Author Archives: Marisa Crawford

Rah! Rah! Roundup

rahrahroundup“Since Friday, there have been stories of three Black women killed by acts of state-sanctioned and intimate partner violence. Those are just the three we lost this weekend, that we know about, but I’m sure there are others.” – Brittney Cooper’s “Connect The Dots: For Korryn Gaines, Skye Mockabee and Joyce Quaweay”

“Korryn’s demeanor and energy reminded me most immediately of Assata’s: boldness in the face of police and the very real threat of physical violence, in the face of imprisonment, or a lethal outcome—and all the while, maintaining the capacity to love. What a feat. To look at the world around you thriving on the death and disposability of you and your kin and still choose to invest in a radical kind of familial love.” – Jacqui Germain’s writes about Korryn Gaines and Black women who dare to be defiant.

“We need to keep changing the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticizes our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear. We need to keep changing the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs.” Barack Obama says “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like” in Glamour.

The National Network of Abortion Funds’ new program We Testify is “dedicated to increasing the spectrum of abortion storytellers in the public sphere.”

The New York Public Library opened its 93rd branch in Rikers Island women’s jail. Continue reading

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Internalized Misogyny Playlist: 11 Songs by Women Hating on Women

Because misogyny is everywhere in our culture, internalized misogyny is also, unfortunately, everywhere. You know how it goes—maybe you find yourself hating on your body, or judging other women’s sexuality, or doubting your own awesomeness at work. Goddess forbid, you may have even uttered the phrase “I don’t like other girls.” Even the most hardcore of feminists are influenced by the white supremacist patriarchy’s messages about girls and women. And so are the most successful of female pop stars. Why are there *so* many songs about how stupid / deceptive / sneaky / crazy / unimpressive girls are… that are sung by women? Are these songs self-implicating appraisals of our culture’s sexist standards? Or just plain-old sexist themselves? Or simply honest expressions of women’s emotions… which are therefore inherently kinda sorta feminist? In the spirit of unpacking our internalized sexism knapsacks or Louis Vuitton bags, I rounded up eleven well-known female-fronted songs that hate on women—here they are, in no particular order:

1) “Stupid Girl” – Garbage

Not to be confused with “Stupid Girl” by The Rolling Stones, or “Stupid Girl” by Neil Young (hey, fuck you guys!), this song is one of several from the Songs by Women Called “Stupid Girl” canon. It features 90s chick singer icon Shirley Manson berating a “stupid girl” (herself? Someone else entirely?) for basically being a hot mess and a fake who wasted everything she had like the beautiful fool that she is. Is this song a self-aware look at one woman’s internal monologue amidst society’s messages about how “stupid” girls are? Or merely a condemnation of girls for being stupid wherein the speaker attempts to distance herself from a dumb, misguided girl who fucked up her whole life? Also, omg you guys, who hasn’t pretended they’re high and/or bored, just to be adored?!

 

2) “Stupid Girls” – Pink

This song presents the classic sexist binary of “stupid” girls who carry around tiny dogs and wear tinier t-shirts and go tanning (oh so 00s) and “not-stupid” girls who wear suits and run for president. It’s kind of weirdly an anthem of second wave feminist ethos. This song contains the cutting and very apropos to our current historical moment lines: “What happened to the dream of a girl president?/ She’s dancin’ in the video next to 50 Cent,” and “I’m so glad that I’ll never fit in/ That will never be me/ Outcasts and girls with ambition/ That’s what I wanna see.” This song is confusing, ‘cause Pink herself wears tight clothes and dances and parties—but for some reason (ahem. Internalized misogyny) chooses to reinforce a tired, sexist binary that girls who do these things can’t also be smart and ambitious.

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Rah! Rah! Roundup

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“While we respect that many people feel as though they want to be in solidarity with the city of Orlando, we are centering in this space the voces of #Pulse, the latinx and queer who are still as always the subject of multiple oppressions and erasures.” – Drunken Boat holds space for “queer latinx gente” to respond to the Pulse nightclub shooting.

“We need to include eating disorders in the larger conversation about mental health lest they continue to remain—to the greater public—dismissible, peculiarities of girlhood.” – JoAnna Novak talks with Nina Puro, Sarah Gerard and other writers about “the literature of eating disorders.”

I’m so excited about Tamara Winfrey Harris’s new column for Bitch, “Some Of Us Are Brave,” which highlights “the intersected identities and experiences of American women.” Continue reading

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In Honor of Father’s Day: 5 Classic Poems About Sh*tty Dads

Sylvia Plath poems Fathers Day
The internet has no shortage of warm, fuzzy Father’s Day cards, memes and messages celebrating great dads. But let’s be honest—our feelings about our dads aren’t always all flowers and teddy bears and references to fishing. For those of us who don’t have the best relationships with our fathers, I’ve rounded up a few classic poems depicting less-than-perfect paternal units as a reminder that not all dads are the best around, and Father’s Day can be complicated.

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Daddy” – Sylvia Plath
Soooo I can’t decide if I should start my Father’s Day card with “Daddy, I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time” or close it with “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”—or both! Plath’s speaker battles with an omnipresent, tyrannical, pretty terrifying Daddy figure. She compares her relationship with her father’s memory to that of the Jews to the Nazis (a move which has received lots of criticism, for good reason), and to her romantic relationship with a male partner  (“I made a model of you, / A man in black with a Meinkampf look”). From Robert Phillips’ 1972 review: “When [the speaker] drives the stake through her father’s heart, she not only is exorcising the demon of her father’s memory, but metaphorically is killing her husband and all men.” Happy Father’s Day!  Continue reading

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Poets & Educators Stand with Orlando

Poets and educators are organizing in response to the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Poets 4 Orlando poetry reading for Orlando

 

Poets are gathering tonight, Tuesday June 14th, from 6–9 PM, in NYC’s Strawberry Fields Memorial in Central Park for a vigil honoring the victims.

