Hirshfeld-Flores Alissa - FURY: womens lived experiences in the trump era

Contents

Fury

Pact Press

Copyright 2019 Amy Roost and Alissa Hirshfeld-Flores. All rights reserved.

Published by Fitzroy Books

An imprint of

Regal House Publishing, LLC

Raleigh, NC 27612

All rights reserved

https://fitzroybooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781646030002

ISBN -13 (epub): 9781646030279

Library of Congress Control Number:

All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.

Interior and cover design by Lafayette & Greene

lafayetteandgreene.com

Cover image by Anonymous

Regal House Publishing, LLC

https://regalhousepublishing.com

The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.

Dedication

Preface

My motherto whom this book is dedicatedwanted a career and children. Unfortunately, Mom married the wrong man during the wrong era and was forced to choose one. She chose children. Though her career ambitions were stymied, she nevertheless remained true to her principles and managed to use her voice for good. She led picket lines against segregated housing policies in our hometown of Deerfield, Illinois, during the late 1950s and was acknowledged by and had her picture taken with Eleanor Roosevelt for those efforts. To this day, that photo sits on my desk as inspiration. Later, in 1965, against my fathers wishes, she took a Greyhound bus to Selma, Alabama. Along with Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent civil rights leaders, she marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and continued for five days, twelve miles a day, to Montgomery to deliver a petition demanding equal voting rights for all.

Mom had high hopes for me (many of them retreads of her own aspirations). In fact, she used to call me Prez because she truly believed that someday Id be the first woman president. I did work on Capitol Hill for a U.S. Senator and I studied politics, but ultimately, I chose a different career path. Like Mom, I held strong opinions but was more of an activist lite than a true activist. I attended some demonstrations during my college years, but I didnt find my Selma until Donald Trump was elected.

Like so many American women, many adverse physiological and psychological effects began to surface for me and the other contributors of this volume as the contours of a new era began to take shape. Contributor Lisa Kirshner describes her anxiety after the election as soreness in my chest, difficulty breathing, numbness in my left arm. Lisa drove herself to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with swelling of the cartilage around her sternum, brought on by anxiety. Susan Shapiro recounts sleep deprivation and the inability to concentrate. Krystal Sital, Susan Fekete, and Katherine Morgan also lost sleep. Beth Couture became depressed. Emily Sinclair was panicky. Jennifer Silva Redmond, angry. Jessica Handler and Sarah Einstein, fearful. For me, it was a game of Choose Your Own Adventure: chronic neck pain one day, emotional reactivity the next. Flip a coin. Heads it was i rritable bowel syndrome; tails it was a racing pulse.

Our cups, once filled to the brim with the nervous what-ifs of a possible Trump presidency, now spilled over with worst-case-scenario realities. Everything we stood foragency over our bodies, the feminine ethos of caring and humane treatment of others, role modeling for our children, to name a fewsuffered a direct hit in the form of the ultimate self-aggrandizing toxic male. For a while, all we could do was wade through wastewaters, hearing filthy dog whistles and watching putrid executive orders float by. We covered our mouths, held our collective breath, and lifted our eyes to the sky, desperate for some indication that the sun would appear and make it all go away.

Dawn Marlan adeptly captures what began to happen instead:

Trump-world corrupts our language, our culture, our planet. What choice do [women] have but to abandon our cocoons and move into the uncomfortable space in the center? Not the center of the spectrum but the center of power, the virtual polis, the place where the range of the acceptable is adjudicated.

And so, on January 21, 2017, I bundled up, pulled on a pair of Wonder Woman knee highs (satin red streamers and all) and went out in the rain to join the San Diego Womens March. I was happy to discover a bustling community of angry yet purposeful women and a surprising number of erstwhile allies. We marched down Harbor Drive past the shadows of the Star of India sails. I jabbed my homemade sign at the dark clouds above. In neat neon-pink lettering, it read, Pussy Riot, American Style on one side and The ACA Saved My Sons Life on the other.

Right then and there, I realized I needed to somehow document what I was personally experiencing along with the urgency Trumps election had stoked for millions of women across the world. And so, a few weeks after the march, I put out a call for submissions to private womens groups I belonged to on Facebook, asking for personal essays about what I referred to as the Trump Effect. Based on the outpouring of responses, it was clear that Id hit a nerve. Women gonna share, and share they did.

Fury: Womens Lived Experiences During the Trump Era is the result. It brings together a diverse community of women who reveal the impact that Donald Trumps behavior, words, and presidency have had on us, and how we have coped and evolved along the way. Reema Zaman more eloquently describes this metamorphosis:

each blow is like that of a blacksmiths hammer pummeling iron. Each hit fortifies our metal. No group knows this better than womenwe are privy to unique grief, singular hostility. Thus, forged in fire, we are all the more prepared and capable for leadership, resilience, grit.

It is fair to say this book is like a hymnal for the choir. I believe theres no such thing as too much empowerment. My co-editor, Alissa Hirshfeld-Flores, writes, Encouraging women to speak can be healing, not only giving [women] a sense of agency regarding current politics but more generally teaching them that their voice matters.

I had two other purposes in mind while gathering these essays. First, I fervently believed this collection would help readers understand and develop empathy for what women have been going through since the election. After reading this, if you agree, I invite you to share it with your friends, colleagues, and loved ones who may have had some trouble understanding the impact of whats been going on during this time. I share Alissas observation gleaned from counseling women during these difficult times:

I never imagined that empathy would become a political act, butalas!it has. People on different sides of the political divide, as well as people of different cultural backgrounds and faiths, seem unwilling and sometimes unable to empathize with others perspectives. But when we listen deeply to one anothers storiesmeaning we practice seeing things from anothers perspective while silencing the voice inside us that wants to disagree or tell our own sidewe learn that we all want the same basic things: a good life for ourselves and our families, good health, an adequate income to provide for our needs, and a sense of meaning and purpose.