Minnie Bruce Pratt: Pushing Boundaries November 27, 2009

by Jordan Vickery

Widely known for her anti-racist, GLBTQ views and works, lesbian poet and feminist Minnie Bruce Pratt has done much for the gay and lesbian community, for women, and for the world of rhetoric in general – overcoming political and societal obstacles and personal prejudices of her own along the way.

Pratt was born and raised in the racially segregated town of Selma, Alabama in 1946. She attended college at the University of Alabama in 1964 and at that point recognized her love and talent for poetry. During this time she met and soon married fellow poet Marvin E. Weaver II – her first and only husband of ten years and father of her two sons.

After coming out as a lesbian and going through a difficult divorce in 1975, Pratt was forced into giving up legal custody of her sons as the anti-gay sodomy laws of the time prevailed against her in court. Feeling for the first time her own social exclusion, Pratt began to empathize with people she had been brought up to condemn, who she was taught were “the other,” and while finding herself and her womanhood as a lesbian she simultaneously became passionate about the struggles of minorities, Jews, and gender and sexuality-oppressed people, among others.

Pratt has written eight books of poetry that provide provocative yet honest insight and detail into her feelings on sex, love, the obscurities of gender, and her personal and political growth as a woman.

In her book Walking Back Up Depot Street, she wrote “A Poem For My Sons” which shows the strength, emotion and sensibility her poetry and rhetoric proudly convey:

But now I have spoken, my self, I can ask for you: that you’ll have work you love, hindering no one, a path crossing at boundary markers where you question power; that your loves will match you thought for thought in the long heat of blood and fact of bone…

Similarly, Pratt’s sex and gender ideas are presented in S/HE, a collection that greatly stems from Pratt’s experience and romance with her trans-gendered partner Leslie Feinberg. In these poems, Pratt’s controversial thoughts on love and sex are publicized, poems intensely erotic and explicit that give even greater clarity to Pratt’s voice as a poet and strength to her position as lesbian and feminist in society. In “Husband,” the intricacies of gender specific to Pratt’s own relationship with Feinberg are demonstrated:

The complexity of your history crowds around me as I mentally juggle your female birth sex, male gender expression. I say, “She’s transgendered, not transsexual.”… Then, femme to femme, he begins to talk of your beauty: “He is perfect. If I ever wanted a woman it would be someone just like her.” With innuendo and arch look he gives truthful ambiguity to what he sees in me, in you… “Don’t let her get away. Hang onto him.”

With similar fervor, Pratt works as an activist participating in public protests and rallies, the International Action Center as well as using her role as a writer and rhetor to combat U.S. imperialism and the class struggle, fight for women’s liberation, and obtain social justice for minorities and all people oppressed on the basis of gender and sexuality.

At only 62, Pratt has earned her reputation as an esteemed feminist and rhetor and continues to further her activism and push the boundaries in her writing even today. Presently, Pratt teaches at Syracuse University and travels the country delivering speeches, promoting the liberation of oppressed classes and of all women. Information on her life and writing can be found at her website: www.mbpratt.org.

“”Identity: Skin Blood Heart.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 11.3 (1983): 16.

“Crime Against Nature.” Ploughshares, the literary journal 15.50 (Winter 1989).

Pratt, Minnie Bruce. We Say We Love Each Other. 2nd ed. 1 vol. Ithaca: Firebrand Books, 1992.

Pratt, Minnie Bruce. S/HE. 1st ed. 2 vols. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1995.

Trinh T. Minh-Ha: Moving Forward November 25, 2009

by Rhamy Payne

Sometimes, we just want to move away from it all.

In a perfect world, writing would be the ultimate escape route.  No bounds, no rules – everything is in the hands of the writer.  Even so, race, gender, and class can dissuade branching out and demand the safety of normalcy, especially for women.  Fortunately, there are those who fight fiercely to remove such condemning barriers – and Trinh T. Minh-Ha, through several different genres, tries to bring about revolution.

