Fugitive Information:

Essays From a Feminist Hothead
Kay Leigh Hagan, Harper Collins

Renee Risingsong

I arrived in my favorite bookstore, after
driving for two hours. Good com-
prehensive lesbian/feminist bookstores
are about as rare as hen's teeth up here in
the North Country. (See the November
1993 issue of Sojourner re: Feminist
Bookstores: Do We Need Them?) I had
made a list from their mail-order cat-
alog, of books for possible purchase
(about twenty-five in number). I began
the somewhat daunting task of locating,
and skimming each book to see if it was
one I'd like to buy. This was complicat-
ed by running across other books which
did not appeal to me in the catalog list-
ing, but did catch my eye as I roved the
shelves. We planned to spend “the day”
to purchase our winter reading material.
The woman at the desk noticed what I
was doing. She asked: “Can I help you
locate some of those?” I handed over
my list and she reappeared several min-
utes later with the titles on my list neatly
stacked and ready for my review. I was
amazed at this helpfulness ! I sorted
books into piles to “keep” and “re-
shelve.” Ahhl, but what is this? As my
eye and fingers passed over the titles on
the shelves I found a slim, hot pink vol-
ume: Fugitive Inforrnation: Essays From
a Feminist Hothead. “I'm a hothead,” I
thought. My excitement rose enormous-
ly. I LOVE finding, slim powerful
books——books that distill someone’s
thinking into crisp words and concise
ideas that resonnate with my own ex—
perience. Books that capture and or-
ganize thinking, I have done myself but
have been unable to put into words or on
a pace. As I skimed a few paces I was
sure that I had found one.

Indeed, Fugitive Information is just such
a book. Kay Leigh Hagan has captured
my heart and my intellect with her in-

sightful analysis of her/our experiences,
measured against and informed by such
authors as Adrienne Rich, Dale Spender,
and Marilyn Frye. As feminism is a col-
laborative effort, so has she opened her
writing process to the community for
whom she writes——her work has been re-
fined and enriched by discussion with
women around the country who have
subscribed to her essay series. These
two things——drawing upon the literature
and talking, with women--make her
book at once both scholarly and access-
ible. A contributor writes about the
choice of title (which actually was se-
lected from computer jargon): “I like
the name ‘fugitive information’ because
it sounds rebellious and because I feel
like a fugitive in this world, given my
beliefs and thoughts, butl also see a fu-
gitive mentality as something very pos-
itive for women if it is developed self-
consciously: like the underground rail-

road or the sanctuary movement or the .

Jane Collective in Chicago, which clan-
destinely provided safe abortions to
women pre Roe v. Wade. If we can't ‘re-
cover’ from oppression, we can stra-
tegize and organize to change things,
and if we take seriously the need for this
government to keep women ‘in their
places’, and if we study the history of
the government’s counterintelligence ac-
tivities against all movements for pro-
gressive change, we could start to be-
lieve that at times, it’s a good thing to be
a fugitive.” Or a hothead I might add.’

The general theme of Hagan’s work is
internalized oppression and its inter-
section with topics including code-
pendency, heterosexual feminism, and
self defense. Her essay on code-

, pendency breaks new ground and I was

astonished as I read it to think that in all

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the time this concept has been “popular,”
I had heard no one else articulate this
view. She answers questions concerning
heterosexual feminism and arrives at a
bottom line for living with men, whether
in your house or on this planet. She ex—
amines many womens’ feelings that
“the means are the end” with regard to
peaceful processes in relation to the ab-
solute war being waged against women
on this planet. She explores a feminist
analysis of questions that have, in her
words, scared or intimidated her, of ide-
as about which she has felt uncertain.
And in doing so, she reduces the fear
and provides validation of our collective
experience——her work is empowering.
Her work empowers by celebrating the
positive in feminist experience: women
loving, women over time. It empowers
by making, suggestions for moving from
theory to practice: develop the habit of
freedom. Read the first essay and find
out just what this hothead means by
“falling in love with an older woman!”

Hagan’s clarity of analysis and her wry
humor alone make this book ex—
traordinary, but imagine my surprise to
find at the end of the afterward her elec-
tronic mail address!! An indescribable
opportunity for connection and com-
mentll I was elated! It only took a day or
so to find the opportunity to send a few
of my words over the network and make
contact with one of the hotheads of this
century...V

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