June 2012
6 posts
“Would an American woman move to another country and not hold dear her memories of childhood places and people? WOuld she not remember with longing some special song or food that she has no access to in her new country? And would she not feel her communication limited, no matter how well she learned her second language, because some very deep, emotional things can only be expressed in one’s native tongue?”
—Judit Moschkovich, “––But I know you, American Woman” from This Bridge Called My Back
We're All in the Same Boat - Rosario Morales
I am not white. I am not middle class.
I am white skinned and puertorican. I was born into the working class and married into the middle class. I object to the label white & middle class both because they don’t include my working class life and my puertoricanness, but also because “white & middle class” stands for a kind of politics. Color and class don’t define people or politics. I get angry with those in the women’s movement and out of it who deal with class & color as if they defined politics and people.
no help for that
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
a space
and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times
times
we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and
we will wait
and
wait
in that space.
May 2012
3 posts
“Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever.”
—Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex.
April 2012
9 posts
“All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren’t valued in women.”
—Anna Quindlen, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992, on today’s Fresh Air. (via nprfreshair)
“The more I think of it, I find this conclusion more impressed upon me, that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion — all in one.”
—Ruskin
