Look Again: Nella Larsen and Qiu Jin
Look Again: Portraits of Daring Women by Julie Lapping Rivera is an homage to exceptional, pioneering women working across centuries. In a series of hand-carved, woodcut and collage prints, Leverett-based artist Julie Rivera (American, b. 1956) highlights the lives and achievements of women who defied the status quo. Each print is accompanied by a poem, written specifically for the series, by local and international women poets.
Look Again is sponsored by the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts
Quicksand, published in 1928, mirrored aspects of the author’s own life. Nella Larsen (1891 – 1964), a biracial American novelist, developed an interest in literature and art during the Harlem Renaissance. Through different stories, Larsen represented the mixed-race experience of straddling two worlds—eschewing racial stereotypes—and explored subject matter such as sexuality, identity, and love. A trained nurse, Larsen assisted in the curation of the New York Public Library’s first exhibition of African American artists. Her interest lay in the depiction of the Black experience, often wrestling with complicated social dynamics and centering resilience in her narratives.
Meteorology
for Nella
by Tamara J. Madison
A pale sky swallows a dark cloud,
spits
and
I am
conceived never
white
bright
black
“down”
Dane
Indian
Caribbean
American
enough never
writer
woman
fighter
white enough
never.
Dixie’s contradiction:
sin without contrition,
yellow never gold,
silver never sterling,
the coveted lining?
never, only thinning shell
veined with fractures, cracks,
quake my bones,
Tamara J. Madison tamarajmadison.com 2
fever the marrow,
never fitting, never splitting
always shorn, torn,
never passing
always contrasting
the criteria.
Behold me:
the eternally stifled, toiling
beneath a battered horizon,
the flanking gray,
neither cloud nor sky, though
brewing morass asunder,
thunder holding its breath,
lightning poised with
clenched teeth,
bruised the skin
of the wind,
the cacophonous quiet, kept
never calm,
storm perfect.
At 28 years old, Qiu Jin (1875 – 1907) left her husband and two children in China to set sail for Japan. There, she immersed herself in feminist ideology. Reflecting on this time in her poetry, Qiu wrote, “Unbinding my feet, I clean out a thousand years of poison / With heated heart arouse all women’s spirits.” By the time Qiu returned to China in 1906, she was determined to advance women’s causes and overthrow the Qing government. At age 31, she was beheaded by Imperial forces, becoming a martyr. Known as China’s “Joan of Arc,” Qiu inspired many to forsake gendered traditions and participate in liberatory politics for all.
Our Women’s World
by Melody S. Gee
Dual double my grandmother
and Qui Jin died one
hundred years apart
Sun and moon have no light left, earth is dark,
born girls bound feet unbound
eventually two
arranged marriages two separate revolutions
the country collapses all
century
Our women’s world is sunk so deep, who can help us?
Jewelry sold to pay this trip across the seas,
My grandmother paid passage with gold too
out of the storm of a hundred
flowers Cut off from my family I leave my native land.
the revolutionary left her children for Japan
feminist heroes the government loves
a rebellion story after regaining hold
Unbinding my feet I clean out a thousand years of poison,
Qui Jin studied in men’s clothes
My grandmother canned tomatoes
With heated heart arouse all women’s spirits.
on unbound feet the body
learns to stand on broken bones
Alas, this delicate kerchief here, Qui Jin falls be
headed defiant my grandmother walks a new country
without the words she gives to me
Is half stained with blood, and half with tears.
About the Artist
Julie Rivera is inspired by the meditative practice of woodcut printmaking. She began her career in New York, working as a teaching artist with the Studio in a School Association, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Lincoln Center Institute. Rivera earned her MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute and her BFA in Printmaking from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship recipient in Drawing and received grants from the New York Foundation of the Arts, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Rivera is a Leverett-based artist. She teaches printmaking at Smith College and at Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, MA.
About the Poet
Tamara J. Madison is a writer, poet, editor, and educator. Her critical and creative works have been reviewed and published in Poetry International, Cider Press Review, Tidal Basin Review, Mom Egg Review (MER) and various anthologies. She is a fellow of Anaphora Arts and is the author of Threed, This Road Not Damascus (Trio House Press).
About the Poet
Melody S. Gee is the author of We Carry Smoke and Paper: Essays on the Grief and Hope of Conversion, and of three poetry collections, The Convert’s Heart is Good to Eat, The Dead in Daylight, and Each Crumbling House. She is a communications and marketing strategist and lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband and daughters.
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