It's impossible to write about Native life without humor-that's how people maintain sanity.
Louise ErdrichRead
Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don't know how strong until we are pushing out our babies. We are too often treated like babies having babies when we should be in training, like acolytes, novices to high priestesshood, like serious applicants for the space program.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Women possess immense strength, often unrecognized until they face significant challenges like childbirth.
In this quote, Louise Erdrich emphasizes the incredible strength and resilience of women, particularly in the context of motherhood and childbirth. She suggests that society often underestimates women's capabilities and treats them as inexperienced or fragile, when in fact they are undergoing profound and powerful experiences that require great fortitude and courage. The comparison to training for a serious and demanding task highlights the seriousness of the journey women embark on during motherhood.
Themes
StrengthWomenMotherhoodResilienceCourage
In practice
Example use cases
In a women's empowerment event highlighting the challenges of motherhood.
More from Louise Erdrich
All quotes →It was just enough to sit there without words.
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Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.
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The world tips away when we look into our children's faces.
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...which causes me to wonder, my own purpose on so many days as humble as the spider's, what is beautiful that I make? What is elegant? What feeds the world?
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Her mind was present because she was always gone. Her hands were filled because they grasped the meaning of empty. Life was simple. Her husband returned and she served him with indifferent patience this time. When he asked what had happened to her heat for him, she gestured to the west. The sun was setting. The sky was a body of fire.
Louise ErdrichRead
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