The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the struggle of workers and mothers against societal and personal pressures.
Adrienne Rich emphasizes the disparity between collective labor movements and the isolation faced by mothers in their homes. While workers can organize and protest, mothers often feel constrained by emotional ties to their children, leading to personal turmoil or mental exhaustion. The metaphor of 'wildcat strikes' suggests that their protests against these pressures often manifest in breakdowns rather than organized action.
In practice
During a women's rights rally, this quote can be used to highlight the dual challenges faced by mothers and workers.
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'”
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
I believe that one day the world will judge the witch hunt against homosexuals just as harshly as it judges the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.
I do a lot of lectures on survival. I always say you can't change what happened, so have a little wallow, feel very sorry for yourself, and then get up and move forward. You can't change what happened.
I call upon those who love freedom to stand with us now. Together we shall achieve victory.
There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.
Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.
Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power - not because they don't see it, but because they see it and they don't want it to exist.
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