Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Excavation Of Silenced Voices: (Re)Visiting Menka Shivdasani’S Frazil Through The Modern Feminist Discourse Of Indian Writing In English, Rangnath Thakur, Binod Mishra

Journal of International Women's Studies

The postmodernist phase of Indian English writing is characterized by the voices of many strong women expressing a feminist exploration of alternative discourses in women’s writing which are distinguished from the patriarchal framework of literary discourse. Along with Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, Imtiaz Dharkar, and Eunice de Souza, Menka Shivdasani is an active voice in contemporary Indian English poetry. Shivdasani is a prolific poet who has written poetry on various social, cultural, religious, and personal issues. Her four poetry collections include Nirvana at Ten Rupees (1990), Stet (2001), Safe House (2015), and Frazil (2018). Through her poetry, she has endeavored …

Unraveling Milk And Honey: Women’S Voice, Patriarchy, And Sexuality, Renidia Audinia Siva, Ida Rosida, Muhammad Azwar

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article discusses patriarchy and sexuality portrayed in Milk and Honey; a poetry collection written by Canadian author Rupi Kaur. Kaur is an amazing poet, artist, and performer who touches on trauma, feminism, migration, love, and loss in her works. Milk and Honey is a unique book of poetry as it combines written poetry with line art images. The collection is split into four chapters: “the hurting,” “the loving,” “the breaking,” and “the healing.” This research aims to show how the illustrations that appear alongside the poems have amplified the speaker’s voice in response to patriarchy and sexuality. This study …

Who Are You?, Luma Balaa

Journal of International Women's Studies

On August 4, 2020, Lebanon witnessed a second Hiroshima-like explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate. It killed and injured thousands of people, destroying most of Beirut. Compounding Lebanon’s misery, the coronavirus has taken its toll, as in the rest of the world, with thousands of deaths. There are no more vacant hospital beds and not enough medical supplies. For the last two years, Lebanon has been experiencing economic and political instability. The country is badly in debt and the banks have gone bankrupt and confiscated people’s life savings. The Lebanese Lira is pegged to the dollar and two years …

Famished: On Finishing Hunger By Roxane Gay, Amber Moore

Journal of International Women's Studies

This poem was written in response to Roxane Gay’s extraordinary new memoir Hunger: A memoir of (my) body (2017), which explores her experience(s) with fatness and living with memories of sexual trauma. In reading this memoir, I was struck by Gay’s unflinching confrontation of the violence she endured and current lived experiences, but also, how she uses her vulnerability as a site for resistance. After reading this book in one sitting, I was moved to respond; as such, my offering is the following piece where I aim to capture some of my immediate ruminations after reading the final lines.

Make America Wait Again, Kim Petrovic

Journal of International Women's Studies

As a means of redirecting my own personal grief that stemmed from Hillary Rodham Clinton's loss to Donald J. Trump in the most recent presidential election, I penned the following prose during the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 as Trump gave his victory speech. Like many Americans who voted in the 2016 Presidential Election, I support the right to vote for one's choice of presidential candidate; however, I am not alone in my concerns about the current presidential administration. Not only are Trump's attempts to silence the media and the right to freedom of speech cause for alarm, …

Poems, Kimberly Zittel

Journal of International Women's Studies

Four poems by Kimberly Zittel:

• Symbiosis
• On Sane Restoring
• Perception
• Cathedral of the Pines

Poems, Melita Schaum

Journal of International Women's Studies

Four poems by Melita Schaum:

• Six White Horses
• Pilot of Ponycarts
• Orbits
• Lizzie

Poems, Ranjini Thaver

Journal of International Women's Studies

Five poems by Ranjini Thaver:

• Fish for Thought
• The Prodigal Poor
• Ode to My Sister
• Paper Dolls at Graduation
• Genesis

The two poems on poverty are intimately related to my emotional [first hand] and intellectual [second-hand] experiences with poverty. As a poor child growing up in apartheid South Africa, I agonized over the inability of affluent men and women of all races to understand the beauty and dignity of the poor despite our outer appearance. Now that I am educated and affluent I understand emotionally why this was so. At the intellectual level most well-meaning scholars and activists respond to …

