Celebrating Adrienne Rich

When I was 16, I took my first class at the University of Pittsburgh–a feminist writing class taught by Sharon McDermott. The class changed my life at the time and introduced me to feminism in a way that has stayed with me since then. One of the authors we read was Adrienne Rich. Rich has written extensively from a feminist, anti-racist, anti-sexist perspective about sexuality, women, peace and war, art, etc. She wrote poetry, essays, politics, and she wrote about writing. In Sharon’s class, we read Rich’s essay called “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision”. In the essay, Rich writes,

“Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for us more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves.”

“We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us”

Rich pushes us to think about the power of writing and the process of writing and revision–the literal re-seeing of language and words. And in this ‘act of looking back’, and of ‘seeing with fresh eyes,’ we see the world anew.

And perhaps one of my favorite parts of the essay because of its relevance for the women’s movement, but also for any social movement…like changing consciousness about human/animal relations: 

“It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful. The awakening of dead or sleeping consciousness has already affected the lives of millions of women, even those who don’t know it yet. It is also affecting the lives of men, even those who deny its claims upon them. The argument will go on whether an oppressive economic class system is responsible for the op-pressive nature of male/female relations, or whether, in fact, patriarchy — the domination of males–is the original model of oppression on which all others are based. But in the last few years the women’s movement has drawn inescapable and illuminating connections between our sexual lives and our political institutions. The sleepwalkers are coming awake, and for the first time this awakening has a collective reality; it is no longer such a lonely thing to open one’s eyes.”

Adrienne Rich died yesterday at the age of 82 and the world lost a brilliant thinker, artist, and writer. The beauty of writing is that we have it to read over and over again long after the writer is gone. And for this we owe a debt of gratitude to Adrienne Rich. Every rereading and revisioning of Rich’s words reveals new insights about politics, art, social justice and profound awakening.

Follow