Women in Literature MMLA 2017—“Literatures from the Lockdown”
Women in Literature MMLA 2017—“Literatures from the Lockdown”
Thinking about this year’s MMLA theme, “Art and Activism,” led us to consider the ways in which women’s art and women’s activism have been “locked down.” Sometimes women’s art and women’s activism locks itself down; after all, Audre Lorde once proclaimed at an MLA conference, “What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable.” How, then, do we escape the lockdown? How do we empower even as we resist?