Big Fat Phallusy

The Brief Two Seconds After You Ruin Everything, Clementine von Radics (via clementinevonradics)

(via fullmisandrynow)

Clementine von Radics, In Defense of Loving Him (after Megan Falley)

(Source: clementinevonradics, via sociolab)

mujeristaxicana:

Welcome to the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Project.

The Sor Juana Project is sponsored by

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Dartmouth College

Hanover, New Hampshire.

We are honored to present to you the greatest poet the American continent produced in the seventeenth century. She was born November 12, 1651, in San Miguel Nepantla, a village south of Mexico City. She was a Poet Nun, a woman of genius, and a person of intellectual prowess whose ideas and accomplishments were ahead of her time.

ranicaa:

Like Adam, you were cast out of the garden—
Or so you say.
The garden might have you back,
If you bow your head, strain your back, till the soil.
Your adoration won’t bud the seeds,
And your words won’t feed the fauna.
Your love might water leaves,
But the roots and mouths go hungry.

And like Jesus in Gethsemane, you suffer.
That garden is quiet, and though disciples surround you,
You are alone. You are alone.
That garden is a poor substitute
For paradise lost, paradise that slipped through your fingers
Like dry sand.

Let it go.

nprfreshair:

Hisham Matar talks to Terry Gross about how, while his father was a political prisoner in Libya, he would recite poetry for himself and the other prisoners. Matar’s father was kidnapped in 1990 and Matar never saw him again.:

It was an astonishing demonstration and victory on his part, on an old argument that he and I had because, like most children, I wasn’t exactly excited about being obliged to memorize pages and pages of text, and he would try to convince me about the virtues of doing such a thing, that it would teach you about language. He described it once, he said, ‘I… [R]eading a poem is like a bird flying over a forest but memorizing it is like that same bird walking through the forest. …” So he would give me all these examples to try to sell me the idea of memorizing these poems, which i did and later of course learned other virtues — many wonderful virtues — of memorizing text, that it does feel like company in a sense. But this story of him reciting poems to comfort himself and others in prison was just another demonstration of how right he was and it made me feel, it made me feel, I was happy for him to have had these poems in his chest, that they were there to delight and comfort perhaps and entertain him and others.

When he was a child Matar’s father had told him that “knowing a book by heart is like carrying a house inside your chest.”

image by catinthecupboard

wow.

oppressedbrowngirlsdoingthings:

mehreenkasana:

Beautiful As You Are:

When I was growing up, I had many bullies in school in Virginia. I was sometimes called the “ugly brown girl with a bush on her head.” And I’d come home bawling my eyes out. Racist bullies do a lot of damage, I’m sure you all know that by now. When I came back to Pakistan, I taught kindergarten and high school students. I found out that skin color is still a huge issue in our culture. Girls are made to feel horrible about their complexion if it’s dark. So I decided to write a little poem for the little girls in elementary school with some doodles. I read it to them in the playground. I’m glad things started to change after that.

Here it is.

When I was four feet and five inches,
Kids at school would say,
“Hey Mehreen, buy yourself a paper bag!
Your face ruins our day!”

I asked them why they thought so,
My mom said I was pretty swell?
“That’s cause your hair is bushy!
Plus your skin’s dark as hell!”

So I wore the paper bag to school,
I wore it day and night.
I thought I’d be accepted
If I was out of sight.

Then I grew up and left home,
For college and other big plans,
I made friends around the world,
I even made some fans!

I learned that people are beautiful
If they love, respect and care.
What matters most is inside.
Not my skin or hair.

So if a girl is tall and pink,
But she’s rotten and she’s rude,
She’s not pretty in any way.
I’d rather have her boo’ed.

And if a girl is small and dark
And her heart is made of gold,
Trust me, she’ll be plain beautiful
Even when she’s old.

Now here’s a little secret.
Brown is a beautiful shade.
Of warmth, strength and sweetness
This strong color is made.

But that doesn’t matter,
Oh it doesn’t matter at all.
If someone treats you for your skin tone,
They’re not worth the fall.

You’re beautiful and you’re lovely,
Because you are you.
Aw, man, this rhymes too nicely.
Because it’s really true.

Your skin is just a cover,
Your skin is just some meat,
It doesn’t make you bitter
And it doesn’t make you sweet.

What makes you gorgeous and lovely,
Comes right out of here.
So now you know you’re perfect.
Oh, you’re beautiful, my dear.

Thought I’d share it here after it got published in South Africa for girls and WOC. To everyone who’s ever felt bad about themselves: Stop. You’re beautiful.

Shadeism sucks. To all the brown and black women in the world.

(via mujeristaxicana)

nothatsstupid:

“One male poet approached me after a performance and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you ever write about anything other than the struggles of women?” I replied, “I don’t mean to be rude, but take your finger off the trigger and I’ll stop.” After all, who among us ever wanted to speak about these things? What little girl dreams of growing up to write ‘rape poems?’ About violence? About the muffled voices of women worldwide?” -Andrea Gibson

No one ever asks men why they write books, movies, games, TV shows, laws, text books, entire genres of media (games) without any female input or any females at all. It’s only a problem when women do it. 

(Source: talkaboutourbigplans, via diaryofanarabfeminist)

Rage against the d(ying of the light)

Bertolt Brecht, A Worker Reads History (via jayaprada)

(via fullmisandrynow)

sinandserotonin:

tell me the story
about how the sun
loved the moon so much
he died every night
to let her breathe

(via heirofmedusa)