IMAGINE A WOMAN

Wangari Muta Maathai is a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She received her education in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica College and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman, and the first environmentalist, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.”

Angela Davis is an American political activist and retired professor from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was director of the university's Feminist Studies department. Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, popular music culture and social consciousness, and philosophy of punishment (women's jails and prisons). Davis is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish what it calls the prison-industrial complex. Davis was an activist during the Civil Rights Movement and a candidate for the U.S. Vice Presidency on the Communist Party ticket. Since leaving the Communist Party, she has identified herself as a democratic socialist. She was found innocent of murder in the August 1970 abduction and killing of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California.

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I read this a long time ago and kept it hanging on my refrigerator for my daughter and me to read every day so we didn't forget what it means to be true to ourselves, always.



Imagine a Woman

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is
a woman. A woman who honors her experience and
tells her stories. Who refuses to carry the sins of others
within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who believes she is good. A woman who
trusts and respects herself. Who listens to her needs and
desires, and meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who has acknowledged the past's influence
on the present. A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life. A woman who
exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf. Who refuses to
surrender except to her truest self and to her wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods. A woman who
imagines the divine in her image and likeness. Who designs
her own spirituality and allows it to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body. A woman who
believes her body is enough, just as it is. Who celebrates her
body and its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the face of the Goddess in her
own changing face. A woman who celebrates the accumulation of
her years and her wisdom. Who refuses to use precious energy
disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.
Patricia Lynn Reilly
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Maya Angelou is an American autobiographer and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adulthood experiences. The first, best-known, and most highly acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), focuses on the first seventeen years of her life, brought her international recognition, and was nominated for a National Book Award.

Arandhati Roy is an Indian writer (in English) and activist who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. She is also a writer of two screenplays and a number of collections of essays. Roy is a well-known activist for social and economic justice.

Winona LaDuke is a Native American activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer. In 1996 and 2000, she ran for vice president as the nominee of the United States Green Party, on a ticket headed by Ralph Nader. She is currently the Executive Director of both Honor the Earth and White Earth Land Recovery Project.