For Strong Women
A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing “Boris Godunov.”
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn’t mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren’t you feminine, why aren’t
you soft, why aren’t you quiet, why aren’t you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do somehing others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you’re so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.
–Marge Piercy
Like many women, I have had a problematic and complex relationship with what it means to be strong. My ancestors were Mormon pioneers, and they kept journals full of strong woman stories. Your children die. Your shoes fall apart. Your handcart fails you. Your health deteriorates. (“It’s only a flesh wound!” in Monty Python terminology…) No matter what happens, the edict remains the same: Keep walking. And the second law is like unto it: Do not whine.
Growing up, my sister Rebecca had a nickname for me: Mister Barlow. I was a very physical kid, with a headstrong contrarian nature. I hated the rank sexism of the task assigned in our large family, so of course I refused the girly jobs inside the house in favor of the heavy lifting outdoors. That proclivity became a habit, and the habit became a personality trait that I had to unlearn later in life, slowly.
Thank you Marge Piercy for such a crazyass poem, one with a message I know all too well.
A crazyass poem that describes the struggle of women to be both strong and submissive; the duality required to be woman, which makes you both vital and admonished for being indispensable.
I love Sojourner Truth’s most famous speech, adapted into poetic form by Erlene Stetson:
1797-1883
Aint I a woman?
A found poem from Sojourner Truth’s most famous speech, adapted into poetic form by Erlene Stetson
That man over there say
a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles
or gives me a best place. . .
And ain’t I a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
and no man could head me. . .
And ain’t I a woman?
I could work as much
and eat as much as a man–
when I could get to it–
and bear the lash as well
and ain’t I a woman?
I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother’s grief
none but Jesus heard me. . .
and ain’t I a woman?
that little man in black there say
a woman can’t have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasn’t a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.
Truth Links
19CWWW Truth page
A Biography of Truth, from Stamp on Black History collection.
The Truth Memorial statue page
From a Women’s Studies collection
(The following is quoted from an editor’s note in the anthology where this poem is found)
“There is no exact copy of this speech given at the Women’s rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1852. The speech is adapted to the poetic format by Erelene Stetson from the copy found in Sojurner, God’s Faithful Pilgrim by Arthur Huff Fauset, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938).”
The poem and note, along with other great women’s poems, can be found in Ain’t I a Woman: A Book of Women’s Poetry from Around The World, Illona Linthwaite, Editor. New York: Wing Books, 1993, page 129.
Page created July 14, 1998
Last update: May 2003
I am in no way endorsing any religion, but the “straight to the heart” approach with which she addresses the issues of the place of women in the world is breathtakingly matter of fact.
And ain’t I a woman?
GREAT comment Diana. Thanks so much for this addendum.
I love both of these. The first hits home especailly hard.
Thanks mom.