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2006 Grants Cycle Begins:
Letters of Intent postmarked by
March 1,2006
Proposals postmarked by
April 28, 2006

OH  BY LYNN MARTIN

WHAT IS A WOMAN IF SHE IS DEFINED BY
women? This was what I thought the women's
movement -was all about. In early consciousness
raising groups, we encouraged women to speak

up and speak out. Implicit in such encouragement '
’ was a promise to listen. Feminist presses sprang

into being. Poetry readings were ‘held in every-
town. We all had subscriptions to Ms. and, at
least, one other journal. ,

No doubt in the 60s feminism was my faith.

‘ I know I grabbed the books as fast'as they

were printed: Adrienne Rich,‘ Audre Lorde,
Paule Marshall, June Jordon, Toni Morrison,

Margaret Atwood. And those that were history

If my grandmother

. wasbusy, there

was always an aunt.
Each woman sang a
different soSng,“A love
for women, not just a
woman, was rocked
into my bones.

rediscovered: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anne
Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Bronte,
Zora Neale Hurston. By god, we were women and
we were going to “dream of a common language"
and save the world.

I listened to Anne Bradstreet:

I_ am obnoxious to each carping tongue

who says my hand a needle better fits,

a poet’s pen all scorn I should thus wrong

for such despite they cast on female wit.

If what I do prove well, it won't advance,

they’l_l say as sto’n, or else it was by chance.
Building on her anger and my oum, I spoke up ...

I was a child born, not into poverty, but
certainly into the working class. There never was
much money. What wealth we had was in family.
I grew up surrounded by women: aunts, cousins,
sisters, mothers, grandmothers. As a baby I was
passed from arm to arm. One of my first leamings
was, if one woman was too busy, go find another.
My grandmother held me in her lap. She sang
softly over my head. If she was busy, there was
always an aunt; another lap, another song. Each
woman sang a different song. A love for_women,
not just a woman, was rocked into my bones.

Out of this love, I became political at the age
of ten. By insisting, despite teasing by a boy
cousin, I could so talk to the birds. And by biting
one bully on the aim and then running like hell.
Living in a tenement, I identified with the many-
voiced laughter of the streets. But I saw my
destiny to be a wife and mother. I adopted two ‘

, children, gave birth to another. Our family was

Asian, Anglo and Afro. This was what it meant
to me to be a woman, to celebrate diversity. And
when women began to speak out, to write, to
march, I wasready to go. My inner process and
the Women’s Movement were in tune. I was ready
to seize the moment and demand equal pay, equal

; access to opporturiity, the right of every woman
' to be heard. Adrienne Rich put words to it. Cris

Williamson sang it. Audre Lorde ‘declared it. We
were going to change the worl d and we were

going to do it right now.

But I didn’tr.eally change my world until I
was in my 50s. It took me till then to go back to
the shelf, as Margaret Atwood put it, and take

' up the being I was before marriage, before kids. 
High on feminism, I decided to go it_ alone. I-lmm.-- ,_

1 ’evér‘th6u‘glit* a‘ 5'o—year:o1‘d‘woiiiod' 'i$v1io“iieéiii"t
had a paying job in over thirty years was going to
make it in the tight market of 1980 is beyond me. i
There is much you learn as a mother of kids, but
much you don’t. The business world is something
“over there,” ' and I hadn’t been listening. I

H’ had also neglected to note that the “common

language” was but a dream, and there was no real
community of women _out there to join. I leaped
into the working world, and have been struggling
ever since. Feminism as religion didn’t work.
Feminism as realism is what it is about today. I
don't know about you, but I still believe. Because
we women did change the world, and we didn’t. _
In the 21st century, We still struggle for
equal rights. (Remember the Equal Rights
Amendment?) We still struggle to have a voice.
(What we never imagined was a Phyllis Shlafly
or a Condoleezza Rice.) It has finally reached my
consciousness that what I first saw as my own
struggle was really a world wide struggle. The

gay rights movement is more than achieving the 

right to marry. It’s about_the right to re-define the
very concept of marriage. It’s about being our
own authentic self.

There is so much to do. Like Susan B. Anthony
we need to keep coming back over and over
again. Especially today. Diverting all the money
to war is another way to keep us looking the
wrong way. The anti-war movement is a civil
ri ts movement, is a feminist movement, is a
gay rights movement. It’s all the same. There isn't
anything else to do but keep on trying, one dream
at a time, to create a better world. It will never
be perfect, because we aren’t perfect, but it can
be better. Y

9 Lynn Martin is a published poet who lives in Brattleboro.