Powerful truths in women's voices
"Good women are rarely clever, and clever women are rarely good." Ada Issacs Menken Adah Issacs Menken (1835 to 1869) was a Civil War era actress, sex symbol, and pin-up girl. She was also a dedicated writer publishing 20 essays, 100 poems, and many newspaper articles. Menken may have been born Adelaide McCord in Chartrain …
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"...writing is so much more than words on a page. Writing contains their [the writer's]concerns, their social context, and their history." Phillippa Yaa De Villiers An actress, a screenwriter, playwright, novelist, and poet Phillippa Yaa De Villiers grew up in South Africa. The daughter of an Australian woman and an Ghanian father who was adopted by a white …
Continue reading "Phillippa Yaa De Villiers on If Love Were Bread"
If marriage be a contract, look to it then, Contracting parties should be equal - Just. Elizabeth Barrett Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) or "Ba," as she was known as a child, was a child of privilege growing up in a wealthy household supported by the slave labor on sugar plantations in Jamaica. A precocious …
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How would you feel if someone made copies of your private poems, carried them across the ocean, and unbeknownst to you published them in a book? Anne Dudley Bradstreet arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. She was among the first Puritans to settle in Salem, New England. A well-educated woman from a well-to-do …
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December 2 is International Abolition of Slavery Day. "One kernel is felt in a hogshead; one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire helps to give light to the world. None are too small, too feeble, too poor to be of service. Think of this and act." -- Hannah More …
Sandra Steingraber has been called a "poet with a knife". She is a renowned ecologist, a cancer survivor, award-winning author, mother, and poet. She is the Rachel Carson of our times calling us to wake up and rid our earth of the toxins that affect the development of our children. Like Rachel she has been attacked by …
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A forgotten woman poet... Felicia Hemans was born in Liverpool in 1753 and died in Dublin in 1834 although she spent most of her life in Wales. She was an acclaimed poetess during her lifetime, admired by Byron, Wadsworth, and George Elliot among others. However, she is forgotten today; her flowery poetry out of style. Separated from …
Women, Words, and Wisdom 