GAWD alive this entire post will need to be read again (and again) 🔥
This paragraph: ‘The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "secondly." Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story.’
As a South African, in Britain, I cannot stress enough how far into their ignorance Brits will remain rooted by calling out SA racism without delving into the white supremacist colonialism they brought to Africa in the first place. The ‘whataboutism’ is astounding.
Oh my gosh, YES! I had such a hard time writing this piece as I kept finding more, and more, AND MORE incredible stories and paradigms that challenged the notion of the single story. It is phenomenal how long the most marginalized among us have been fighting for our collective freedom.
Wow, yes, that sounds very, very familiar with the US' treatment of, well, everyone who isn't a white American. So many 'whataboutisms.'
Thank you so much for spending time with my words and sharing your connection to them, Nicole. It really means so much and I am so grateful!!! Thank you. ❤️
Like many, I’ve wrestled with understanding the nature of power throughout my life. I’ve read the Maya Angelo quote so many times but just now has it really clicked. The level of awareness and embodiment of power mostly by men as they actively suppress people and ideas requires intense meditation to capture. The small intuition we have of a power-based person. The feeling of being a bit uncomfortable around them. That merely scratches the surface of what is truly a mountain of controlling and destructive energy/behavior. Listen to men when they reveal their power. Then do everything to avoid their games and maintain your own.
The violence of control and oppression is birthed from the same intense destructive energy of murder and rape. I get that it’s kind of an intense thing to say but it’s true. I’ve witnessed both and now really see oppression in the same category.
I’m sure the story your daughter’s teacher told with her body language as well as her words was intense. Having your passion and life’s work suppressed by a man who is not misguided but intentionally violent is a strike to the spirit that can only be healed with a return to balance and free flow of information. The only viable approach I see is building robust alternative school options and voting. Anything else is playing at their game
Truly! It is so hard to see the connecting pieces, but I also think that is the whole point. So many of the most marginalized throughout history have fought to have their voice heard, shouting at us from the past to see the signs and likeness. I'm so glad that Maya's quote hit for you, it really is a good one. Thank you so, so much, Amy, for spending time with my words! I am so grateful.
Another necessary read. The connection between the Danger of a Single Story and the book ban was one I haven’t thought of before. This is exactly how a single story gets created. You remove the truth and allow other people who never lived those stories to get created. I fear what kind of world our children and their children are growing up in. We are living in a dystopian novel.
Absolutely!! One journal from 1949 regarding book bans in the surge of the communist scare was so startling similar to our current reality, it truly could have been written in 2024, just replace the word ‘communist’ with ‘woke.’ It was scary, and also a stark reminder that we have to fight to preserve the voices of those that have come before us. Thank you for spending time with my words, Marc! It means so dang much, and I am grateful.
My friend is a school librarian and her district told her this year that kids will need to get permission from their parents for each book they buy. When she asked if she could just send home a general permission slip for everyone she was told no because the district can’t look like it’s “banning books” - so they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too. Keep certain parents happy, while not outright ban. Put “problematic” books in the counselors office instead of the library. It boggles the mind.
Excellent post. As always, your words make me feel more powerful as a woman. I have a book of Hildegard of Bingen’s illustrations; she was a truly grifted woman. Women’s stories aren’t just in words, but in their art, and that too has suffered recognition under the patriarchy.
