- Paperback: 172 pages
- Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press (Dec 13 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0889204446
- ISBN-13: 978-0889204447
- Product Dimensions: 2.3 x 1.5 x 0.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#198,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #96 in Books > Nonfiction > Crime & Criminals > Penology
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
On a May morning in 1939, eighteen-year-old Velma Demerson and her lover were having breakfast when two police officers arrived to take her away. Her crime was loving a Chinese man, a “crime” that was compounded by her pregnancy and subsequent mixed-race child. Sentenced to a home for wayward girls, Demerson was then transferred (along with forty-six other girls) to Torontos Mercer Reformatory for Females. The girls were locked in their cells for twelve hours a day and required to work in the on-site laundry and factory. They also endured suspect medical examinations. When Demerson was finally released after ten months’ incarceration weeks of solitary confinement, abusive medical treatments, and the state’s apprehension of her child, her marriage to her lover resulted in the loss of her citizenship status.
This is the story of how Demerson, and so many other girls, were treated as criminals or mentally defective individuals, even though their worst crime might have been only their choice of lover. Incorrigible is a survivor’s narrative. In a period that saw the rise of psychiatry, legislation against interracial marriage, and a populist movement that believed in eradicating disease and sin by improving the purity of Anglo-Saxon stock, Velma Demerson, like many young women, found herself confronted by powerful social forces. This is a history of some of those who fell through the cracks of the criminal code, told in a powerful first-person voice.
About the Author
Velma Demerson is a widow, and mother of three children—the first child, the son of her interracial marriage, died at age twenty-six. She has worked throughout her life in a variety of positions, mostly as a secretary for governments (provincial and federal) and lawyers. She is self-educated. This is her first book.
Inside This Book
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
a shocking account of "behaviour" control,
By Shemogue (New Brunswick) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Incorrigible (Paperback)
"Incorrigible" is a shocking account of the lengths to which persons in positions of authority would go - in the not-so-distant-past - to force fellow citizens to adhere to a standard of "acceptable" behaviour. Demerson, a white teenager, was incarcerated while pregnant for the crimes of being an unwed mother and - transgressing an even bigger taboo - having sex - with a Chinese man.I read this book on the personal recommendation of Jan Wong, Canadian journalist and author of "Red China Blues". I had shared with her a story from my own family, that of my grandfather's young sister Nell (they were Ukrainian) who married a Chinese man in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, circa 1920. The marriage was a success (they had several children), but grandfather never again spoke to his sister, & the townsfolk showed their displeasure at the relationship one night by setting fire to the couple's home. They escaped with their lives only because Nell had woken up to check on their sick baby. If I appear to digress it is because this book resonates on so many levels, one of which was the pervasive racism in Canada. This we have seen in the government's attempt to limit the numbers of non-whites by putting an onerous head tax on Chinese worker/immigrants & later banning their entry altogther (thus ensuring that they could not send for Chinese brides from their homeland), and assuming societal sanctions against inter-racial marriage would do the rest. I am also reminded of Frances Farmer, a 1930's Hollywood actress, who was committed to an institution for the insane by her parents because of what they deemed her out-of-control smoking, drinking and sexual behaviour. Farmer survived decades of brutal treatment and wrote a searing autobiography "Will There Ever Be A Morning". We have seen such societal interference against individual Canadian women in recent years as well. A decade ago a young Quebec woman was barred by court order and by her abusive boy-friend from obtaining a legal abortion. A certain amount of public opinion was against her here in New Brunswick was well.(She trumped them all by secretly travelling to New York for an abortion). More recently there was the case of a young Manitoba woman, drug addicted and pregnant & already the mother of a drug addicted baby, who was forcibly confined to forestall further harm to her unborn child. While one's gut reaction is concern for the life and health of the child-to-be, it cannot supercede the rights of a person, who has committed no crime, to be free, no matter how much we disapprove of her morals. Author Velma Demerson was a young woman from a disadvantaged background who made some unwise choices. In straight-forward, unvarnished prose she tells a story of courage and perseverence against unrelenting authority.
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