If One Woman told the Truth about
Her life the World would Split open²
Women’s Wealth, Thought & Labor
Have Cemented the Stones of Every
Monument man has reared to Liberty³
A Woman knows the only Wrong is to Hurt
Others – and that the meaning of Life is Love⁴
The Rising of Women is the Rising of the Race⁵
There’s No Mark on the wall to Measure the precise
Height of Women – no yard measures that one can
Lay against the Qualities of a good Mother or the
Devotion of a Daughter or Fidelity of a Sister⁶
Feminist: a Man or Woman who says there’s
A Problem with Gender and we must Fix it⁷
Women as man’s Equal is unspeakably
More Valuable than women as Inferior,
Both as a Moral and Intellectual being⁸
Who shall Dis-Inter the Girls to Love
The Women they were to Become?⁹
Women are Bright Stars whose
Light Penetrates Dark Clouds¹⁰
¹ Laura Hershey, And She Will Also Want to Draw the Water
² Muriel Rukeyser, Käthe Kollwitz
³ Susan B. Anthony, Declaration of Rights for Women
⁴ Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto
⁵ James Oppenheim, Bread and Roses
⁶ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
⁷ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists
⁸ Sarah Grimke, Letter on the Equality of Sexes
⁹ Audre Lorde, Suffer the Children
¹⁰ Huda Sha’arawi, Women Are Bright Stars