Tag: Patriarchy

Mirror Talk

Sarwa Azeez

Be yourself if you want to kill all demons inside your head. My therapist advises. Talk to yourself in the mirror. I look at my reflection, its mouth opens, wanting to start before me. But the voice is not mine. Yes. You heard it right. I am Miryam. The pretty Read more

Sarwa Azeez

Sarwa Azeez is a Kurdish poet, translator, and Fulbright scholar with an MA in English Literature at Leicester University and an MFA from Nebraska-Lincoln University. She is a Pushcart prize nominee and her debut poetry collection, Remote, was published in the UK by 4Word in 2019. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Parentheses Journal, Collateral Journal, Writing for A Woman's Voice, the other side of hope, Genocide Studies and Prevention Journal, Kurdish Center for Studies, Wingless Dreamer, and elsewhere. Sarwa's writing draws on her childhood memories of wartime Iraq, where she grew up reading by the flickering light of kerosene lanterns, and searches for the beauty in a war-torn world while seeking to define identity and confront issues of equal gender representation and violence in male-dominant communities. In what little free time she has, Sarwa applies her knowledge of English, Arabic, Kurdish, and Farsi by practicing the subtle art of translating poetry.

LEGISLATING SEX 

Katherine West

Teenagers in Texas can no longer get birth control on their own.  The logic of this escapes me just as it did when I was a teenager and my step-father stole my birth control pills out of my purse.  He did not want the shame of a pregnant teenage daughter, Read more

Katherine West

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective and Southwest Word Fiesta. New Verse News nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.

Amelia Bassano

Emma Wells

A mistress at thirteen. Shocking for you – now. Not so for me – then. Juliet was only thirteen when she met, fell in love, and all too hastily, married Romeo. Perhaps that’s where life and art merge? The cloudy yet wholesome translucency of writing from experience. It isn’t a Read more

Emma Wells

Emma is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry and prose published with various literary journals and magazines. She is currently writing her fifth novel. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 and her short story, ‘Virginia Creeper’, was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Recently, Emma won Dipity Literary Magazine’s 2024 Best of the Net Nominations for Fiction with a short story entitled ‘The Voice of a Wildling’. Her poem ‘Rose-Tainted is the winner of the poetry category, Discourse Literary Journal, February 2024 Issue.

Kissing the Patriarch Goodbye

Karin Swann-Rubenstein

It’s been over six years now, since I last spoke to my father: mid-summer, July 15th, 2014. I was in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he was lying on a gurney at a funeral home — dead as a doornail. To hide the incisions of his autopsy, the back Read more

Karin Swann-Rubenstein

Karin is a writer (poetry, essays, social commentary) entranced by the relationship between inner-work and social change. Inspired by the revelations in her own healing, she's come to see the de-humanizing impact of patriarchy on women, men and people of color. She envisions the emergence of more empowered women, more attuned, self-reflective men, and the dismantling, for the betterment of all, of the patriarchal gender binary. After decades of inquiry as a feminist, queer activist and encouraged by the growing movement of men 'wanting out' of the "Man Box," she ascribes to a humanism that re-awakens the deep feminine in us all, where the power in our all-too-human vulnerability connects us with greater sympathy and respect for all things inter-dependent and of this earth. She holds masters degrees in gender studies/communication, political philosophy, and psychotherapy and is a long-time student of The Diamond Approach. When not writing, she’s mom to twin, 10-year-old boys and works with her husband on their retreat center in the Anderson Valley, CA. She lives with her family in Berkeley, CA. Another world is not only possible. She is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. - Arundhati Roy

Destroying Patriarchy with its Gift

Sara Easterly

Why am I so triggered by the Kavanaugh news? Why can’t I pull myself away from it all? “Did someone ever sexually assault you?” my husband worries over tea this morning after I wake up at 4:16 am, feeling helpless and unable to sleep. “No,” I say. “But I know Read more

Sara Easterly

Sara Easterly lives in the Pacific Northwest. She has published various articles and essays on motherhood, as well as a children’s book, and is currently working on a mother-daughter memoir. Previously Sara led one of the largest chapters of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and she was recognized as 2009 SCBWI Member of the Year. Visit her at www.saraeasterly.com