black
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Reality, the oppressor’s tongue.

Adrienne Rich

This is one of the ways in which women’s work and thinking has been made to seem sporadic, errant, orphaned of any tradition of its own.
ADRIENNE RICH

Errant One Orphaned Own Seem Sporadic Thinking Tradition Way Women Work
There is already a gap between those with education and those without. Those with educational privilege can be seen as arrogant, remote, alien – and very often they believe themselves superior.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alien Believe Education Educational Gap Privilege Remote Superior
Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we’re not alone in the universe, even in sleep.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Enough Meadow Midnight Planet Rotating Sleep Sleeping Touch Turning
Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?
ADRIENNE RICH

Breaking Broken Historian might Poem Question Real Silence Tended
The channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist’s concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Artist Channel Clogged Concern Song Struggle Woman
When my dreams showed signs of becoming politically correct no unruly images escaping beyond borders … then I began to wonder
ADRIENNE RICH

Becoming Border Correct Dream Escaping Political Politically Showed Sign
Across the curve of the earth, there are women getting up before dawn, in the blackness before the point of light, in the twilight before sunrise; there are women rising earlier than men and children to break the ice, to start the stove, to put up the pap.
ADRIENNE RICH

Blackness Children Dawn Light Running Twilight Women
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.
ADRIENNE RICH

Apparated Asking Crucial Movement Political Voice Women
The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change Continuity Dialectric Instructive Life Light People Personal
To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.
ADRIENNE RICH

Darkness Found Light Rejecting Treasure
Language is power… Language can be used as a means of changing reality.
ADRIENNE RICH

Changing Language Mean Reality Writing
It requires enormous commitment like any art. But there’s a core of desire in each of us and poetry goes to and comes from that core. It’s the social, economic, institutional gap that makes it difficult.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Come Committed Desire Economic Enormous Institution Poetry Require Social
We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Children Genius Imagine Motherhood New Relationship Woman World
In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bringing Console Create Sustain Vision Woman
In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Language Naming Oppression Power Silence Violence World
Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness
ADRIENNE RICH

Biology Ignorance Key Ourselves Powerlessness

Reality, the oppressor’s tongue.

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Reality, the oppressor’s tongue.

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