Judith Arcana is an American writer of poems, stories, essays and books. She was a teacher for forty years (1964-2004), and her writing has appeared in journals and anthologies since the early 1980s. She has been an activist for reproductive justice since spending two years in Chicago’s underground abortion service (1970-72) Jane Collective. [1] Judith is notable for her insistence on the organically political nature of art and literature.
Born February 5, 1943 in Cleveland, Ohio, she is the daughter of Anne Solomon and Norman Rosenfield. Anne died in March,1944; the mother who raised Judith was Ida Epstein, who married Norman in July,1945. Mothering, perhaps as a consequence, has been one of Judith’s primary subjects. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
Judith’s first teaching job was at the high school she graduated from, Niles Township High School (East Division) in Illinois; she did her student teaching there in spring of 1964, and returned in the fall as a full time teacher. She taught at Niles until the spring of 1970, when the school board fired her — despite tenure — along with two other teachers (John Palm and Nancy Tripp). The three were considered radically innovative, and even dangerous, by the school board.
Her last teaching job was at the Union Graduate School (which has since morphed into The Union Institute & University). She began work there as a dean in early 1989 and left, as faculty emerita, in the early 2000s. At Union, Judith was a dean in the Graduate College, Founding Director of the Center for Women, adviser to interdisciplinary doctoral students, and a convener of residential colloquium and seminars.
Judith is an experienced speaker and performer of her work with TV/radio experience & years of performances at bookstores, colleges and community events. She has received awards and grants from Oregon Literary Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women, the Puffin Foundation, the Rockefeller Archive Center and the doctoral faculty of the Union Graduate School, as well as residencies and fellowships from Ragdale, Soapstone, the Montana Artists Refuge, the Mesa Refuge and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.
She has taught literature, writing and interdisciplinary topics in Women's Studies in high schools, colleges, libraries, living rooms, a state prison and a county jail. She holds a PhD in Literature (Loyola University of Chicago 1989), an MA in Women's Studies (Goddard College 1979), an Urban Preceptorship in Preventive Medicine (University of Illinois Medical School 1973) and a BA in English (Northwestern University 1964). She lives in Portland, Oregon.In 2008-2009, Judith collaborated with Ash Creek Press in Portland, Oregon to publish The Ash Creek Series: an elegant signed/numbered edition folding broadside of five short poems (POEMS), a manuscript in a cartoon envelope — perhaps her most autobiographical work so far (Family Business), and 4th Period English, a chapbook of poems about immigration and related themes, spoken primarily in the voices of high school students.[2]
Arcana's poetry collection What if your mother (2005)[3] offers poems and monologues examining a constellation of motherhood themes including abortion, adoption, miscarriage and the biotechnology of childbirth, as well as the daily experience of mothering.In her review of the collection in Affilia (see references), Merle Hoffman describes Arcana's poems as "maps of interior psychological and physiological journeys" that meet the unnamed experience (abortion) "with bold lyricism, passion, and creative imagery."
Her two prose books about motherhood — Our Mothers’ Daughters (1979)[4] and Every Mother’s Son (1983) [5]— are radical feminist analysis; both have been read, taught and discussed for many years in the USA, Canada and the UK. Grace Paley’s Life Stories, A Literary Biography (1993)[6], is Judith’s study of the well-loved & much admired writer/activist who died in August,2007. The initial interviews, research and draft for that book comprise her doctoral dissertation.
What if your mother, Goshen: Chicory Blue Press, 2005 ISBN 1-887344-11-X)
Grace Paley's Life Stories, A Literary Biography, Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994, 1993 ISBN 0-252-06447-X
Every Mother's Son, US and UK: The Women's Press, 1996, 1992; Seattle: Seal Press, 1986; London: The Women's Press, 1983; New York: Doubleday, 1983, ISBN 0-931188-39-3
Our Mothers' Daughters, US and UK: The Women's Press, 1996, 1992; Berkeley: Shameless Hussy Press, 1986, 1979; London: The Women's Press, ISBN 0-915288-38-9
