fromthemouthofmoi

That bully, that foul language spewing misogynist. That person can be a woman. A woman with such a powerful hurt and hate that she lashes out at the very thing that she can not be. She is a child. A child desecrated before Moira was born. That woman seems to be out of control. She is filled with rage so big and consuming that everything she touches gets a lashing. From the inanimate to the breathing. She would never see it this way but sometimes she is a racist. Racism is not always directed at the person claiming racism. That woman prefers the small, and the voiceless; the lame and the lost. How else does one feed a dragon? Surely not with those capable of flight. That woman has a hurt so deep that there is not enough life left in her to figure out the source of her  fire breath. That woman is to be pitied. That woman, if she is lucky will one day be utterly alone, left with nothing but herself. With nothing but the dead silence that can never be heard when you're yelling. T...

I have been watching episodes of The Honeymooners and what struck me for the first time was how strong a character Alice, Ralph Kramden's wife, was. She stands up for herself and tongue lashes Ralph every time he needs an ass kicking, which is practically every episode.  Every time he uses the phrases: "Bang! Zoom!" or "To the moon, Alice" he is saying it in response to her standing her ground. Every time he thinks she is behaving, like a bitch, he threatens her with those phrases. This, in part, is one of the inspirations behind this post. That and two emails I received in the last three days. I am the luckiest woman in the world. Last Thursday, during the Language Exchange Group which is held in my home, one of the students came to teach a Spanish class. I have structured the group in such a way, fashioned after my own progressive experiences with education, so that everyone teaches and no sole person is the source of information. Benjamin arrived and gave a...

The following essay was written in response to an online comment about sexual abuse. It is a difficult topic to say the least. In keeping with my ongoing fascination with how race and colour play out in the world, I began to think of my own abuse, in conjunction to my academic studies: how Whiteness and its power plays out in literature and attempting to understand how this same relationship has  inadvertently played out in my own life. First came sleeplessness. My earliest memories are of insomnia. Then came physical torture in the form of being wrapped and pinned into sheets while she jabbed my fingers with pins and needles attempting to rid me of the pus infecting my fingers. Somewhere in this time I climbed to the top of a sewing machine to glance in a mirror and saw, with shock, that I did not look like this blond haired, blue eyed woman that called herself my mother. Me? I had cotton candy brown hair and golden brown skin.  As my body developed prematurely, the...