Quotes About Empowerment

Even to declare that I'm writing for myself would still mean I'm writing to a part of me that wants to please white people. I didn't know how to escape it.

Myung Mi Kim was the first poet who said I didn't need to sound like a white poet nor did I have to "translate" my experiences so that they sounded accessible to a white audience. No other mentor afterwards was as emphatic about this idea as her.

Overhaul the tired ethnic narratives that have automated our identities; that have made our lives palatable to a white audience but removed them from our own lived realities—and stop spelling ourselves out in the alphabet given to us.

It was like Tobin had told her: they didn't matter. She never should have given them that much power.

Oh, why do I even care what other people think?

And being different? That turned out to the best part of all. I found that with a little creativity, and a lot of dedication, any difference can be turned into something amazing. Our differences are our superpowers.

And being different? That turned out to be the best part of all. I found that with a little creativity, and a lot of dedication, any difference can be turned into something amazing. Our differences are our superpowers

The drill sergeants learned that lavishly praising recruits who got it right worked better than abusing those who got it wrong. The women had been raised to please, Tracy Borum discovered,

Many men believe in the saying that educating women is like allowing the nose of the camel into the tent: eventually the beast will edge in and take up all the room inside.

the women began traveling to remote villages, distributing articles that argued not just against "honor" killings but also against forced marriages and the pernicious way gossip is used in small communities to control the behavior of women and girls.

Until Islam's articulate spokeswomen such as Rana Kabbani target their misguided coreligionists with the fervor they expend on outside critics, the grave mistake of conflating Islam with clitoridectomy and honor killings will continue. And much more importantly, so will the practices themselves, at the cost of so many Muslim women's health and happiness.

My mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother all told me it was right, that without it a woman wouldn't be able to control herself, that she would end up a prostitute," said Aset, a beautiful twenty-eight-year-old whose own genitals had been mutilated when she was about seven years old.

Save the Children, an organization whose research has proved repeatedly that money in women's hands benefits families much more than money flowing to men.

You must school your mind and not let your fears be your master.

I liked to be off by myself, away from the eyes of adults who always had some task or errand to demand of an unoccupied child.

Women, it says, "manufacture men and play a great role in guiding and educating the [new] generation. The

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Just as a lump of coal, under pressure, could become a diamond bit, Theo had learned to turn his anger into something he could use.

You were like a flame blown by the wind until it is almost extinguished. All I had to do was put the glass around you. And now, how you shine!

She must not speak in a delicate tone. This is from the Koran. Things begun with a few words will continue to other things.

Instead of idleness, vanity, or an intellect formed by the spoon-feeding of others, my girls have acquired energy, industry, and independence." ? Geraldine Brooks, March

Women without their own drivers could get around only at the whim of husbands and sons. Some

For these women, Hamas's view of women was laughable. And since they couldn't hear the appeal of such views themselves, they were deaf to the appeal they held for their students.

With this assertion, many mainstream Muslims wash their hands of the twin brutalities that shape the lives of perhaps a quarter of the women of Islam.