The HerStories Project

Embodying Our Nature is in full swing at Gone Wired Cafe! While we’re on break, I’m taking a moment to pass on some items I mentioned during our opening talking circle. There are a few excerpts with references to the pieces and authors, as well as a media source. Enjoy!

* Trailer for the documentary “Two Spirits” – http://twospirits.org

* Excerpts from “Women on Trains” Audre Lorde (The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance):

Women on trains
have a life
that is exactly livable
the precision of days flashing past
and the shape of each season
relentlessly carved in the land.
~
Between new lumber and the maples
I rehear your question
owning
the woman who breaks the woman
who is broken.

* Excerpts from “For the Trees” Chrystos (Fire Power)

I am
part of the plundering & raping
accustomed to warm fires in winter all day
fresh vegetables in January, someone else to bring water
I am the very person who breaks
my heart open with sap
~

The trouble with writing is that you end up
being cut by the truth
Sorrow turns to laughter at the self
who would claim innocence
~

The buzz saw eats the edge
of my ears as I write
close enough to kill

* Excerpts from “Map of the Americas” Qwo-Li Driskill (Walking with Ghosts):

I wish when we touch
we could transcend history in
double helixes of dark and light
on wings we build ourselves

~
When your hands travel
across my hemispheres
know these lands
have been invaded before
and though I may quiver
from your touch
there is still a war

~
Honor this

I walk out of genocide to touch you

* Excerpts from “Speaking In Tongues: A Letter To Third World Women Writers” Gloria E. Anzaldua (This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color):

Who gave us permission to perform the act of writing? Why does writing seem so unnatural for me? I’ll do anything to postpone it — empty the trash, answer the telephone. The voice recurs in me: Who am I, a poor Chicanita from the sticks, to think I could write? How dare I even consider becoming a writer as I stooped over the tomato fields bending, bending under the hot sun, hands broadened and calloused, not fit to hold the quill, numbed into an animal stupor by the head.

~
How dare we get out of our colored faces. How dare we reveal the human flesh underneath and bleed red blood like the white folks. It takes tremendous energy and courage not to acquiesce, not to capitulate to a definition of feminism that still renders most of us invisible.