Minh-Ha was born in 1953 and grew up in Hanoi – in the midst of a conflict-ridden Vietnam.  In addition to a first-hand account of many critical events, her family was also ideologically divided.  After studying in the Philippines (as well as Saigon), she moved to America in 1970.  Currently, she is a member of the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley, and has enjoyed careers in writing, filmmaking, and even composing.

Regardless of her medium, Minh-Ha has always left a lasting impression on her audiences.  One of her most common themes is the presence of race and gender in our lives, and questions them regularly.  Her aim is usually to disrupt conventions (but not eliminate them outright), and she is no stranger to the issue of selfhood.  Naturally, the writer is a champion of women, asserting that the fairer sex should find their own voices, not just duplicate those of men.

However, the greatest draw of Minh-Ha’s creative works are the strategies she uses to assert them.  In an interview, the writer declared:

I rarely think in terms of message. I think more in terms of processes of transformation. Every film that I make, for example, is a transformative process for me. I mean by that that whenever I start a film, I may start with an idea, an image or an impression. By the time I finish the film, l am somewhere else altogether, even though I have not lost what I started out with. In the process of making the film your consciousness has changed considerably.

Minh-Ha definitely keeps her word.  She doesn’t commit her work, despite the medium, to a single subject or idea; she almost seems to allow it to take its natural course.  Audiences are greeted with a peculiar display in her works – a sort of “order in disorder” mentality; in her films, there is no clear-cut voice feeding the audience an answer, or even an explanation of what transpires onscreen.  Rapid flashes, random silences, and images superimposed upon one another are entirely possible.  Through this method (a method that, to some extent, persists in her writing), Minh-Ha consolidates her goal: the complete disorientation of the audience.  As a firm believer in the necessity of transience – that one must always move forward ideologically – the audience is refused the chance to settle into a comfortable spot based on the work; they must come to their own conclusions.  One could argue, quite successfully, that unpredictability is one of Minh-Ha’s greatest weapons.  By the same token, one could also argue that to be able to create such a potpourri of words and images and have some coherent idea emerge from it is a testament to the rhetor’s mastery of logical appeal.  Her desire to shift opinions out of accepted niches is made more than possible by her continuing efforts; she is a force that, by reaching to others, drives countless minds toward a change in paradigms.

Works Cited/Further Reading

Minh-Ha, Trinh T.  Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcolonially and Feminism, 6, 16-17, 19-20.   Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.

Minh-ha, Trinh T.  When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender, and Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge, 1991. 29-50.

Spangler, Tina.  Interviewer Interviewed: A Discussion with Trinh T. Minh-Ha. Emerson College, Dec. 1993.

The Regents of the University of California.  “Breaking Boundaries through Film.”  Framing the Questions: New Visions From the Arts and Humanities at Berkeley. 2000.

Longballa, John.  “T. Minh-Ha Trinh: Voices from the Gaps.”  University of Minnesota. May 2001.

Brigham, Robert K.  “Overview.”  The Wars for Vietnam: 1945 to 1975. Vassar College, 2003.

Alice Walker’s Garden November 20, 2009

by Bonnie Lynch

What do you see when you look at this picture? I see a strong, wise, black woman whose wrinkles tell a story of life, love, and struggle. Her name is Alice Walker, an author famous for literary works that magnify the struggles faced by primarily African-American women.

Born on February 9, 1944, in Georgia to poor and uneducated sharecroppers, Walker witnessed the struggle her parents endured for civil rights from an early age. She attended Spelman College on a full scholarship where she was inspired to become involved in the Civil Rights Movement, which she did after transferring to Sarah Laurence College, completing her bachelor’s degree, and returning to the South.

Walker’s first two novels tell the stories of activist workers in the South during the Civil Rights Movement, a theme motivated by Walker’s personal experiences (Lewis). In 1982, Walker published her best-known novel, The Color Purple, which told the story of a young black woman, Celie, and her experience in a racist white culture as well as a patriarchal black culture.

