I have a confession. I think Joel was right when he said in the first weeks of classes that we will either love or hate Ana Historic. I'd like to situate myself as one of the former, but if I did, I'd be lying.

When I first picked up the book from the bookshelf and flipped through the pages, I was taken aback by the oddity of the format--lower case letters, italicized letters, wide spaces, even blank pages! (I think you can tell I'm not experienced reader of feminist writings.) In fact, I read and re-read the first paragraph on page nine and put the book away, completely dumbfounded.

However, Lily and I seized the opportunity suggested by Joel to research on intertextuality for our collaborative presentation. I can not say that I am now an expert on the topic, or that I even have the capacity to analyze Ana Historic comprehensively through the eyes of intertextuality, but a amateur understanding of it has helped me along in grasping elements of the novel.

First of all, feminist language writers argue that our present language dominate and oppress women, preserving the status quo favourable to a patriarchic society. Leaving language as it is means agreeing to this order, thus feminist language writers, such as Marlatt, often incorporate dialogic forms of writing because traditional genres (such as the epic and the tragedy) support the sociopolitical and socioeconomic establishments.

The "new sentence," taken up by feminist language writers, experiments with interartistic projects, such as synaesthetic writing-writing that appeals to all five senses of the body. Altered ways of spelling, graphic, textual and spatial forms are used to incite the reader. In doing so, these practices yield hybridized constructs where techniques form various arts are translated into the written text. Moreover, the blank spaces act as visual silences that draws attention to the act of writing itself.

Ana Historic uses a highly non-standard style of writing coupled with the feminist content in the story itself to magnify the feminist message to the audience. That said, I find the novel paradoxical in that it is so unconventional the reader is caught up in the perplexity of the format that s/he is able only to catches fragments of the whole message.