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WORK TITLE: Scissors, Paper, Stones
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1961
WEBSITE: http://marthakdavis.com/
CITY: San Diego
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1961, in New York, NY.
EDUCATION:Columbia University, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, editor, and educator. Has also worked as a lecturer, paralegal, a literary assistant, and at a women’s resource center.
WRITINGS
Contributor of short stories and essays to journals, including StoryQuarterly, River Styx, Stone Canoe, CALYX, and the Gay & Lesbian Review.
SIDELIGHTS
Martha K. Davis is a writer, editor, and educator. Born and raised in New York City, she has lived on both coasts of the United States and also in Oaxaca, Mexico. She earned an M.F.A. from Columbia University. Davis has taught a range of classes, including freshman English composition, women’s studies, job-seeking skills, and English as a second language classes at several institutions and universities. She has additionally worked as a literary assistant, as a paralegal, and also at a women’s resource center. Davis has contributed short stories and essays to a number of journals, including StoryQuarterly, River Styx, Stone Canoe, CALYX, and the Gay & Lesbian Review.
Davis published the novel Scissors, Paper, Stone in 2018. Americans Catherine and Jonathan adopt Korea-born Min in 1964. At only a few months old, she is raised as American with little knowledge of Korean culture. Despite not knowing any other way of life, race remains an obstacle in her life. From early on, Catherine’s younger brother, Andy, refuses to accept Min as his niece. Andy continues to verbally attack Catherine, eventually putting the notion in her head that Min can never truly be her daughter. As Min grows up, she faces racism outside of the home as well in numerous experiences, some overtly bigoted. Davis tells the story spanning twenty-one years in alternating chapters from the perspectives of Catherine, Min, and Laura, Min’s longtime friend. Aside from race, Davis also discusses other issues in the narrative, including Min’s sexual orientation, her involvement in organizations meant to combat homophobia, difficulties of long-term relationships, and Catherine’s divorce.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the novel “a terrific bildungsroman featuring three women who are by turns fascinating and bewildering but ultimately worth championing.” The same reviewer noted that the tensions between Catherine and Min “combine to make the novel an intense and compelling read.” In a review in Foreword, Letitia Montgomery-Rodgersstated: “A compelling family drama resonant with feminist and queer issues, Martha K. Davis’s Scissors, Paper, Stone neatly captures the grit of intimacy as relationships expand and contract.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2018, review of Scissors, Paper, Stone.
ONLINE
Foreword, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (March 27, 2018), Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers, review of Scissors, Paper, Stone.
Martha K. Davis website, http://marthakdavis.com (July 8, 2018).
Born and raised in New York City, I’ve also lived in Connecticut; San Francisco, CA; Ithaca, NY; and Oaxaca, Mexico. Currently I live in San Diego, CA, where I am a writer, editor, and teacher. I’ve taught freshman composition, women’s studies, job-seeking skills, and English as a Second Language classes at various universities and institutions. I also worked as a paralegal, a literary assistant, and at a women’s resource center.
I received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. My short stories and essays have appeared in River Styx, StoryQuarterly, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Stone Canoe, CALYX, and elsewhere. I’ve completed a second novel, and I’m finishing a memoir about living and teaching in Mexico.
When I’m not working / writing, I am probably reading: the New York Times online or novels in paper form. I am especially interested in fiction and memoirs by women. I hike regularly, and I try to maintain a consistent yoga practice. Recently I’ve been volunteering with the ACLU and taking acting classes. Coffee and dark chocolate are two pleasures I can’t imagine giving up.
Davis, Martha K.: SCISSORS, PAPER, STONE
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Davis, Martha K. SCISSORS, PAPER, STONE Red Hen Press (Adult Fiction) $16.95 4, 16 ISBN: 978-1-59709-046-9
Questions of identity are bound to arise when children of color are adopted by white parents.
Korea-born Min is adopted by white Americans Catherine and Jonathan in 1964 when she's just a few months old; they try to nurture and love her as best they can, but race nags. Catherine's younger brother, Andy, for one, will barely look at Min and, in a particularly explosive fight, declares that he will never accept the child as his niece. Worse, he tells his sister that he believes the adoption should never have taken place. "She's not really yours," he says. "I've got nothing against Orientals, but you can never even pretend that she's your own." Andy, sadly, is not the only person to react this way, but it's his rejection that stings Catherine the most. As Andy's hateful words penetrate, they slowly undermine Catherine's confidence as a parent. It's brutal, if beautifully wrought. Indeed, as the novel unfolds and Min comes of age, we crash head-on into the sometimes-subtle and sometimes-overt bigotry that she experiences. The story is told in the alternating voices of Catherine, Min, and Min's longtime best friend, Laura, and covers 21 years, from 1964 to '85. Set in the predominantly white San Francisco suburb in which the family lives, it addresses numerous additional topics--Min's coming out as a lesbian, her parents' divorce, the creation of dozens of LGBTQ institutions that developed to challenge homophobia, and the difficulties that all young people face as they attempt to navigate long-term relationships. Min's sexuality--some scenes are pretty graphic--and the tensions that arise between her and Catherine combine to make the novel an intense and compelling read.
A terrific bildungsroman featuring three women who are by turns fascinating and bewildering but ultimately worth championing.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Davis, Martha K.: SCISSORS, PAPER, STONE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248235/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ee3ea809. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527248235
SCISSORS, PAPER, STONE
Martha K. Davis
Red Hen Press (Apr 16, 2018)
Softcover $16.95 (312pp)
978-1-59709-046-9
A compelling family drama resonant with feminist and queer issues, Martha K. Davis’s Scissors, Paper, Stone neatly captures the grit of intimacy as relationships expand and contract.
“We had been walking for over an hour before I realized I was actually running away, or at least investigating how it could be done.” These words hang in the air as the novel follows an evolving relationship between Catherine, Min, and Laura from 1964 to 1985.
Catherine opens the novel: “I had never wanted my own family. The older I grew, the less I could tolerate the one I came from.” So she moves to San Francisco as a newly married woman who is determined to live out her principles, no matter the distance it causes. She doesn’t expect the reality. When the response to her adopting three-month-old Min from Korea is alarmingly racist, Catherine starts cutting off those who can’t adjust, but the underlying fear, hatred, and doubt lingers.
Min grows up with an increasingly distant mother. Like most kids, she’s focused more on her own journey than she is on figuring her mother out. At her side is Laura, her best friend, who forms an instant connection with Catherine. As Min and Laura age, their paths diverge. Laura goes to college and the seemingly inevitable MRS degree; Min goes to massage school and lives as an out-and-proud butch lesbian. The women’s relationships must weather their individual storms of self-discovery if they’re going to survive.
Davis sustains a beautiful tension between the women. Despite all that distances them, they’re in each other’s lives for good or ill. Like the children’s game of the title, they come together, face off, and drift apart, though at heart they’re a set, compelled to find the parts that complete it in each other, even if their connections are attended by confrontation.
Reviewed by Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers
LGBTQ+ 2018
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The author of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the author for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.