A Tribute to Cheryl Braganza

Cheryl presenting at the Women's guild of St. Augustine of Canterbury Parish

"For the last twelve years, while our mother fought bone cancer, a handwritten quote from Goethe has rested on top of her easel: "Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time."

Little did we know how much she would take this to heart. In the last 5 years, she produced more artwork and published more writing than she ever produced in the previous 20 years. When asked why, she answered "I'm in a race against time. I have so much to say and so much more to bring into the world..." And her effect on people across the world is evident in the hundreds and thousands of awe-inspiring emails she got from fans of her work everywhere.

She lived longer than anyone in the history of medicine with myeloma cancer in the brain, and refused painkillers because she didn't want her senses affected. All she wanted was to experience every moment in living color until her last breath.

Our mother believed that in order to enjoy true happiness, she should live each moment as if it were her last. Today will never return. We may speak of the past or of the future, but the only reality we have is that of the present instant. Confronting the reality of death actually enabled her to bring forth unlimited creativity, courage and joy into each moment of her life. The more broken her body became over the years, the more she painted soaring images of birds, and butterflies, and dancing women. And even when the cancer paralyzed her body, she painted tapestries of colour and love with her face, her voice and her mind.

She died peacefully in her sleep this morning after seeing her three children; her soul soaring to the beautiful places reflected in her art. We could not have wished for a more beautiful and meaningful farewell." - a tribute by Cheryl's son Miguel on December 16th, 2016.

There is a wonderful link to various aspects of Cheryl's life, including her life story, art activism and cancer here.

Don't miss her recollections on the Partition of India either.

And, of course, her there is her tremendous art - which I will end with.  These are some of my very favorite Cheryl Braganza paintings.

Peace, Pink, Power

Crescendo

We Remember

Dancing Lady

You can get lost looking at Cheryl's website - there are so many amazing paintings.

Rest in Peace - and in Power - beloved artist, writer, mother, friend, visionary and warrior.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry Official Trailer 1 (2014) - Documentary HD

The Woman Identified Woman

Read the full document here.

Our Daughters Need Women’s History Month All Year Long by Melia Keeton-Digby, M.Ed

Photo by Alyscia Cunningham

Today marks the first day of Women’s History Month in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. The purpose of Women’s History Month is to highlight and honor the contributions of women to historical events and contemporary society. Every year at this time, school curriculums focus on a handful of well-known, front-runner women-in-history.

Unfortunately, besides this one month every year, chances are your daughter will spend a disproportionate amount of time in school studying the men who shaped their country (and the world at large). Although some respectable attempts have been made to correct this imbalance in the U.S., since the introduction of Title 9, which prohibited “sex discrimination against students and employees of educational institutions” in the 1970s, textbooks and classroom lessons today still fall short of a complete and equally represented history. Dr. Myra Pollack Sadker pioneered much of the research documenting gender bias in American schools. In her book, Failing at Fairness: How America’s Schools Cheat Girls, Sadker shares that a history text for sixth graders, published in 1992, only mentioned eleven female names! Sadker and colleagues conducted a research experiment in which people were asked to list famous women from history, the only limitation being that they could not name entertainers or president’s wives. How do you think people did? How would your daughter do? Too often, the lists only contained a few names or none at all.

Why does this matter?

Dr. Alan Ravitz, a prominent child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City, explains that, “as kids individualize themselves from their parents, which is a natural part of development and growing up, they try to establish psychological and emotional independence. No matter the culture, they need somebody to look to, aside from their parents, for guidance and a model for becoming an adult.” Considering the lack of women’s history and real-life role models offered in our school curriculums, to whom are our daughters turning to meet their developmental (and universal) need for role models? Culture icons and the influence of advertising are not sufficient substitutes. Young girls wearing Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus t-shirts, engrossed in the latest YouTube videos, need role models with a more lasting and positive impact. Sure, we did it as children too – Madonna and Kylie Minogue graced many of our childhood bedroom walls - but what exactly did these teen idols offer us and what are they offering our daughters? Celebrity worship and an obsession with teen idols can result in lost self-esteem in children, and this loss of self-esteem can lead to poor family relationships, poor body image, and even eating disorders. Dr. Lin Fang, assistant professor in the faculty of social work at the University of Toronto cautions parents of adolescent girls against the common, but not actually harmless, idolization of pop stars:

“Research shows that girls who strongly idolize celebrities tend to buy into other aspects of commercial culture and may become overly materialistic. The pressure coming from celebrities with perfect bodies may lead to an unrealistic body image and possibly nurture eating disorders, which can consume a child’s life.”

