COLLEGE FEMINISMS: Divergence

By Brianna Suslovic

 

You took me to my first protest when I was in

the first grade,

Mom,

a peaceful affair

outside the federal building downtown

where the cops glared

and we chalked the sidewalk,

shouting anti-war chants

and holding hands.

 

It was you who fed me

the word feminist,

and I swallowed it whole,

letting it linger on my tongue,

sitting delicious as I took it in

because

it felt more fitting

than any prior label had,

for my six-year-old self.

 

I still have the women’s history books

gifted to me

from a decade past;

I basked in the glory of

femmes before me,

those women who dared to

resist,

taking on singlehood

just as you had,

protesting

just as we had.

 

You shaped the high school girl

who chopped off her hair

and thanked the boy who called her

“Communist”

in English class,

letting her thrive instead of

squelching

her desires for a romanticized

activist experience.

 

Now, we sit

across from each other

in the dining room

still separated by 40 years or so

and a dinner table,

our feminisms divergent

yet linked,

and while we speak of the same issues,

we do so in different languages.

 

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Brianna Suslovic is a junior at Harvard College studying Social Anthropology and Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality. Her passions include acoustic music, reproductive justice, and intersectional activism. She hails from Syracuse, New York, with grand plans to remain in academia and in the struggle.