As seen above, much of Walker’s source of inspiration comes from her own personal experiences. She focuses on how the issues of racism, sexism and violent society impact the lives of blacks but particularly black women. Her ideology of rewriting rhetorical theory stems from the belief that by studying past African-American women, knowledge and authority can emerge from the everyday, and that the private sphere of the home and the work of women in these realms are of equal value with “high art” or public discourse (Richie and Ronald 314).

In The Color Purple, Walker uses the private form of letter writing as a way for Celie to express what she does, hears, and sees and later as a way for her to express her personal insights. This is shown in an excerpt from The Color Purple, where Celie writes,

I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women. Where do children really come from. It didn’t take long to realize I didn’t hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don’t mean nothing if you don’t ast why you here, period. (Walker 289-290)

Joy Richie and Kate Ronald explain in Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric, that In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens is the title essay in a collection of prose that Walker terms ‘womanist,’” also referred to as “black feminist” or “feminist of color.” The essay serves as a pinnacle example of “womanist” writing, which Walker describes as “courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered ‘good for one’” (Richie and Ronald 314). In the essay, Walker magnifies her desire to sharpen rhetorical theory with class, race, and material contexts and her belief that by studying the art and talent of past African American women, one may discover knowledge and authority.

Walker describes the way her mother as well as generations of black women were unable to express their creativity in life. She expresses her belief that reflection on these women’s lives will help one discover themselves.

Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength—in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own. (Walker 322)

Today Walker is known for her work with the female activists anti-war group “Code Pink,” traveling to nations across the world and advocating her belief in equality. For further reading Alice Walker, check out the sources below.

Works Cited & Further Reading

Alice Walker’s Garden. 3 Nov. 2009.

Gonzalez, Juan, and Amy Goodman. “Inner Light in a Time of Darkness: A Conversation with Author and Poet Alice Walker.” Democracy Now!. 5 Nov. 2009.

Gussow, Mel. “An Explorer Of Human Terrain; Once Again, Alice Walker Is Ready to Embrace Her Freedom to Change.” The New York Times. 26 Dec. 2000. 5 Nov. 2009.

Lewis, Jone J. “About Alice Walker.” Women’s History: Comprehensive Women’s History Research Guide.  3 Nov. 2009.

Ritchie, Joy S., and Kate Ronald. “Introduction: A Gathering of Rhetorics.” Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. xv-xxxi.

Walker, Alice. Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism. New York: Random House, 1997.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Orlando, Fl: Harcourt, 2003.

Adrienne Rich: The Papillon Poet November 16, 2009

by Takeshi Takahashi

Adrienne Rich has been called “one of the most eloquent, provocative voices on the politics of sexuality, race, language, power, and women’s culture” (Pope). She is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose, and her writing has garnered her awards and accolades ranging from the National Book Award to two Guggenheim Fellowships. Her life exemplifies transformation, in the spheres of the poetic and the personal.

Born in Maryland on May 16, 1929, Adrienne Rich soon displayed a love and talent for poetry. She wrote primarily for her highly educated parents, especially her professor father. She writes, “for about twenty years I wrote for a particular man, who criticized and praised me and made me feel I was indeed ’special’” (Ritchie 272). Later, Rich attended and eventually graduated from Radcliffe College. In the year of her graduation, she received from famed poet W. H. Auden the Yale Younger Poet’s Prize for her first book, A Change of World.

Two years later, she married Alfred Conrad, and subsequently bore three children. She continued to write poetry in the same formalist, emotionally distant style that had won her the Prize, but found herself distressed and disappointed by the poetry she wrote. After more than ten years, she awoke politically and became active in public movements for social justice. She even incorporated them into her poems, which were thusly infused with the anger and gravity that has further propelled her to an iconic status in feminine literature. Looking back on her most famous poem, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” written in 1951, Rich sees her psyche split in two, between “the girl who wrote poems, who defined herself in writing poems, and the girl who was to define herself by her relationships with men” (Ritchie 273). That dichotomy in her mind and on paper became the fulcrum by which she moved from formalism to free verse, opening her poetry.

