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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Quotes

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Famous Adrienne Rich Quotes

“In the middle-class United States, a veneer of "alternative lifestyles" disguises the reality that, here as everywhere, women's apparent "choices" whether or not to have children are still dependent on the far from neutral will of male legislators, jurists, a male medical and pharmaceutical profession, well-financed lobbies, including the prelates of the Catholic Church, and the political reality that women do not as yet have self-determination over our bodies and still live mostly in ignorance of our authentic physicality, our possible choices, our eroticism itself.”

WellsChildrenStillsSelfStatesBodyRealityPoliticalChoicesChurchUnitedClassUnited StatesMiddleIgnoranceDeterminationCatholicMalesIncludingProfessionMedicalLifestyleAlternativesAbortionDependentMiddle ClassSelf DeterminationDisguiseCatholic ChurchLegislatorsPhysicalityPharmaceuticalVeneerJurists
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Across the curve of the earth, there are women getting up before dawn, in the blackness before the point of light, in the twilight before sunrise; there are women rising earlier than men and children to break the ice, to start the stove, to put up the pap, the coffee, the rice, to iron the pants, to braid the hair, to pull the day's water up from the well, to boil water for tea, to wash the children for school, to pull the vegetables and start the walk to market, to run to catch the bus for the work that is paid. I don't know when most women sleep.”

KnowsMenWellsChildrenLightRunningSchoolEarthWaterSleepWalksBreakHairPaidCoffeeIceTeaDawnRisingIronBusVegetablesPantsTwilightSunriseCurvesRiceBlacknessStovesBraidsPoints Of LightBefore Sunrise
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.”

NeedsHumansChildrenWarMotherPassionForceCommonPovertyBattleSurvivalHuman LifeSicknessExploitationCallousness
Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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“The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.”

ChildrenHomeFormMotherInspiringTakenWorkersStrikesTiesDividedCompassionateTiedMothers DayBreakdownRich WomenMental BreakdownWildcats
Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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“But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child’s mother or some man’s wife?…we have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.”

ThinkingMenChildrenMadeSelfMotherChoicesNamesRoomsWifeImagineReadyRelationChosenFamiliarYour Freedom
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women's movement is saying that we have come to an edge of history when men - insofar as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea - have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included”

MenFeelsBelieveChildrenIdeasI BelieveDangerousMovementEdgesFeministAssBad AssLiving ThingsEmbodimentThis Society
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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“My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.”

ChildrenSometimesFeelingsSeemsSufferingCausesTinyMonstersBitterSelfishnessMy ChildrenNervesResentmentTendernessIntoleranceGratificationExquisiteAmbivalence
Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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“We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.”

IfsThinkingWorldNeedsHumansChildrenBodyUniverseCommunityExistenceVisionImagineGeniusBalanceIndependenceSexualityMotherhoodIntimacyTransformedNew LifeHuman ExistenceConsoleOnly ChildIfs AndNew Relationship
Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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