By sharing herstory with our daughters– by imparting knowledge of our past, from a feminist perspective, and emphasizing the role of women told from a woman’s point of view – we can leverage the innate desire for role models and provide our daughters with an abundance of strong, healthy women with whom she can choose to identify and emulate. When introduced in the right way, women such as Joan of Arc and Ruby Bridges can truly meet a girls’ developmental need for role models.

Women’s History Month is indeed a step in the right direction, but our daughters deserve (and need) more than one month a year. Herstory is ours to tell and we are the ones we have been waiting for.

For inspiration and guidance on sharing women’s history with your daughter all year long, check out Melia Keeton-Digby’s revolutionary new book: The Heroines Club: A Mother-Daughter Empowerment Circle, coming April 22, 2016 from Womancraft Publishing.

 
Melia Keeton-Digby, M.Ed, is the founder of The Mother-Daughter Nest, a sacred women’s gathering space in Georgia, USA. She is passionately invested in supporting mothers to raise confident, connected daughters. A mother of three, she works as a Speech-Language Pathologist, Transformational Life Coach and Sacred Circle Facilitator. Her work has been featured in a variety of online and print publications, and she is the author of the groundbreaking book, The Heroines Club: a mother-daughter empowerment circle (April 2016, Womancraft Publishing).

Connect with Melia:
www.TheMotherDaughterNest.com
www.TheHeroinesClub.com
https://www.facebook.com/themotherdaughternest/
https://www.facebook.com/TheHeroinesClub/

Batay Ouvriye (of Haiti) on International Working Women’s Day

"Most workers in the world don’t know the date of March 8th is of the greatest importance for them. And many of those who do know it don’t realize what the date really represented in history. For us, conscious workers, for whom the struggle is our daily life, it is absolutely necessary we know our true history, the various battles waged by our class and the lessons we should draw from them.

First of all, since many workers in Haiti and throughout the world, especially in the maquilas and free trade zones, work in the textile industry, we should know that the mobilizations held on March 8th, 1908, were carried out precisely by textile industry workers. Despite this, presently, most workers in this branch know nothing of this part of our history.

In 1975, the United Nations proclaimed March 8th “International Women’s Day.” Once more, this was a recuperation of the international ruling classes to distort the real significance of our battles. In this way, they have attempted to wipe out the collective memory of the real working-class mobilization that occurred on this date, turning it into a wide-ranging, limited celebration completely void of class content, in which all women partake, including totally anti-worker and reactionary bourgeois women. In this way, the nature and logic of our battles are obliterated. Our own history is robbed from us.

What was March 8th?

March 8th is a historic date! Doubly so. First of all, on March 8th, 1857, a large number of factory workers in the United States took to the streets to demand their economic and political rights. The owners called the police who arrived immediately and opened fire, engaging in blind repression. Later on, in 1908, the same date of March 8th was once again a memorable date of struggle. On this day, capitalist bosses in Chicago set fire to a textile factory where over a thousand women worked. A very large number was terribly burnt. 120 died! This heinous crime happened simply because the workers were demanding that the legal 8-hour work day be respected, as well as substantial ameliorations of their work conditions since they were working in a hellish environment in which their very dignity was constantly and totally denied. In this factory, however, the workers refused to cower. They fought daily. And having reached a certain level of organization, they held protests, work stoppages and strikes… On this day of March 8th, 1908, instead of obeying the law and satisfying the workers’ legal and legitimate demands, the factory owners decided to bar in this way what they called “the rising disorder”.

Solidarity Mobilization and the “Commemoration”

An enormous national and worldwide solidarity campaign was launched, denouncing the workers’ situation. Work stoppages, strikes and even factory occupations were held throughout the world to protest against this practice that revealed so crudely how capitalism has no consideration for human life when its economic interests are on the line. The campaign didn’t succeed in really dealing with the capitalists responsible for this organized crime that happened on March 8th. But combatants in the entire world registered this date as highly significant of this factory’s working women’s immense courage; and, for all, this eternal flame glows in our hearts. Several years later, in Germany, Clara Zetkin, a great combatant and revolutionary, suggested setting this precise date of March 8th as international day of the WORKING WOMAN, given its double significance for working-class struggles. But, with the ebb of our class’ struggles during the second part of the 20th century, March 8th began to lose its true meaning and, progressively, mainly due to petty-bourgeois deviationists, it was changed into “women’s day”, in which much talk goes on concerning feminism and where, instead of consolidating working-class unity by calling men and women workers together in the struggle – just as, precisely, occurred during these historical March 8ths –, we’re called to fight one another. The field thus prepared, in 1975, the UN easily resumed March 8th as “International Women’s Day”.

