I have to do a project for my European women's class. I've built my loom and picked my materials already. I've asked to do it on the chapter of the welfare state and women. I've decided to use Alice Walker's poem "Women" from her 1973 book Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems. If you don't know the poem, here it is:
They were women then
My momma’s generation
Husky of voice—stout of
Step
With fists as well as
Hands
How they battered down
Doors…
How they led
Armies
Headragged Generals
Across mined
Fields
Booby-trapped
Ditches
To discover books
Desks
A place for us
How they knew what we
Must know
Without knowing a page
Of it
Themselves
3 comments:
I think I have a better understanding of this poem than I would have a month ago, because I've just seen The Color Purple yesterday.
This poem and that story have some similar themes.
i think all of alice walker's work is interlaced with the same themes, but i don't think one need be a rural, poor, black woman from the souththern US to connect with what she is saying.
i read "the color purple" when I was 11 and I have been thinking of reading it again sometime this year to see if it has changed since i've grown older.
jilly
I really like this poem..I've read it several times today and it reminds me of my childhood. Our maid was one of these women.
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