Poem by Marjorie Kantor (AWC Madrid); Interview by Mary Adams (AWC The Hague)
Since its founding, the International Women’s Writing Guild (IWWG) has championed the power of women’s voices, ensuring they are heard, celebrated and shared. In 2025, its anthology efforts align with the 69th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. This event is a call to action, reminding us of the power of storytelling to illuminate the 12 critical areas of concern outlined in the Beijing Platform for Action – from education and health to climate justice and human rights. The 2025 IWWG Anthology, supported by The de Groot Foundation, brings together voices from around the world to reflect on these themes.
Women from FAWCO took the opportunity to share stories with IWWG that touched on 11 of the critical concerns: Human Rights, Education & Training, Poverty, Economy, Health, Power & Decision-Making, Institutional Mechanisms, Environment, Violence Against Women, Media and the Girl Child. The Human Rights Team is proud to publish these works and interviews with the six authors in the coming months.
In the first of our series, we feature “Elsa's Memories,” a poem by Marjorie Kantor, AWC Madrid, which addresses the suppression of language and cultural identity for a young girl Puerto Rican girl in school. The devastating silencing effect of her daily trauma demonstrates the psychological damage inflicted by such rigid institutional mechanisms.
Elsa’s Memories
1970s
new york city.
a puerto rican child grows up.
forked tongue.
elsa goes to school.
elsa is seven years old.
she’s a sweet little shy child.
elsa is from puerto rico but now she lives
in THE city.
at home they speak in (e)spanish.
at school elsa is just learning english.
she goes to catholic school.
run by nuns. they care about her soul.
they care about cleanliness.
there is a (e)special nun who does the
daily cleansing.
everytime elsa says a word of (e)spanish
she is taken over to the sink in the corner
of the room and her mouth is washed out with a bar of soap.
it makes a lot of suds.
one day elsa just stops talking altogether.
---------------
P.S. (What happened to Elsa? She became a bilingual teacher.
She didn’t do what was done to her. She understood. This
doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it goes in reverse.)
Originally published in "I displace the air as I walk" in 2004 and part of the wall installation "The Bagged Stories" and used as a prompt in workshops to talk and write about relationships such as parent-teacher-child and mixing languages and cultures ...
Interview with the Author
Why did you choose to participate in the IWWG anthology reflecting on Beijing Platform for Action progress?
As a woman, early on I understood that I was a victim of discrimination. My mother told me how everyone treated her when my brother was born, the third child, versus when my sister and I were born. In the fifth grade, I decided girls should not do well in math if they wanted boys to like them. When I started my first job as a speech and language therapist, I covered a lot of schools in an entire county. I had to introduce myself to each school first, by phone. Each new introduction started with my giving my name and the secretary or receptionist asking me, if I was Miss or Mrs. I would say Ms. This was not accepted. I’d be asked again and again and again, until finally with every new call, I would be asked,“Well – are you married or aren´t you?” When I got married in 1971 in Cincinnati Ohio, I was told by the justice of the peace that I could not keep my maiden name – not, I believe, the truth. I gradually learned to understand my behavior as it had been guided by societal norms. I tended to be submissive, to take backstage, to play a role ... but sometimes I jumped out of that. As I expanded my horizons and met women from around the world and learned about the larger plights of many women, I understood more and more. I stand for the Beijing platform.
How do your personal experiences influence the way you approach human rights topics in your writing?
Though my writing is largely creative, it is almost always based on real life experience, my own or that observed or reported to me by others. I began my career as a writer, late in life, and worked hard not to judge in my creative texts, rather to show and then utilize these texts for dialogue, reflection and use in dialogue and workshops, for my own learning and to share with others.
Can you describe how your background – whether cultural, academic or professional – shapes your views on human rights for women?
I grew up in a caring and thoughtful home. We tried to match our values and beliefs with our behaviors. We thought about others, not just ourselves. We cared. We had our faults too, of course. Family was the beginning, and then through working with children in need as a speech and language therapist and traveling and living outside my first culture, I deepened my beliefs and actions because I started seeing things from different perspectives and I understood more and more the inequities in life’s offerings.
What role do you think storytelling plays in human rights advocacy and creating social change?
I think that storytelling can be an extremely powerful way to show and reflect on life. Through reading and dialogue about these stories, we can move toward advocacy and social change. Stories are powerful. And more so, when shared in dialogue, performance, workshops, etc. Both individuals sharing/telling their own stories and others telling other’s stories are a major point of departure for building human rights advocacy and creating social change. We need to know. We need to share. We reflect and learn through these “sharings.”
How do you see the role of authors evolving in the human rights movement, especially with the rise of digital media and social platforms?
Through all the new media, it is so much easier for us to connect across cultures and social environments, to get to know each other, to become friends, to learn about each other and to support each other. One does however need to be careful of all the “garbage” out there in the new media too.
What impact do you hope your work will have on public awareness or attitudes toward human rights for women?
I think my greatest impact now can be through giving workshops and readings where dialogue amongst the participants, working through provocations, collecting situations, opening doors to one’s thinking and creativity can help build more awareness, clarity, defining of rights and changing of attitudes and behaviors.
Looking ahead, what are some human rights issues or themes you would like to explore more in your future works?
I would like to collect and provide further personal vignettes of human pragmatic issues in communication and behavior. These little stories – showingly – can tell a lot. I wish to continue giving workshops for building one´s creative self and for helping to build assertiveness and clear expressiveness around the important themes. Show them. Define them. Work through them.
Additional comments
Thank you for this opportunity. It has provoked me, caused me to reflect on where I want to be now forward in my actions.