To Understand and Draw Lessons

It’s important to point out that one of the reasons for this deviation is the partial abandonment of working-class memory by members of this very class and, at the same time, the taking in hand of such an important theme as that of women by agents of other classes. Indeed, the specific theme of women, concerning the contradictions that may exist – and do exist – in the relations between men and women of the working-class, is of great importance. But it should always be resolved within our own class. First, because there exist here specificities that ar totally our own; secondly, because once regrouped, only within our class can we find a true and complete solidarity. Finally, and above all, because we can’t and shouldn’t, under any conditions, consent to class collaboration under any circumstances, since these options will always lead us to lose our own independence, which is the most important for our class’ emancipation, a key element for that of the entire humanity.

It is no coincidence that our struggles, of the working-class, gave rise to the date of March 8th. All battles for the peoples’ emancipation, for the emancipation of humanity, emerge from the class interests of the working-class. This is also true of the struggle for women’s rights. The working-class’ liberation, in its true, wider, sense, will have to be a total liberation. Otherwise, it won’t exist. The emancipation of the working-class is the only one that demands, indeed commands, concurrently, the emancipation of women. Since this theme affects them too, many middle-class and even liberal bourgeois women have engaged in gender struggles and, deliberately – since they have several objectives and never forget what’s most important – combine all women as having the same nature, mystifying us and, especially, taking the lead of initiatives. They completely detach March 8th from its first and basic meaning as a class battle where working-class women headed the struggles with hope and courage. They obscure all but gender considerations, thus twisting this date so profoundly belonging to us, when in practice, precisely the practice of struggle, we, men and women, had united together.

At present, during March 8th celebrations, women denounce the abuses they endure in patriarchal society. These problems are real and these denunciations have great importance. We can say that they contribute to the resolving of real, significant, human problems that we, as women workers and women of the peoples’ camp suffer in our flesh as well. But never, either, will we forget that during this March 8th, we faced the bosses – and their women! As always. We bear in mind the exploitation that we, women workers, suffer in the factory-prisons, the humiliations owners and managers submit us to on a daily basis, the constant and casual sexual harassment. This capitalist domination that feeds off our dehumanization, treading our human dignity, reminds us, that just like on this historical date of March 8th, capitalism is built over our corpses. And that, always, each time our deep, economic class interests are concerned, when even death may come into question, we’ll clearly and surely find ourselves standing across from these bourgeois women organized with us in the gender struggle. The only permanent and fruitful unity for us is within our own class, in alliance with the entire people – brothers, friends, comrades. Here and only here can we resolve our problems."

Read the full post via Batay Ouvriye

News: batayouvriye.wordpress.com/
batayouvriye.org
batay@batayouvriye.org
***
Batay Ouvriye (Workers Fight) is an autonomous workers’ organization—not run by establishment unions, NGOs, students, or other outside groups, but by workers. In 1995 it launched a struggle against Disney contractors who were paying workers 30 cents an hour to stitch together Pocahontas t-shirts. It has branches in most geographical areas of Haiti, organizing garment workers in assembly factories of the Free Trade Zones, agricultural laborers, unemployed workers, and others.
Batay Ouvriye also organizes amongst other sections of the popular masses, such as small peasants, and builds alliance with other organizations. They fight for better conditions, livable wages, and for an end to occupation by UN military forces.

Year Of The Woman

"In the fall of 1973, a documentary following women’s rights proponents at the 1972 Democratic Convention played at a small Greenwich Village theater to crowds wrapping around the block. But after a limited run, the film disappeared for more than 40 years. Now, thanks to Huffington Post reporter Rebecca Traister, this doc that the Washington Post deemed “too radical, too weird and too far ahead of its time for any distributor to touch” has finally resurfaced.

The Year of the Woman was shot by an all-female crew including Barbara Koppel, Claudia Weill, Martha Coolidge and more, and captures the likes of Coretta Scott King, Shirley MacClaine, and other well-known feminist leaders of the 70s. Together, these talented and ambitious young women provide us with an extraordinary lens through which we may examine this upcoming election when a woman, rather than seeking leverage from male candidates, may actually *be* the candidate."
Watch the film now, only on Vimeo On Demand, then read more about its incarnation and miraculous comeback; highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lets-go-full-crocodile-ladies/

Coretta Scott King (1927-2006): We See You, We Hear You by Melia Keeton-Digby, M.Ed

Here in the United States, we are about to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In honor of this sacred day honoring this extraordinary man, I’d like to re-introduce you to a woman you may think you already know: Ms. Coretta Scott King.

