Women Authors

"We stopped digging deep long ago in this uncertain field of ours-yours because all kinds of junk can turn up: human bones, horses’ heads, unexploded mines"

"It takes a lifetime to understand that long ago the grown-ups lied to you, that in fact nothing living, neither a flower, nor a rabbit, nor a person, nor a country, can, in fact, be had: they can only be destroyed, which is the one way to confirm they have been possessed."

"Halyna Kruk has found a language to ingest violence and horror — blunt and eloquent, witty and aphoristic, her language is layered and electric as it takes on the daily dislocations of Russia’s barbaric war on Ukraine. Idiosyncratic and universal, these poems bring us necessary news as only poetry can."

"Everyone who receives power involuntarily feels omnipotent…superior to all others who fantasize about freedom. But what do we know about the dependencies of those who are themselves omnipotent?"

"All attempts to bring writers and artists, even feminists, from both sides together have failed. And why? Because the Israelis feel superior, rather than equal to us. That is one reason. The other is that they don't feel connected to the Third World in any way. They are connected with the first or the Western world. And third, they are deeply racist. So I ask myself, how can a person grow up in such an atmosphere without being infected? It isn't easy to deal with them...The truth is that there is a complete divide between us and them, geographically, politically, and culturally. The only Israelis we Palestinians have any contact with are the soldiers. That is the reality."

"And people think to be a princess or prince, that it's about money. But nobody talks about duty, education, or leading by example. Things like that."

"(As a feminist author, do you feel that you have a special responsibility?) Well, the fact that I am a feminist author with a feminist vision of the world does of course make my literature very critical-and the criticism is targeted at both my own society and Israel. I can see that both societies are oppressive in different ways. The reality in which I find myself at any given time is extremely complex and that means that it is very difficult for me to write without watching every step I make. I cannot allow myself the luxury that other writers may have elsewhere; I cannot just rattle off something for no other reason than to satisfy my own feelings and dreams. I really feel that I represent my people, despite my critical views on our culture and many of its beliefs and values. So yes, I do feel a responsibility to change some of those beliefs and values. My position means that I am constantly in conflict with our traditional leaders, not just political, but also religious and social leaders.""

"Everything that happens in our life is because you meet someone who gives you the road. Because we need each other. You give me hands, tomorrow I give those hands to someone else."

"(What are the greatest obstacles to equality for women?) There are many, many obstacles in our way. The Israeli occupation, naturally. Our own traditional leadership. Poverty and illiteracy. There is also a dangerous lack of real communication and friendship with the Western world. The West views us with suspicion and we are suspicious of them. I think that communication between different cultures is essential to development. I myself have studied in the West, I have lived and worked there and can, with my hand on my heart, say that I have no exaggerated dreams about Western culture. But I am absolutely convinced that the Western world has a lot to teach us. I only wish that you were not so biased, as then the world would be a better place. At least for us!"

"Israelis are always minor characters in my books. Why? Because in reality we only come into contact with soldiers and other representatives of the occupation. We have minimal contact with Israeli civilians. How can I write about somebody or something I don't really know? Despite my best intentions and feelings for them as fellow human beings, I can't capture them as full-rounded figures. After all, what is literature? It reflects life, society, and the people who live there. Not in the same way that a photograph does, of course, since the author's personal feelings and opinions will be blended in. An author also strives to transcend reality and make it more beautiful and valuable. You could say that I have one obligation in my writing and that is to reflect the lives of people living under the occupation. My literature is highly political, as our lives are dominated by politics. But it is not dry or rigid, as you might easily imagine. My characters are full of life. They are flesh and blood. You can feel them, smell them, and touch them."

"My wish today is for the royal houses around the world to join my foundation, and help me to help others."

"Our culture does not mean that much to me. It is not sacred. I am very critical of it. It has to change. We cannot develop unless we are strong enough to face our own weakness, head on. And Islam, well, Islam is a part of our culture."

"I am a committed writer or maybe I am an obsessed writer. I am obsessed by occupation because I live it. I witness the atrocities of occupation. I witness and live through those atrocities and still am living them. My characters represent what I experience, what I feel, what I think and believe. My characters, in a way, are me. I am them, whether in this novel or the previous ones or after."

"I usually start by choosing the plot. According to that plot, I choose my characters. When I choose my characters, it becomes easy to follow them wherever they go and live with them or be them. I do not choose characters if I am not familiar with their backgrounds. I select them from real life. If they are historical characters, I study their biographies very well and then let my imagination take care of the details. This is the game of writing fiction."

