You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Amazing People' category.
From her collection of essays, Sister Outsider. Because sometimes, when we are at a loss for words, we should turn to the writing of the people who help us to remember that we are not alone.
“Racism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over the other and thereby the right to dominance. Ageism. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism.
It is a lifetime pursuit for each one of us to extract these distortions from our living at the same time as we recognize, reclaim, and define those differences upon which they are imposed. For we have all been raised in a society where those distortions were endemic within our living. Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all. This results in a voluntary isolation, or false and treacherous connections. Either way, we do not develop tools for using human difference as a springboard for creative change…
Ignoring the differences of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to mobilization of women’s joint power.
As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define woman in terms of their own experience alone, then women of Color become “other,” the outsider whose experience and tradition is too “alien” to comprehend…
The literatures of all women of Color recreate the textures of our lives, and many white women are heavily invested in ignoring the real differences. For as long as any difference between us means one of us must be inferior, then the recognition of any difference must be fraught with guilt. To allow women of Color to step out of stereotypes is too guilt provoking, for it threatens the complacency of those women who view oppression only in terms of sex.
Refusing to recognize difference makes it impossible to see the different problems and pitfalls facing us as women.
Thus, in a patriarchal power system where whiteskin privilege is a major prop, the entrapments used to neutralize Black women and white women are not the same…
Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying…”
need to read something like the following:
as soon as we thought of marrying, our first few conversations included gender politics. included domestic violence. included cheating in marriages, and our views on divorce. we have both resolved to test for hiv before getting married. “romantic”? no. but sure as hell reassuring, and realistic.
we’ve worked our way through several issues to keep our wedding as in line with our politics as possible. we’ve had long talks about what rituals we’ll have, how we’ll organise our house, our personal comfort levels in conforming to gender dictates - and those talks haven’t just been between us, we’ve obviously had to talk to everyone else involved. a lot of hard work, but well worth the investment
The whole post can be found here at Scribble Pad.
I’ve waited a while to read something like this, and in the midst of dealing with many appearance/future related demons in the last month (which I am just beginning to write about - and blog about), this was what I needed to put a tear in my eye and reignite my faith in what m. so rightly describes as the “happily and political ever after”.
I am, contrary to possible common belief, in the process of writing a post. It’s taken me a while to adjust to my internship and to sort out my thoughts coherently enough to write. But the posts will begin to flow soon enough - for there are many things to say.
In the meantime I wanted to tell my small little audience of readers about this movie that is releasing in Los Angeles on June 15th and in select U.S. cities over the summer - I am not sure about possible release dates beyond North America. The film is called Amu, the site is here, the description of the film is below (taken from the website):
The year 1984 has a dreaded historical significance for India’s Sikhs, and one oddly buried deep within the collective memory
of that country, and for that matter the world. Indian-American director Shonali Bose resurrects that period marking the brutal
ethnic government abetted massacre of thousands of Sikhs by Hindus in her film, “Amu”.
Between three thousand and twenty thousand Sikhs were the victims of indiscriminate slaughter over three days, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards acting on their culture’s separatist sentiments. The ensuing horrific sectarian violence against the Sikhs brought such shame and indeed guilt to the perpetrators, that the incident is absent from any national dialogue. In addition, the failure to bring the perpetrators to justice, among them police and the politicians, meant that Writer/Director/Producer Bose was subjected to censorship of the parts of the movie exposing this massive cover-up, while filming in India.
“Amu” crafts the horror of that period as a dramatic story with historical components. Kaju (Konkona Sensharma) is a recent college graduate and aspiring filmmaker who returns to her homeland to visit with relatives in New Delhi. Adopted when she was a baby and taken to the United States by an Indian family, Kaju (once called Amu by her real mother) is shocked to learn back in India that her adoptive parents’ version of how she became an orphan, is untrue. Rather than her parents perishing in an apparently nonexistent malaria epidemic, Amu discovers that they along with her baby brother perished in the 1984 massacre, of which she was the sole survivor in her family.
I have had the pleasure of meeting the director and encourage anyone with the opportunity to see the film to do so. I think it is going to be amazing - I’m going to see it this Saturday and will be sure to post my thoughts about the movie.