For many of us, when we hear the name Coretta Scott King, we think: Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife and widow… and the story stop there. But there is so much more to the story of this beloved, powerful-in-her-own-right woman!

Coretta was born in 1927 in Marion, Alabama, a town drenched in racism and segregation at the time. Her grandparents were former slaves, and her own parents had not been allowed to receive a formal education. For this reason, her parents were adamant that their children be educated. Coretta once quoted her mother as saying, “My children are going to college, even if it means I only have one dress to put on.” Every day, Coretta and her three siblings were bused miles from their home, passing excellent schools, to attend the closest one room black high school. After school, Coretta worked on her family’s farm picking cotton to help earn money for her family. As a child, her family’s lumber mill (and primary source of income) was burned down by white neighbors. Coretta knew hardship and injustice firsthand, but thanks to her mother and the strong ties she developed within the local black church, she grew into a strong, confident woman who believed in a better future for herself and the world.

Upon graduating as valedictorian, Coretta joined her older sister, Edythe, at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Edythe had been the first African American student to attend Antioch, paving the way for her little sister to join. In college, Coretta became active in the nascent Civil Rights Movement and joined the Antioch chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She forged her own legacy of peace, tolerance, and understanding, and held freedom concerts to raise money for the Civil Rights Movement. (She did all of this before she had even met Martin Luther King, Jr.!) Later, she won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, so she transferred out of Antioch to study singing in Boston, which is where she met her beloved husband.

After much courting, Coretta fell in love with and decided to marry Martin, but she remained a woman unto herself. She even had the vow to obey her husband removed from the ceremony, which was very unusual at the time.

The newlywed couple moved to Montgomery, Alabama in 1954, when Martin accepted an invitation to be the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Before long, they found themselves in the middle of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Martin was elected leader of the protest movement. Coretta and Martin believed in nonviolent protests as a way of expression consistent with the teachings to which they adhered. During the movement, Coretta, a gifted musician who loved to sing, used her gifts and abilities to enthuse crowds, inspire change, and tell the stories that needed to be told. While raising four children, Coretta made speeches and performed more than thirty fundraising concerts for the cause. She assisted her husband from the earliest days of his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement- marching next to him, leading marchers in song, and coordinating supplies and events.

A terrible tragedy occurred on April 4th, 1968. The beloved and wise Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by an evil, racist man. How did Coretta respond to this personal and social tragedy? Did she crawl into her cave of grief and step away from the cause that had meant so much to her and her husband? Not at all. Instead, Coretta took her husband’s place at the helm of the Civil Rights movement. Four days after his death, rather than canceling the march that had already been planned, Ms. King herself led the march. As her involvement in Civil Rights deepened, she extended her focus to include Women’s rights, as well as the rights of LGBT people, for Coretta believed that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Later that same year, Ms. King established the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to her husband and his (their) belief in attaining social justice through nonviolence. Today, the King Center continues to allocate millions of dollars in resources and trains thousands of volunteers each year to promote racial harmony and social justice in their communities. We have Coretta to thank for this.

Do you know why Martin Luther King, Jr. day is observed every January as a federal holiday? Because Coretta Scott King lobbied for fourteen (yes- fourteen- how’s that for not giving up on what you believe in!) years to have this date recognized. She finally succeeded when President Regan signed the 1983 bill establishing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a federal holiday. It was Coretta who tirelessly strived to preserve her husband’s legacy.

One of the most influential African-American leaders of her time, Ms. King received honorary doctorates from over 60 colleges and universities; authored three books and a nationally-syndicated newspaper column; and served on and helped found dozens of organizations, including the Black Leadership Forum, the National Black Coalition for Voter Participation, and the Black Leadership Roundtable.

During her lifetime, Mrs. King dialogued with heads of state, including prime ministers and presidents, as well as participating in protests alongside rank and file working people of all races. She met with many great spiritual leaders, including Pope John Paul, the Dalai Lama, Dorothy Day, and Bishop Desmond Tutu. She witnessed the historic handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yassir Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords. She stood with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he became South Africa’s first democratically-elected president. A woman of wisdom, compassion and vision, Coretta Scott King tried to make ours a better world and, in the process, made history.

Coretta Scott King was one of the most influential women leaders in our world, but not unlike many heroines, her place in history has been over-shadowed. As we honor the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this month, may we also recognize his right-hand woman for her contributions, both to Dr. King’s work as he lived, to his legacy after he died, and to her own important work for social justice.
As women and girls rewriting herstory, let us say loud and clear:

We see you. We hear you. Our Sister, Coretta. Thank you for your supreme contributions to making our world a better place.