"I was nothing and became something. Others can learn from that, especially women. Is it worth trying? I think it is."

"(Who are some of the writers you enjoy reading and re-reading?) SK: Dostoevsky and Simone De Beauvoir. Since I was a young teenager, I started reading them and I never stopped...Those two writers affected me deeply. But this is not the whole truth. The truth, the real truth, is that the writer, any writer, is made by all the readings she or he makes. We are influenced not just by one or two or ten writers. We are influenced by everything we read. Whether we are aware of this fact or not makes no difference. We read, we devour. We digest what we read and grow. Just like food. Without food we never grow. Without reading we never write."

"On the whole, the situation for Palestinian women today is just as it was. There have been no real changes, though there are of course more educated women, more female doctors, university lecturers, artists, and writers. But they come from the elite classes and live in a completely different world from the masses. The truth is that the Islamist movement has had a great influence on the masses over the past 30 years, and has robbed women of many of the few small victories that we had achieved. So what do we need? First and foremost, we need better political leadership, a leadership that takes women seriously and introduces laws that entail that women are treated as equals. Personally, I am working for liberation and human rights for all. Despite the many setbacks, I still believe that I have had a certain influence. I was the first feminist in the Arab world to write about women's issues in a literary form. I have had some influence on educated women, but I have not had much influence on men-and it is men who dominate society here, at all levels."

"Because you are Black, you are blue, you are crocodile, it doesn't matter — we need people to give a hand to help others."

"I think that readers of novels usually read for enjoyment and a little inspiration and knowledge. Readers of novels, I think, are not skeptical like those who read works of social sciences or history. They already know that what they are reading is fiction despite the fact that, at times, that fiction might have elements of truth in it. Even when that fiction is realistic, they know that the reality they are reading is not 100% real. It is a reality that is seen through the eyes of the novelist or created by the novelist. And this is what I consider bliss because it gives me, and gives other novelists, an open space where we can play with reality, or have fun with reality, or ignore reality altogether."

"When I published my first novel, I was not so clear about what I feel or believe. Through the years, more than 40 years, I developed as a writer, as a feminist, and as a deeply politicized and humanized person. Thanks to my patience and will. Through the years I learned and learned, and I am still learning."

"Alfonsina Storni, considered to be a subversive, a radical for Argentina's bourgeois...we see that Storni's poems both in image and meaning are more traditional than Gabriela Mistral's"

"Just a few years ago, one could easily identify the women in all of Latin America who stood out in literature. Names like Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni, Juana de Ibarború, Delmira Agustini, Claudia Lars, not to mention the greatest of them all, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz..."

"Unas veces mis versos han nacido Del ideal. Otras del corazón y de la angustia En tempestad. Otras de algunas sed como divina Que pide hablar. Pero otras muchas, hombres, los ha escrito Mi vanidad. Soy, como todos, una pobre mezcla De lo divino al fin y lo bestial."

"Alfonsina Storni of Argentina...wrote scathing feminist poems."

"Tiemblo, como las luces Tiemblo sobre las aguas. Tiemblo como en los ojos Suelen temblar las lágrimas. Tiemblo como en las carnes Sabe temblar el alma."

"la luna me ha dicho Las tres viejas palabras: “Muerte, amor y misterio ...”"

"At the turn of the century, a legendary group of women poets emerged, including Delmira Agustini, Alfonsina Storni, and Gabriela Mistral. Their work caused scandal and outrage but ultimately opened the way for other women to explore their experience in a woman's voice."

"Sí, yo me muevo, vivo, me equivoco; Agua que corre y se entremezcla, siento El vértigo feroz del movimiento: Huelo las selvas, tierra nueva toco. Sí, yo me muevo, voy buscando acaso Soles, auroras, tempestad y olvido. ¿Qué haces allí misérrimo y pulido? Eres la piedra a cuyo lado paso."

"I am that woman who lives with eyes open"

"Other poets wrote of the special connective qualities of sound...Alfonsina Storni finds in her own body "wells of sounds/... where the spoken word/and unspoken word/echo"..."

"My project is to rewrite the palestinian history through the eyes of women."

"(about Fadwa Tuqan) one of the most important poets of Palestine. She wrote a book that is like the bible of the palestinian feminist movement. When she was 12 years old a boy threw flowers on her. Her brother saw it, and it was a big crisis for her family. They told her ”You will stay in the house until you die.” Her brother Ibrahim Toquan was one of the best poets in Palestine at the time. He didn’t let her out of the house, but he taught her to write. After 20 years of house arrest she left the house. She was a rebel, and she established the poetry of love and loneliness in Palestine."

