Capitalism and Feminism

A movement/narrowly concerned with pregnancy and birth

which does not ask

questions

and demands

answers about the lives of children, the priorities of the government:

a movement/ in which individual families

rely on consumerism and educational

privilege

to supply their own children with good

nutrition, health care can,

while perceiving itself a progressive or alternative

exist only as a minor contradiction within a society most of whose

children grow up in poverty

and which places its highest priority on the technology of

war.

My decision to turn this quote from Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution into a poem was based on the malignancy ingrained in the questions of capitalism and sexism. This excerpt spoke to me heavily because Rich actively acknowledges the power of capitalism when addressing issues of a woman’s body and its relation to society. By integrating conversations of “consumerism” and “government” with topics such as “pregnancy”, Rich is encouraging a holistic approach when addressing 21st century feminism. When constructing this poem I thought heavily about Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story.” Her talk discusses how individuals are composed of complex identities and connections and to reduce someone to a single narrative is to take away their humanity. I believe that capitalism is an all-consuming force and to deny its power would be unjust and ultimately fail to dismantle any systems of oppression. Rich echoes Adichie’s sentiments in her TED talk by refusing to strip away conversations of capitalism when discussing motherhood and feminism.

Furthermore, my stylistic choice in how I turned this quote into a poem was based on words that I deemed the most dynamic. I choose to give words such as “questions,” “privilege,” and “war” their own lines in order to emphasize them. When reading this poem out loud the reader is forced to give intentional breaks and breaths dedicated to these three words. I this because I I believe these breaks force both the reader and the listener to reconcile with these words and think deeper about the meaning behind them.