Author Melia Keeton-Digby, M.Ed, is the founder of The Mother-Daughter Nest, a sacred women’s gathering space in Georgia, USA. She is passionately invested in supporting mothers to raise confident, connected daughters. A mother of three, she works as a Speech-Language Pathologist, Transformational Life Coach and Sacred Circle Facilitator. Her work has been featured in a variety of online and print publications. Her upcoming book, The Heroines Club: A Mother-Daughter Empowerment Circle will be released April 2016.

Join Melia:

The Book:
www.TheHeroinesClub.com

The Website:
www.TheMotherDaughterNest.com 

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/TheHeroinesClub/

https://www.facebook.com/themotherdaughternest/

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https://www.instagram.com/themotherdaughternest/

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Trees, like Radical Women, are most strongly bonded to each other in their roots - Mary Daly

 

 

"Many women express a sense of identity and/or communication with trees.

The intuition that women are like trees in our Rootedness was inspired by a letter from Io Ax, in which she commented that trees communicate with each other from root to root. They are Radical! So also women radically communicate with each other.

The closeness between women and trees becomes more evident when we consider other aspects of Rootedness. It has commonly been observed that trees are difficult to uproot when their roots are deeply and widely intertwined with those of other trees. That is, the trees, like Radical Women, are most strongly bonded to each other in their roots They "hold on to each other."

Another important aspect of Radicalness is manifested in certain trees, whose roots--even after the trees have been cut down--continue to grow/travel. From these traveling roots new trees can continue to sprout. Similarly, Feminist Foresisters who have been cut down by the patriarchs continue to be Radically Here with us--in their writings, in the recorded examples of their personal and political Feminist Acts, and through the exercise of their Elemental Presentiating Powers.

Clearly the more Radical/Rooted women are, the more adeptly we can stand our ground, expand our ground. It becomes more and more obvious to those who chose to move in this direction that we can never become "too Radical." -Mary Daly, QUINTESSENCE: Realizing the Archaic Future A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

 

"In the jungle of the Upper Parana, the prettiest butterflies survive by exhibiting themselves. They display their black wings enlivened by red or yellow spots, and they flit from flower to flower without the least worry. After thousands upon thousands of years, their enemies have learned that these butterflies are poisonous. Spiders, wasps, lizards, flies and bats admire them from a prudent distance.

On this day in 1960 three activists against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic were beaten and thrown off a cliff. They were the Mirabal sisters. They were the prettiest, and they were called Las Mariposas, “The Butterflies.”

In memory of them, in memory of their inedible beauty, today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In other words, for the elimination of violence by the little Trujillos that rule in so many homes."

~Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days

It is Re-membering that makes it Real - Mary Daly

"To all the women who quietly made history.”

You may forget but
Let me tell you
this:someone in
some future time
will thing of us. -Sappho

We witness the phenomenon of re-discover over and over again. Matilda Joslyn Gage, who was erased by her contemporaries, towers as an intellectual giant over meanspirited “sisters.” The works of Virginia Woolf, who was driven to suicide by the oppressors of her Life, Live Now.

Our knowledge that we are creating great Memories of the Future becomes more substantial, more real, as we come to recognize who we are and the value of what we are doing. As we Realize our Genius and grow in Self-confidence we can know the value of our work to Future Foresisters and therefore be invigorated and spurred on to Hopeful, Courageous, Creative work Now.

The better we can Re-member our history, the better we can provide for our Future Foresisters. And our anticipation of their Future Thriving draws us forward.

The better we know who we are, the greater can be our Leaps. The doors are open. We ourselves have been opening them. We have only to remove the blinders imposed in the pseudoworld of the foreground to See that these Future Women are Here Now. Not only do the treasures of our own creation attract us. They attract the Future Foresisters who receive the Memories of the Future we have created. Mutual Magnetic attraction brings us together.

This is indeed Intergalactic Travel. It is Transtemporal Diaspora that transforms foreground temporal diaspora. Our Exile, Scattering, and Migration create an Outsiders' Society that is outside anything imaginable to be microscopic/telescopic re(visionaries. And it is Re-membering that makes it Real.”

-Mary Daly, Quintessence...Realizing the Archaic Future: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto

Rarest of all is a passionate spirit: Bertha Pappenheim (AKA "Anna O") from the Jewish Women's Archive

"I not only admired her but loved her, and will love her until the day I die. There are people of spirit and there are people of passion, both less common than one might think. Rarer still are the people of spirit and passion. But rarest of all is a passionate spirit. Bertha Pappenheim was a woman with just such a spirit. Pass on her memory. Be a witness that it still esists." - the philosopher Martin Buber's commemoration at her death. (Quoted from Judith Herman, M.D., Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, where I found out about her work.)

