For Those Of Us Who

I Write For Those Women Who Do Not Speak, For Those Who Do Not Have A Voice Because They Were So Terrified, Because We Are Taught To Respect Fear More Than Ourselves. We've Been Taught That Silence Would Save Us, But It Won't.

Nothing I Accept About Myself Can Be Used Against Me To Diminish Me. I Am Who I Am, Doing What I Came To Do, Acting Upon You Like A Drug Or A Chisel To Remind You Of Your Me-ness, As I Discover You In Myself.

We Must Constantly Encourage Ourselves And Each Other To Attempt The Heretical Actions That Our Dreams Imply And So Many Of Our Old Ideas Disparage.

Some Problems We Share As Women, Some We Do Not. You [white Women] Fear Your Children Will Grow Up To Join The Patriarchy And Testify Against You; We Fear Our Children Will Be Dragged From A Car And Shot Down In The Street, And You Will Turn Your Backs On The Reasons They Are Dying.

And This Is A Grave Responsibility, Projected From Within Each Of Us, Not To Settle For The Convenient, The Shoddy, The Conventionally Expected, Nor The Merely Safe.