The Homesteady

Feminist Reading List: Milk & Honey

Even though I graduated from Mount Holyoke with a degree in English, I've never read much poetry. I thought poetry asked for a lot. I struggled with what felt like having to adjust the speed of my brain to someone else's.

There's one poem that I photocopied from a photocopy that Katy had had in college, that was pinned to the door of my dorm room for three years and is now on my refrigerator almost 10 years later. It's called "What If We Died in Space?" and it's by Al Kostalas (even though I've seen it every day of my life for almost a decade, I still had to walk to the kitchen to get the author's name). Read it here.

That poem came easily to me and I thought maybe there was hope for me and poetry. It wasn't introduced to me in an academic context – I just liked it because I liked it. (Although a little analysis probably wouldn't have hurt. A few weeks ago my dad was visiting. He read the poem on the fridge and said out loud, "That's so stupid." I said, "No, Dad, they're not actually going to die in space, she's just imagining..." He interrupted me and said, "But Hannah, we all die in space." Mind=blown.)

Rupi Kaur's poetry felt accessible to me in a similar way. Most of her poems are short, and they don't rhyme (I know not all poems have to rhyme). They're easy to read, and lethal that way. So much is conveyed with so few words. 

Kaur is an Indo-Canadian poet and performance artist who lives in Ontario. I learned about her through Instagram. She'd posted an all-too-familiar image there – menstrual blood that had leaked through her clothing during the night. It can be seen on her sheets, and the back of her pants. (It's the upper left hand image here.) Instagram initially banned the photo, so Kaur called them out on Facebook.

"Thank you Instagram for providing me with the exact response my work was created to critique. ...You deleted my photo twice stating that it goes against community guidelines. I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in an underwear but not be okay with a small leak. ...Some women aren’t allowed in their religious place of worship [when they have their period]. Out of their homes. To do certain things. And are told they are sick. As if the period is a common cold. Yes. This is here in North America. I have been hospitalized many times because of issues associated with my period. I have been suffering from a sickness related to my period. And ever since I have been working so hard to love it. Embrace it. Celebrate it. Even thought it’s given me so much pain in the past few years. and they want to tell me I should be quiet about this. That all of this we experience collectively does not need to be seen. Just felt secretly behind closed doors. That’s why this is important. Because when I first got my period my mother was sad and worried. And they want to censor all that pain. Experience. Learning. No.

Their patriarchy is leaking.

Their misogyny is leaking."

Yeah. I wanted to hear more from her.

Milk & Honey, Kaur's first and only book of poetry, is divided into four sections: the hurting; the loving; the breaking; and the healing. I liked the first and the fourth best. The hurting is brutal and forthright, full of very short poems that are like holding a fistful of little razor blades. But they are so, so good. I folded over the most corners in this section.

I liked the loving. A few poems were so sensual I could taste them.

The breaking was bitter and sad, and so honest about the unpleasant parts of relationships that I was glad when it was over.

The healing was the most inspiring. The most full of power. (Female power, which is my favorite kind.) These I'd want to photocopy and put on my dorm room door. They reminded me of being at the women's march. 

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Feminist Reading List: We Should All Be Feminists

I read We Should All Be Feminists while eating breakfast by myself at Zaftig's in Brookline. I was in Boston for a conference and relishing the chance to share a quiet meal with a book. Zaftig's is high on the list of things I miss about living in Boston – such indulgent breakfast and brunch. I had a breakfast sandwich so oozy and delicious that I had to take all my rings off. It was that drippy. I finished the book before I finished the sandwich. The essay was that good. 

