069-07:002011-08-06T13:48:11.069-07:00Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost agai...<i>Well I'll be damned<br />Here comes your ghost again</i><br /><br />It's four years since Anna died. And though we emailed each other in the noughties, it's been three decades since I spoke to her. But still I think of questions I'd like to ask her. And still I wonder what she would make of this, or that, or this person or that person. Such an interesting and interested lady.TLnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-90363577545144198792011-04-27T21:53:07.033-07:002011-04-27T21:53:07.033-07:00i am very late to the party. i found a copy of INC...i am very late to the party. i found a copy of INCIDENTS INVOLVING WARMTH in a thrift store today & instantly gobbled down three delicious stories & then googled Anna Livia & discovered she has transcended this flesh. who, i want to know, is her reincarnation? surely like the Dalai Lama she'd determined who she was coming back as? i've never met such a natural WIT, such a lyrical, unforced talent. <br />if anyone knows, how the hell did she "die in her sleep" ?<br />all respect & condolences & mischief to those who love her still & are forced to do without her now.<br />erin blackwellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-68137894984442192862010-09-26T00:09:58.905-07:002010-09-26T00:09:58.905-07:00I just learned of Anna Livia's death today, an...I just learned of Anna Livia's death today, and I am shocked that she has been deceased for three years. I was looking forward to her translating more of Natalie Barney's works and other French lesbian writers. Anna helped bring Natalie Barney's writings to a modern audience, many whom have never heard of Barney.<br /><br />Had I known Anna just lived 90 miles from Sacramento, I would have raced down the highway to Berkeley to talk to her about the women of the Left Bank in Paris. <br /><br />I think Ana was in communication with my friend Gael Lang, who had created the Lavender Library and Archives in Sacramento because I came across a copy of Anna's translation, "A Perilous Advantage," in which she inscribed a copy to Gael. Without knowing Anna signed it, I passed it on to a friend, and I have been trying to get it back ever since I discovered the book was a signed autographed copy by the author. Gael, too, died young at the age of 52.<br /><br />Anna will be sorely missed by the lesbian community. There is so much of Natalie Barney's writings that are in a library in Paris, in French and unpublished. With Anna gone, who will now translate Natalie?<br /><br />Cherie Gordoncherie Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-89899159639189142952010-08-30T01:13:45.215-07:002010-08-30T01:13:45.215-07:00So many have said what is in my heart - sadness an...So many have said what is in my heart - sadness and gratitude. I discovered Relatively Norma first, in a womens bookstore in NZ, and it reassured me that I could be both lesbian and playful (as funny as that sounds). I still have several of her books, 20 years and many moves later. I feel for those who knew her personally... it's been lovely reading others' comments.Alisonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-45107846762695854882009-11-21T14:41:50.978-08:002009-11-21T14:41:50.978-08:00Maybe I took that photo that Megan refers to - cer...Maybe I took that photo that Megan refers to - certainly some of the others that she has been looking through recently. I met Anna I guess in early 1977, one of of vibrant group of undergraduates in French at UCL, and later as one of the Cirkusact group trying its best in radical street theatre and entertaining children with inflatables - in retrospect a strange combination. Anna was the funniest woman that I had met - so sharp, so clever and so in tune with everything. Many of us were captivated by her and loved her. I have so many letters from her from France and Australia that seem a lifetime away, and she moved on to another life. I'm sad that I didn't see her in her last 20 years. An email had been waiting to be sent in my outbox for months to send, and there it remained when I heard that she had died. I wasn't sure enough if she would have wanted to hear from me. <br /><br />Having read so many pieces by others who had seen her more recently, she seems to have retained the characteristics that I remembered and valued, and to be happy in her life. I am sorry that I didn't see her again, but glad that she led such a fulfilling life and contributed so much to other people's happiness.