"Aware that Protestant and Catholic women had their own national organizations, Pappenheim believed Jewish women also needed a national organization to represent their needs. She turned exclusively to women, convinced that “men always and in every situation follow their private interests.” She expected women to volunteer their services, because Jewish organizations could not afford to pay for the amount of help they needed and because volunteer work would enrich what she saw as the empty lives of middle class Jewish women. She brought the League into the largest middle class feminist organization, the Federation of German Women’s Associations (Bund deutscher Frauenvereine). Pappenheim credited German feminism with giving “the shy, uncertain advances of Jewish women direction and confidence.”

Pappenheim's commitment to Judaism and to feminism went hand in hand. She argued that feminism could reinvigorate Judaism in Germany, insisting that Jews were turning away from Judaism because women—the transmitters of culture—were alienated from Jewish customs and communities. She did not blame women. Instead, she created the Jewish women’s movement to fight for women’s equality as both a means by which women would return to Judaism and an end in itself. She believed that social work for women within the Jewish community offered a form of practical politics to enhance women’s lives.

Although Pappenheim devoted her life to the League, she never ceased to do what she called “holy small deeds.” These included ministering to children in the home for unwed mothers that she set up at Neu Isenburg, personally advising its teenage residents, and writing about the tragedy of Jewish prostitution. Pappenheim attended all the major Jewish and secular international conferences on the subject of prostitution and the traffic in women; wrote her best known book, Sisyphus Arbeit (Sisyphus Work), describing the problem of Jewish prostitution and the traffic in women in Eastern Europe and the Middle East; and traveled to Eastern Europe to publicize the dangers of the traffic in women and to organize Jewish anti-white slavery committees. Her campaign blended two major concerns: the status of Jewish women and the fight against antisemitism. She hoped to alleviate the economic and social conditions that pulled Jewish women into the traffic, particularly the need for better education and employment opportunities; expose the Jewish agents responsible for this entrapment; and show the world that Jews were fighting the Jewish portion of this criminality.

Pappenheim’s writings, begun in the 1890s and continued throughout her lifetime, reflected her feminist and Jewish concerns. By 1899, when she published a play entitled Women’s Rights and a translation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, she was firmly committed to fighting for women’s human rights and their educational advancement. Her pamphlets and books on Jewish life in Eastern Europe expressed her growing alarm at the conditions there. She attempted to mobilize Jewish communities to educate young women and to aid the victims of antisemitic government policies.

At the age of seventy-six she took several children out of Nazi Germany, delivering them to safety in an orphanage in Glasgow. She died in Isenburg of cancer on May 28, 1936 and was buried in the old Rat Beil-Strasse Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt. In her “last will,” written in 1930, she hoped that people who visited her grave would leave a small stone, “as a quiet promise...to serve the mission of women’s duties and women’s joy...unflinchingly and courageously.”

Selections from Jewish Women's Archive.

Realizing the Archaic Future A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto

 

 

"Throughout patriarchal history women have experienced surges of Memories of an Archaic Past. Patriarchal men have done everything they could to stop women from this Re-membering. They are doing this today--by deadening and killing of Women's Studies, by erasing Feminist books, i.e., making them inaccessible, putting them out of print, keeping them out of libraries, forcing women's bookstores out of business. They try to kill our Deep Memories by tokenizing/taming women faculty members and other professionals.

In the early 1970s Elizabeth Gould Davis and Monique Witting were outstanding examples of Memory Bearers of an Archaic Past. That period was marked by Volcanic Eruptions of Memories which were recognized by and assumed into the consciousness of many women. In the late nineteenth century Matilda Joslyn Gage was such a Memory Bearer. And there were many before that.

Those Memories are still alive. The Volcanic Eruptions that occur from Time to Time spew forth Lava that enriches the soil for the flowering of Elemental Feminist Genius. When the predictable backlash from the patriarchy occurs after each Eruption women become exhausted and feel betrayed. It appears that the Volcanic soil is also exhausted. We often have described this experience as "having to reinvent the wheel over and over." - Mary Daly, QUINTESSENCE: Realizing the Archaic Future A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto

Nawal El Saadawi: Women, Creativity & Mental Health

"We need to re-read our history or "heresy" (her story). Because of our fear of "heresy" we have buried our history, and women's names are buried in history. Their resistance is ignored, their creative work is not mentioned, except if they are accepted by powerful patriarchal critics."

Read the full essay here.

Documentary on Women's Liberation Movement

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980): The Forgotten Woman by Laura Passin

 

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.

