Risk by Elana Dykewomon; Bywater Books, $14.95
Oakland-based novelist, teacher, and lesbian feminist Elana Dykewomon follows up her Lambda Literary Award-winning novel Beyond the Pale with Risk, about a gay Jewish woman coming to terms with the boundaries of her life and her loves.
Carol Schwartz, a self-proclaimed "Chicago Jew," clearly remembers when her father, an Air Force lieutenant, dashed off to fight in the Vietnam War and never returned. Her mother, now a newly-minted war protester, received an American flag and her husband's dogtags in recompense for his demise, along with the burden of raising her daughter alone.
Fast-forwarding many years later, Carol finds her life stagnant as a UC Berkeley graduate tutoring math to high school students, a job her dying mother thinks is beneath her. Her mother also believes Carol's lesbianism is some sort of disjointed "religion." Desperate for a change, Carol volunteers as an usher at the local repertory theatre, where she befriends Z.D., a late-30s, bird-watching "white butch" whom she quite overtly seduces. Their romance smolders slowly and passionately while the author introduces a gathering of interesting, politically passionate, anti-Iraq war lesbians who stomp into their orbit; some who deal drugs, some who are still-smitten exes with a chip on their shoulder, and a few who share Carol's affinity with a humanitarian fundraising organization called LABIA (Lesbian Amazon Brigade In Action). But Carol also has a compulsion for her bookie and the action at the casinos "where everything converges – money, sex, and race." As she indulges in this pastime more frequently, things get complicated, yet all of the relationship melodrama dovetails beautifully, bringing the novel's title into clear focus. In the end, by taking chances, Carol discovers she's not only reinvigorated her life, she's found true love as well.
Dykewomon is a gifted writer, and her latest is most definitely a feminist's playground with plenty of opinionated asides about "butch/fem" roles, the complexities of gender identity, and the dynamics of girl-on-girl intimacy. With nary a male in sight, she uses her characters to amplify an unapologetic emphasis on dyke solidarity by sneaking in a few biased riffs on "what the menfolk have done to the world" and how Carol "didn�t see the point of spending so much time with men." Forewarning aside, this is another savvy effort from an outspoken, indefatigable Bay Area talent.