Shopping for International Women’s Day

by Carolyn Boyd

This International Women’s Day, I plan to celebrate with one of my favorite activities: shopping. I don’t mean at the mall; I mean on the internet, buying magnificent works of art created by women all over the world as a means to their economic, social, and political independence. By doing so, I will not only be enabling women to support themselves, but also bringing back a very ancient kind of women’s art and empowerment.

Women have always created great art. Of course, the spectacular embroidery, quilting, weaving, painting on functional objects, and other arts that have been women’s specialties in the home are called “crafts,” while work done for pay outside the home, more frequently by men, is known as “art.”

One way to bring honor back to traditional women’s art while improving women’s lives is by purchasing our clothes, home goods, foods, and other items through “fair trade” or other similar organizations. These groups providing opportunities for the women who make the art they sell to support themselves and their families, sometimes leave abusive homes; educate themselves and their children; gain self respect; and form bonds with the other women with whom they work.

We who buy what they make are lucky enough to surround ourselves with hand-created beauty and symbols of sisterhood, hope, and empowerment. As I write, a red basket made by women from Rwanda graces my file cabinet; beaded necklaces from Uganda swirl in my jewelry bowl; vests, pants and dresses from India hang in my closet; wooden bracelets from Nepal click on my wrist; soup mixes from Chicago sit in my sister’s kitchen; and a purse made by a teen in a residential program in my town lies in my closet.

Each day we are given more choices of where we can purchase such art. Organizations that are designated “fair trade” have committed to a variety of business practices, including providing a reasonable wage, safe working conditions, and opportunities for advancement; equal treatment of women; and environmental sustainability, among others. Many of these organizations have both men and women artists. Ten Thousand Villages at http://www/tenthousandvillages.com and A Greater Gift at http://www.agreatergift.org both offer a variety of items from around the world.

Some organizations provide goods made exclusively by women. Http://globalsistergoods.com offers jewelry, accessories, and home decorating items made by women from many nations. Http://beadforlife.org sells beaded jewelry made by women from Uganda. Http://www.marketplaceindia.org has a variety of clothing and home decor made by women from India. The Women’s Bean Project at http://womensbeanproject.com sells food products made by U.S. women. Finally, feminist organizations like the Feminist Majority Foundation, at http://store.feminist.org, sometimes offer products by women as part of their mission.

So often the economic system works to exclude and impoverish women. By buying women’s art through these organizations, we can form a very global special circle of women that has economic, political, and spiritual impacts. This International Women’s Day, it’s time to shop!

Writing on the Line: The Poetry and Life of Alda Merini

by Shannon K. Winston

Alda Merini, born in Milan in 1931, published her first poetry collection, La presenza di Orfeo, when she was only twenty-two. By and large, her poetry is characterized by a deep ambiguity. While her early poems are filled with hope and love, her later collections, especially Tu sei Pietro (1962), exhibit a more angst-ridden and troubled Merini. After suffering from mental breakdowns, she intermittently spent time in asylums, especially after the death of her husband in 1986 (O’Brien, 174, 177, 181). Merini’s struggle with her mental illness, her desire for a “normal” life, and her longing to be loved all come to shape her poetry (O’Brien, 177).

One theme that resurfaces in Merini’s writing over and over is the precariousness of life. Overall, Merini’s writing is modest and the “I” is diminished and private. In her poem “Confessione,” published in 1948, for example, she opens: “You always ask me,/ but I don’t live a continuous life;/ I will nourish you with only small instances”) (all translations mine) (Merini, “Confessione,” 1-3). These “instances” are the central theme of the poem, which is only twelve lines long and could be considered only an “an instance” itself. Love and life, the speaker reminds readers, are transient in the face of death. In addition, this poem, published only several years before she began to suffer from mental illness, could also testify to the fact that sanity and “normal life,” for Merini, is also fleeting. The speaker continues: “I am the apparition that disperses/and the time that exists between two moments/ is a truce in death’s favor” (Ibid, 4-5). Within these lines, she wavers in a liminal space between life and death. Yet, her sense of helplessness is interrupted, if only for a second, by a moment of tenderness and love. The speaker continues: “I live in the space of an exchange: you age me without realizing it/ under the heat of your caresses.”

