{"id":1143,"date":"2019-12-11T00:14:58","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T05:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/?p=1143"},"modified":"2019-12-11T00:14:58","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T05:14:58","slug":"before-i-dare-reach-out-and-touch-your-hand-up-from-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/mctague\/before-i-dare-reach-out-and-touch-your-hand-up-from-under\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBefore I Dare Reach Out and Touch Your Hand\u201d: Up From Under"},"content":{"rendered":"

Up From Under<\/em>, a feminist periodical \u201cby, for, and about women,\u201d published five times between 1970 and 1973, traces the entrance of Third World narratives into the larger Feminist Poetry Movement. Over time, Up From Under<\/em> included more information about Third World women, though these articles and poems remain scarce. In all five publications, there are only four poems about Third World women; only one of these poems is written by a woman of color. As the white feminist editors of Up From Under<\/em> included more prose and poetry about Vietnamese and Black women, they often misinterpreted and manipulated these narratives.<\/p>\n

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Robin Morgan’s poems, “Guerrilla Woman” and “The Vigil,” published in Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 1.<\/p><\/div>\n

Two Robin Morgan poems, boldly addressed \u201cTo the Women of Vietnam,\u201d lie in the centerfold of Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 1, published in 1970. In \u201cGuerrilla Woman,\u201d a Vietnamese woman waits for her lover to return from the war while she digs ditches \u201cfor the French when they march this path, \/ beds for the French to sleep in, \/ graves in the land for the enemy of the land\u201d (lines 4-5, 21-24). In the distance, she hears \u201cthe whimpering of children left at home\u201d as her hands become \u201cblood-lotioned, ice-gloved\u201d (5, 12). Similarly, in \u201cThe Vigil,\u201d a young pregnant woman waits expectantly as \u201cher husband hunts different prey, in the hills,\u201d fighting in the Vietnam War (4). Hoping for his return, seeing him only \u201cbehind closed eyes,\u201d she gives birth and finally realizes that her husband will never return home from the war that has killed him (20). In both poems, written by a white woman, Vietnamese women become living victims whose physical bodies bear the pain of a devastating war. Morgan\u2019s poems are the only mention of the Vietnam War and of non-American women in vol. 1, no. 1 of Up From Under.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The next two publications of Up From Under<\/em> feature more writing about the Vietnam War, including Betty Thomas Mayhen\u2019s poem \u201cTo My Black Sisters,\u201d printed in Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 3, in 1971. In \u201cTo My Black Sisters,\u201d the speaker, a white American mother, addresses Black mothers whose sons are also fighting in the Vietnam War, simply stating: \u201cOur sons are dying together \/ Not here where you and I were always divided, \/ but in some distant place against another colored people\u201d (1-3). To the speaker, white and Black women, and their children, have always been divided in America, and she acknowledges her own role in this division, admitting that \u201cin my whiteness I looked away from your Black womanhood\u201d (9-10). Finally, she wonders: \u201cHow many crimes and corpses must I view to rid myself \/ of a whiteness not human, \/ Before I dare reach out and touch your hand\u201d (17-19). As this speaker comes to terms with her own racism, her own mistreatment of Black women and their children, so does Up From Under<\/em>. Although this poem is written by a white woman, it represents a shift in Up From Under<\/em> as the editors try to \u201creach out and touch your hand\u201d\u2014and unite with American women of color (19).<\/p>\n

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“no title poem,” formatted next to an article and an image in Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 4.<\/p><\/div>\n

In Ericka Huggins\u2019s \u201cno title poem,\u201d printed in vol. 1, no. 4 of Up From Under<\/em> in 1971, the speaker writes about the world \u201cif you\u2019re black and poor and female \/ like my mama \/ like me and my sisters\u201d\u2014a world that is \u201cready to rape you \/ of everything\u201d (28-30, 4-5). Huggins writes this poem from the Niantic Prison in 1970, and her speaker also realizes that \u201cprison can make you look back on a lifetime \/ of bitterness\u2026\u201d (11-12). This poem appears in a section dedicated to Black women, wedged between essays \u201cWho I Am\u201d and \u201cFrom One Generation to Another.\u201d The works, grouped together because they are about Black women, demonstrate a larger trend of Up From Under<\/em>. In each publication, the editors include exactly two, four, or six pages on women of color, including Vietnamese and Black women; clearly, these women are deemed \u201cother\u201d enough to constitute their own sections, separate from the rest of the writing about white women. This formula contributes to the tokenization of women of color throughout all of Up From Under<\/em>. In this publication, just like the Feminist Poetry Movement, American white women too often minimized women of color and their poetic voices.<\/p>\n

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The cover of Up From Under,<\/em> vol. 1, no. 1, published in 1970.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The cover of Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 5, published in 1973. This cover features images of both white and Third World women, demonstrating the progression of Up From Under.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

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Sources:<\/p>\n

Huggins, Ericka. \u201cno title poem.\u201d Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 4, 1971.<\/p>\n

Mayhen, Betty Thomas. \u201cTo My Black Sisters.\u201d Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 3, January 1971.<\/p>\n

Morgan, Robin. \u201cGuerrilla Woman.\u201d Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 1, May 1970.<\/p>\n

Morgan, Robin. \u201cThe Vigil.\u201d Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 1, May 1970.<\/p>\n

Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 1, May 1970.<\/p>\n

Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 2, August 1970.<\/p>\n

Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 3, January 1971.<\/p>\n

Up From Under<\/em>,\u00a0vol. 1, no. 4, 1971.<\/p>\n

Up From Under<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 5, 1973.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up From Under, a feminist periodical \u201cby, for, and about women,\u201d published five times between 1970 and 1973, traces the entrance of Third World narratives into the larger Feminist Poetry Movement. Over time, Up From Under included more information about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2245,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mctague"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}