Muriel Rukeyser wrote that in 1968, even though she’d been splitting the world open for decades already. She’d gone from literary wunderkind to lefty pariah to feminist heroine precisely because of her commitment to telling the truth–about one woman’s life, yes, but also about many, many women’s lives, about the lives that weren’t yet celebrated in poetry. The girl cutting her brother’s hair before his job interview. The mother burying her sons. The pregnant woman. The suicidal woman. The woman who loves sex. The women written out of myths and legends: the girl waiting for Icarus to come back; even the Sphinx and her infuriating riddle. Muriel Rukeyser died in 1980, and if there is any justice in literary history (and let’s be real, there is not much), her name will outlive mine and yours by hundreds of years. Anne Sexton called her “Muriel, mother of us all,” and Adrienne Rich named her “our twentieth-century Coleridge, our Neruda, and more.”

So why didn’t you read any of her poetry in college?

Muriel Rukeyser was unruly. Her writing was impolite and thus inconsistent: her poetic style and her political ideas evolved across her lifetime. When this happens with a brilliant male poet, we (and by we I mean people who have somehow managed to make talking about poets our real, honest to god jobs) tend to tell a story of maturation or of breakthrough: he grew up and is now wise or brave. When women’s writing or thinking evolves, “we” tend to tell a story about a before and an after, in which one of those phases is dismissed as naive or inadequate or overly mannered or not mannered enough. Someone tells this version of the story, and someone else repeats it, and then thirty years later mouthy feminist grad students say “But seriously, ‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’ is an incredibly fierce poem even though it rhymes, how are we even arguing about this” and then those grad students drink too much and their professors probably do too.

Here is a thing the eminent midcentury poet-critic Randall Jarrell once wrote about Muriel Rukeyser (who, mind you, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize at age 21): “One feels about most of her poems almost as one feels about the girl on last year’s calendar…. Miss Rukeyser almost asks us to be unjust to her.”

That is just an example. I could give you more, but you can probably guess most of them. Even today, many anthologies that do include Rukeyser’s work introduce her by emphasizing a line from “Poem Out of Childhood”: “Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.” Okay, fine. That’s a great poem, and a great line. But that is also the first line of the first poem in the first book of a woman whose Collected Poems is over 600 pages. That is a line written by a woman who, today, would not be old enough to buy a bottle of wine in the US. That is a line from a poem that is ABOUT BECOMING AN ADULT. Why on earth should we stop there? Why would anyone?

Read the full piece here - it's exceptional!

"What lovely luck!?": Stella Snead (1910-2006) by Priscilla Frank

Stella Snead, "Eclipse of the Moon." 1942. Oil on masonite

Snead was born in London and, along with her mother, fled home at a young age, keeping her destination secret from her father, who was mentally unstable and potentially dangerous.

Around the age of 20 Snead became depressed, possibly a genetic tendency inherited from her father. "Try this, that and the other," she wrote. "No satisfaction, lonely, bored. During my early 20s, deep depressions started to descend, self-pitying they were, and would hang around for months. I cried a lot, wanted to hibernate like the bears or to be very old or dead."

Begonias, 1936, Oil on Canvas, 12" x 16

She came to life in 1936 after being taken with a friend's painting, so much so that she too decided to create art. Her paintings are characterized by a nocturnal palette, exotic animals, New Mexico-style planes, ancient sculptures and ruins, sophisticated feminine style, all experienced through a warped, all-seeing perspective.

She stopped painting abruptly in 1950, after again battling depression. Towards the end of her life, Snead was "rediscovered" as an artist, and had the opportunity to witness the positive critical response to her work.

"In 1998, I had turned 88 and time was running out to be rediscovered as a painter," she wrote. "Quite suddenly the doors were flung open, and there was Neil Zukerman wanting to do just that! A solo exhibition in April 1999; a handsome catalogue; enthusiasm, encouragement, kindness, reliability, generosity. What lovely luck!?"

Stella Snead, 1979 unidentified photographer

The names most often associated with surrealism, the avant-garde cultural movement born in the 1920s, include Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp and Yves Tanguy, among others.

Surprise, surprise, they're all men. 

Thankfully, Sotheby's is now hoping to illuminate the many women artists who deserve equal recognition, those who also expressed the convoluted details of their interior worlds with sharp lines and bold colors. The upcoming exhibition "Cherchez la Femme: Women and Surrealism" will feature more well-known names like Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington, along with many even surrealist buffs may not recognize.

