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The mother’s battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

Adrienne Rich

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.
ADRIENNE RICH

Breaking Comprise Compulsory Existence Heterosexuality Lesbian Life Male Rejection Taboo
We move but our words stand become responsible for more than we intended and this is verbal privilege
ADRIENNE RICH

Intended Moving Our Privilege Responsible Verbal Words
If, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal,that we can understand our past through a male lens.
ADRIENNE RICH

Accept Assert Assimilated Definition History Male Past Philosophy Universe Wind Women
What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion.
ADRIENNE RICH

Adequate Art Dysfunction Hope Language Occasion Particular Search Stand
I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Instrument Mind relief Shape Trying
Or those who still believe that language is ‘only words’ and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Description Language Old Transform
It is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.
ADRIENNE RICH

Changeable Daily Earth Eternal Indestructible Life Live Spawn Swallow Threating Unstable
Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness
ADRIENNE RICH

Biology Ignorance Key Ourselves Powerlessness
I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There’s always going to be a kind of tidal movement back and forth between the two.
ADRIENNE RICH

Connection Going Isolated Kind Mean Movement Thinking Two
Lying is done with words and also with silence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Integrity Liar Silence Truth Word
The suppressed lesbian I had been carrying in me since adolescence began to stretch her limbs.
ADRIENNE RICH

Adolescence Carrying Lesbian Limb Sexuality Stretch
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
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.
ADRIENNE RICH

Birth Code Cultural Giving Law Professional Religious
Waiting for children to grow up, or for the birth of a new child, or for menopause.
ADRIENNE RICH

Birth Child Children Grow Up Waiting
Much male fear of feminism is infantilism–the longing to remain the mother’s son, to possess a woman who exists purely for him.
ADRIENNE RICH

Exist Fear Feminism Infantilism Longing Male Mother Much Purely Remain Son
and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim us which will we claim how will we go on living how will we touch, what will we know what will we say to each other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Aak Claim Goes Myself On Touch Vision

The mother’s battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

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The mother’s battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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