Inspiring New Year Quotes

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Confidence Culture

In Confidence Culture, Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill argue that imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks rather than entrenched social injustices hold women back. Interrogating the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development, Orgad and Gill draw on Foucault’s notion of technologies of self to demonstrate how “confidence culture” demands of women near-constant introspection and vigilance in the service of self-improvement. They argue that while confidence messaging may feel good, it does not address structural and systemic oppression. Rather, confidence culture suggests that women—along with people of color, the disabled, and other marginalized groups—are responsible for their own conditions. Rejecting confidence culture’s remaking of feminism along individualistic and neoliberal lines, Orgad and Gill explore alternative articulations of feminism that go beyond the confidence imperative.

Blades of Grass in the Desert

Several years have passed since the old plantation-style mansion at 1324 Blessing Path was lovingly restored, but the mysterious old place is apparently still calling the shots. Years ago, when it was discovered that the house had supernatural tendencies, two retired ladies set out on a quest to determine its history. Tracing its lineage from central Texas to Charleston, South Carolina, they uncovered a love story worthy of comparison to Gone with the Wind and eventually realized that there were “plans” for the structure that had been set in place as far back as 1950. This time, however, events lead one of the ladies not to the east coast but to the deserts of west Texas where she befriends a beautiful, young woman from Guatemala. Wondering whether their meeting was serendipitous, Jamie returns to Sweet Grass Memories, the name given the House, and shares a handwritten letter with Ms. G that the young woman gave her the last time they spoke. The letter, together with a photograph of a lone boat on the shore of the Rio Grande, lead the two of them, Reid, Tracy, and the kids of the House, on another adventure, one that rivals any television docudrama. The story winds its way from the dry, blowing sand of west Texas, into Mexico, and finally returns to the estuaries and humidity of Charleston, South Carolina, and its indomitable Gullah people. People whose ancestors endured like blades of grass pushing through concrete; endured and sang songs about faith and hope as they journeyed toward freedom. Just like the Gullah peoples during the slave era, today many others endure. Walking or riding northward through deserts, they journey toward a different kind of freedom; freedom from devastating drought and hunger, and freedom to live again in places that are absent the perils associated with trying to survive where malevolence thrives.