"Downtown Women" - Julia Stein

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jjhunter and alee_grrl

Reprinted from Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings, Janet Zandy ed., p. 103, by permission of Ms. Stein. See bottom of post for additional context she wished included.
==

Downtown Women
Julia Stein

I come from Bessie Abramowitz,
                   the Russian Jewish factory girl;
                   not Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
                   the Wasp judge's daughter;
           from the shtetl in Russia,
                   when the matchmaker
                   came to make a marriage for me
                   after marrying off my four older sisters
                   I said, "Not on your life,"
                   and came over the sea to America.

I come from downtown women,
                   not uptown ladies.

I come from sewing buttons on pants in the sweatshop,
                   piecework rates,
                   complaining to the boss,
                   getting blacklisted;
                   and when the uptown ladies came downtown
                   with their charity baskets,
                   I threw their baskets at them,
                   told them, "Go to hell,"
            and  I came back to get another shit job
                   under a phony name.

I come from downtown women,
                   not uptown ladies.

( Read more... )

--
Julia Stein edited the just published book Every Day is an Act of Resistance: Selected Poems of Carol Tarlen by the brilliant S.F. working class poet Carol Tarlen who died in 2004. Stein also edited the Walking Through a River of Fire: 100 Years of Triangle Fire Poetry. Previously she has published four books of poetry: Under the Ladder to Heaven, Desert Soldiers, Shulamith, and Walker Woman. Her fifth book of poetry What Were They Like? Poems on the Iraq and Afghan Wars will be published February, 2013. Stein’s grandmother worked in a garment sweatshop and her great-aunt was an union organizer of garment and cafeteria workers.

For more information regarding the Carol Tarlen book Ms. Stein edited, check out the publisher's press release: Mongrel Empire Press Announces Every Day is An Act of Resistance by Carol Tarlen.