Blog
Call me “Incested.”
I earned that name. I struggled long and hard to be able to say those words.
I cannot speak for husbands, children, sisters, brothers, cousins, wives, ancestors, friends,
or any of the hundreds involved; I speak only for myself. I tell this from my vantage point, my version of vision, my fractured reality.
After two thousand years, the historical truth of the two sisters, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị, has evaporated into the winds of time, carried along by gusts of myth throughout the centuries. In the most traditional account of events, the one most widely reported by historians, the Trưng sisters were born into a noble family, their father part of the Lạc lords living in the Red River Delta valley, in Giao Chỉ province.
Laine Halpern Zisman’s latest book Conceivable: A Guide to Making 2SLGBTQ+ Family (Fernwood, 2024) is the first book of its kind in Canada.
Laine Halpern Zisman is an adjunct professor at the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria. She is founder and project lead on Family Building Canada (familybuildingcanada.com) and a Certified Fertility Support Practitioner with Birth Mark in Toronto. Her research traverses the intersections of 2SLGBTQ+ equity, culture, and reproductive care.
I am standing in the middle of the street, crying. “I hate this coffee. Why does everything taste so weird? Why is surówka served with everything?” To this day I don’t get what’s to love about a type of coleslaw. Why did we come here? What was I thinking? My poor husband stands helpless, watching my meltdown. He later tells me he was concerned by my extreme reaction, and worried that I was going to unravel. He felt bad, he said. He had no idea how to help me. We haven’t found our support system. For now it is just the two of us trying to navigate our daily existence.
Today’s Power Q & A features best-selling Polish-Canadian author and pediatric clinical geneticist Dr. Margaret Nowaczyk. Dr. Nowaczyk’s most recent book, Marrow Memory: Essays of Discovery invites readers to examine her DNA under a microscope, sharing her vast life experiences in a series of invariably absorbing and beautifully-crafted personal essays. From growing up in Communist Poland, to immigrating to Canada as a teen, to working as a pediatric clinical geneticist and professor at McMaster University, Nowaczyk bares her soul while encouraging readers to explore the ways in which our experiences and identities are entangled with our ancestral history.