"A lot of it is still fairly unknown to the general public, even to surrealism enthusiasts," Julian Dawes, a Sotheby’s vice president who organized the show, explained to The New York Times. "Male surrealists look at women as objects of desire. The female surrealists sort of treat women as looking inward."

by Priscilla Frank, excerpt from 7 Forgotten Women Surrealists Who Deserve To Be Remembered

Shared with permission of the author.

You can read more about the artist here.

Dora Maar With And Without Picasso: A Biography, by Mary Ann Caws

"Another reason for refusing the reduction of Dora Maar's memory to "the Weeping Woman" is the crucial fact that she drew upon her lover's imagery in her own representations of his work. This says a great deal about her strength. Her recovery of her image, the agency of her own art, have not been taken as seriously as they deserve. She was not simply "imitating" Picasso, as has been said: she was too intelligent for that. Nor is she "imitating" his portraits of her. She is collaborating in their representation of this tragedy, as she did in photographing his work.

All the same, her submission to what seems to have been Picasso's wish demonstrates a great sacrifice of her talent and her individuality. She was intensely conscious of this, once saying about their relationship, "I wasn't Picasso's mistress, he was just my master."

One positive effect of her renunciation of photography was the renewal of her friendship with that other photographer of genius, Brassaï: "Professional jealousy shaken off, there was no longer any obstacle to our friendship ..." When Dora Maar's still lifes were exhibited in 1944, Brassäi insisted that one fact deserved underlining: "She has managed to keep herself free of Picasso's formidable influence. Her still lifes - a loaf of bread, a pitcher or a jug - are extremely austere and recall nothing of her friend's colours or any of the periods of his work." Françoise Gilot, herself a painter, considered that Maar excelled in a chiaroscuro that was missing in Picasso's work, and in the painting of ordinary objects: "Lamp or an alarm clock or a piece of bread ... [they] made you feel she wasn't so much interested in them as their solitude, the terrible solitude and void that surrounded everything in that penumbra." - Mary Ann Caws

Read the full excerpt here.

Why didn't the Million Man March 2015 receive media coverage? An Interview with Khalid Hussein El-Hakim of The Black History 101 Mobile Museum

"Isn’t it interesting that the Million Man March is trending on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and hasn’t received any mainstream media attention." -Khalid Hussein El-Hakim, The Black History 101 Mobile Museum

Please right this injustice by sharing this post or the photos directly on Khalid's page. 

Over the weekend an old picture from the original Million Man March was circulating as a current picture from the 20 Year Anniversary March. I chatted with Khalid yesterday on Facebook, where he gave some additional perspective.

Thank you for posting the pictures of the 20 year Anniversary of the Million Man March. Why do you suppose that old picture keeps circulating as a current one? How many people were estimated in attendance this weekend?

Thanks for checking out my pics. I think the old picture is just people being misinformed and ignorant about history.  If people are intentionally trying to mislead others using those photos from '95 that's just lying to the people about history, which is counterproductive to what the whole Justice or Else theme of the March was about.  One of the biggest reasons I went to DC was to document the event so there would be no question on the beauty, strength, and diversity of this movement. In regards to numbers, I am not really focused on it. But, I would say at least half a million, which to me is a huge success. There has been an intentional media blackout of Minister Farrakhan since the last MMM. They can't stand that he has a broad base of support and influence. He went around the country on his own dime since making the announcement in June that he would be gathering people for the 20th anniversary. So, with absolutely no mainstream press this beyond a success.

I noted that the media seemed to severely under-count the original MMM - and I saw one article today that sort of made it look like not that many people came to the recent MMM.

 I remember people trying to say only 400,000 came out to the first one. Then they said 700,000. But, those pictures from '95 don't lie. If you compare the '95 pics to Barack's inauguration, which they claim was over a million you'll see the MMM was just as large - or larger - I would say.

Also to give a little more perspective the March on Washington in 1963 was only 250K. So its very problematic that the MMM has been written out of the history books and the 20th anniversary will not be written about either. But, that is the burden that I've been given. I'll always will be able to speak about the both of them because I was there. Unfortunately I didn't take one picture at the first one. But, I got this one covered.

All photos by KHALID EL-HAKIM PHOTOGRAPHY (2015) - see more of these amazing photos on Khalid's Facebook page. Khalid also runs The Black History 101 Mobile Museum, which you should definitely check out as well.

Khalid tours the entire U.S. with his amazing collection of Black History, which I have had the privilege of seeing twice with my children. He has been collecting artifacts and Black History for over 20 years. It is a unique experience to touch and feel history in your hands.

While we usually focus on HERstory on this blog, Khalid is documenting the lived experiences of both men and women, which would not likely be heard of otherwise.

Shared with permission of Khalid Hussein El-Hakim.