Catherine O’Brien writes of Merini’s work: “[Her] poetry reflects her intention of highlighting her inner self but his effort causes her bitter disillusionment and grief as she waits for someone capable of understanding her” (O’Brien, 180-181). What renders Merini’s work so compelling is that despite her struggle with a mental illness and her proclivity to write about death, she still finds glimmers of hope, which is apparent in several of her poems. When speaking to Catherine O’Brien, she complained: “They ask me often what the asylum is like, but no one asks me about what it’s like to be alive. Life is part of the asylum because it’s in this unholy and abject place that I found life” (Ibid, 185). She, thus, uses poetry and the page as a creative place in which to negotiate and embrace the intense joys, loves, and anguish that define her life.

Antonella Anedda: Encounters with Silence, the Page, and the World

by Shannon K. Winston

Antonella Anedda, one of today’s most prominent and promising Italian women poets, once called poetry her “reality.” In that same interview with Niederngasse in 2006, she explains that poetry is “the way [she has of] opening [herself] to the world, with verses, with rhythms that [she has] in [her] head and it is on this score that [she works] when [she writes] on the page” (translation mine). For Anedda, poetry is therefore an implicitly musical genre that unfolds on a register that differs from prose; it allows for a greater space of silence, contemplation of human existence, and death. The speaker of “Nocturnes,” for example, urges the reader to “Accept this silence: the world caught in the dark of/ the throat like a stiffened animal, like/ the stuffed boar that sparkled in the cellar during/ October storms” (Poetry International Web). Night, just like writing itself, becomes place not only reflection but also of a critical examination of the self and its position in an increasingly volatile world. In fact, many of Anneda’s work is grounded in ethical concerns about war and injustice, which are the central themes of Notti di pace occidentale. Rather than assuming a safe and privileged position within work, Anedda and her speaker are deeply entangled in the struggles that she grapples with. She ties contemporary and literal wars with her battle with language in the poetic process. In “This language has no innocence,” her speaker begins: “This language has no innocence/ listen to how speeches break up/ as if also here there were a war” (www.lyrikline.org). How, she seems to ask, can the poet and reader remain innocent in a world where there is injustice? Here, like elsewhere in her poetry, Anneda complicates issues of agency, guilt, and hope for a more peaceful future. Here, however, her hope is intermingled with doubt that she, as a poet, can effect change: “I write with patience/ to the eternity I don’t believe in./ Slowness comes to me from silence” (16-1Cool (Ibid)). Silence, then, becomes a predominant theme in Anedda’s work as the place where change becomes possible.

Another distinguishing feature of Anedda’s poetry is the diminished “I” of the speaker. Rather, the “I” becomes a distanced observer that attempts—but sometimes fails—to grasp the present moment/moments in the poem. “I don’t like invasiveness,” she says and then goes on to say: “I don’t like texts in which the narrative “I” is too present, in which [the “I”] confesses itself” (Niederngasse). This distancing mode is prevalent in Anedda’s entire corpus and reflects her greater poetic vision “to write in order to disappear, so that life is revealed to [her], without [her], [her] face at last more blurred than the whiteness of the paper, bereft of reflection. A world where one can forget oneself. Not a mirror, but a stone” (Poetry International Web).” For Anedda then, poetry and truth—as it leads to a greater understanding of the world—emerges out of a desire to capture more than individual experience; it reaches beyond the self and the page to grapple with both contemporary and timeless struggles that continue to shape our existence. In undertaking this task, Anneda writes with a grace and humility that cannot help but to enthrall readers.

