To read the essay: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/fashion/a-feminists-daughter-finds-love-in-the-kitchen.
If you want to send thoughts or see pics of Janet and her artist mom and her own daughter, www.facebook.com/WriterJanetBenton
AND/OR -- read this article from VFA'S webpage, www.vfa.us
Suzanne Benton and daughter Janet Benton
Suzanne Benton, an artist and an activist since early days of the movement is also a founder of VFA. Suzanne, who always used her art in feminist demonstrations, is a transculturalist and is often traveling to some remote part of the world. In 1996 VFA was honoring activists on NOW's 30th anniversary, but, Suzanne was in Bosnia. Janet, her daughter accepted her medal of honor. No one present that evening will forget Janet's acceptance speech. Many of us were raising children at the time and could identify. Here are excerpts. Read them and cry. And laugh!
It wasn't always easy having a mother dedicated to feminism and to becoming herself. I came home from third grade to find that my full-size baby carriage and baby doll who wet her pants, along with Barbie, her lovely accessories, and most of my stuffed animals, had been donated to a day-care center. While I got an appendectomy a few months earlier, Mom was marching through New York City streets with a procession of women wearing her metal masks, proclaiming the second coming of the great goddess. And after my parents divorced, I often came home to an empty house. It was a strange irony, the way that a joyous liberation and a freeing divorce sucked the joy from my life.
But I also received a treasure, one that I have come to understand as rare since hearing many people tell me what happened to the dreams, to the capacities of their mothers, and that is that my mother is a creative, strong, courageous woman who will never give up. The pride she has brought me, and the self-respect and assertiveness she has worked so hard to teach me, have proved more nutritive than hundreds of perfectly cooked meals.
So thank you for acknowledging Suzanne's thirty years of work on behalf of women. It means a lot to both of us.
For more about Suzanne see our Art Section.http://www.vfa.us/Artists.htm
To reach Janet, now a mother herself bentoneditorial@msn.com
It wasn't always easy having a mother dedicated to feminism and to becoming herself. I came home from third grade to find that my full-size baby carriage and baby doll who wet her pants, along with Barbie, her lovely accessories, and most of my stuffed animals, had been donated to a day-care center. While I got an appendectomy a few months earlier, Mom was marching through New York City streets with a procession of women wearing her metal masks, proclaiming the second coming of the great goddess. And after my parents divorced, I often came home to an empty house. It was a strange irony, the way that a joyous liberation and a freeing divorce sucked the joy from my life.
But I also received a treasure, one that I have come to understand as rare since hearing many people tell me what happened to the dreams, to the capacities of their mothers, and that is that my mother is a creative, strong, courageous woman who will never give up. The pride she has brought me, and the self-respect and assertiveness she has worked so hard to teach me, have proved more nutritive than hundreds of perfectly cooked meals.
So thank you for acknowledging Suzanne's thirty years of work on behalf of women. It means a lot to both of us.
For more about Suzanne see our Art Section.http://www.vfa.us/Artists.htm
To reach Janet, now a mother herself bentoneditorial@msn.com
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