In 1976, six years after divorcing her husband, Adrienne Rich came out, along with her partner Michelle Cliff. While her previous poetry exhibited undertones angst and confusion, albeit with grace and art, suddenly it was now tempered by a new clarity, because she no longer cared to hide pieces of herself from her poetry. Subsequently, she gained much fame by her steadfast conviction to speak the truth in power, through poetry.

Rich confronted stereotypes in her writing, some of whom she was victim to. As a feminist, lesbian, Jewish, female poet, she certainly had negative experience with stereotyping, yet was able to strike back coherently and thoughtfully in her essays, journals, and poetry. Her fame and prestige grew to the point that she won the National Medal of Arts in 1997. However, she refused the award on principle, instead saying these words, “‘I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration.’ She went on to say: ‘[Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage’” (“Adrienne”).

Further Reading

“Adrienne Rich.” Modern American Poetry. Ed. Cary Nelson. University of Illinois.

Rich, Adrienne C. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Journal of Women’s History 15 (2003): 11-48.

Rich, Adrienne C. Diving Into the Wreck: Poems. Norton, 1973.

Works Cited

“Adrienne Rich.” Poetry.org. The Academy of American Poets. 12 Nov. 2009.

Pope, Deborah. “Rich’s Life and Career.” Adrienne Rich (1929 – ). University of Illinois. 11 Nov. 2009.

Ritchie, Joy S., and Kate Ronald. “Adrienne Rich” Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. 267-282.

Emma Goldman: Anarchist and Angel November 9, 2009

by Traci Shackelford

Anarchist. Free love. These words are the most associated with Emma Goldman, but in truth she was so much more. Born in Kovno, Russia in 1869 to a German speaking Jewish family, Emma rebelled. She came from a working class background. Emma herself worked at a corset factory in Russia. Her family was not wealthy like many other feminists of the time, so she educated herself. Emma emigrated to live with her sister in Rochester, New York in 1885 at the age of age 16. In New York she worked in a glove factory and was very close to workers’ issues. She understood their needs because she was one of them.

Emma became interested anarchism after the Haymarket affair, where in Chicago during a workers’ strike fighting for eight-hour workdays, a bomb was thrown at police resulting in subsequent gunfire and many deaths. Goldman felt a common fight with those who protested and died in the Haymarket affair.

In 1893, Emma she was arrested for “inciting riot” and spent a year in prison. She was arrested again in 1917 after she and her lover and fellow Russian anarchist Alexander Berkman wrote a piece opposing the WW1 draft in their anarchist publication Mother Earth.

Mother Earth magazine was an important part of feminist rhetorical history. It was not necessarily anarchism that the magazine supported, but freedom. Unlike other anarchist publications, Mother Earth focused on issues that pertained directly to women. It helped support a new breed of women that was not submissive and powerless. Goldman gave the modern woman a voice. She gave a platform to discuss issues such as marriage, birth control, war, unions, labor practices and laws, and homosexuality.

Although Goldman was multilingual, speaking Russian, German, Yiddish, and English, and she used the other languages to spread her ideas at times, she chose to write the publication in English and “consciously shaped her anarchist journal’s contents as American, invoking in its pages Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, and Walt Whitman” (Lumsed 33). The magazine held articles pertaining to a women’s role as a mother, marriage, and love. In the March 1906 Mother Earth issue Goldman wrote, “Our highly prized independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and stifling woman’s nature, her love instinct and her mother instinct” (Lumsed 35).

These were issues that Goldman felt very passionately about. Goldman believed that marriage was an unfair transaction between a man and a woman where the woman “pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, “until death doth part”. She felt that women were not educated about “her only asset in the competitive field- sex” (Ritchie and Ronald 228).  She felt that love was to be considered over marriage and “dollars and cents” (Ritchie and Ronald 229).

In an excerpt from “Marriage and Love” Goldman writes,

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. (Ritchie and Ronald 231)

Her use of repetition and interjecting her self into the pieces with exclamations of  “oh” or “aye” she portrayed her strong emotion. She used repetition of words and phrases, sarcasm, and even questions to get the public to think and respond to the issues she wrote about. She expresses her emotion so poetically and yet so directly.