For more information on the life and works of Antonella Anedda, please visit Poetry International Web.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Celebration of a Friendship that Changed the World

by Shana Thornton-Morris

On Valentine’s Day, people are often wrapped up in gifts, dedications, and sentiments regarding romantic love; however, the ties of love aren’t only attached to romantic relationships. Many women now honor Valentine’s Day and Susan B. Anthony’s February 15th Birthday with a V-Day performance of the Vagina Monologues. These performances are symbolic of the current, global Women’s Movement, which has its roots in the work started by two friends; their dedication to one another; and their desire for universal suffrage.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton shared a friendship based on tolerance and human rights. They lectured together, delivered speeches, formed political parties, created a newspaper for Women’s Rights and Universal Suffrage, wrote a History of Women’s Suffrage, testified before Congress, pledged their loyalty, and remained friends at a time when suspicions of change and true freedom divided families, friends, neighbors, and the nation itself. While both women fought tirelessly for women’s rights, they also faced the challenges of disagreeing with the socially accepted opinions of the time, which were codified into laws; their peers; and one another concerning the finer points of the Women’s Rights Movement. Together, they set about on the rigorous task of following and re-interpreting the governmental procedures (both in state governments and the federal government) to challenge the prevailing laws against women’s rights to vote and own property, as well as other common rights and liberties enjoyed by American women today. These include “the right to retain their own wages and equal guardianship of their children,” to name just two.

In Rochester Libraries’ Online Exhibition “Susan B. Anthony: Celebrating an Heroic Life”, we can see some of the physical effort put forth by Susan B. Anthony in her many letters, printed speeches, and programs for her tours. In the photographs, we glimpse the playful fire in the eyes of a young Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who Anthony first met at the age of 31 in 1851, just a decade prior to the start of the Civil War. A young, liberal, mother of four, the activist Stanton is credited with “convinc[ing] Anthony that women could not be effective reformers without the right to vote.”

From that time, Susan B. Anthony devoted her life to universal suffrage, with an emphasis on the Women’s Movement. While their peers and contemporaries split over disagreements on the specifics of the suffrage movement, Anthony and Stanton tried to support one another in spite of their differences. Anthony is often seen as a mediator, trying to help conservatives, who were loyal to their religious ideologies while still fighting for women’s rights, as well as liberals like Stanton, who wanted more than simply rights. Liberals of the time pushed for a recognition of equality that encompassed such things as the right to divorce and the ability to enjoy a legally-recognized biracial marriage. While Anthony often maintained her focus on the ability to cast a vote and saw that act as the ticket to even more rights, Stanton wanted to give voice to all of the shadows of inequality. She threw a bright light out into the darkness of the time and was often criticized for her bold opinions. Though Stanton was eventually excluded by many of the women in NAWSA, the women’s rights organization that she helped to found with Anthony and several other women (ironically, she organized the first US Women’s Right convention with Lucretia Mott), Anthony often supported and encouraged Stanton’s political perspective, even when it conflicted with her own focus.

When the suffragists were divided based on the 14th and 15th Amendments and when politicians drove a wedge between “African-American males and…all women“, Anthony and Stanton maintained their dedication to universal suffrage and friendship. They suspended their own efforts during the Civil War in order to support the abolitionist movement and end slavery. The two women seemed to always recognize, respect, and honor each other’s responsibility to fight for human rights. They shared scandals, like allowing George Francis Train to fund their lecture tours and their newspaper “The Revolution“. They shared criticism for creating “The New Departure,” a new way of interpreting the 14th Amendment that prompted Anthony to cast an “illegal” vote. They were satirized as ducks “flocking” to Washington “for freedom”.

In a photograph from 1892, the two aged friends share a table while looking through papers and a book. In the photo, Stanton sits facing the camera while her gaze rests on the paper in her hands. Her white shawl with fringe is a contrast to Anthony’s formal, ruffled, black dress that’s secured at the neck with an International Council of Women pin. Anthony’s gaze is turned to the side, which is common in her photographs, due her self-consciousness about the way that her eyes appeared close together.

