“Last night I dreamed the whale Moby Dick swallowed up every woman and girl on the face of the earth, including me. All of us, pulverized into mush. My eyeballs were intact, so when the whale turned on its side I crawled into its head to peek through his blowhole. With all the women gone from the earth, the men’s heads and third legs exploded into nothingness – headless, third-leg-less bodies running amok and in circles like cartoon roadrunners.”
This is a passage from Twist: An American Girl, a coming-of-age memoir by Adele Bertei, a writer, director, performer and musician. She had the Moby Dick dream when she was a child but still remembers it clearly. “What a metaphor concerning the invisibility of women’s stories through the centuries,” the 68-year-old says by phone from Paris. “We need to break the conspiracy of silence and more women need to be angry and speak out.
