My daughter’s friend offered a solidarity sentence about her friend at lunch today: The friend was irate. There had been a squabble about seating, and the allegedly irate child sat with her back toward another. While I’m not a fan of children hurling ire at one another, I admired the girl’s satisfied ten-year-old pleasure in using this mighty word. I pictured this girl with a bow held tight between her hands, arrow strung tight and ready to fly.

What is it a girl might need in her quiver of arrow-words? A child will need tumble and sungold-tomatoes, milk, and mirth. A woman needs moxie, wariness, appetite,
wonder, sorrow, and mirth.

No history books used in public school informed us (girls) about racial imperialism… No one mentioned mass murders of Native Americans as genocide, or the rape of Native American and African women as terrorism. No one discussed slavery as a foundation for the growth of capitalism. No one described the forced breeding of white wives to increase the white population as sexist oppression.

Ain’t I a Woman, bell hooks