The Queen of Peace Room
Magie Dominic
Author Bio
Magie Dominic is a Newfoundland writer and artist. She received the Langston Hughes award for poetry, studied at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh and lives in New York. Her memoir, THE QUEEN OF PEACE ROOM, was shortlisted for the Canadian Women’s Studies Award, Book of the Year Award-ForeWord Magazine and the Judy Grahn Award. Her essays and poetry have been published in over fifty anthologies and journals in Canada, the United States and India. Her artwork has been exhibited in Toronto and New York, including a presentation at the United Nations. She is one of the founding members of the Off-Off Broadway movement of the sixties.
Her books in print are THE QUEEN OF PEACE ROOM, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002; H. M. KOUTOUKAS, (co-author) Fast Books Press, 2010; BELLES LETTRES/BEAUTIFUL LETTERS, (co-author) League of Canadian Poets, 1994; and the forthcoming book, STREET ANGEL, a sequel to THE QUEEN OF PEACE ROOM, Wilfrid Laurier University Press. STREET ANGEL will be published on July 1, 2014.
In 2013 she was long listed for The Vanderbilt/Exile Short Fiction Award.
Description
What is memory, and where is it stored in the body? Can a room be symbolic of a lifetime?
Memories are like layers of your skin or layers of paint on a canvas. In The Queen of Peace Room, Magie Dominic peels away these layers as she explores her life, that of a Newfoundlander turned New Yorker, an artist and a writer — and frees herself from the memories of her violent past. On an eight-day retreat with Catholic nuns in a remote location safe from the outside world, she exposes, and captures, fifty years of violent memories and weaves them into a tapestry of unforgettable images. The room she inhabits while there is called The Queen of Peace Room; it becomes, for her, a room of sanctuary. She examines Newfoundland in the 1940s and 1950s and New York in the 1960s; her confrontations with violence, incest, and rape; the devastating loss of friends to AIDS; and the relationship between life and art. These memories she finds stored alongside memories of nature’s images of trees pulling themselves up from their roots and fleeing the forest; storms and ley lines, and skies bursting with star-like eyes.
“The Queen of Peace Room unfolds, as Magie Dominic unfolds, during an eight-day retreat in a place safe from the intruding world surrounded by the love of kindred spirits and the hushed quietude of nature. In a deeply personal and inviting tone, Magie takes us into the deepest folds of her life. The Queen of Peace Room is expansive life writing. The tragedy bound in this tale is epic. Yet, there is affirmation in Magie Dominic and in her story. The refusal of one human soul to let go of its dignity, its absolute unwillingness to surrender, is genuinely heroic. Reading this made me cherish the brutal privilege of being human – like the one who wrote this story. Like the one who lives this life.” Timothy E. McMahon.
In The Queen of Peace Room, from a very personal perspective, Magie Dominic explores violence against women in the second half of the twentieth century, and in doing so unearths the memory of a generation. In eight days, she captures half a century.
Book excerpt
The Queen of Peace Room
Introduction
Just as a country can be the site of a battle, so too can a body be the scene of a crime.
The blood I am walking through is splattered over a black wooden floor, which makes it impossible to detect until I’m almost stepping in it. I have to stare and see where the light is bouncing. The light guides me as it spills from giant bulbs mounted on high poles. The incline of the slick wooden floor makes everything difficult. It forces me to slow down, grabbing clothing as I move. A cape lying dangerously close to a pool of blood, gloves thrown into a corner, fabric tossed onto floorboards, a tiny headpiece. I watch as my feet move through rivulets of blood and grab clothing with both hands, every move calculated with heart pounding speed, like choreography. Not a second to waste. Then exit, same side I entered from, stage left, The Metropolitan Opera, Saturday afternoon, live, On the Air. I leave John the Baptist’s blood running down the tilted stage of the Met. I leave Salome with blood dripping down the front of her crème dress. I leave the sounds of thousands of people applauding on the other side of the giant, gold curtain and hang my dresser bag from a high rack in the wardrobe room. All the racks at the Met are high. It isn’t just that I’m short. The racks are unusually high to accommodate elaborate costumes. I unplug the iron and steamer, close the heavy wardrobe room door, leave the images of violence, and return home to think. To the quiet.
Anything can trigger memories, a voice, a story, a smell, the sight of dripping blood. And images come roaring back into the mind like a broken dam, unstoppable.
I walk up the crumbling steps of my building, into the apartment and click on the radio. One announcement: ” All the men will die from AIDS and all the women will die from cancer and animals will inhabit the earth again”.
I snap the radio off. I don’t need to know this. But it’s too late. I know it now.
The television screen has enormous red painted lips on it, huge glossy lips. They almost fill the screen. The TV. is saying, “I love you, I love you, watch me, watch me “. I recognize manipulation and snap the TV off too. Put a cloth and vase of flowers over the box type shape. “Watch me, watch me” I imagine it calling from beneath the cloth. I remove the TV, leave it on the street, and return home again. Maybe now I can think. The electrical outlet beckons, “I wanted you to watch me. I wanted you to watch me” .
I leave the apartment and its electrical outlets and travel to an isolated retreat house at the suggestion of a friend. I’m told along the way that there’s something unique about the place, something positive, but not explainable.
Author Website
http://magiedominic.blogspot.com/