Sara Watson: “Poetry is one of the few safe spaces for queer women. As such, it’s a great space for a queer woman such as myself to play around, to dream, to imagine, to demonstrate and celebrate queer desire. If Poetry were a town, I think I’d like to move there.”
Julie Marie Wade: “I happily identify as a feminist and more specifically, a third-wave feminist. I grew up in a family that adhered to strict gender roles and regarded liberation movements, particularly ‘women’s lib,’ with suspicion. In 1997, I arrived at college with the false impression that feminism was something that already happened, a social movement that had come and gone. To my surprise and delight, this was not the case. I read Rebecca Walker’s Becoming the Third Wave and Naomi Wolf’s Radical Heterosexuality. Slowly, it dawned on me that feminism was still alive and well, and I wanted desperately to be a part of this third wave my new feminist heroes described. To me, feminism is about more than equality, which often conjures notions of ‘sameness,’ but rather about justice, which seeks to honor and protect individual integrity and complexity within and beyond the category of gender. One of my early mentors once said to me: ‘If there are two people—one physically agile and one confined to a wheelchair—and you ask them both to climb the same flight of stairs in the same amount of time—you are treating them equally, but you are not treating them justly.’ This example has always stayed with me. Feminism’s first wave centered on women’s equality, but the third wave encompasses the pursuit of justice for all marginalized groups, including people of color, people with disabilities, sexual minorities, and the earth itself.”
“Zumba Gold at 9 AM” by Amy UyematsuPosted by Rattle
Amy Uyematsu
ZUMBA GOLD AT 9 AM
We are a throng of older women—yes, we are silver- and white-haired, or in my case, color-enhanced reddish brown, some with new knees and hips, others sporting flashy neon wristbands to tally how many steps, all of us ready to rumble in our rubber-soled shoes. Our teacher Yvonne used to weigh 300 pounds. Now she zumbas and runs, sports a modified Mohawk, sparkly bracelets stacked from wrist to forearm, and pink, lime, or lavender tank tops and sweats. Her constant command: “Smile! This is spoze to be fun!” And it is, though a few in the crowd just don’t get the steps, their faces so labored and lost. Most of us, though, are having the best time we’ve had in decades, feel like we did in our teens, maybe better since we don’t care anymore if we look uncool—heck, no pressure anymore from ogling adolescents or lascivious men. Now nothing matters more than the way this Latin music pulls us in—our bodies set loose to congas and timbales. We learn salsa, very New York City smooth, while Dominican merengue is frenzied and almost too fast to keep on beat. We all like the song where we gyrate our hips, follow Yvonne in an unhurried blend of hula and belly dance, then raise arms and hands to shoo away something toward the sky, all of us joining the chorus, “amor—amor, amor, amor”—not sure if we’re sending love out to the universe or saying goodbye to a lover, our voices rising as one. But my favorite, as always, is the cha cha, which we got from Cuba. I didn’t know this in the ’60s, when I cha cha cha’d to Chicano and Motown discs, doing it Eastside style with a swivel and dip. Cha cha feels like I’m coming home, so easy and free, just a zumba-crazed grandma with bad knees—that’s me.
Amy Uyematsu: “Back in the ’70s, I taught a course at UCLA called ‘Asian Women in America.’ In that class, we studied ‘triple jeopardy’—how Asian American women face issues of racism, sexism, and economic discrimination. I’ve long considered myself an Asian American woman poet, which to me means being an advocate for people of color as well as women.”
Kelly Grace Thomas: “Feminism is about connected and often quiet power; it took me too many years to understand this. Years of an awkward dance between embracing and apologizing for my femininity. When people think of feminism, many things come to mind. For me, it just means evolution, it just means equality, it means I am gonna exercise my right to express myself as eloquently and openly as anyone else. I coach an all-female youth poetry team and try to be a strong model of feminism for them, and for girls to come. I think to be a feminist you have to be both the mirror and the window; my work in poetry seeks to do just that.” (web)
Kelly Grace Thomas is the guest on episode #30 of the Rattlecast. Click here to watch!
Katherine Barrett Swett: “For me the most interesting work of feminism is the recovery of lost lives and lost writing. I have studied the writings of 19th century women for 30 years. I am amazed by the bravery and tenacity of women who wrote and still write against enormous pressures to be silent. I love to enter into their worlds and break that silence.”
Lisa Summe: “I am a feminist poet because I am a woman who loves women. My autobiographical poems, while often celebratory, also explore the challenges that come with identifying as a lesbian: homophobia, familial rejection, appearance norms, etc.” (web)
Julie Steiner: “I consider feminism part of the broader notion that all members of the human race, without exception, should have opportunities and challenges proportionate to their actual, not presumed, abilities. So, yes, I am a feminist. As are most men, I think. But occasionally all of us in positions of traditional privilege—whatever those might be—need reminders that our own worldview is not a universal default, shared by all humanity.”
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