Medusa, Andrea Nicki

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Hurting, Burning, Pilar Greenwood

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Race, Gender And Performance In Grace Nichols’S The Fat Black Woman’S Poems, Maite Escudero

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Article:

In a world of diverse cultures and societal beliefs, marginalized groups often share common experiences. Recurrent themes in the literature of black peoples include anti-imperialism, racism, sexism, exile, ‘cultural schizophrenia’, language, otherness and home to ancestors, just to name a few. Yet, there is no single black voice: black writing can come from everywhere in the world – America, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and Britain. As a result, an individual may become torn between conflicting expressions by others within the same cultural group. What is at issue here is the recognition of extraordinary variation of subjective positions …

Poems, Elizabeth Brownell Balestrieri

Journal of International Women's Studies

Two poems by Elizabeth Brownell Balestrieri

• For My Sisters
• The Beating

Maternal Instinct, Tara Pearson

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Poetry, Donna J. G. Lee

Journal of International Women's Studies

Two poems by Donna J. G. Lee:

• Afternoon in Paleó Fáliron
• Up the Mountain

Using Imagination To Create New Roles: Diane Wakoski’S Poetry, Nancy Bunge

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Poems, Catherine Daly

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Father's Kitchen, Elisabeth Kuhn

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Two Poems, Zenobia Chan

Journal of International Women's Studies

Two Poems by Zenobia Chan

• a bowl of beef balls rice noodle soup
• God please keep my parents alive

Liberation Women, Melise Huggins

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Three Poems, Biljana D. Obradovic

Journal of International Women's Studies

Three Poems by Biljana D. Obradovic

• Update: January Appointment Postponed
• I’ve Been Here Before
• Safe in the US of A

Three Poems, Mary Kennan Herbert

Journal of International Women's Studies

Poems by Mary Kennan Herbert:

• Trying To Make Sense of Motherhood
• Weekend In The Woods
• Hot Dog

India Sutra, Susan Hawthorne

Journal of International Women's Studies

The complete “India Sutra” appears in The Butterfly Effect by Susan Hawthorne (Spinifex Press, 2005).

Body And The Text/Body Of The Text In Mina Loy’S Songs To Joannes, Lucia Pietroiusti

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay advances a close reading of Mina Loy’s Songs to Joannes, a sequence of poems dedicated to her failed relationship with the futurist Giovanni Papini and published in 1917. Through a close analysis of the typographical complexities by which Songs to Joannes is characterized, I attempt to draw explicit connections between Loy’s radical approach to physical existence and sexual activity in the poems, and her equally radical departure from the conventions of poetic form. In the systematic tension between form and content, then, I illuminate the ways in which Loy’s poetry redefines the familiar concept of the ‘body …

Confessing The Secrets Of Others: Pascale Petit’S Poetic Employment Of Latin American Cultures And The Mexican Artist, Frida Kahlo, Zoë Brigley

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay works to review the poetry of the Welsh-French writer Pascale Petit through the lens of recent theoretical scholarship relating to women, violence, and confession. More specifically, through a detailed analysis of two of her collections, The Zoo Father (2001) and The Wounded Deer (2005), I examine the ways in which Petit attempts to extricate confessional poetry from the stereotype of self-indulgent, ‘awful’ femininity outlined by Deryn Rees-Jones in Consorting with Angels (2005). It is my view that by recapitulating stories of women and violence in a variety of new contexts, Petit is able to reconfigure the politics of …

Framing Masculinity In The Poetry Of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Margaret Garry Burke

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper examines how the contemporary Irish poet, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, is destabilizing traditional notions of the masculine and feminine. Female Irish writers have been suppressed and silenced by a strong patriarchal society and it is interesting to study how Ni Dhomhnaill uses vivid masculine imagery to delineate new boundaries within the institutionalized male/female construction. The two works that I explore, “Nude” and “A God Shows Up,” represent her complex journey toward a strong feminine voice.