Still I Rise. Marlene Wagman-Geller
Some things stagger the mind—the size of the universe, or the trillions of atoms in a single grain of sand or cells in a newborn’s little fingernail. As much beyond our grasp is the estimated one hundred billion human beings who have ever lived. This means that fifty billion women have watched the sun rise and set and the seasons pass since our species came into being.
Millions of women, we can therefore safely say, have lived what Western culture has defined as the appropriate female experience—the helpmate, the subordinate, the one who stirred the pot and darned the socks at home. Though women in our culture have far greater opportunities than in the past, a significant degree of gender stereotyping still clings to our society and rattles around unbidden and unwanted in our brains. Women have put up with mansplaining and gender bias far longer than there have been words for either, and have sold themselves short for centuries, as so many still do today. Here, in these stories of twenty-five women who overcame incredible personal and societal adversity, Marlene Wagman speaks not just for these women’s heroism, but for all the rest whose stories we will never know, and for the next generation of female heroes whose voices are better heard in classrooms, on playing fields, and in workplaces today because of the women who have come before.
Many of the stories recounted in Still I Rise are bigger than gender, though gender limitations are woven inextricably throughout. Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan struggled to overcome the ravages of a disease that couldn’t have cared less if Helen was a girl or boy. Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind, sat in the same separate waiting rooms and drank from the same “colored” water fountains as African American men. Having an addicted spouse, as Lois Burnham Wilson, the wife of the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous did, is devastating whether the spouse is a husband or wife. Nevertheless, there is no question that being female compounds immeasurably the other burdens and struggles of life, as Wagman shows here.
The twenty-five essays are replete with details that show evidence of Wagman’s deep research. Did you know, for example, that Keller’s eyes were replaced with glass ones for cosmetic and medical reasons? Or that McDaniel successfully pleaded with Clark Gable not to “make a scene” by boycotting the gala opening night, which she could not attend because of her race? Or that Lois Wilson endured her husband’s many other addictions, while they struggled to make the Twelve Step AA program, which had freed him from dependence on alcohol, the household word it is today? All the details are here in these thoughtful, touching, and well written essays, sprinkled throughout with signature doses of Wagman’s wry humor.
Still I Rise serves as a shout-out to all of us and our stories. I am proud to share my gender not just with the women about whom Wagman writes, but with Wagman herself, and all my sister authors who put their hearts, intelligence, creativity, and hard work into telling the stories of women who can no longer speak for themselves.
Laurel Corona
Author of Finding Emilie and The Mapmaker’s Daughter
San Diego, 2017
PROLOGUE: HELL, I’M STILL HERE
“A woman is like a teabag; you never know strong it is until it’s in hot water.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Anyone who has managed to survive to mid-mark of the biblically allotted three score years and ten has had occasion to cast one’s eyes heavenward and mutter, “Ya know, God, there are other people.” Amidst these litany of woes can be discerned cries of betrayal, illness, lost illusions. After all, part and parcel of living means treading the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, navigating the Canal of a Shattered Romance. What eases the thorny path is the belief we do not have a monopoly on grief, that loss is a universal condition. Another weapon in the arsenal of endurance is the hope we can rise from our knees. In the words of Oprah, “Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
In a nod to the sweet is sprinkled with the bitter; while celebrating the launch of my fourth book, Behind Every Great Man, was the pain I experienced from watching a lady I love grappling with a tsunami of tsoris that through solidarity became my own. For solace I turned to women who had conquered their own emotional Everest—who not only refused to crumble, but prevailed. The first of these possessors of indomitable spirit I investigated was Hattie McDaniel. She was the thirteenth child born to former slaves and her life was a struggle against grinding poverty, racism, four failed marriages, and a hysterical pregnancy. Rather than bow to defeat, she arm-wrestled Jim Crow and broke the color barrier in film to become the first African American to win an Academy Award for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind. In her emotional acceptance speech, she stated she hoped she was a credit to her race. She was—and not just to her race, but the human race.
Aung San Suu Kyi went from two decades of house arrest in Burma to Sweden’s Nobel Peace Laureate. Rather than vow vengeance on the regime who had stolen her life, she sought to negotiate with the junta; however, so far it has chosen to ignore her. She stated with her indefatigable humor sweetened with temperance, “I wish I could have tea with them every Saturday, a friendly tea. And, if not, we could always try coffee.”
Nobody feels sorry for British-born Joanne Rowling, the most staggering successful author in the world. Yet her earlier life was a prologue far removed from her present golden years. She was in Portugal, trapped in a physically and emotionally abusive marriage, mother of an infant, when she fled penniless to her sister’s Scottish home. Had she succumbed to the depression and contemplation of suicide, the world would never have met its beloved, bespectacled wizard.
At the age of eleven, Malala Yousafzai took on the Taliban by giving voice to her dream of obtaining an education. They responded with bullets. In 2014, she became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. She stated of her historic win, “I am pretty certain that I am the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still fights with her younger brothers.”
Although these ladies hail from different climes and chronologies, they share a common denominator. Life had thrust them to their knees, but they refused to remain in that position—with the result they not merely stood, but soared.
I have a connection with one of our era’s great ladies. Gail Devers had been a student at Sweetwater High School in National City, CA where I currently teach. After graduating from UCLA, she was on her way to becoming an Olympic track and field star when smitten with Graves’ disease. The girl who was always running was reduced to crawling, and doctors suggested amputating her feet. Her husband, feeling it was not what he had signed up for, declined to live up to “the in sickness and in health.” An embodiment of true grit, Gail went on to become a three-time Olympic champion.
The parable of the donkey in the well is a metaphor for the power of persistence, of surviving against the proverbial odds. One day an old donkey fell into a well and the farmer decided, as he had outlasted its usefulness, to let him die. He grabbed a shovel and began to toss dirt into the well. At first the cornered animal let out piteous cries followed by silence. Every time the dirt hit his back he shrugged it off; soon he was level with the ground and walked away.
Although this volume showcases the women who left imprints on the face of history, we must remember the unsung women who embody the face of fortitude. A metaphor for these ladies is Mary Tyler Moore tossing her iconic blue-knit beret into the air to the accompaniment of “Love is in the Air”—a thumbs up gesture to life. The freeze frame captures her megawatt smile, a testimony to one can endure bell-bottoms, bad dates, institutionalized sexism, and still retain faith.
Recently I met “Rebecca,” who could have qualified as a contestant on the 1960s television show Queen for a Day. For the younger-than-baby boomer generation, it was the precursor to reality television. Every week it featured four desperate housewives whose criteria for appearing on the air were lives of unmitigated horror. Each contestant turned the show into a public confessional, wherein they would relate