E-Mail This Article to a Friend IN MEMORIAM Andrea Dworkin, 1946–2005 BY MARY DALY

"Andrea Dworkin died last week."

When I heard myself saying these words to a close friend on the phone yesterday, my voice sounded hollow and horrifying. My friend’s voice betrayed shock and disbelief. "When?" she asked.

I muttered some scrambled details. What I wanted to say was something like: "Andrea died, but Andrea Lives!" My friend felt the same way. Together we asked: how could such a powerful, indefatigable spirit be dead? And we agreed that it was impossible. Andrea Dworkin’s Spirit is Here.

And she is. This is not mere denial. It is not hallucination. I can feel that Presence. When she stood before her audiences, Dworkin exuded great power. This has been commonly acknowledged. It was not attributable to the strength of her vocal cords. In fact she was soft-spoken. It was what I call Elemental Power. Andrea Dworkin had/has Elemental Feminist Genius. Her speaking was Be-Speaking. She spoke Reality into the Ether.

Andrea was all of a piece. That is, she had integrity — organic oneness. A stack of her books is piled next to my computer as I write this. They flow into each other.

One book in particular stands out, as if to illustrate my point. This is Letters from a War Zone. Its copyright date is l993, and it is a paperback. The photo of Andrea on the cover says it all. She is wearing her own "traditional" outfit. Some might think of it as her unique uniform: huge overalls cut off raggedly on the bottom. Her beautiful serious face is topped by a long, wild mop of dark curly hair. Standing sturdily with feet spread wide apart, her hands in her pockets, she says: "I’m Andrea." And the name Andrea means Courage. During her life she was battered, molested, humiliated, lied about, turned into a pornographic cartoon on the Internet, drug-raped, sneered at, defiled.

Andrea Dworkin demonstrated Courage all her life, and her Courage is contagious. As I see it, she demonstrated her bravery mainly by Sinning against patriarchy. She was Big and she Sinned Big. The word sin is from the Indo-European root es-, meaning to be. SHE IS BIG!

Andrea Dworkin has cooked up a baker’s dozen of Big Books (Big in import, Big in scholarship, Big in analysis, Big in creativity) and has Sinspired many more. She has overcome big obstacles, and will continue to do so.