After Emma and Alexander’s arrest in 1917, they were deported back to Russia in 1919. Goldman never ceased to write about and participate in social movements of reform. She stayed forever a “rebel” and forever a soldier for women’s rights until her stroke in 1940, which caused her to loose the ability to speak. She died four months later on May 14, 1940 and was buried in the same cemetery in Chicago where many of the protesters from the Haymarket affair were laid to rest. Although Goldman lost her voice in the end, her writings and works have extended through generations and still hold a large place in women’s history and rhetoric today.

Works Cited

Ferguson, Kathy E. “Discourses of Danger: Locating Emma Goldman.” Political Theory 36.5 (October 2008): 735-61.

Lumsden, Linda L. “Anarchy Meets Feminism: A Gender Analysis of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth, 1906-1917.” American Journalism 24.3 (Summer 2007): 31-54.

Palmer, Kathryn, and Stephen E. Lucas. “On Trial: Conflicting Versions of Emma Goldman’s Address to the Jury.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11.1 (2008): 47-88.

Reizbaum, Marilyn. “Yiddish Modernisms: Red Emma Goldman.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 51.2 (Summer 2005): 456-81.

Ritchie, Joy and Kate Ronald. Available Means An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s). New York: University of Pittsburgh, 2001.

Ida B. Wells November 6, 2009

by Shaley Sanders

Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862. Her parents, James and Elizabeth, strongly encouraged Ida to pursue an education. Ida attended a school not far from home and enjoyed reading the bible as well as Shakespeare. Her father was actively involved in politics and her mother was known to be very religious and a strict disciplinarian.

When Ida was 16, a yellow fever plague hit Holly Springs, killing both of her parents and her younger brother. Ida decided to care for her five younger siblings; she dressed up to appear older than she truly was and found a job teaching not too far away. She relied on family and friends to take care of brothers and sisters while she was working. Eventually, one of Ida’s family members talked her into moving to Memphis, Tennessee where she continued teaching.

Ida’s involvement in civil rights began when a conductor tried to make her move from a first class car to a smoking car. After quarreling for quite some time, Ida ended up biting the conductor who kicked her off at the next stop. Ida returned to Memphis immediately and sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company. Although she ultimately ended up losing the case, this unjust treatment sparked her interest in not only civil rights issues, but women’s suffrage as well.

In 1889, Ida became the co-owner and eventually the editor of a Memphis newspaper, Free Speech and Headlight. In 1892 three African-American males were lynched, one of whom was Ida’s dear friend. After researching the lynching, Ida learned the men were murdered because their business was thriving and therefore threatening the business of a white man’s grocery store down the street. Ida wrote about this case as well as other reasons for lynching in her newspaper. When researching lynching history, Ida found that a large majority of black men were accused of raping white women. Ida, who wrote under the pen-name “Iola”, researched these cases and learned that many of the black men who were killed were engaging in consensual interracial relationships, not raping white women. This particular statement enraged many white males who destroyed the Free Speech and Headlight building and searched for “Iola” the “man” who wrote such offensive articles. Eventually, people discovered that Iola was in fact Ida and sent word if she ever returned to Memphis her life would be in great danger.

Taking these threats seriously, as she should, Ida made home in New York where she began investigative reporting for the New York Age. Ida eventually moved to Chicago where she married the attorney and founder of Chicago’s first African-American Newspaper, the Chicago Conservator; by the age of 33, Ida owned the entire newspaper. Ida also founded several organizations and influenced many others who went on to campaign for African-American women’s rights as well as racial equality. Ida took a break from all of her organizations to raise her four children, but eventually became re-involved with her previous campaigns and stayed active until her death in 1931.

Further Reading
1. Great PBS web site offering a wide variety of information-http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_wells.html

http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/civilrights/il2.htm

www.galegroup.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/wells_i.htm

2. Ida’s Biography- http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/idabwells.html

3. Interview with Author- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUpWpOnDUqs

4. Ida’s pamphlets- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aapmob.html

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: “She” is Not Just a Woman but a WOE-man November 4, 2009

by Sharia de’Castro

“Alone [a woman] goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world.”