As true friends often are, the two women are also keenly aware of their differences. They could be called opposites, though they ultimately combined their desires for women’s rights in order to make progress. As Stanton writes to Anthony on March 10, 1887, prior to the conference for the International Council of Women, she “…cautions Anthony to ‘not get up more machinery than you can manage. You err on the side of details & I on the opposite extreme. Let us try & strike the happy medium & leave something to peoples common sense.’” This was in response to Anthony’s letter written to Stanton who supported Frederick Douglass’ marriage to a white woman. In the letter, “Anthony implores Stanton not to publicly endorse Douglass’s marriage.” After Stanton stayed in Anthony’s home for a month in 1890, Anthony extended an invitation for her friend to remain permanently; however, according to the notes of the exhibition, “Stanton, who did not relish the idea of being daily harassed by Anthony to do suffrage work, declined the offer.”

In a photo taken at Anthony’s house during that time, we discover the same accepted differences in the appearance of the two friends: the white print dress and black lace shawl worn by Stanton in contrast with Anthony’s formal, Quaker black dress and broach. Stanton faces us, while Anthony maintains her sideways stare. Anthony’s hands are clasped. Stanton reaches out toward the books stacked on a table in the doorway. Their knees meet in the middle of the photograph. Between them, the history of the suffrage movement is stacked upon the table.

Through their shared passion, opposite approaches, thoughtful tolerance, and ability to speak about their differences, Anthony and Stanton allowed us to know the benefits of their working friendship. For Anthony’s 80th birthday party held on February 15, 1900, Stanton wrote a poem honoring her “life-long friend and co-worker.” Though she was unable to attend the celebration, the poem showed the dedication of two lives and their many journeys, of the beginning of a new century and new hopes in younger American women. In Verse II, we can hear the winding routes of their journey. Stanton writes:

“We met and loved, ne’er to part,
Hand clasped in hand, heart bound to heart.
We’ve traveled West, years together,
Day and night, in stormy weather;
Climbing the rugged Suffrage hill,
Bravely facing every ill:
Resting, speaking, everywhere;
Oft-times in the open air;
From sleighs, ox-carts, and coaches,
Besieged with bugs and roaches:
All for the emancipation
Of the women of our Nation.”

Not only did the two friends put up with unsanitary accommodations in their quest for Women’s Rights, they also bravely faced hostility from the public, government leaders, and their own peers. Yet, Anthony and Stanton remained loyal to one another while respecting one another’s right to have her own opinions.

All women should be so fortunate to have a true and lasting friendship in which both friends are aware of their own limitations. Our celebration of Valentine’s Day should honor our friendships, especially those that have weathered the challenges of years; in this way, we would also honor the life of Susan B. Anthony on her birthday.

Shana Thornton-Morris reads about, researches, and explores her curiosities. She also blogs frequently at http://storytimeout.blogspot.com/

One Night, Three Parties…Keep the Change

by Diane Saarinen

The line up of events on the evening of January 31 caused me to temporarily abandon my shut-in status and get out of the house for once. And who could blame me?

Jessica Valenti, Feministing.com

Ceres Gallery folks

Downtown Groove
Last but not least, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (of which Her Circle Ezine is a member) hosted a shindig in their offices to celebrate the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference and bookfair in New York City. (Have I mentioned yet that all these events were in NYC? Well, if I didn’t – I’m doing so now.) The invitation promised “a toast and a twirl,” and while there was plenty of champagne, I can guarantee you there was no twirling. As this photo illustrates the premises were packed which meant once you found a spot, you were with fair certainty rooted there – with all those around you effectively becoming quite the captive audience. Cool! Exactly the right atmosphere to tell all about our upcoming International Women’s Day Virtual Festival.

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