“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”
This is the first sentence of “The S.C.U.M. Manifesto” by Valerie Solanas and might be one of my favorite first sentences ever. You gotta admit, it packs a punch.
I’ve been thinking a lot about anger lately, specifically women’s rage. This year has certainly amplified my own anger over systemic inequalities globally and in our country and culture. My mind easily turns little moments into representations or symbols of enormous unfairness and then I’m furious. This was the year I finally called the upstairs neighbor an asshole to his face (so justified), and he threatened my husband (not in charge of me) with a lawyer (yes, he’s one of those men, the kind who only sees things their way and cares about getting their way and not the other people along the way). So now I only give my best glare, though I’m absolutely burning with violent rage inside. Consequently, I’ve been thinking about anger, our shared anger, how we express it (or are expected to), and what we can do about it.
I fantasize about being wielding a baseball bat like Beyoncé. Who wouldn’t? This is an artistically perfect expression of rage. Notice the joy is being so unfettered.
I wonder if her yellow dress is a deliberate reference to Artemesia’s painting or a coincidence, or maybe anger has a color and it is bright, burning yellow.
“It will come as absolutely no surprise that women report being angrier and in more sustained ways and with more intensity than men. Some of that comes from the fact that we’re socialized to ruminate, to keep it to ourselves and mull it over. But we also have to find socially palatable ways to express the intensity of emotion that we have and the awareness that it brings of our precarity.”
Soraya Chemaly is the author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, which is one of three good books that came out around the time of the 2016 election and the #MeToo movement.
Chemaly says in her talk, “we have an anger of hope and we see it every single day in the resistant anger of women and marginalized people. It’s related to compassion and empathy and love, and we should recognize that anger as well.” Anger is a response to a world that fails us; it is a reaction that has the potential to bring change to that world.
This idea of hope and anger as intertwined reminded me of this Grace Paley poem, which I first read in poet and teacher Devin Kelly’s own newsletter, which I highly recommend (follow the link to sign up for a weekly poem and reflection).
Chemaly ends her talk with "[Anger] exactly shows how seriously we take ourselves, and we expect other people to take us seriously as well.” I feel this is true, not just for feminist anger, but racial anger, class anger.
In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks writes:
“In this capitalist culture, feminism and feminist theory are fast becoming a commodity that only the privileged can afford. This process of commodification is disrupted and subverted when as feminist activists we affirm our commitment to a politicized revolutionary feminist movement that has as its central agenda the transformation of society.”
A myth I often hear in the media and politics that absolutely enrages me is that people demanding equity (Black lives, for example) will take opportunity or power or comfort away from those who currently have it (often richer white people). This capitalistic view implicity sees the world as one of limited resources that are to be possessed, rather than collaborative, cooperative, coexistence. I hate such a lack of imagination. It is an acceptance of a status quo that marginalizes and represses some voices while over-amplifying others instead of imagining a world that validates the existence—the epistemological experiences and feelings and yes, anger—of others.
How can our anger transform into hope and love for people different from ourselves, into societal change?
Having spent a lot of my adult life in the company of young people, I think also of their anger at inheriting this fucked up and hurting world from adults who don’t take their anger about it seriously. Youth activists give me hope.
I’ve spent a year listening to deeply passionate discussion among educators who see their complicity in the education system and they are met with apathy or hollow gestures from administrators, so when I came across this line in Assata Shakur’s autobiography, it rang true:
“The schools we go to are reflections of the society that created them. Nobody is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”
Those readers who know me well know that a decade of classroom teaching left me disillusioned and disgusted with the formal educational system. Coming to terms with this was and is extremely painful and enraging. I’ve taught in both Dorchester and the Boston area’s most expensive private schools—the inequity is extreme. I continue to work within the educational system but on my own terms—I often struggle with how to do so in a way I believe in. Schools still enrage me with their hierarchical inefficiencies, their structural racism, how they grind down teachers’ idealism, how they teach rote tasks and formulaic responses over critical thinking which might cause students to question the system in which they exist.
