Cixous, Helene. "The Laugh of the Medusa." Signs. 1.4. (1975): 875-93.
             As the title of Helene Cixous' essay, "The Laugh of the Medusa" suggests, Cixous, like Freud uses Greek mythology to critically examine attitudes of her culture towards expressions of sexuality. Unlike Freud, however, Cixous is concerned with the lack of female voice in a patriarchal culture and language that defines women as inarticulate, animal, beyond language, and all that is 'not male.' When women attempt to create a uniquely female canon of writing, even feminist writers limit themselves, by confining female aspirations in terms of achieving fluency in male-dominated language. Cixous, to defy the 'lock' that patriarchy has had in defining the current myths of our society and language, instead urges women writers to turn to the body and to subvert rather than celebrate linguistic constructs. To even write her own essay, Cixous tries to consciously subvert the grammatical structures of language. She deliberately uses a non-linear style that defies conventional academic discourse. She tries to eschew binaries of male/female, either/or, and celebrate indeterminacy to create a female language. Thus Cixous rehabilitates the Medusa, in other words, a mythical woman defined by men as ugly who spoke through her body to men by turning them into stone.
             Phillip, Norbese. She Tries Her Tongue: Her Silence Softly Breaks. Charlottetown;
             In contrast to Helene Cixous, Norbese Phillip's work She Tries Her Tongue: Her Silence Softly Breaks attempts to subvert racial as well as gender-based linguistic structures. She tries to create her own hybrid language that defies conventional grammar and instead replicates the colloquial, non-standardized speech habits of the Caribbean as well as her own inner thoughts as a writer. Phillip makes use of wordplay such as how "language" causes one to &q
             ...