Hiatus

By Niki Esko

Kamusta Folks,

I have been on a short hiatus due to a crazy Fall 08 school semester and 2nd Trimester (si, I am with child! An energetic, kicking, and punching child!). Fortunately, I am on a relatively long break from school. This has allowed me to spend a good amount of time with pamilya and other loved ones, my writing, and books. Although I do not have an interview post ready for yall tonight, I do have some quotes and excerpts from a few of my new favorite/treasured books (&, as with all my posts, please read in such a way that your throat and lips vibrate. Ahem, i.e., aloud):

from Woman At Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi,

"It seemed to me as though I reached out in the dark and took her hand, or that she reached out in the dark and took my hand. The sudden contact made my body shiver with a pain so deep that it was almost like pleasure, or a pleasure so deep that it bordered on pain. It was a remote pleasure, buried in such far away depths that it seemed to have arisen a very long time ago, longer than the length of memory, older than the remembered years of life's journey. Something no sooner remembered than forgotten, as if it has happened just once before, only to be lost for all time, or as though it had never happened at all."-- p. 33

"Revolutionary men with principles were not really different from the rest. They used their cleverness to get, in return for principles, what other men buy with their money. Revolution for them is like sex for us. Something to be abused. Something to be sold."-- p. 88

from Love Works, by Janice Mirikitani,


from Amar En Los Anos De Guerra (Loving in the War Years), by Cherrie Moraga

"Introduccion

Sueno

My lover and I are in a prison camp together.
We are in love in wartime.

A young soldier working as a guard has befriended us.
We ask him honestly-- the truth-- are we going to die?

He answers, yes, it's almost certain. I contemplate escaping. Ask him to help us. He blanches. That is impossible, he says. I regret asking him, fearing recriminations.

I see the forest through the fence on my right. I think, the place between the trees-- I could burrow through there-- toward freedom? Two of us would surely be spotted. One of us has a slim chance. I think of leaving my lover, imprisoned. But immediately I understand that we me must, at all costs, remain with each other. Even unto death. That it is our being together that makes the pain, even our dying, human.

Loving in the war years."-- p. i

"In this country, lesbianism is a poverty-- as is being brown, as is being a woman, as is being just plain poor. The danger lies in ranking the oppressions. The danger lies in failing to acknowledge the specificity of the oppression. The danger lies in attempting to deal with oppression purely from a theoretical base. Without an emotional, heartfelt grappling with the source of our own oppression, without naming the enemy within ourselves and outside of us, no authentic, non-hierarchical connection among oppressed groups can take place."-- pp. 52-53

These are all words created and put forth by strong womyn of color. Each writes with unmatched passion that takes on a thirsty search for freedom using self-examination and the stories of others. The intensity of each book will leave you wanting more; and from there, I hope you search inward and exhale what you find into the world, in long, liberating breaths.

& I will leave you with the words of J-Mirikitani, in hopes that readers of this blog will soon search vehemently for a pen and a piece of paper:

"I believe the poet has a responsibility to warn of dangers to our spirit... If poetry connects and humanizes and restores our souls, the power of our words must be written across the chalkboards of schools, the pages of history and literature, and the electronic pages of the future... If the power of the word raises us from the slumber of complacency and warns of the powerful hatred perpetrated against people who are labeled as "different"; and if it awakens our passion for justice, we must read and write as if our lives depended upon it. "-- excerpt from the Inaugural Address 'The Power of Poetry,' pp. 14-16



[if you are thinking of purchasing these books, please check your local bookstores or abebooks.com instead of using Amazon or Borders or other pure evils. Salamat!]