Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle

In the tradition of the bestselling Dropped Threads and Dropped Threads 2 comes this new collection of essays from well-known writers and new voices.

Ever since the publication of the first two Dropped Threads books, readers and writers have longed for another installment — and here it is. For this collection, editor Marjorie Anderson took a new thematic path, searching out pieces that don’t necessarily focus on what women haven’t been told, but rather on what they have to tell. In Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle, thirty-five women open up their own small circles of experience to others in ways that not only illuminate the lives of individual women but add more threads to the already-rich tapestry of our collective conversation.

These essays focus on personal discoveries that, for various reasons, need to be shared: the writers tell us about family secrets, sexuality, rebellion, crevices of deep joy or regret; about finding connections to nature, to animals, to a “tribe” to which one can belong; about embracing forgiveness, kindness, and new perspectives beyond the circle of individual sight. Barbara McLean tells us of the sister she never knew, and how recovering her story shed light on how grief can take so many different forms. June Callwood explores the continuity that flows between mothers and daughters, and the mysterious, chance happenings that form character. Frances Itani writes about how the voices of the women in her family – her aunts and grandmother relaying stories around the kitchen table – are as integral to her life as her own genetic code. Melanie Janzen sees connections between a Ugandan women’s collective and the neighbourhood women of her childhood, but has trouble finding a similar community of support in her own life today. And in all of the pieces, there is a powerful sense that the understanding that comes from writing and reading can enrich our lives beyond measure.

As Marjorie Anderson writes in her foreword, we trust first-person narratives precisely because they give us an inside view into someone else’s world; here, as in the best of our personal conversations, there are “no assertions of absolute truth, no earth-shaking revelations or attempts to manipulate another’s belief, just individual voices making individual claims on the discovery of meaning.” With Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle, Anderson has created a forum in which Canadian women can share their personal discoveries with honesty, insight and humour.

Marjorie Anderson (foreword)
Margaret Atwood
June Callwood
Tracey Ann Coveart
Lorna Crozier
Andrea Curtis
Norma DePledge
Maggie de Vries
M.A.C. Farrant
Liane Faulder
Natalie Fingerhut
Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Marie-Lynn Hammond
Harriet Hart
Frances Itani
Melanie D. Janzen
Gillian Kerr
Chantal Kreviazuk
Silken Laumann
Jodi Lundgren
Ann-Marie MacDonald (introduction)
C.B. Mackintosh
Heather Mallick
Barbara McLean
Barbara Mitchell
Bernice Morgan
Patricia Pearson
Beth Powning
Judy Rebick
Susan Riley
Lauri Sarkadi
Barbara Scott
Jodi Stone
Cathy Stonehouse
J. C. Szasz
Aritha van Herk
Janice Williamson

Marjorie Anderson has a Ph.D. in literature and taught in the English Department and Faculty of Management at the University of Manitoba for twenty years. During that time she was awarded the University’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and was chosen to teach in a number of international programs, including an MBA program in the Czech Republic. Now, through her company, Wordwise, she works as a communication consultant and professional editor. She is the seventh of eight children born to Ásdis and Thorsteinn Anderson, Icelandic-Canadian fishers, farmers and storytellers who farmed in the hamlet of Libau, on the edges of Lake Winnipeg. Anderson and her husband, Gary, live in Winnipeg and take delight in their four daughters, four sons-in-law and seven grandchildren.

Due to her lifelong interest in writing, editing and storytelling, as well as her passion for bringing women’s issues to the forefront, Anderson’s work on the Dropped Threads books came somewhat naturally to her. She became friends with Carol Shields in the 1980s when they were both teaching at the University of Manitoba, and later they collaborated on the first two Dropped Threads anthologies. The idea for the first collection came up over lunch when they started discussing what topics were “undiscussable” for women, and where there were holes in the fabric of women’s talk over the last thirty or forty years. The interest in the topic expanded beyond them to their other women friends, and from this conversational fervour the idea for a collection of personal essays was born. The contributors, a cross-section of women, would be asked to explore defining moments in their lives rarely aired in common discourse: truths they had never shared, subjects they hadn’t written about before or otherwise found a place for. What they wanted to hear about were the experiences that had brought unexpected pleasure or disappointment, that somehow had caught each woman by surprise.

The pieces, so many “dropped threads” retrieved and woven together, would become a tapestry of stories about things women experience but don’t talk about. The resulting book, Dropped Threads: What We Aren’t Told, came out in 2001 and became an instant national bestseller. For Anderson, one of the best results of the book’s popularity was how it resonated with so many women and brought them together; as she explained in one interview, “One of the most gratifying experiences I've had as an editor of this book has been taking part in book clubs and bookstore gatherings of readers who want to talk about the theme of the book, in particular, and the benefits of storytelling and life writing in general. The energy in these rooms sizzles, the emotions and personal revelations flow freely, and we all leave with profound nourishment for our souls.” Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren’t Told was published in 2003 and was also very well received. Both books have since become staples for book clubs nationwide.