Everyone should read this post. It’s a rant about a quote. It’s an awful quote. But it is a lovely rant.
This is such an interesting post and I really enjoyed reading the dialogue that followed in the comments.
I told myself I would write a post a day until I left for India, but unfortunately I’m still working on a draft. About “Asian”. and “South Asian”. And what I think.
I baked cookies again today. ‘Tis the season!
Of all the races in the United States, white people have the hardest time understanding racial oppression. This is a fact. Much like the men (including myself) in the United States who just cannot understand what it feels like to be a woman who is judged by her bra and waist measurements, white Americans cannot put themselves in the position of racial other-ness on a daily basis. Unless of course they go abroad or to New York, Chicago, DC, Altanta, Detroit, Philly, LA, Houston, or anywhere else with more black people than say, Altoona, PA. This is not to say that white people cannot understand racial opporession. It’s just that, well, most of them don’t. - Philip Arthur Moore; read the entire thing here.
via Racialicious - one of my new favorite blogs!
Just a short post to end this long day.
I spent the entire evening working on a presentation for transnational feminist theory - it’s the introduction to Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, written by Alexander and Mohanty. I spent more than six hours working on the presentation and still feel that overwhelming since of inadequacy that often accompanies me in the midst of this privileged education. It was difficult to get past the irony of reading about how feminist theory in the United States continues to be Western and Euro centric and how feminist praxis and activism is a key part of feminism, but is often left out of feminist scholarship - for my feminist theory class (a class located, in case we didn’t know, in a small town in California).
Theory is so difficult for me to understand, and not simply because of the vocabulary - it’s difficult because it is so resistant to including emotion and experience as a valid source - a source that I would argue is strongly tied to the identity of many women of color. What does that mean for women of color theorists? Can there be any? Should there be any? The idea of writing theory makes me cringe a little, I’ll admit. The audience is limited and it’s difficult for me to see the possibility of bridging the gap between feminist theory and feminist application. I know it happens, but tracing the path seems impossible.
I guess my question is, what does feminist theory enable me to do as a feminist and activist(-in-the-making) and most importantly, as a woman of color? I wonder if Mohanty considers herself a theorist - I bet she considers herself a writer with the privilege of an education who understands the prioritizing of praxis over theory and knows that “feminist theory” still has a normalized connotation of white, Western, urban, straight, and upper middle class. It’s why we have to keep adding “transnational” to the beginning of the phrase in order for it to even begin to include women of color as theorists and writers instead of marginalized tokens.
On a completely unrelated note, I’m getting quite attached to peppermint tea.
Thank you Dora, for this post - (courtesy of Shrub.com) I too, never wanted to be a white girl. I just wanted to be exactly like a white girl.
And yes. We need to keep talking about this…
I have more to say but it will have to wait.
So, this is a great podcast which I highly suggest subscribing too - the link here is an episode that covers a lot of ground, including the media continuing to exoticize women of color when they are finally represented (if you haven’t seen the Aishwarya video I posted earlier, well then you need to, particularly if you are skeptical of this belief. Of course if you are…you probably aren’t reading this site ever.)
Listen to it while having breakfast or during your lunchbreak.
“My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. You fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.
Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial destortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and co-optation.” -Audre Lorde, The uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism
I hate this feeling of being tired but having postponed writing that now the need to write has outweighed the fact the my bed is beckoning a mere yard away. So, I shall try my best to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time, and if I don’t make it past a couple of points, well I’ll just continue tomorrow.
> First, the many quotes I’ve been meaning to put down for others to read - I’m reading my last summer book, Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair, which is in a word, stunning. I haven’t begun my paper but now I realize Nair’s book will be the center of my writing. The quotes don’t need any sort of introduction - those who understand will wince and those who don’t…are lucky?
“I’m not who everyone thinks I am”…
“I know that now. But you hide behind such a stiff armour of control that most people must be in awe of you,”…
“…I wasn’t always like this; so stiff and restrained. I had to grow a shell around myself. To protect myself. To deflect hurt and pain. If I hadn’t, I would have gone insane.”