"I’m interested in finding the relation between war and the human being. The beauty of the small pleasures in life, subtle things."

"I believe the image is what can unite the world."

"Three cities run in my veins: Jerusalem, which I consider to be the place of my soul’s identity and existence; Jericho, the city that colors my heart and my passion; and Hebron, which I believe is the source of my creative imagination and my personal archive of popular folk tales, like those about Al-Shater Hassan."

"If you look for them, you can find hero’s everywhere, in ordinary people."

"Raquel Jodorowsky's poems, in form as well as content, have had an enduring impact."

"I remember her as both compact and graceful, shorter than me but with contagious energy. She had long dark hair and eyes that seemed backlit by a magical knowing. Having traveled from Peru, she brought with her its tenuous Andean air and wailing reed pipes. Vivacious and determined, she filled a room with vibrant power. Her poetry captivated us all."

"Generally, a revolution isn't enough. For me, it's changing one chaos for another. The important thing is to know that which from this moment is to be constructed."

"Raquel was also clearly accustomed to being a lone woman among men. But she operated on a different strata, not because of her gender but because her lifestyle and goals situated her beyond all social constraints. When she read her work, the air turned electric. We listened in awe."

"The Nadaistas are a miracle. In many ways they are fighters. I've never seen a whole nation living the exaltation of poetry as if it were a political party. After my reading, I tried to save myself from the Cali effusion and I retreated to my dark room in the hotel. Success frightened me. Or the noise of the crowds. (1964)"

"I'm writing a prologue for the Ajy Tojen like nothing ever read in literature. (1964)"

"Another of Raquel's letters included a few lines that continue to resonate with me. She wrote: "You can't imagine, my brother, how much I've thought of our children. In all they have yet to touch, create and do. There is space, I say this from my heart, to reconstruct the world." Today Raquel is long gone, and I am thinking not of our children or grandchildren but of my two young great-grandchildren. Is there still space to reconstruct the world? It doesn't feel like it. And yet I believe that the spirit that palpitates in Raquel's work urges that reconstruction even more now than it did then. And that poetry and art remain our best resistance to the horrors that besiege us."

"Long live the thieves! They don't make a lie of their lives in this wormy society. They are what they are. Sincere in their disgrace. Working with them I've learnt the importance of loyalty and honor."

"We think of these people as primitive, uneducated, crude. But bringing myself a bit closer to their lives, I felt with emotion their capacity for kindness which they radiate, because they contain it, towards any stranger. Every civilized-intelligent person, whom I have known, tends towards evil, coldness, distrust of friend. Every civilized-intelligent person, seated one step above the rest, perhaps in order to spit down on them and shout; "because I am intelligent" -with the right to everything, above everyone. I've come to the conclusion, after briefly touching these high villages without aspirations, that intelligence is not one of the human values I respect. It's inhuman. Especially since those gifted with super doses of cerebral juice can't seem to live in peace with each other. They isolate themselves and retreat from a reality they insist on showing their back. There I found men who escape all definition. Perhaps "pure" is the poor word best fitting. I feel not that "I've arrived" in a marvelous world, but that "I've left" the inclement garbage of the city. (1963)"

"There is space, I say this from my heart, to reconstruct the world. (September 1963)"

"I was four thousand feet high. And more. In the heart of stone of the Andes. The open mouth of the earth surprised me, with its deep color. Like one of her fruits, the coffee bean...A difficult earth, only a bit of earth stretched over the sleeping eye of a volcano. One day she awakes, yawns and swallows an entire village with its men, its screams and its trees. (September 1963)"

"Another day the poor inhabitants lift themselves from the ruins and right there begin to reconstruct the roads; children without shoes, but with joy on their shoulders, return to carry the future. (September 1963)"

"In yet another poem, "Chewing" she writes: "This is the first time on earth for me / but I've been in other mouths before and my / heart has beaten in another tongue." And later, in an untitled poem, she describes herself: "Raquel maker of useless poems, says: / I want to regain my dignity / in the poorest spot on earth / dressed in a song to write a song / that doesn't pretend to amuse, honor or impress..." This work is a cry against social hypocrisy, entitlement, consumerism, complacency, ostentation and false idols. Without following party lines or using political jargon, poets such as Raquel honor values necessary to effecting positive social change."

"100 painters engraving their dreams on skin"