We Should All Be Feminists is based on Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TEDx Talk of the same name. It's been viewed more than three million times on YouTube (and I embedded it below). I hadn't seen the TEDx Talk prior to reading the essay. I don't watch TED Talks very often, to my own deficit. I highly recommend watching this one. Adichie is such an intelligent, relatable, powerful person. Just as much for her delivery, watch the video for the audience's reaction. TEDxEuston, which took place in London in December of last year, "celebrate[d] the diversity, vibrancy and potential of Africa as it reflects the ideas and inspired thinking of those who are committed to engaging meaningfully with the continent." Adichie, in a series of straightforward, personal, real-life examples, takes the audience by the hand and leads them – gently but surely – to their own conclusion that of course, everyone should be a feminist. She struck me as one of the most capable writers and speakers I've ever read or seen. Her essay, her argument, is crafted carefully. Every word, pause, and joke has a job – and does that job well. We can all learn from her delivery and passion. (As every 16-year-old in Sweden does.)

I read the whole thing again while riding the T to Government Center after breakfast. (I miss reading on trains.) It's a quick read, but it bears revisiting. Read it two times, even three. As I said before, Adichie's common-sense arguments are accessible and compelling to those exploring feminism. Already a feminist? This essay is a rallying cry for us. Commit a sentence or two to memory for future use in aiding the explanation of feminism to those who doubt its significance, its critical power. And let this essay help you remember that things are different all over the world. People approach the idea of feminism each holding different things – prejudices, hopes, challenges, opportunities, questions, frustrations. Think about intersectionality, and what it means for the way you practice feminism. 

What I underlined:

"Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice."

"We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage."

"It is easy to say, 'But women can just say no to all this.' But the reality is more difficult, more complex. We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization."

"Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general – but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. ...I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, 'Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?' This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences."

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Feminist Reading List: Not That Kind of Girl

Let me start this with a confession: I've never seen an episode of "Girls." 

But I do feel like I know Lena Dunham. She's a feminist who's my age, who's consistently outspoken and honest about her experience with endometriosis (something I know very well). That was when I started paying attention to her, actually – when I realized she was one of the few well known women actually being vocal about the disease (this essay, especially). Soon after, I signed up for Lenny Letter, Dunham's email newsletter project with Jenni Konner. It became the one e-newsletter I dependably open. The interviews are fabulous, and the illustrations are usually just this side of new, pointing in the direction of what is going to be design-y and cool next week. 

So, her book. I was maybe a tiny bit amused at the idea of reading the memoirs of a twenty-something, and then immediately checked myself. I mean, look how much has fit into my twenty-something years! (Trust me, that could provide plenty for a book.) Plus, she's pretty wry about that aspect herself. Dunham's experience as a woman writing, directing, and acting in Hollywood adds a fascinating/enlightening/frustrating dimension. Her childhood anecdotes create the visible frame for this future feminist. And her witty, sardonic writing had me cackling out loud more than once.

The best part, though? Her frankness. Dunham knows what she knows, and what she knows is usually perfect and a little funny and exactly what you needed to read right then. 

Here's who it's okay to share your bed with:

Your sister if you're a girl, your brother if you're a boy, your mom if you're a girl, and your dad if you're under twelve or he's over 90. Your best friend. A carpenter you picked up at the key-lime-pie stand in Red Hook. A bellhop you met in the business center of a hotel in Colorado. A Spanish model, a puppy, a kitten, one of those domesticated minigoats. A heating pad. An empty bag of pita chips. The love of your life.

Here's who it's not okay to share a bed with: 

Anyone who makes you feel like you're invading their space. Anyone who tells you they "just can't be alone right now." Anyone who doesn't make you feel like sharing a bed is the coziest and most sensual activity they could possibly be undertaking (unless, of course, it is one of those aforementioned relatives; in that case, they should act lovingly but also reserved/slightly annoyed.

I loved the writing about her child- and teenage-hood. We shared so many of the same anxieties. It was kinda nice to imagine that she was out there being weird and awkward at just the same time I was, hiding from my summer camp counselors so I could read Harry Potter alone instead of doing group activities or, you know, making friends. Dunham writes about her heady online relationships, shares old letters written to boyfriends (with lengthy new footnotes), openly describes sexual experiences that didn't feel safe. It all felt so familiar – but was so much better written than my memories! 

