I will be amazed if anyone is still checking this blog, but here comes a post anyway! It has been a long hiatus, and I apologize. In the past couple of months, we bought a house, moved across the country, changed jobs, finished one thesis (my husband's) and started another (mine)--and of course, there's always that thing where we're chasing a toddler (or rather, waddling behind a toddler, since I'm third-trimester-pregnant). We are settled into our new home now, internet access and all, so I think that I will be returning you to your regularly scheduled blog-programming.
Today I mostly just have a recommendation. Last week a friend forwarded me an amazing article that was recently published in the New York Times. This article, "The Women's Crusade," was written by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. If Kristof's name sounds familiar to you, it might be because of his regular Times column that often addresses, among other social issues, global women's issues. Past columns have covered topics like sex trafficking, maternal health and obstetric fistula, and mass rape as an element of warfare. (You can access a full list of his columns here.)
Kristof and WuDunn (who are married to each other) have written a new book called Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Worldwide, which is scheduled to be released in early September. In preparation for the book release, the Times published an excerpt from the book under the title "The Women's Crusade." Please take some time to go read this article. If it is any indication of the quality of the book, you can bet I will be reviewing the rest of the book soon. "The Women's Crusade" is an excellent introduction to a number of issues that affect women around the world, such as domestic violence, poverty, bride burning, sex-selective abortion, sex slavery, maternal mortality, health, education, etc. etc. I hope to delve more deeply into some of these topics in future blog posts, but for now the excerpt from the book will provide you will a good overview, and a sense of why these issues are so urgent.
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FISSURES IN REALITY:
A discussion of global issues;
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"My trip to the former Yugoslavia had opened the world for me, and my hunger for the world. In doing so, it undid the contained, safe borders of my existence. Suddenly a woman weeping over her lost son in an image on the front page of The New York Times was no longer a theoretical entity. She was real, a woman I might have met, might have known. I was connected to her. I could no longer divorce myself from her pain, her suffering. Initially this was overwhelming. I had nightmares. I felt restless and wrong in my comforting life in America. Everything seemed absurd and pointless. I came to understand why we block out the pain and atrocities of others. That pain, if we allow it to enter us, makes our lives impossible. It forces us to examine our own values and reality. It insists that we be responsible for others. It thrusts us into the messy world where there are no easy solutions or reasons, only struggles and questions. It creates great fissures in the landscape of our insulated, so-called safe reality. Fissures that, once split open, can never close again. It compels us to act."
(Eve Ensler)
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"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."
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"But in the end, there will still be a morning like this one, full of new light, and a distant voice will be heard, like a memory of before we became people. And the tones of a song will well up, the gentle lull of the first mother. This song, yes indeed, will be ours, the memory of a deep root that they were unable to wrench out of us. This voice will give us the strength for a new beginning, and upon hearing it, the corpses will find peace in their graves and the survivors will embrace life with the simple joy of young lovers. All this will happen if we are able to rid ourselves of this time that has made animals out of us. Let us strive to die like the people we no longer are."
(Mia Couto)
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"If they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away."
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- missy.
- missy is a mama, phd student, writer, teacher, activist, progressive veg*n ecofeminist. Who deplores labels.
3 comments:
I agree that this article was fabulous, but one undercurrent left me feeling conflicted as I often do when I read articles about the triumphs of oppressed groups. While I want to celebrate with women around the world as we all struggle against an oppressive patriarchal system, sometimes I sense in these articles that it is somehow primarily the responsibility (and, resultingly, the glory) of the oppressed when they (we) manage to escape from under the giant thumb. I feel keenly the responsibility that does, and must, rest with the perpetrators of such heinous offenses. Every one woman's victory is everyone's, in a sense, but I can't stop my mind from remembering that while a power differential exists, those with more power and privilege will always find ways to oppress those with less.
I think the best thing about this article was the overview it provided of so many issues salient in the lives of millions of women today. I still take issue with the lack of discussion about what would help the oppressors want to heal from their misplaced sense of power so that the demand will dry up rather than simply being displaced into another realm.
Hope this made sense.
forgot to subscribe to the comments :)
I really like your comment, Amy--that makes a lot of sense to me. I agree with you that the best feature of this article is that it's an introduction to dozens of issues that some people might not know about. I want to read the book and see if it addresses more fully the issues you raised in your comment.
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