Gender Theory and Praxis in Poetry
MALD ’23 Christine Munson wrote a series of five poems for her finale assignment for P214: Gender Theory and Praxis with Prof. Kimberly Theidon and GAIA PhD candidate Dipali Anumol.
Inspired by the content and concepts covered in the course, Christine’s poems touch on themes of self-care, intersectional feminism, slow violence, power dynamics, and the gaps in history left by racism, sexism, and prejudice.
The five poems, included below, are titled: “Justice Bell”; “A Haiku to Dismantle the Women’s Liberation Movement”; “The Slow Burn of Slow Violence”; “Power”; and “All the Names We Do Not Know”.
I. Justice Bell
Ring the bell sister
Ring it loud
And when they tell you to stop
Ring it harder
Ring it for those before you
Whose struggle handed you the rope
Ring it for those coming
Who will wake to its sound filling the air
And ring it for you
Who came and saw and knew the injustice
Who fought for change
Who cried for loss
Who mourned for the wronged
Who taught the unknowing
Ring it for you sister
And I will ring it too
II. A Haiku to Dismantle the Women’s Liberation Movement
“Implicit in this simplistic definition of women’s liberation is a dismissal of race and class as factors that, in conjunction with sexism, determine the extent to which an individual will be discriminated against, exploited, or oppressed” – bell hooks
Emulating them
Straight, white and cis-gendered men
Keeps them at the top
III. The Slow Burn of a Slow Violence
“I think of globalization like a light which shines brighter and brighter on a few people and the rest are in darkness, wiped out. They simply can’t be seen. Once you get used to not seeing something, then, slowly, it’s no longer possible to see it” – Arundhati Roy
It billows
Slowly
A cloud of black smoke
It burns
Lightly
Looming in the background
It fills the lungs of those it touches
Slows movement
Labors breath
The same fire that warms others
Shines a light for their path
The glow of bright futures
Engulfs more left exposed to the smoke
The slow burn
Of a slow violence
IV. Power
It looms
Silent
Natural in its surrounding
It changes
Shifts
Hidden in the shadows
It wraps you
Squeezing
The snake and its prey
You cannot run
You cannot fight
You cannot cry injustice
All the things you want to say and do are gone now
Survival is all you have
V. All the Names We Do Not Know
https://www.nativehope.org/en-us/understanding-the-issue-of-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women
They slip
Unknown
Through the cracks of a society
Designed to ignore them
They go
Unimportant
In the eyes of men and women
Who do not recognize them
They pass
Unacknowledged
By the books used
To teach our youth
Their mark unsung
Their fear passed over
Their pain silenced
There they go
Falling away from memory
Into the black night of history