{"id":1172,"date":"2019-12-11T00:12:38","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T05:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2019-12-16T10:50:17","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T15:50:17","slug":"the-burden-of-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/mctague\/the-burden-of-education\/","title":{"rendered":"The Burden of Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Both Lorraine Bethel in \u201cWhat Chou Mean We, White Girl?\u201d, printed in 1979, and Charlotte Bunch in her 1985 essay \u201cGoing beyond Boundaries\u201d respond to this question of how to build community as they consider the burden of education often placed on Third World women. In Bethel\u2019s poem \u201cWhat Chou Mean We, White Girl?\u201d printed in conditions: five,<\/em> the speaker criticizes the \u201cso-called radical white lesbian \/ feminist(s)\u201d who invite her to their conferences and panels \u201cbecause they want to represent Third World women and lesbians \/ on their feminist criticism panel\u201d and as \u201cTHE BLACK \/ LESBIAN \/ FEMINIST \/ CRITIC\u201d she is \u201csuch a convenient package\u201d (8-9, 7, 10). The speaker shows how these white feminists have simplified and grouped together her intersectional identities, inviting one woman who must represent the diverse perspectives of many women. The speaker mimics white women who seem to say, \u201cDon\u2019t come as you are, \/ but as we\u2019d like you to be; our worst fantasy \/ primal nightmare, our best dream\u201d (31-32). Just like in Carrillo\u2019s \u201cAnd When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You,\u201d these white feminists do not accept Third World women outside of their picture frames, outside of their preconceived notions of what they should be.<\/p>\n

In her 1985 essay \u201cGoing beyond Boundaries,\u201d delivered six years after the publication of conditions: five,<\/em> Bunch echos this critism as a white feminist. Bunch, like Bethel, argues that women of color often have to explain their daily sufferings to white women who coldly treat them as living primary sources, not as fellow women. To ameliorate this problem, Bunch calls for the complete elimination of the terms \u201cThird World,\u201d \u201cdeveloped,\u201d and \u201cdeveloping,\u201d rejecting the \u201ccondescending notion that the Western industrialized world is \u2018developed\u2019\u201d which comes from \u201ca strictly industrialized interpretation of that word\u201d (Bunch, p. 151-152).<\/p>\n

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Women’s March in 1979 (Goodman).<\/p><\/div>\n

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Women’s March in 2019 (“2019 Boston”).<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1979, Third World women marched in Boston to protest the murders of Black women, clutching a sign that read \u201c3rd World Women, We Cannot Live Without Our Lives.\u201d Exactly forty years later, in 2019, another protest took place in Boston, and women and men of all ages and heritages marched together as part of the global Women\u2019s March. Even as feminist movements expand to include more people, I, a young white woman in 2019, continue to wrestle with two central questions. How can we, in the twenty-first century, learn about Third World Women\u2014and their diverse histories, heritages, and forms of resistance\u2014without tokenizing them? How can we speak about and remember the Feminist Poetry Movement in an inclusive way?<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/p>\n

Bethel, Lorraine. \u201cWhat Chou Mean We, White Girl?\u201d. conditions: five<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 5, 1979.<\/p>\n

Bunch, Charlotte. \u201cGoing beyond Boundaries.\u201d The American Women\u2019s Movement, 1945-2000, <\/em>edited by Nancy MacLean, Bedford\/ St. Martin\u2019s, 2009, p. 149-154.<\/p>\n

conditions: five,<\/em> vol. 1, no. 5, 1979.<\/p>\n

Goodman, Donna. \u201cThe Untold Side of Second Wave Feminism: A Multinational, Politically Diverse Movement.\u201d Liberation School,<\/em> 21 March 2019, https:\/\/liberationschool.org\/feminism-and-the-mass-movements-1960-1990\/. Accessed 10 December 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201c2019 Boston Women\u2019s March is Saturday, Jan. 19th.\u201d BosGuy.com,<\/em> 13 January 2019, https:\/\/bosguy.com\/2019\/01\/13\/2019-boston-womens-march\/. Accessed 10 December 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both Lorraine Bethel in \u201cWhat Chou Mean We, White Girl?\u201d, printed in 1979, and Charlotte Bunch in her 1985 essay \u201cGoing beyond Boundaries\u201d respond to this question of how to build community as they consider the burden of education often … 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-1172","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\/1172","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=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1504,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions\/1504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}