She's so unapologetic in this book, which makes me envious. To be so sure of oneself, so safe in one's knowledge and convictions. So cool. I don't know if it's fair to project so much onto a person you don't actually know, just because they seemed that way in their memoirs. Especially because in said memoirs, she's admittedly not really that confident. 

I still think she's cool. I'm really glad she wrote this book. I'm really glad someone my age wrote out all these beautiful, simple, but sometimes weirdly hard-to-say statements about being a young feminist, and a young woman, and a person with a past. It makes me think our generation has actually got it together – that we're headed for a future of talking about periods and sexual health and all the things that have happened to us without having to say, I don't know, something like "TMI" first. 

Oh! And let me just point something out. I don't know if this is in the paperback copy, but the illustrations inside the jacket of the hardcover book (by Joana Avillez) are so intricate and beautiful. My mom and my aunt and I pored over them together at the kitchen table in Maine after I read all the passages I'd underlined out loud. I want them as wallpaper. 

What I underlined:

(Describing the pain of endometriosis): "I imagined the worst: a flesh-eating bacteria acquired in India making its way up my urethra, soon to turn me into a bag of bones. A tiny tumor, like a pea, sitting high up inside me. An imperceptible scratch from a sandy tampon." 

"Sometimes I lie in bed next to my sleeping boyfriend and puff out my stomach, imagine that he is protecting me and I am protecting our child." 

"I have watched men order at dinner, ask for shitty wine and extra bread with a confidence I could never muster, and thought, What a treat that must be. But I also consider being female such a unique gift, such a sacred joy, in ways that run so deep I can't articulate them. It's a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as you recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to define it."

(Part of a guide to running away for nine-year-old girls): "In terms of packing, all you need is clean underwear and a loaf of bread."

[This will be described as] "an era when women in Hollywood were treated like the paper thingies that protect glasses in hotel bathrooms – necessary but infinitely disposable." 

Feminist Reading List: My Life on the Road

I bought this book in a hurry.

"Do you have any paperback versions in stock?" I asked the cashier at Barnes & Noble. She said My Life on the Road wasn't coming out in paperback until summer. I was running out of time, so I bit the bullet and paid more than I would have liked for the hardcover book. I couldn't risk not having it that night.

Before my current job, I worked for a prep school. The campus is gorgeous, the students have such bright futures, and I still love my old co-workers. Scientists, writers, politicians, and more often come to the school to speak for the community, and I was on my way to see Gloria Steinem speak in person for the very first time.

There was no book signing on her schedule, but what if she held an impromptu one after her talk? What if I could hang out with her for a minute, tell her that hers was a household name in my childhood home? What if she wanted to jot down a note for me in a book jacket? I couldn't not have that book. 

Steinem's talk was incredible. I fought the urge to agree out loud when she made certain points. She so expertly shut down male privilege when a self-identified 19-year-old white male Republican student said, "I think I'm in the same boat today that you were when you were a young woman and nobody listened to YOU. Do you think we now live in a time when people can't voice their opinion without an uproar from liberals?" Steinem chose to explain one of the myriad ways in which he is different from her younger female self, citing statistics regarding an individual's risk of being sexually assaulted or raped and how those odds differ between men and women, and what it's like to move through the world with that knowledge. Next, she addressed his concerns re: people having other opinions. "What you're talking about is free speech. Nobody is trying to take away your right to free speech," she said, "they're just getting mad at you." (Cue eruption of applause.)

To wrap it up a bit, there was no book signing after the talk. I didn't get to meet Gloria Steinem. But I was still glad I had bought the book – I'd scribbled notes from her talk inside the jacket. Things like, "equal wage = economic stimulus," "bodily integrity (not just reproductive justice)," and "freedom for men: boys must be raised to raise children, nurturing and loving." (And as an aside – lots of other people brought their copies of the book to the talk too, which was held in the campus chapel. Seeing all those books lined up in the little pew shelves instead of bibles sure did tickle me.)

I'm happy I saw her speak before reading the book. I could hear it all being read in her voice – like Vanessa Redgrave, without the British accent. The book was a good stand-in for the intimate conversation with her I craved. The smattering of photographs included from her personal collection made it feel even more so. 