<br /><br />Her friends and family have many good things to remember about AnnaMichael Osbornehttp://www.gla.ac.uk/faculties/education/staff/michaelosborne/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-73737523368936219262009-11-13T20:50:27.222-08:002009-11-13T20:50:27.222-08:00Thinking of Anna on her birthday. Going through s...Thinking of Anna on her birthday. Going through some old photos the other day I found one of her @1981 at Albion Road...Megan Ellisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-54048797296657335752009-08-22T10:12:42.367-07:002009-08-22T10:12:42.367-07:00it's one of those days...months later from not...it's one of those days...months later from not hearing your voice and i am as sad now as ever...so good to read words of love from so many you touched. the last thing we talked about after we hugged was having a cup of tea over the phone and catching up again. oh! i so so wish we could...me too veronica...still missing our dear friend.Dr. Kathy Woodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07911894715321517799noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-39690685551465615162009-03-02T19:16:00.000-08:002009-03-02T19:16:00.000-08:00still missing you, dear anna...still missing you, dear anna...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-75455289269102391102009-01-07T20:35:00.000-08:002009-01-07T20:35:00.000-08:00I came across Anna Livia in a Vancouver book store...I came across Anna Livia in a Vancouver book store called Little Sisters. I found Incidents Involving Warmth and Relatively Norma in the used book section.<BR/>I asked them at the store if they could get some more of her books in. When I googled Anna Livia I read of her death.<BR/>I liked her writing very much, she made me laugh and she had a brilliant mind.<BR/>I always look for her in the used book section I have found a few others and enjoy them very much. <BR/>Thanks Anna for your brilliance and the courage you had to share it with the world. RIPAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-75435774677412693432008-12-23T10:30:00.000-08:002008-12-23T10:30:00.000-08:00I just googled Anna to see what she's up to, and l...I just googled Anna to see what she's up to, and looking for any new writings, and am so shocked to read of her passing over a year ago. I was introduced to Relatively Norma in my queer fiction writing class at City College in 1994, and snapped up every subsequent book. She spoke to our class and I was in love. Her writings inspired me, comforted me during some very dark periods in my life, and most of all, amused me. Her books hold the most prominent place on my shelves to this day. I will treasure them all the more so now. So grateful that she touched my life so briefly. A special woman has left the earth and we are the poorer for it.Chelsea Chicagohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12569486452707908127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-584353251338927272008-08-23T15:26:00.000-07:002008-08-23T15:26:00.000-07:00I've only just seen the obituary in the Guardian a...I've only just seen the obituary in the Guardian and being much the same age as Anna, was shocked that she had passed. I attended one of Anna's creative writing classes held in the Gay Centre in Cowcross Street, Farringdon, in London in the 1980s. She was an attentive, patient and kind teacher. At that time, she had a couple of books published, and was one of of a group of important women in the London Women's Liberation movement. Someone who made history rather than observing it. What can I say? A great loss.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-65195758200249816762008-02-22T07:21:00.000-08:002008-02-22T07:21:00.000-08:00A Tribute to the Life and Work of Anna LiviaOffere...A Tribute to the Life and Work of Anna Livia<BR/><BR/>Offered by Liz Morrish on February 15th 2008<BR/>Lavender Languages and Linguistics XV <BR/>American University, Washington, DC<BR/><BR/><BR/>It was with enormous shock that we heard of Anna’s death on August 6th. She died unexpectedly at the age of just 51, a death all the more tragic because she has left two young children, and at a time when she had found new happiness. <BR/><BR/>She has left a remarkable body of work. She has been a pioneer in more than one area and her writing establishes a linking thread that runs all the way from lesbian feminist science fiction to queer theory. Anna Livia produced significant, enduring writing from 1980 until her death. We remember her participation at this conference. Anna’s papers were brilliant and insightful. They were fortified by a wide range of knowledge and life experience and, as we all remember, sharp humour. Even in the formality of a conference paper, Anna was very, very funny. <BR/><BR/>I have been able to gain an appreciation of Anna’s early work prior to academia from her own writing in the 1980’s and from writing about her. She was clearly a major figure in lesbian feminist circles in London at that