Words of plight, unity, fantasy, love, heartbreak, but overall empowerment echoed through a microphone and bounced off the walls of LC-155 at Thursday’s Tribute to Women Writers.
The event was hosted by the Modern Language department in conjunction with the English department with Dr. Linda Palumbo and Professor Froylan Cabuto at the helm.
Empowerment and community was felt by students and faculty alike who took up almost every seat in the teleconference center either waiting to hear or recite a poem of their own or a woman writer.
Among the staff there was History Professor Fernandez, who shared pieces of essays written by Flora Tristan, a socialist writer and activist.
English professor Elaine Folayan shared two poems, but not before sharing how she did not like Jamaica Kinkade’s ‘Girl’, whose ‘this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child’ line deafened the room.
“They tell me I write too much. I listen to the music of their fingers flatten queso into masa, make perfect circles. We are in our late twenties, still trying to figure out where we will go.”
Cynthia Guardado’s ‘Eight Women In a Kitchen y Una Poeta’ reads as a snapshot of a moment in life and a celebration of women congregating together in a kitchen to make pupusas.
Guardado, who is an English professor at Cerritos College, completed the first draft of the poem while she sat at the table she described in her poem in San Salvador, El Salvador.
“A lot of those lines came originally from the experience,” Guardado says.
A more somber experience was recited by Julie Davis, a history professor at Cerritos College who read a 1916 Helen Keller piece titled ‘Strike Against the War.’
“I really wanted to really highlight her role as somebody who advocated for American workers, I think that a lot of the issues, though they may not be as extreme as the time that she was writing, we still have […]in front of us as an American populace with respect to our workers, and we still are a nation that engages in war-like behavior,” Davis explained on why she chose this particular piece.
“I think that it’s still a very current and relevant conversation to be had about who goes to war and what is at stake,” Davis added.
In a brief moment that stunned the room, Modern Language Chair, Froylan Cabuto, recited Sor Juana Inez De La Cruz ‘Detente Sombra’ with soft prose.
“Im always fascinated by Sor Juana, especially because she is the first feminist of the Americas, and I’m talking about the whole continent and the fact that she brought it in the 1600s, where really women didn’t have any voice,” Cabuto voiced.
Jamie San Choi represented students with her recital of Emma Watson’s International Women’s Day speech.
“Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive, both men and women should feel free to be strong,” Jamie recited.
It is with this sensitivity and strength that words like the ones echoing through LC-155 come alive and ignite.
