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My Head Is Opening
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July 22, 2023
Like many Irish women writers in the 1980s, Evelyn Conlon seemed to be writing for her life. The stories in My Head is Opening, Conlon's first collection, smolder and blaze with women's rage against the everyday inflictions and inflections of patriarchy in a state that was a republic only in name and only for men.
Conlon creates women who desire freedom from their housebound lives and yet are saddled with guilt for wanting this freedom. It is rare that an attempt at personhood goes unpunished for them, especially by other women. They live in a society that is ruled by stupid and often aggressive men and by women who are hardwired to hate their own kind - most of the time anyway. There are, however, moments of hope for a life that is more, and these moments shimmer on the page for Conlon's women, usually out of reach but perhaps, it occasionally seems, possible yet.
This collection was published by Attic Press in the 1980s, an independent publisher that was pushing boundaries in Irish literature and society with their radically feminist agenda. And these stories feel like they needed to be written, not only for Conlon but for the Ireland of that time. While there may be more freedom today - not least of all around abortion - many of its themes are still just as urgent.
Conlon creates women who desire freedom from their housebound lives and yet are saddled with guilt for wanting this freedom. It is rare that an attempt at personhood goes unpunished for them, especially by other women. They live in a society that is ruled by stupid and often aggressive men and by women who are hardwired to hate their own kind - most of the time anyway. There are, however, moments of hope for a life that is more, and these moments shimmer on the page for Conlon's women, usually out of reach but perhaps, it occasionally seems, possible yet.
This collection was published by Attic Press in the 1980s, an independent publisher that was pushing boundaries in Irish literature and society with their radically feminist agenda. And these stories feel like they needed to be written, not only for Conlon but for the Ireland of that time. While there may be more freedom today - not least of all around abortion - many of its themes are still just as urgent.
Displaying 1 of 1 review