Coming to Voice
“There are spaces where thoughts and concerns converge. One such space has been the feminist focus on coming to voice – on moving from silence into speech as revolutionary gesture. Once again, the idea of finding one’s voice or having a voice assumes a primacy in talk, discourse, writing, and action. As metaphor for self-transformation, it has been especially relevant for groups of women who have previously never had a public voice, women who are speaking and writing for the first time, including many women of color. Feminist focus of finding a voice may seem clichéd at times, especially when the insistence is that women share a common speech or that all women have something meaningful to say at all times. However, for women within oppressed groups who have contained so many feelings – despair, rage, anguish – who do not speak, as poet Audre Lorde writes, “for fear our words will not be heard nor welcomed,” coming to voice is an act of resistance. Speaking becomes both a way of active self-transformation and a rite of passage where one moves from being an object to being subject. Only as subjects can we speak. As objects, we remain voiceless – our beings defined and interpreted by others.”
(bell hooks in: Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black)
