if you need me i can always be found

some quotes from my incredibly inspiring reading as of late:::

“We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstance by power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason, and creativity.” -Port Huron Statement, 1962

"I believe that all men to some degree dread strong women. The systems men have created are homogeneous systems, which exclude and degrade women or deny our existence; and the most frequent rationalization for our exclusion from those systems is that we are or ought to be mothers." -adrienne rich, of woman born: motherhood as experience and institution

"He fears loss of "humanity" when women speak and listen to women. I suspect that what he really fears is the absence of humanity among men, the cerebral divisions of the male group, the undeveloped affections between man and man, the ruthless pursuit  of goals, the defensive male bonding which goes only skin-deep. And men fear the loss of privilege. It is all too evident that the majority of "concerned" or "profeminist" men secretly hope that "liberation" will give them the right to shed tears while still exercising old prerogatives." --adrienne rich,  of woman born: motherhood as experience and institution

"But where it is unavoidable, pain can be transformed into something usable, it is something which takes us beyond the limits of experience itself into a further grasp of the essentials of life and the possibilities within us." -adrienne rich, of woman born: motherhood as experience and institution

“I want to be a person who can embrace change although there is a part of me that always wants life to stay the same, not to change.” -bell hooks, wounds of passion

“In social settings, I am awkward. How can we be real with so many strangers. How can we smile and tell the truth to so many people we don’t know. Small talk makes me feel the way I do when a mosquito is buzzing around my head--irritated--and then finally unable to get any relief I just slaughter the damn thing. I slaughter the moment by saying something real. Everybody acts like I can’t see that they think I am strange and out of place like some antique in a room full of modern furniture. I don’t care what they think--they are not real to me, just ghosts that have nothing to do with my life”-bell hooks, wounds of passion

“I sat in Tillie Olsen’s class and wept when she talked about how raising children made it so hard to find the time to read and write. I thought about mama and how much of her young life had been given over to just that and I longed to give her back those years when her imagination was full and fresh and longing to create worlds….I know she dreamed of love and marriage. I know she had her moments of happiness. But I was there when the lights went out of her eyes, when love betrayed her for the last time. In the shadows of that betrayal she must have imagined the path her life would have taken had she been free to study and grow and learn before becoming a mother so young, so many times”-bell hooks, wounds of passion