There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then.
Show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.
That primary quality of being which knows itself, its passions, only against an otherness that has to be dehumanized. I grew up in white silence that was utterly obsessional. Race was the theme whatever the topic.
The women’s movement appeared at a very crucial moment in my life. There was a whole political movement asking such questions and others I had never asked.
Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.
It takes some strength of soul–and not just individual strength, but collective understanding–to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.
One does not give birth in a void, but rather in a cultural and political context. Laws, professional codes, religious sanctions, and ethnic traditions all affect women’s choices concerning childbirth.
Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'imagick.so' (tried: /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20200930/imagick.so (/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20200930/imagick.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory), /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20200930/imagick.so.so (/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20200930/imagick.so.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)) in Unknown on line 0