Let’s choose to be happy

Angela Weld Grimke lived from 1880-1958. She was the daughter of a white abolitionist mother and a black father who was the vice-president of the NAACP. Grimke studied at Harvard. A book of her poems wasn’t published until 1991.

Fragment

I am the woman with the black black skin
I am the laughing woman with the black black face
I am living in the cellars and in every crowded place
I am toiling just to eat
In the cold and in the heat
And I laugh
I am the laughing woman who’s forgotten how to weep
I am the laughing woman who’s afraid to go to sleep. –1930

Adrienne Rich was born in 1929 She was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated from Radcliffe College. Her poetry underwent a change as she outgrew her interest in traditional poetric scture. She became increasingly interested in feminism and a peotry of community.

1948 : Jews

a mother”s letter torn open
In a college mailroom:
…Some of them will be
the most brilliant, fascinating
you’ll ever meet
but don’t get taken up by any clique
trying to claim you.

–Marry out, like your father
she didn’t write She wrote for wrote
against him

It was a burden for anyone
to be fascinating, brilliant
after the six million
Never mind just coming home
and trying to get some sleep
like and ordinary person —1990

Myrtle Beach, SC Photograph taken and copyrighted 2003

Seven Sisters Mountain twilight, Black Mountain.
Photograph copyrighted by Barbara Mattio