Freire has always been a philosophical influence of mine, and I used to sign my teacher email with this quote from Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
Mad Max: Fury Road is one of my favorite films. I got it for my father so I can watch it with him every time I visit, and we geek out about the art direction. The hero, Furiosa, getting her name from a fury particular to women, guides a group of wives fleeing the warlord to the “green place,” an ecological hope shepherded by women. Needless to say, it is a major creative influence in my book-length manuscript.
Every time I watch film, the more I admire how it was constructed. Did you know that the sound designers, inspired by Moby Dick, incorporated whale sounds into the final crash of the war rig making the machine animal? Also, check out this anatomy of a scene from the New York Times. I was also interested in their recent oral history of making the film—how making art drains something deep from inside you.
Ultimately, they find green place has become a wasteland like the rest of the earth, water hoarded by a warlord and released in limited amounts to desperate masses. Though they don’t recognize the green place at first, it is pictured below in the only blue-tinged scene in the film, denoting mourning but also a cooling balm from the heat and burning hues of the rest of the film, a place of lingering hope. Writing this Notions & Notes has helped me understand the intimate connection between hope and anger—that validating and engaging anger opens the door for change, is humanizing and hopeful. The movie ends with the toppling of the patriarchy and the release of water for ecological and human renewal.
Brendan McCarthy’s original concept art is also fascinating. Because it took so long to actually make the movie, these images are early imaginings of the characters and their world:
Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger edited by Lilly Dancyger is another of those recent-ish books about women’s anger, and while I have yet to get my hands on it, I loved this essay which is included in the collection by Marissa Corbel excerpted in Guernica.
“But crying is our first language; it is the original sound. Before we know words and their meanings, before we know consonants from vowels, a book from a ball. Before the before, on the first exhale, we cry. Lidia Yuknavitch says that crying is articulate, it is language. Then we have narrowed the language of the body, the ways we speak without words. Not all tears are sadness. Not all rage is yelling. Sometimes the wires between one thing and another get crossed, synaptic fizzles. Sometimes it comes out as a sigh, or a thud, or a whimper. Sometimes it looks like tears and tastes like fury.”
What are you waiting for? Go read the rest of that essay!
I’m including this recipe because it’s a favorite snack-instead-of-lunch and book club contribution, and all that ginger and red pepper packs a punch so it felt justifiably on theme.
Spicey Date Spread
2 1/2 cups pitted, chopped dates (dates don’t get peeled)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 cups water
1 tablespoon lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh grated ginger (ginger gets peeled)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
scant 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon sea salt
Place a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add chopped dates, lemon juice, water, lemon zest, ginger, and spices to the pan. Simmer until almost all of the water is evaporated. The dates will begin to break down, and the simmering mixture will resemble a very pudding. This step takes about 30 minutes.
This comes from Joy the Baker. I always skip her last step of pureeing to make it smooth, but I do follow her suggestion for eating it with warm naan.
This Morning the Small Bird Brought a Message from the Other Side
By Aracelis Girmay
I would not call it fear
or the absence of fear
that I woke with, but worry,
this morning when I rose
up from the bed, & saw,
with clear seeing, for the first time,
that my chest was a small, red cup,
or bird in my hand, somehow
thirsty, its injury
made me panic for it
& I carried it with me
not knowing what to do
with its small speech, the way
it said your name.
I want to know what to do
with the dead things we carry.
If I were to wake
another morning,
maybe tomorrow,
with the red thing in my chest
or hand, what would
I do? Will I?
& the bird, would it attempt,
to cross over, would it come again
from the body's realm
of animals & claws?
Would it risk its life
again to give me the message
of your name?
Would I trust my mouth
to resuscitate the messenger, small bird,
knowing I could kill it
with my teeth?
It’s been nice hearing from some of you that you’re appreciating this newsletter. I’m enjoying making it, too. If you know someone who might like this mix of stuff, please share it