What a risk! What a sacrifice! Yet, what an honor! Shouldn’t honor be given to whom it is rightfully due? I believe that she is not just a woman, but a WOE-man! While risking death, she faces anguish and pain to give life to man. Who is man? He is the offspring of a woman. Yet, where is her authority? Where is her respect? Where is her solitude? These must’ve been some of the questions that lingered through the mind of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a spokesperson for the rights of women.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, New York on November 12^th, 1815. She died on October 26^th, 1902 at age 86 – eighteen years before women would win the right to vote. She was one of the first leaders of the American woman’s rights movement and worked alongside Susan B. Anthony to form the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. The following quote from her book Eighty Years and More depicts that in a time when women were silenced, Stanton became their voice.

But I suffered with mental hunger, which, like an empty stomach, is very depressing…The general discontent I felt with woman’s portion as wife, mother, housekeeper, physical, and spiritual guide…the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women impressed me with a strong feeling that some measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of society in general and of women in particular. (Stanton 144)

Her thoughts on women’s issues symbolized seeds that she later planted, allowing her to flourish into the Elizabeth Cady Stanton that we know today. Her ideas were watered and sprang forth beautifully when she became a feminist as a young child. This was due to her early exposure to law, as well as slavery and the abolition movement. She enjoyed spending time in her father’s law library and debating legal issues with his law clerks. This enhanced Stanton’s feminist sentiments. It caused her to realize how the law’s unjustifiable treatment of favoring men over women, particularly married women, condoned inequality among the sexes.

Stanton addressed this inequality in her speech “The Solitude of Self” in order to make a “radical philosophical argument, dramatizing the fundamental existential condition of humanistic values that demand the rights of women as part of their fundamental “natural rights” as human beings” (Richie and Ronald 171). She utilized many rhetorical strategies to effectively appeal to her audience. She presented the personal as political and the political as personal. Her dominant strategy throughout the speech was the use of metaphors to paint a vivid picture on the canvas of the brain for her audience. She even situates metaphors in such a way that they create questions. The key to this strategy was to ask the question but also give the answer to the question. In the following quote she used a metaphor to declare that women should have the right to be captains of their own ships.

To guide our own craft we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to watch winds and waves, and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton possessed a persuasive voice that could confidently demand the attention of her audience. She did not proclaim her authority in a blatant way but instead used figurative language to do so. She demanded authority not just for herself but for women as a whole. This takes us back to the opening quote where Stanton drew a metaphorical reference of women in labor and delivery to illustrate the authority, respect and solitude that is rightfully theirs. “She” is not just a woman but a woe-man!

Works Cited & Further Readings:

Jenkins, Coline. “American Woman.” National Parks 83.2 (Spring 2009), 50-52.

Richie, Joy and Kate Ronald. “Elizabeth Cady Stanton.” Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. 171-178.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Eighty Years and More: Reminises, 1815-1897. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991.

“Elizabeth Cady Stanton.”Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony November 2, 2009

by Jennifer Brown

How would you react if the world around you was saying that your opinions didn’t matter as much as someone else’s simply because of the way you were born? Susan B. Anthony refused to conform to the ideals of her male counterparts for years before defying the law and standing up for her rights.

In November of 1872 she registered to vote and voted in the Presidential election. She was arrested for voting illegally and sentenced to pay a fine of $100 and the cost of prosecution. In her speech “Is it a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?”, regarding her sentencing she said,

It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. And we formed it, not to give blessings or liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people-women as well as men. And it is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government-the ballot. (Anthony)

Her trial became infamous being covered by every newspaper.

Throughout her life Susan Anthony made 75-100 speeches per year for 45 consecutive years. She spoke to other women, congress and men, traveling all around to spread the word of “the cause” which was the Women’s Rights Movement. One of her greatest rhetorical choices was starting The Revolution, a weekly journal to help spread the word of the suffrage movement faster. This was the official publication of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Anthony founded this newspaper in January of 1868 and its motto was “The true republic – men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.” The Revolution’s circulation never exceeded 3,000 but it still managed to play a major part in the progression of Suffragists.