time, working for OnlyWomen Press. Her politics at the time were radical and separatist. Let me quote from an article in New Internationalist from August 1985:<BR/>“It took a while to realise the reason why I could not, and no longer wanted to be close or passionate with men went back to this oppression business. It took more than a while – it took someone else saying that, exactly that, clearly: ‘If you believe that patriarchy is the root of all oppression, that all men benefit from it and maintain it – they are therefore to be seen as the enemy”. <BR/><BR/>Ultimately Anna found this position unsustainable and her intellectual journey took her quite a distance from it. But even in 1995 in her classic essay, “I ought to throw a Buick at you”, she can’t quite resist quoting Valerie Solanas’s 1968 SCUM Manifesto…in fact she’s so fond of it she quotes it twice – once in English and once in Italian. But then she adds this qualification: “In the late eighties and early nineties, feminist rage has quietened, become scholarly”. <BR/><BR/>In fact her political position had become informed by her scholarship. No less committed to feminist or lesbian concerns, no less opposed to patriarchy – far from it. But her academic work had become grounded in evidence, statements were verified, hypotheses nuanced. She was leaving essentialism behind, as her contact with queer theory led her to complicate her analysis of gender, sexuality, butch and femme.<BR/><BR/>But whatever restraints she employed in her academic argument, uncurbed imagination was central to Anna’s fiction work, as was the idea of transgressing gender boundaries. Her novel Bruised Fruit has, as a central character, someone truly androgynous. It is no accident then, given her love of languages, her feminism, her unorthodoxy, her gender queerying, that she should find herself introducing these paradoxes into linguistics. Her fictional challenges to the gender binary later re-emerged in her book Pronoun Envy as linguistic enquiry into the changing nature of grammatical and semantic gender in French and English; its use by lesbians, and a wider reflection on the use of the resources of language in subverting the hegemony of gender – for example, latterly on Lambda Moo where players may adopt personae with a range of genders, or none. She was always an activist, taking her knowledge and expertise and shifting our world view. <BR/><BR/>Anna brought a multi-disciplinary richness to her analysis of language. She was at once philosopher, postmodernist, modern linguist, translator, lesbian, feminist, literary analyst. This gave her the intellectual toolbox to take on received wisdom and some long-standing questions. In her 2004 commentary on Robin Lakoff’s Language and Woman’s Place she took issue with Lakoff’s notion of ‘speaking like a woman’, pointing out that such a statement overlooks the different contexts, cultures and meanings that the overlapping categories of class and race would necessitate. Characteristically, the critique is offered in the most generous and celebratory of terms; Anna and Robin were friends and Anna acknowledges the intellectual debt. <BR/><BR/>On another philosophical question in linguistics – that of linguistic determinism, she points out the belief of Foucault and Butler of the centrality of language to our perceptions and comprehension of categories. But where she stands on the issue of the postmodern turn in linguistics, we can not be sure. In some way she answers it in Queerly Phrased, co-edited with Kira Hall. This was a ground breaking book, published in 1997, and it charts a number of issues and connections both within and outside of linguistics, but taking us into new territory of the intersection of queer theory and linguistics. As she wrote with Kira Hall: “It is time to bring performativity back to its disciplinary origins”, offering the queer subject a new agency and subversion in their enactment of gender conventions.<BR/><BR/>But in another sense she is profoundly sceptical, seeing Butler’s approach as overly deterministic, a kind of neo-Whorfian inscription of subjectivity furnished from discourse. But then again, her own experiments with realising other genders linguistically underline the salience of language in constructing our own perceptions. Is that Whorfian, or a negation of Whorf’s determinism? Is language itself agentive? Were these questions ever fully resolved in her own mind ?