Home / Quotes / Quote by Elana Dykewomon

Quote by Elana Dykewomon

“I was strong and tough enough and charming. / How else is a fat Jew lesbian poet gonna get by? / Listening to the radio, staying home, staying alone, like / they mean us to. / Who means you to be left out? / Who don't?”

Quote by Elana Dykewomon

Author

Elana Dykewomon

Elana Dykewomon is an American author born on October 11, 1949. Her works primarily focus on the LGBTQ+ community, with a particular emphasis on black women. Dykewomon is known for her profound social commentary and exploration of gender, race, and sexual orientation. more

You May Also Like

“I got a flash of ... what it means, now, 'you can't be too rich or too thin.' How well it works, will keep on working, because the vast majority of women will never be thin. Thin enough. How well the hope of class mobility keeps every mother dieting, and handing the diets down to her daughter, hoping the daughter may do even better. When you combine this with the fact that many non-white peoples tend to be heavier than white folks, dieting becomes a tool not only in enforcing class but in encouraging assimilation.”

Wells May Mean Enough Facts Mother Women White Class Rich Daughter Tools Weight Majority Folks Diets Flash Assimilation Dieting Mobility

Author:Elana Dykewomon

“the fear of fat works ... because it's being manipulated in us to enforce class divisions, racisms, womyn-hatred. And we give it the room to work because it's so close to us, it's our own bodies, that we don't see it as coming from outside ourselves, we don't name it for the weapon it is.”

Giving Body Names Rooms Class Weapons Racism Hatred Weight Discrimination Fats Division

Author:Elana Dykewomon

“We were made to believe / our faces betrayed us. / Our bodies were loud / with yellow / screaming flesh / needing to be silenced / behind barbed wire.”

World Believe Made War Body Faces Behinds Racism Flesh Loud War Of The Worlds Bigotry Yellow World War Ii World War I Betrayed Wire Barbed Wire

Book:We, the Dangerous: New and Selected Poems

Source: We, the Dangerous: New and Selected Poems

“I am iron butterfly ... / I am she/we / of flesh / and iron / and silk wings, / healing, flying / into a gentle blue sky.”

Healing Sky Confidence Blue Wings Flesh Flying Gentle Iron Butterfly Silk Blue Sky

Author:Janice Mirikitani

“The biographer's real business - if it is not too arrogant to say so - is simply this: to bring the dead to life.”

Ifs Real Arrogant Biographers

Author:Iris Origo

“Behind each biography there should always be a rich treasury of unformulated knowledge, a tapestry that has not been unrolled.”

Should Behinds Rich Biographies Treasury Tapestry

Author:Iris Origo

“while it is certainly the biographer's business to describe the foibles, passions and idiosyncrasies which make his subject a person, his work will be very meagre if these individual traits are not also seen as part of a universal drama - for each man's life is also the story of Everyman.”

Ifs Men Persons Stories Life Is Passion Individual Subjects Drama Universal Traits Biographers Idiosyncrasies Foibles Everyman

Author:Iris Origo

“[On writing biography:] If you wish to see a person you must not start by seeing through him.”

Ifs Writing Persons Wish Seeing Biographies

Book:A Need to Testify

Source: A Need to Testify

“I do not think that one is likely to write a good biography unless one feels some sympathy with its subject.”

Thinking Feels Writing Subjects Biographies

Author:Iris Origo

“[On writing biography:] ... every human life is at once so complex and so simple, so perplexing and so clear, so superficial and so profound, that any attempt to present it as a unified, consistent whole, to enclose it within a rigid frame, inevitably tempts one to cheat or to falsify.”

Writing Humans Whole Life Is Simple Clear Profound Complexes Human Life Consistent Cheat Superficial Biographies Unified

Author:Iris Origo