Wednesday, September 23, 2015

By Dr. Karen Swallow Prior

“Write about being a woman,” she said. So I will. It means something, this being a woman. It is something bodily, yet beyond biology. There is something of earth in it, and something heavenly, too. It is something that can be understood, yet is not easily captured in words. It brings forth a sense of sisterhood among the women I’ve met in places across the world, from Malawi to Morocco, from Guatemala to Ireland, from Puerto Rico to England, from Tennessee to Chicago. And among the women I’ve never met, too, except through their words: Teresa, Flannery, Edith, Emily, Charlotte, Jane, Hannah, Julian, and so many more. It means something that transcends age, time, place, race, class, and creed. Yet, there are as many ways to be a woman as there are women. When I think about being a woman, I think most about the women I come from.

I think about my grandmother, my mother’s mother, strong, stoic, and brusque, with an edge about her, both familiar and strange. She was never like other people’s grandmothers. She was not a cookie-baking, cheek-pinching, ooh-aahing Grandma. She showed more affection for her goats, chickens, and hothouse flowers than she did to her children and grandchildren. But though she didn’t stoop to enter our world, we were always welcome to join her in hers. My grandmother resented her whole life the fact she wasn’t born a man. This is something I could but couldn’t understand…

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