Who is Dejah?
Dejah is Mary’s nickname.
It’s a reference to the character Dejah Thoris Burroughs-Carter in Robert Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast. Back in her university days, Mary admired the heroine’s post-feminist sensibility—before she even knew what “post-feminist” meant. The character could shoot a gun, cook supper, survive on a strange planet, do higher math with ease and still be sexy— the antithesis of the idea that to compete with men, that a woman can’t be a woman, she has to be like a man. It’s an empowering ideal.
Mary chose “Dejah Thoris” in 1988 as her handle on Broadcast an ancient ancestor of today’s instant messaging software. Over the years, Mary’s shortened the appellation to “dejah” and then to just “dej.” No one calls her Mary except her husband and mother—even her kids.
Jerri is Jerri’s real name, not a nickname.