From the event’s Facebook page:

“This crime was committed in a nightclub. Let’s bring some of that magical quality into our own VIGIL for those we never met but always knew.

PLEASE COME AND BRING YOUR SPIRIT: We want to hear your voice, and want America to recognize this for what it is.

A HATE crime, the largest to hit our community in modern times.”

For those of us who teach, educators are compiling a comprehensive list of resources for addressing the Orlando shooting in the classroom. The #PulseOrlandoSyllabus includes relevant books, articles, poems, videos and more. You can read the syllabus, and add your resources, here.

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Rah! Rah! Roundup

rah rah roundup feminist literary roundup

For your Feminist Friday enjoyment: every plant and animal from Emily Dickinson’s poems, catalogued.

Read Weird Sister Caolan Madden’s poem “Haworth Honeymoon” in the new issue of Inferior Planets.

Krystal Languell talks about unpaid labor, ethics, and the unsung heroes of small press publishing.

“There needs to be a literary Juneteenth. We can’t rely on publications and presses that have, through the actions and complicity of their leadership, proven oppressive.” – Casey Rocheteau on why she left The OffingContinue reading

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We’re Obsessed With: The Headless Women of Hollywood

Started by comedian Marcia Belsky, the new Tumblr The Headless Women of Hollywood draws attention to the all-too-common practice of featuring fragmented, objectified images of women’s bodies in advertising for movies and TV.

 

From the Tumblr’s “About” page:

“The head is first and foremost the thinking part of the human body, where our motivations and feelings are located. So, these images we are bombarded with on a daily basis tell us persistently that women’s thoughts, feelings and personal agency either don’t exist or are of no interest.

Further, facial features are the way we recognize other people. It’s the face that makes us individuals. That too is taken away, and we are taught that all women, especially ones that match the ideal, are the same and interchangeable.

We are made numb in pop culture to female bodies remaining background to male-centered action. A right for men to focus on or ignore, but always there if and when he so chooses. And always there explicitly, first and foremost, for his intent.”

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WEIRD SISTER at AWP!

Come say hi to us at AWP in LA!

We’ll be hanging out with the very rad No Dear & Atlas Review at book fair table #1842 on Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday 3/31, we’ll be teaming up with the legendary queer feminist road show Sister Spit for one night of unforgettable power babehood!

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Weird Sister Spit

When:  Thursday, 3/31 @ 6PM Continue reading

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Voice, Form & Politics: Talking with Mecca Jamilah Sullivan about June Jordan

When I heard that Professor Mecca Jamilah Sullivan and her colleagues at Umass Amherst’s Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and Afro-American Studies departments were planning “Feminist Poetics: Legacies of June Jordan,” I was super excited. This one-day symposium sounds so amazing—it’s billed as “celebrating the work of feminist poet, scholar and activist June Jordan, and her legacies in contemporary feminist poetics.” The conference will feature panels on Writing Feminist Activism, The Combahee River Collective and Black Feminist Foundations, Feminist Poetics as Theory and Praxis, and more. Speakers, moderators and performers include renowned feminist thinkers Sonia Sanchez, Evie Shockley, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Cheryl Clarke and many others. And it’s all happening THIS Friday, March 25th.

For me, Umass Amherst is an extra-special place: I went to college there, and the Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies department is where I learned about the intersections of art and activism, and came into my own as both a writer and a feminist. When I learned about the Feminist Poetics symposium, I had to reach out to Mecca Jamilah Sullivan to ask her about how it all came together, why June Jordan’s legacy matters right now, and—because Mecca is an incredible fiction writer herself—how Jordan’s poetics influence her own work as a writer.

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Photo Credit Marcia Wilson

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her scholarly and creative works on gender and sexuality in African Diaspora cultures have appeared in Best New Writing, Callaloo, Feminist Studies, Palimpsest, Crab Orchard Review, GLQ, Jacket2, Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize Stories, BLOOM, TriQuarterly, Public Books, American Fiction, Prairie Schooner, Ebony.com, TheRoot.com, Ms. Magazine online, and The Feminist Wire, where she is Associate Editor for Arts and Culture. She is the author of the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love (2015), a current finalist for both the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the 2016 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. A current Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the winner of the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Glenna Luschei Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, and fellowships, scholarships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mellon-Mays Foundation, Williams College, Rutgers University, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat, the Social Sciences Research Council, and the Center for Fiction in New York City, where she received a 2011 Emerging Writers Fellowship. She is currently completing a scholarly manuscript, The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora, which explores the politics of formal innovation in global black women’s literary and artistic cultures.

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From the Girlhood Lit Canon: 10 Vintage Book Covers You Need Framed in Your Apartment

When we were younger, books about girlhood let us know we weren’t alone, and showed us that young women’s voices and stories are important; that girls can be smart, adventurous, playful, sad, and strong. Now that we’re all grown up, these amazing vintage covers would be just perfect for blowing up, framing, and hanging in our apartments.

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Vintage Book Cover: Go Ask Alice

I just learned that this book wasn’t really written by an anonymous drug-addicted teenager like last year. What is definitely ultra-real though is this awesome cover. (Via) Continue reading

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