Sharon, you are so powerful!!! Thank you for saying this, and taking time with my words. I am always so grateful for your support and connection with my words, it means so much to me. Thank you! 💜
This is such a fantastic framing of how women have preserved women's writing, how pointedly patriarchy controls the story, history. All of the stories that are there underneath, waiting to be held up and witnessed to break pieces off of the continued hold of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I thought of Julian of Norwich's manuscripts as well while reading, preserved by the daughters of Thomas More among many other over centuries to keep her words alive. We have to hold up these stories and I am so grateful that you are doing that, that we are trying to do that, that women are still here holding up one another's works and voices. Brava!! As maddening as it all can be, there is something incredibly reassuring--and inspiring--about these marginalized voices and how they have always been fighting, that we continue and support their legacy. 💜
Thank you for saying that, it means so much to me. You are so right, Julian of Norwich's legacy relies so heavily on women preserving it and also preserving her during her lifetime to ensure she could live the way she felt called to!! There are just so many tangential stories out there! Absolutely, feeling that connection to the past is so powerful and we can learn so much from the ways in which they navigated the oppressive systems that predate ours. ❤️❤️
Here’s to this stack and all of us keeping women’s words in full view! For more on Anne Boleyn’s contributions to the reformation and how historians have replaced those contributions with temptress mythology, see my book, The Creation of Anne Boleyn. Here’s the book page from my website. If you go to the :extras” link at bottom of page, you’ll find lots of articles and interviews: https://bordocrossings.com/book/the-creation-of-anne-boleyn/
Brilliant essay, thank you. I will add - with a hat tip to Imani Barbarin who regularly points this out - that ableism is behind every other -ism because patriarchy uses claims of biological inferiority to both justify and enforce its power.
Colonial invasion is a mass disabling event. Preventing women’s bodily autonomy and restricting access to divorce is disabling. Blocking gender-affirming care is disabling. Racial and gender bias in medicine disables especially women of colour. Bombing hospitals and starving civilians in a besieged territory is a mass disabling event.
I am so grateful to you for connecting so many dots in this essay. I specially relate with the part where you spoke about one form of oppression hidden within another. The story starting with ’secondly’ - to reclaim that narrative in the way it needs to be. So stoked to learning about all these powerful women. You started something of a revolution here by bringing their vision and voices to light. So grateful for your work. 💜🔥
I am honored you found connection here.❤️❤️ It is in equal measures beautiful and frustrating, this work -- to see all of the women who have fought to preserve women is just breathtakingly beautiful, yet so frustrating i is even necessary. And still to this day! Thank you for spending the time with my words, and these women!!!!
This is very important body of work and to recognise that women have been allies to each other is essential to breaking the patriarchal narrative of separation that ultimately holds us in disadvantageous spaces. Thank You for your vision and work to bring that narrative forward. 💜
This is the first newsletter where I’ve listened to the audio version and wow this was incredible. Grateful that you’re sharing your gift of sharp historical analysis, clarity of thought, and wonderful voice with us.
Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to say this! I am so grateful. Thank you for spending time with my words, and these incredible women throughout history!! ❤️❤️
The way the women of the past ensured we would feel seen and heard in the future is just breathtaking! This piece led me to so many rabbit holes of similar stories on different scales and I couldn’t shake how pervasive the myth of female rivalry is. So thankful to be doing this work alongside so many phenomenal women writers, such as yourself! 💜💜💜
I think if you like historical fiction you would really enjoy it! I also loved her book secret life of bees (much different than longings, but one of my all time favorites and way better than the movie. lol) and if you want nonfiction, Dance of the Dissident Daughter is her feminist spiritual memoir.
Fantastic and riveting piece. You are doing such important work! Among you, Freya, Swarnali, and others, I feel a strong coalition being built, one that refuses to accept erasure and silencing, both of the past, and for the future.
I feel honored to be counted among them! Thank you so much, Antonia, not just for the support and time spent, but the belief and encouragement— I am so grateful for this community I stumbled upon here! Thank you, thank you, thank you! 💜💜
GAWD alive this entire post will need to be read again (and again) 🔥
This paragraph: ‘The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "secondly." Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story.’
As a South African, in Britain, I cannot stress enough how far into their ignorance Brits will remain rooted by calling out SA racism without delving into the white supremacist colonialism they brought to Africa in the first place. The ‘whataboutism’ is astounding.
Oh my gosh, YES! I had such a hard time writing this piece as I kept finding more, and more, AND MORE incredible stories and paradigms that challenged the notion of the single story. It is phenomenal how long the most marginalized among us have been fighting for our collective freedom.
