Feminism for starters
As a kid, when I had no or little idea about what representation was, I saw my mother having a voice at the table that usually was dominated by men. Yet, the men managed to create a group that included topics that remained exclusive to them and alien to her: for e.g. cricket. Yet, she would shine when they spoke about managing finance or literature or in general what to do about something. In her own way, she made us normalize periods, heartbreaks, and taking a stand. We added our own drama, and experiences and survived the world that lingers in almostness.
When your feminism starts questioning talent, access, and the idea of world design that is presented to you, you may choose to read this, as I do. This is by Virginia Woolf, whose voice is a reminder of our own.
“ I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister, but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young – alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to – night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so – I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals – and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting – room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky. too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.”