I read this book a little bit at a time during my lunch breaks. It was a good gear shift for me mentally in the middle of the day; before bed I like to read novels, books that won't get me fired up or particularly inspired. But at lunchtime, My Life on the Road was energizing, thought-provoking. A tome full of lessons she's gained from a lifetime of travel, Steinem offers up her memories in a way that I just loved. A short introduction, then a list of anecdotes – seemingly mismatched beads strung together by shared recurring themes of intersectionality, surprise, and heartache. Throughout it all, Steinem is openly, continually checking the assumptions she's made about others through the decades.

Steinem, a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter, does write about Secretary Clinton more than once, suddenly making me wonder about the timing of this book's publication. But Steinem's dependably relaxed and compelling prose tamped down suspicious thoughts that the book might be a shill for Hillary's presidential campaign. (I'm already a Hillary supporter, btw.) 

A lasting thought I took away from My Life on the Road was how little of my country I've actually seen or learned about. There's so much history out there – and under our very feet in western Massachusetts' ancient agriculture mounds – of the Native people who thrived in this country before the arrival of white Europeans (and whose ancestors are systematically oppressed to this day). Kristie is proud of her family's Cherokee heritage, but admittedly doesn't know much about it. Reading about Gloria's experiences and relationships with Native organizers and activists made me wonder how we can teach our future children about the heritage gained from their Southern mother's side. 

I remember being in the Christiansborg ruins (built in 1167) underneath Copenhagen, Denmark by myself once, and wondering to myself that America's history was nothing compared to these old stone structures. That was my ignorance, and the absence of America's incredibly history (long before it was called America) from my classrooms. I didn't know that there are structures older than Stonehenge in our country, that there are people alive today who can trace their origins back a hundred thousand years in our country – not until I read this book at age 28. It was the most painfully beautiful kind of called-out feeling, like walking into the too-bright sunshine after being in a dark movie theater for too long, or a flower opening for the first time. I'm so sorry I didn't know before. I'm so glad I know now. 

What I highlighted

"[Traveling by road] is right up there with life-threatening emergencies and truly mutual sex as a way of being fully alive in the present." 

"I was traveling not only for stories, but also to sell ads to reluctant makers of cars who were convinced that men made that buying decision; to explain to makers of women's products why Ms. didn't publish fashion, beauty, or cooking articles that praised and promoted the products of advertisers." (<-- Definitely has me thinking about the ads I host and sponsored posts I write on this blog.)

"If an audience is half women and half men, women worry about the reaction of the men around them. But in one that is two-thirds women and one-third men, women respond as they would on their own, and men hear women speaking honestly." (<-- the best explanation of the value of women's colleges I've ever heard, and certainly exemplative of my time at Mount Holyoke, and I'm sure Steinem's time at Smith.)

"A writer's greatest reward is naming something unnamed that many people are feeling. A writer's greatest punishment is being misunderstood. The same words can do both." 

"Thinking about our schooling in different decades and parts of the country, all three of us in that kitchen discover that we were taught more about ancient Greece and Rome than about the history of the land we live on. We learned about the pyramid builders of Egypt, but not the pyramid builders of the Mississippi River."

"Home is a symbol of the self. Caring for a home is caring for one's self."

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Feminist Reading List: The Feminist Utopia Project

*This is the beginning of a new post series, Feminist Reading List, in which I read and review feminist books or books of interest to feminists – mostly for my own edification, but to share here too in the hopes a few titles might make it onto your reading list.

Would it be ridiculous if I said that this book changed everything for me? 

No. Because it's true.

The Feminist Utopia Project: Fifty-Seven Visions of a Wildly Better Future is a powerful collection of essays, interviews, comic strips, illustrations, poems, manifestos, and more, each describing with thoughtful specificity and unapologetic detail that particular author's or artist's take on what their "feminist utopia" would look like. 