Wow, yes, that sounds very, very familiar with the US' treatment of, well, everyone who isn't a white American. So many 'whataboutisms.'
Thank you so much for spending time with my words and sharing your connection to them, Nicole. It really means so much and I am so grateful!!! Thank you. ❤️
🫶🏼✨
Like many, I’ve wrestled with understanding the nature of power throughout my life. I’ve read the Maya Angelo quote so many times but just now has it really clicked. The level of awareness and embodiment of power mostly by men as they actively suppress people and ideas requires intense meditation to capture. The small intuition we have of a power-based person. The feeling of being a bit uncomfortable around them. That merely scratches the surface of what is truly a mountain of controlling and destructive energy/behavior. Listen to men when they reveal their power. Then do everything to avoid their games and maintain your own.
The violence of control and oppression is birthed from the same intense destructive energy of murder and rape. I get that it’s kind of an intense thing to say but it’s true. I’ve witnessed both and now really see oppression in the same category.
I’m sure the story your daughter’s teacher told with her body language as well as her words was intense. Having your passion and life’s work suppressed by a man who is not misguided but intentionally violent is a strike to the spirit that can only be healed with a return to balance and free flow of information. The only viable approach I see is building robust alternative school options and voting. Anything else is playing at their game
Truly! It is so hard to see the connecting pieces, but I also think that is the whole point. So many of the most marginalized throughout history have fought to have their voice heard, shouting at us from the past to see the signs and likeness. I'm so glad that Maya's quote hit for you, it really is a good one. Thank you so, so much, Amy, for spending time with my words! I am so grateful.
Another necessary read. The connection between the Danger of a Single Story and the book ban was one I haven’t thought of before. This is exactly how a single story gets created. You remove the truth and allow other people who never lived those stories to get created. I fear what kind of world our children and their children are growing up in. We are living in a dystopian novel.
Absolutely!! One journal from 1949 regarding book bans in the surge of the communist scare was so startling similar to our current reality, it truly could have been written in 2024, just replace the word ‘communist’ with ‘woke.’ It was scary, and also a stark reminder that we have to fight to preserve the voices of those that have come before us. Thank you for spending time with my words, Marc! It means so dang much, and I am grateful.
My friend is a school librarian and her district told her this year that kids will need to get permission from their parents for each book they buy. When she asked if she could just send home a general permission slip for everyone she was told no because the district can’t look like it’s “banning books” - so they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too. Keep certain parents happy, while not outright ban. Put “problematic” books in the counselors office instead of the library. It boggles the mind.
Ridiculous and sad.
FFS
Excellent post. As always, your words make me feel more powerful as a woman. I have a book of Hildegard of Bingen’s illustrations; she was a truly grifted woman. Women’s stories aren’t just in words, but in their art, and that too has suffered recognition under the patriarchy.
Sharon, you are so powerful!!! Thank you for saying this, and taking time with my words. I am always so grateful for your support and connection with my words, it means so much to me. Thank you! 💜
This is such a fantastic framing of how women have preserved women's writing, how pointedly patriarchy controls the story, history. All of the stories that are there underneath, waiting to be held up and witnessed to break pieces off of the continued hold of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I thought of Julian of Norwich's manuscripts as well while reading, preserved by the daughters of Thomas More among many other over centuries to keep her words alive. We have to hold up these stories and I am so grateful that you are doing that, that we are trying to do that, that women are still here holding up one another's works and voices. Brava!! As maddening as it all can be, there is something incredibly reassuring--and inspiring--about these marginalized voices and how they have always been fighting, that we continue and support their legacy. 💜
Thank you for saying that, it means so much to me. You are so right, Julian of Norwich's legacy relies so heavily on women preserving it and also preserving her during her lifetime to ensure she could live the way she felt called to!! There are just so many tangential stories out there! Absolutely, feeling that connection to the past is so powerful and we can learn so much from the ways in which they navigated the oppressive systems that predate ours. ❤️❤️
Here’s to this stack and all of us keeping women’s words in full view! For more on Anne Boleyn’s contributions to the reformation and how historians have replaced those contributions with temptress mythology, see my book, The Creation of Anne Boleyn. Here’s the book page from my website. If you go to the :extras” link at bottom of page, you’ll find lots of articles and interviews: https://bordocrossings.com/book/the-creation-of-anne-boleyn/
Cheers, Susan! 🥂🔥👏
Brilliant essay, thank you. I will add - with a hat tip to Imani Barbarin who regularly points this out - that ableism is behind every other -ism because patriarchy uses claims of biological inferiority to both justify and enforce its power.
