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Me, The Feminist, The Woman
Manana Monareng
South AfricaGALLERYCONVERSATION
Personally, I feel (without taking anything from achievements of women before us) that the challenges we face are much more that...
My submission is a poem I wrote in 2003 called "Me, the Feminist, the Woman". I feel it answers the question of how women today need to acknowledge that they are where they are because women who came before us had to sacrifices a lot and get us the freedom we have today. With this piece my objective was truly to be outspoken about our challenges, achievements, and all that comes with being us - the new generation of women.
I talk to you now, standing on the shoulders
of my feminine grandparents.
Their souls keep me drifting away and rising above
the daily insults of the everyday life on mother earth.

My woman ability to give birth stands not
as an exclusive form of fulfilment,
but as a symbol of my creative perseverance.
My children are heirs of the female line of descent,
and it is in this sense that I have always believed
that there are no illegitimate children.

Don't start now to marvel and fall in love with
what I am saying to you,
For these words have been preached silently
by those on whose shoulders I stand.
On the other side, I do comprehend your sudden
growing passion within you as I go on.
Many decades ago, my grandmother
could never stand here like I am
To concientise female souls
about the currently publicly showcased
and continuously secretly felt joys of womanhood.

You my sister, my friend, my mother, myself
are the lucky feminine souls
For these shoulders beneath my feet
have instilled courage in me
To stand here and say what they went
as far as dreaming to verbalise.
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