Risk, Courage, and Women: Contemporary Voices in Prose and Poetry

the real self

217 the real self Eric Liddell, the famed Scottish missionary and runner, equated faith to running a race, reflecting that the power to see the race to its end comes from within. Indeed, our greatest potential and confidence may emerge from putting one foot forward at a time to take life’s risks. In the following essays and poems, we read of the “truth-telling” self (Muskie, 2000), the real or inner self of women that allows them to be courageous one step at a time in the face of overwhelming obstacles. In “When I am Asked,” Valerie Bridgeman Davis delves into her reserves “To reclaim the stolen esteem / And broken spirit of my offspring,” pouring herself into raising strong black men amidst racism and social hostility. Bridgeman Davis knows that they are society’s future and wants her sons’ first response “to every adversity” to “be a straight back / And a stiffened will.” Similarly, Joan Loveridge-Sanbonmatsu faces negativity in raising “warrior ” sons. In her poems “Enroute From Japan” and “Two Warriors,”she writes about nurturing her sons in a world where prejudice abounds. “Prejudice, in an instant, / is perceived. / Prejudice, like the trailing jellyfish tentacle / stings like a sea wasp / injecting toxic, paralyzing threads into its victim.” LoveridgeSanbonmatsu knows, as Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, that “to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment,” and creates sons “strong enough to ward off blows.” Similarly looking inward for personal strength, Kim Barnes finds the river to be the source of her real self. “What the river takes, the river gives, and so it is with my life here. Each hour I spend with my feet near water, I feel more deeply rooted; the further I get away, the less sure I am of my place in the world.” At the same time she resents the power it has over her. “Like all seductions , it necessitates surrender.” When Barnes puts herself and her children in its dangerous path, she writes, “I felt suddenly and awfully alone, not because of the isolation, but because I was a woman where I should not be, having risked too much for the river.” It is then that she must find the power within herself to move them to safety. Kenneth Patton writes that “by the choices and acts of our lives, we create 218 Risk, Courage, and Women the person that we are and the faces that we wear.” We see this reflected in the women in Pat Mora’s poem, “Doña Feliciana,” and Janice Brazil’s “Faces.” Doña Feliciana is an old Mexican migrant woman without land or family. Yet, she brings a little cilantro with her because “even a little green helps in all this dust.” Faced with nothing, she finds a way to make a home; “My arms hurt from dragging / boards. My head ached from banging, / but I lifted my house up, made myself a roof.” The old woman in “Faces” hides “behind no mask / to shut out pain or darkened / streams of unrestrained emotion.” After a lifetime of living, she knows that “Your face is your power.” Like those in Mora’s and Brazil’s poems, the woman in Rosemary Catacalos’s poem “Swallow Wings” is also a survivor. But she too pulls herself up because “It ain’t nothin’ / ’bout lettin’ go a this life.” It is not some external force that sustains these women, but instead accepting who they are at the core of their being. In “A Heart to Run,” Valerie Bridgeman Davis learns that she has “too much firepower in the heart.” She is a novice marathon runner who has just finished running eight miles with friends when she has a heart attack. In “My Heart Beats for You,” she writes, “My heart saved my life / Its strength, its will turning back / An attack / Beat, beat / The power of life.” Within the week she has a procedure to repair her heart defect. Determined, Bridgeman Davis returns to training and races just two months later. In “Marathon,” she writes: “Mile 15 and the wall and dreams of / Finishing scare you / But you keep running , churning / To complete what you started.” As Liddell proclaimed, the power to finish the race comes from within. Next, we see the real selves appear in a Biblical trilogy. In “Eve,” Nanette Yavel paints a portrait of “Everywoman.” She is created “from a twisted root that lay broken on the...