Later, Susan B. Anthony would become the first women ever to appear on currency. The Susan B. Anthony coin was in production for four only four years and didn’t circulate well despite the coins slogan “Carry 3 for Susan B”.

Susan delivered her final, and in some opinions, her most powerful speech at her last convention on her 86th birthday. The speech titled “Failure is Impossible” was an insight to all things she knew would inevitably come for women. She died shortly after in her home in Rochester, New York. At the time of her death only four states allowed women the right to vote. The 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, fourteen years after her death and gave women the rights she fought so hard for her entire life. With the ratification of the amendment it brought to light Susan’s last public words and reminded us that indeed “Failure is Impossible.”

Works Cited and Further Reading

Linder, Douglas. “The Susan B. Anthony Trial.” 2001.

See The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, ed. by I. Husted (3 vol., 1908; repr. 1969); biographies by K. S. Anthony (1954) and R. C. Dorr (1928,repr. 1970).

“Susan B. Anthony.” Wikipedia.

Hughes, Deborah L. “The Susan B. Anthony House.”

The Women of the Hall – Susan B. Anthony.

Women in History. Susan B. Anthony biography. Last Updated: 3/9/2009. Lakewood Public Library, Lakewood, OH.

Sojourner Truth—Powerful, Logical, Passionate: Rhetorical October 30, 2009

by Leonor Serrano

Sojourner Truth became the strongest symbol of African American women during an era in which both sexism and racism were prominent sentiments. Her life was anything but easy, as she was born into slavery and sold several times. Her family life as a child and mother was disrupted as her family members were taken away and sold. Her life experiences instigated an urge for her to champion the issues of antislavery and women’s rights. How did this former slave become such an inspiring figure against the odds stacked up against her? The answer may be hidden in the way that we have interpreted her most famous speech, “Aren’t I A Woman?”, recorded by Frances D. Gage. While there is controversy surrounding this version of the speech, due to the differences found in other reports, it is impossible to deny that this account has strongly contributed to the rise of Sojourner Truth as an important African American icon of the women’s movement. Let us look at the rhetorical strategies used by Truth in her most famous speech.

It is hard to talk about rhetoric without bringing in the three major components: ethos, pathos and logos. Truth establishes ethos, or credibility, through her strong presence. She is described as six feet tall with a deep, not loud, but commanding voice. Her posture as described by Gage is with her head erect and eye piercing the air ahead. These descriptions give the reader the impression that Truth is sure of what she has to say. In addition to her physical appearance, Truth speaks from the experience of a former slave woman. It is hard to deny the credibility of someone who has lived through the two worst oppressions of this time period.

Pathos, or emotion, is instilled in the audience through her description of her previous labor and suffering. Describing the past abuses including the whipping that she has endured helps the audience empathize with her suffering. She brings up the fact that her children have been sold from her to further pull the emotional strings of the listener, “I have borne thirteen children and seen them almost all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard” (Ritchie and Ronald 145). The emotions evoked by this speech are a sense of empathy, sadness and even a sense of anger at the injustices that she has experienced.

Through the use of logic, Truth expresses her points by comparing her position in society to that of a man. Even though she is a woman, her role as an African American individual has played the most important factor in shaping her position. By repeatedly asking the question, “Aren’t I a woman?”, she allows the reader to explore the logical argument on his or her own, and come to the conclusion that yes, she is a woman, but because of her race, her struggles are not the same as a white woman’s. Furthermore, although she embodies many of the characteristics of a working man, she is distant from that category as well because she is denied the rights of a man.

It is certain that Sojourner Truth was an excellent orator and knew how to move her audience, whether it was in agreement or disagreement. Sojourner Truth was able to accomplish something that was difficult not only during her time period, but even in the present time. She owned herself. Truth championed her cause despite the taboos surrounding public perception of women in the public speaking sphere. Even though Truth passed away in 1883, her words continue to live as many women use them as inspiration today.