“Sometimes when friends came calling and there would be a little girl whose father beamed proudly at his daughter’s quick answers, Sheela would want to butt in and plead, ‘Don’t do this to her. My father was the same. He thought it funny when I was cheeky. Only now he calls it back chat and it makes him furious. Please, don’t do this to your daughter. She is going to grow up thinking this is the way to be. Instead, teach her to swallow her words, make her mouth nice and pleasant, innocuous things. Kill her spirit and tame her tongue. So that when she grows up, she won’t be like me, wondering what it is I said wrong and what blunder I am going to commit next by opening my mouth”
“…She thought, all these women….are trying to make some sense of their own existence by talking about it to anyone who will listen. I am the same, she thought. I’m trying to define the reality of my life, justify my failures and my own sense of hopelessness by preying on the fabric of their lives, seeking in it a similar thread that in some way will connect their lives with mine, make me feel less guilty for who I am and what I have let myself become.”
The whole book could be a quote, really. But ya know.
>I wanted so much to talk about how lovely yesterday was, but maybe I will save that for another day.
> For the first time in so long I actually miss the feeling of being interested in someone. Of classic teen-movie romance. Something I should have experienced at the generalized age of 14? 15? In reading Ladies Coupe, I wonder if it’s even possible for me to feel that kind of butterfly/first date/getting to know you love. That feeling of fascination and excitement - the last time I felt that way was…when I met P. Almost two years ago now. Before and after that…there was just… Struggle.
It makes me angry that the most female-sensitive/forward thinking/cream of the crop males are still intimidated by women in power, women who are smarter and louder and more opinionated than the normalized idealized woman. Why are the few who can handle it praised so highly for being exceptions?
> I need a new name for this blog because I realized that my fatalistic title has done just that - provided an easy out clause for my writing, so that I never feel obligated to process in text once college starts up again. But in wanting to make the effort, I have decided the first and easiest method of commitment is to change the title from seasonal to defining.
Of course the question that arises is, what to name this blog of genre-less deconstruction? Will I even need it when the year begins? It became so useful in providing a means of communicating with people and continue my habits as an antisocial, hibernating introvert. Maybe someone can throw out a suggestion.
11:49! It was an early morning so I don’t feel guilty about sleeping so early. Especially after discovering my new love for sleeping in bed diagonally.
Till tomorrow.
I’m back!
with a computer that has a new harddrive
…with my old hd went the last 2 years of my writing/music/papers/photos/letters/etc.
I have come out of the week feeling recharged..
With an article about something beautiful - the only soccer player of Indian decent in the world cup is actively speaking out against homophobia
And we love him for it.
“But why is it that India arrives only when the West says it does? Our movies have nourished half the world for a century, as every Russian cabdriver in Manhattan will tell you. And if the West is now waking up to our energy and confidence, will we be tempted to change? Will Oscar fever mean we temper our spice to suit Western palates? Will the few Indian actors and directors cherry-picked by Hollywood shove the khadi and brocade under the carpet and make chick flicks on Fifth Avenue?”– Mira Nair, Hooray for Bollywood
Read the entire article (especially if you’re a bollywood movie/future Namesake watcher) here
Anyone that knows me well knows how much it meant for me to read this in Sonja D. Curry-Johnson’s “Weaving an Identity Tapestry”:
“In college, conflicts did not lessen, but rather grew, both around me and within me. Here I had to decide what meant more to me, the attention and admiration of men, or my integrity as an independent woman. Unfortunately, there were times when my willingness to find and keep a boyfriend outweighed my desire to live my life honestly as my own person. During these times, I often placed the needs of the relationship over my own. It took a few years and a few broken relationships for me to reassess the importance of romantic love and to realize that there was no fantasy that was worth my denying any part of my identity. I decided not to become involved with a man unless I was sure he was the type of person that would not only accept my feminist ideals but also support my execution of them in my personal and professional lives. That type of man, in my mind, was a rare bird indeed. No sooner had I resigned myself to a life without romance, that I met such a bird and, in perhaps the least-debated decision of my life, married him.”
What they've said