This is a verse from Beyoncé's song "Pretty Hurts".
Today, just the girls were in ELA with Ms. Gunter because the boys were having a conversation with Helen Rossi. Instead of working on things for Night or learning more about the Holocaust, we read, annotated, and discussed three different poems that all were about one topic: being a woman. The three poems we looked at were "homage to my hips", "Hanging Fire", and "My Mother's Closet".
First, we read "homage to my hips". This poem was written by Lucille Clifton. This is a humorous poem to read, but there was a huge meaning behind it. This poem was Lucille talking about how her hips are big and need space and also how her hips cannot be enslaved or held back. The girls all pretty much came to a consensus and agreed that her hips represented herself. She is comfortable with herself and she does not want to hide herself.
Next, we moved on to "Hanging Fire". This was written by Audre Lorde. This poem was a bit difficult to understand. There was repetition of death and the same line in every stanza, "and momma's in the bedroom with the door closed". After many minutes of discussing what this poem could possibly mean, Ms. Gunter showed us her paper and the things that she annotated and when she did, things started to make sense. This poem is about a fourteen-year-old girl who is experiencing what all girls who are fourteen or around fourteen experience. The anxiety, the acne, crushes, oily and dry skin, learning how to dance, graduating, always being busy, being seen as less than a man, braces, what to wear the next day, growing up, and most of all, the hormones. This poem it written to sympathize with girls who are going straight from a girl to a woman and do not feel comfortable in their own skin.
Lastly, we read "My Mother's Closet". This was written by Kate Buckley. This poem was sad to read. A young girl is going through her mother's closet and looking at everything from her mom's dresses to her mom's shoes. The poem ends with her dad coming to find her and giving her a sad smile. He then proceeds to take her away from the closet and shuts the door. Of course, all of us knew what had happened here. The mother was dead and the girl just wanted to find out more about who her mother was. Pictures were not enough, so the girl had to examine her mother's personal items to understand her mother. We discussed how the dad was probably sad because his daughter had no female role model anymore. She was not going to learn how to be a woman from her dad.
We then ended the class by listening to Beyoncé's song "Pretty Hurts".
I really enjoyed today's class. I noticed that some of the girls who do not talk very much in normal classes spoke up today and that made me really happy. I liked hearing their thoughts and perspectives on what we read.