Far from the mainstream feminist theory in which I was immersed in college – necessarily replete in heartbreaking personal accounts of misogyny and harassment; the depressing realities of access to reproductive healthcare; life-threatening domestic violence; and the demeaning and deleterious effects of insidious rape culture – The Feminist Utopia Project is just as powerful, while simultaneously being utterly uplifting. It is the perfect companion to serious examinations of the hard road that's led us here. Each vision is beautiful and complete, and seems shockingly within reach. Rather than looking at where we've been, and how it has challenged and changed and stunted us, The Feminist Utopia Project turns the reader gently, safely toward the future. Somehow without ever pointing directly to the violence that marks our history, the essays acknowledge it as an artifact of the past – something that we (humanity) do not need to keep carrying with us. 

The perspectives and voices in the book are many and varied – from well known names like Janet Mock and Melissa Harris-Perry, to thoughtful, open interviews with sex workers. How would living in a feminist utopia change a teenage mother's average day? How would the standard for "good sex" change? What would it look like if birth control were invented by an abortion provider? Each segment elevates a different topic in a way that's completely accessible and inspiring. And I was given the reminder I so badly needed about the importance of intersectionality in feminism, and that feminism benefit all of us – not just women. 

It had been awhile since I'd read much feminist theory. Since college, probably. Like I said earlier, a lot of it can be tough and heavy to digest, especially if you're a sensitive person. The Feminist Utopia Project is the complete opposite; it's an informed, welcoming answer to a question I didn't even realize I was asking. I truly hope this collection finds its way into college classrooms. In the meantime, if you are a woman, or someone who knows a woman, or someone who identifies as a human in any way, it's time to read this book. The only way we can move forward, in the direction that celebrates and makes safe and changes everything, is if we all have similar pictures in our minds of what that future looks like. 

My friend Kate is a vegan. A few years ago when Eating Animals came out, she was so strongly inspired by the book that she bought a copy for anyone who expressed the slightest interest in reading it (present company included). I loved the book, and I was in awe of how Kate had so graciously embraced it, offering to share with whomever was interested what had touched her so deeply. I never felt that way about a book myself – until now. This is my Eating Animals. I wish I had enough money to buy a copy for each person reading this right now. Maybe someday I'll win the lottery, and mail a copy of The Feminist Utopia Project to every house in America. In the meantime, if it's in your budget, try the book. The Kindle version is cheaper. And, as ever, the library version is free. 

So what changed? My mind reopened. Rather than having to fortify myself to get through recollections of trauma and harsh realities that can seem all too familiar, inescapable, and heavy, I began to see feminism once again for what it is: something intelligent, and growing, and beautiful, and hopeful. We can't forget about that part. Maybe it's not a fair way to look at feminist theory, but I personally needed some balance, which was fully, wholly provided by this book. 

What I highlighted:

"A good word to consider in lieu of 'happiness' is the ancient Greek word eudaimonia. It is often mistranslated as 'happiness,' revealing how beholden we are to this diminished view of human flourishing in the modern age, but it is better understood as meaning 'living a good life for a human being.' It means to flourish in a fullness of practice, to dance through a full range of human experience—from the most pleasurable emotions, states, and practices to the thoroughly unpleasant ones. It means to live a life of meaning."

"Perhaps in a feminist utopia, my 'hysteria' might be affirmed. It may be diagnosed as 'the world hurt you with its sickness' rather than 'you are sick.'"

"Being . . . a woman is an awful tragedy. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night. — Sylvia Plath"

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I needed that

I'm currently reading My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem. Last night, this passage jumped out at me, and I shared it on my personal Facebook page. I thought you might like to read it, too. It's timely (and a little prescient on her part), don't you think?

Despite all their faults, campaigns are based on the fact that every vote counts, and therefore every person counts. As freestanding societies, they are more open than academia, more idealistic than corporations, more unifying than religions, and more accessible than government itself. Campaign season is the only time of public debate about what we want for the future. It can change consciousness even more than who gets elected. In short, campaigns may be the closest thing we have to democracy itself.

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