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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Quotes

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Famous Adrienne Rich Quotes

“White hate crimes, white hate speech. I still try to claim I wasn't brought up to hate. But hate isn't the half of it. I grew up in the vast encircling presumption of whiteness - that primary quality of being which knows itself, its passions, only against an otherness that has to be dehumanized. I grew up in white silence that was utterly obsessional. Race was the theme whatever the topic.”

KnowsTryingStillsHatePassionWhiteRaceHalfSilenceQualityCrimeGrewSpeechGrew UpRacismClaimsPrimariesThemeTopicsHate CrimePresumptionWhitenessOthernessHate Speech
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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“Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society.”

KnowsSelfEyeVisionSeeingIdentitySurvivalMalesCriticalAssumptionChaptersLooking BackSelf KnowledgeEnteringRefusalDestructivenessSearch For Identity
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence-- words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.”

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Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go further, isn't there a difficulty of saying 'we'? You cannot speak for me. I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say 'I'; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.”

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Author:Adrienne Rich
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“When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding--to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.”

IfsKnowsWorldSoulMomentsGamesIndividualUnderstandingSawsTeacherHeardFeminismLike YouAuthorityMirrorsCollectivesVoidPsychicsThrustIndividual StrengthDisequilibrium
Author:Adrienne Rich
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