Colonial invasion is a mass disabling event. Preventing women’s bodily autonomy and restricting access to divorce is disabling. Blocking gender-affirming care is disabling. Racial and gender bias in medicine disables especially women of colour. Bombing hospitals and starving civilians in a besieged territory is a mass disabling event.
Such a great add to this, thank you Michelle! Too right! Thank you so much for spending time with my words and adding here, I am so grateful. 💜
💯 💯 💯
I am so grateful to you for connecting so many dots in this essay. I specially relate with the part where you spoke about one form of oppression hidden within another. The story starting with ’secondly’ - to reclaim that narrative in the way it needs to be. So stoked to learning about all these powerful women. You started something of a revolution here by bringing their vision and voices to light. So grateful for your work. 💜🔥
I am honored you found connection here.❤️❤️ It is in equal measures beautiful and frustrating, this work -- to see all of the women who have fought to preserve women is just breathtakingly beautiful, yet so frustrating i is even necessary. And still to this day! Thank you for spending the time with my words, and these women!!!!
This is very important body of work and to recognise that women have been allies to each other is essential to breaking the patriarchal narrative of separation that ultimately holds us in disadvantageous spaces. Thank You for your vision and work to bring that narrative forward. 💜
This is the first newsletter where I’ve listened to the audio version and wow this was incredible. Grateful that you’re sharing your gift of sharp historical analysis, clarity of thought, and wonderful voice with us.
Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to say this! I am so grateful. Thank you for spending time with my words, and these incredible women throughout history!! ❤️❤️
I’m so inspired to learn about these women - smuggling books, writing down their visions, writing poems, passing books through their family lines!! 🔥
The way the women of the past ensured we would feel seen and heard in the future is just breathtaking! This piece led me to so many rabbit holes of similar stories on different scales and I couldn’t shake how pervasive the myth of female rivalry is. So thankful to be doing this work alongside so many phenomenal women writers, such as yourself! 💜💜💜
Thank you 💗💗 your essay also reminded me of sue monk kidds “the book of longings” - have you read it?
I haven't! You recommend? I don't think I've read sue monk kidds' work at all, to be honest.
I think if you like historical fiction you would really enjoy it! I also loved her book secret life of bees (much different than longings, but one of my all time favorites and way better than the movie. lol) and if you want nonfiction, Dance of the Dissident Daughter is her feminist spiritual memoir.
Oh goodness I didn’t realize she had written SLoB! I loved, loved that read. Thank you for the recommendation! 💜
This affected me deeply. Thank you so much.
Powerful piece! Thank you.
Thank YOU for spending your precious time with my words, I am so grateful! 💜
Love this. So happy to have randomly stumbled upon your newsletter!
Thank you, Morgan! I really appreciate you taking the time to say that, and spending your precious time with my words - so, so grateful! ❤️
🔥✊🏻💜
Thank you for spending time with my words and these incredible women! ❤️
Fantastic and riveting piece. You are doing such important work! Among you, Freya, Swarnali, and others, I feel a strong coalition being built, one that refuses to accept erasure and silencing, both of the past, and for the future.
I feel honored to be counted among them! Thank you so much, Antonia, not just for the support and time spent, but the belief and encouragement— I am so grateful for this community I stumbled upon here! Thank you, thank you, thank you! 💜💜
Ach…..that was “gifted “ woman not grifted. Sheese.