Further Reading

Ede, Lisa, Cheryl Glenn and Andrea Lunsford. “Border Crossings: Intersections of Rhetoric
and Feminism.” Rhetorica Vol. 13, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995). 401-441.

Pullon Fitch, Suzanne and Mandziuk, Roseann M. “Sojourner Truth As Orator.” Westport,
Conn: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Ritchie, Joy and Ronald Kate. Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s).
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.

Zackodnik, Teresa C. “’I Don’t Know How You Will Feel When I Get Through’: Racial
Difference, Women’s Rights and Sojourner Truth.” Feminist Studies Spring 2004, Vol.
30 Issue 1. 49-73.

New York Tribune’s first woman correspondent: Margaret Fuller October 28, 2009

by Laura Hamilton

A “cougar” long before society had any use for such a label, Margaret Fuller bore a child out of wedlock and only later married the father, a man half her age. These actions sure don’t sound like the ones of a woman following societies norm in the early 1800’s, and these choices were not the only evidence of Fuller’s rebellious attitude to surface before she died tragically in a shipwreck at age 40.

Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1810. She was the first-born child and the only child for the first 5 years of her life because a sibling died in infancy. Her father was determined to have an educated and intellectual daughter. She was force fed the Latin and Greek languages, which she read by age 6. She had been able to read and write English by age 3 and translating Virgil by age 5. Margaret was banned from reading Shakespeare and all other “girly” literature for pleasure.

At an early age, Fuller began to rebel against her father because of the “masculine schooling” he put her through. She was an outcast at school. She soon joined the Transcendentalists, where she became great friends with Horace Greeley and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was here that Fuller began to appreciate her intellectual background. This was a group of well-educated men that were determined to move away from the norm and bring in new literature to America. This group also believed in reaching the human potential and educating all citizens.

Soon after Fuller met Emerson, the two of them went into business together and co-founded The Dial. Fuller also wrote for the magazine and there published, “The Great lawsuit: Man vs. Men and Woman vs. Women” in 1843. This paper called for women’s equality and was expanded in 1845 when Fuller published “Women in the Nineteenth Century.” This new publication went into more detail and Fuller established her views on many topics. Including: Incompatible marriages, the double standard, Amelia Norman’s trial, property rights to married women, rehabilitation homes for prostitutes, life cycle of women, inspiring women, and the strengths and weaknesses of public women. This publication led to the Seneca Falls convention just 3 years later.

In 1846 Horace Greeley hired Fuller to become the first women’s correspondent for the New York Tribune. Greeley had Fuller travel transatlantic to discover new European culture, politics, and literature. It was during these adventures that Fuller met her husband, a man 10 years younger and without an education. Before marrying him she bore his child out of wedlock. Fuller, her husband, and their young child were all to die tragically in a shipwreck off the coast of New York when traveling for the Tribune. Many letters and writing of Fuller’s were left behind. Letters were found upon the ship, many of which were ruined. Her friends later published those that were still legible.

Margaret Fuller also wrote the first book advocating equality between men and woman. She fought to end slavery and also for many urban culture needs, including half way homes for prostitutes and the insane. She also became a New York journalist at a time when this job was deemed unfit for a woman.

Today, Margaret Fuller is known for not conforming to the accepted standard of womanhood during her period. All of her actions had an underlying commonality of the growth of literature in America. Her job and travel were unheard for a woman during the time period in which she lived. One determined woman she was; which is why she is remembered and currently studied.

Further reading

James, Laurie. Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller. New York: Golden Heritage, Inc., 1990.

Johnson Lewis, Jone. “What is Transcendentalism?” (1995): 1-4. www.transcendentalists.com.

Kornfield, Eve. Margaret Fuller: A Brief Biography with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997.

Myerson, Joel. Critical Essays on Margaret Fuller. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1990.

Ritchie, Joy, and Kate Ronald, eds. Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetorics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2001.