Category Archives: Women’s empowerment

Lava

I saw this wonderful tirade by Audra Alexander on a friend’s Facebook page. I tracked down the author, who generously gave me permission to run it on my blog. Since there was no button on her blog to do so, I couldn’t “reblog” it, so here it is in its entirety. I hope you visit her blog, URL given below, to tell her what you think !!!! I think she’s captured perfectly and in an entertaining if irate fashion what is going to happen when Kavanaugh is confirmed:

Lava

Kavanaugh is going to get confirmed, we all know that. A lot of women will be very angry. Some might even take to the streets. But this won’t be the tipping point. There won’t be a tipping point, there never is. There will just be the subterranean lava flow of women’s anger – slow, blistering, savage and inexorable. We’ll go to bed angry, we’ll get up angry, we’ll drink our coffee and fix the kids’ breakfasts angrily, we’ll drive thru car line and to work angry, our male colleagues will ask each other if we’re on the rag, we’ll eat silent lunches with rage and we’ll pick up groceries on the way home with vengeance on our hearts. We’ll kiss our partners and our kids goodnight wrathfully. We’ll cry hot, silently screaming tears in the middle of brushing our teeth. We’ll go to bed angry. We’ll get up angry…

Nothing will seem to change for you. But the mother of a 32 year old man will suddenly snap at him to “Grow up!” when he complains that he’s pretty sick of frozen dinners lately. That quiet chick 3 cubicles down will show up out of nowhere and tell a gathering of dudebros that she’ll report them to HR if they don’t shut up. They’ll call her a bitch under their breath as she turns around, but she won’t care. The teenage daughter will ask her dad if he’d still find it funny if she was the punchline in his favorite joke. He’ll scold her for talking back and look at his wife, who will look back and say nothing. Another daughter will say nothing to her father – ever again.

The anger will shift, seismic but unseen. Before the lava used to burn us to ash on the inside. It’s bubbling over now. Enough of us have ripped open our bodies to let the boiling soil of our lives out that the heat itself causes fires. Sure, you can put one or two out at a time. A single flame is easy to catch. But the lava is elemental and everywhere. Kavanaugh will be confirmed. And in less than a generation he’ll be a petrified ash fossil, frozen in a rictus of agony in the new Pompeii. Nothing will seem to have changed, until it’s too late. The lava of our anger is going to cover the earth and bury you.

Here is her blog.  Check it out!  https://scarletvirago.com/2018/09/28/lava/

“Veils, Halos and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women”

Message from Judy:  The quotation below in italics is copied from a message published on Facebook on July 7, 2015 by Charles Fishman. I am very pleased to say that my long narrative poem “Zauditu” will be included in the anthology “Veils, Halos and Shackles” that he mentions.

It’s been 31 months since Jyoti Singh Pandey was gang-raped on a private bus in Munirka, South Delhi. It was Jyoti’s rape & subsequent death from her injuries that moved Smita Sahay & me to set out on our mission: to collect & edit poems for a landmark anthology about the oppression of women & the essential need that women have for safety & empowerment. It’s been a long journey, & I’m so happy to report that *VEILS, HALOS, AND SHACKLES: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women* will be released by Kasva Press (Israel) in late April/early May 2016. I will be in Israel at that time to witness this milestone & to begin a reading tour in the Holy Land. In the meantime, I will help organize launch readings in the United States & some of the two dozen other countries where our contributors live. Smita will focus on scheduling launch readings in India.

 

This article by Sam Rappaz explains the incident and the overall state of women’s rights in India more fully. Please read it to acquaint yourself more fully with the horrendous act that led to Smita and Charles decision to assemble this women’s anthology:

https://tokillamimingbird.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/respectful-necessary-indias-daughter/