<BR/><BR/>I wish Anna could be here today to answer that. But she is still part of our conversation. And as her pages are turned by the next generation of graduate students, they will perhaps imagine that the author of such a prolific body of work died as an accomplished and very old woman. Sadly, only the first is true. But she does live on in our memories. And she lives on in the ideas, the thoughts, the perspectives she has urged us to explore. We must now give thanks for the life and work of Anna Livia which will continue to be an influence for many years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-63715208348272349842008-01-23T12:45:00.000-08:002008-01-23T12:45:00.000-08:00I think of you often Anna. Still can't quite belie...I think of you often Anna. Still can't quite believe that you're gone from this world. So strange to have no explanation. It hasn't been so long, but so sudden and definite. Poof! <BR/>You are missed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-82264014150142398412008-01-12T10:27:00.000-08:002008-01-12T10:27:00.000-08:00This is a very very delayed after the event - but ...This is a very very delayed after the event - but I knew Anna a short time before the first novel - when she was on holiday in Australia visiting her mother - a very long time ago - she was someone very special - I was very saddened to hear of her passing - however hearing about her legacy of children and her books and her students and friends - I am sure that she has left something that will live on with us for the rest of our livesAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-58956690466072980702007-11-19T03:07:00.000-08:002007-11-19T03:07:00.000-08:00When she would visit us we would walk along the po...When she would visit us we would walk along the posh streets and pick the houses we wanted to live in. I only wish i had seen her more often.<BR/><BR/>love u anna xo<BR/>ur niece LouisaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-12896502719355622882007-11-06T07:39:00.000-08:002007-11-06T07:39:00.000-08:00From : Avalon BrawnDear Anna was my aunty...i miss...From : Avalon Brawn<BR/>Dear Anna was my aunty...i miss her and am sad i didnt get to see her as often. I live in Australia and the whole family is devestated about this loss. As we know Anna was a great French lecturer in America and published many great books. To all her friends and their comments thank you, i showed my mum (her sister) and she was so happy at all the lovely comments. Aunty Anna was a loving person and great mum, i hope to soon meet Asher and Emma. Love always Anna your niece Avalon x x xAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-51367921581307751722007-10-31T11:35:00.000-07:002007-10-31T11:35:00.000-07:00I knew Anna only slightly but am the publisher of ...I knew Anna only slightly but am the publisher of her two books of fiction that were published in the U.S., Incidents Involving Mirth and Minimax. I would like to be in touch with her partner about the books. And would like to offer, to anyone who knew and loved Anna, that I'd be glad to sell the books at unit cost plus postage which is $5 for one, $7 for both. Feel free to email me: ruth@eighthmountain.com. I think the last time I saw Anna was in the late 80s in London. She was all that everyone has said, devilishly witty, brilliant, and kind. Ruth GundleRuth Gundlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13540793764925123910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3392856037970344180.post-7551713104427997292007-10-21T02:42:00.000-07:002007-10-21T02:42:00.000-07:00I got to know Anna when I was a graduate student a...I got to know Anna when I was a graduate student at Berkeley. We both did our Ph. D. with Suzanne Fleischman and Anna finished one year before me. I especially remember the seminar on “Women and French Language” we both took with Suzanne. It was the first time Suzanne taught this class and the only students taking it were Anna, Fabienne Baider and I. I was young right then, full of certainty, based mostly on inexperience while Anna was full of conviction based mostly on her already rich life. I recall many heated but really interesting discussions on women, men and language and how after them Anna would smile gently and still be so kind to me. I wish she’d known that I have now come to understand so much better many of the things we spoke about and how I have come to share many of her views and feelings. My last memory of her was a dinner at Suzanne’s with Fabienne in December 1998, I think. Anna spoke about expecting the twins and she was so happy and calmly confident. We had a very nice dinner recalling our Ph. D. years with Suzanne as our professor. Tragically Suzanne passed away in 2000, as she was fifty and now I have just learned about Anna leaving us. Both of them were extraordinary women, inspiring individual and insightful scholars and they left us too early. I hope that by sharing memories but also emulating them in our lives we can be true to them. I send my sympathy to Anna loved ones.<BR/>Sophie MarnetteAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com