As you work on drafts of Project 1, please share your questions and thoughts with me and your classmates so we can better understand the assignment and our approaches to it.
In my instructions for Project 1, I noted that you must use quotations in the justification part, but not in the manifesto part. If you want to include language directly from the text because it captures what you think belongs in the manifesto, you can–but the majority of the words in the manifesto should not be direct quotations from the text. You’re not explaining the text in the manifesto, or explaining those passages, but rather are writing a bold statement about women that you understand the text is making.
I promised a sample manifesto, using Frida Kahlo’s “The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego and Señor Xólotl.” I hope this serves as an example of what your manifesto could be, but only an example, not a template or guideline. Take a look at the way Loy’s manifesto is laid out on the page (255-257) to see how you might consider altering the look of your manifesto. Also note that this manifesto is approximately 300 words, so the minimum length you would want to write.
Imagining Kahlo’s Feminist Manifesto
We are all connected, women to men, to animals, to plants in the ground, to that ground, to the water that flows through that ground and around it. To the air that envelops us. To the Earth that envelops us. To the Universe, that envelops all.
A woman is at the center, is both supported and a supporter. In both, she has love. It extends from the Universe to Earth, to her, and from her to mankind and animalkind. To her love.
Women, our woman, the Universe says, are enmeshed in matrix of the natural world, but so too are they wrapped in their culture, and wear their background in its vibrant color and intricate patterning, a dress that protects and conceals as it represents and identifies. She is constructed by both forces, by the Earth and by the dress.
The world she lives in lends a hand to the love a woman gives: to a man, to her husband, to her partner. They are not equivalent, but they are reliant on each other. Their love unifies them, and them with their world, and the vastness of the Universe.
The world she lives in lends a hand, lays a hand on the infant she nurtures.
When a woman has no infant to nurture, the Earth ensures that she will still nurture. As a model, the Earth reminds that she, too, has a woman’s form, that she, too, nourishes, that her milk can quench the thirst of all living things. Women must realize and remember that as the Earth takes a woman’s form, she supports all life, all growth, all love, and bestows that ability on all women. They, too, must form themselves in her model and embody their role as sustainer, while embracing that they, too, are sustained by the larger forces of the Earth and the Universe.
