Quotes About Sisterhood

I'm a woman, and I see women get put through an awful lot of grief and be subjected to the kind of criticism, remarks, and suggestions that no woman should ever have to tolerate. And I think we should be helping each other and supporting each other.

If a woman can't help another woman in trouble, where would we be?

The power of women united, I am again reminded, is an invincible thing.

My mother kept alive the best part for my sister and me. At the same time, she's always been someone who's very straight and solid, which wasn't that -common in families with "'68er" parents.

What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face? What woman's terms of oppression have become precious and necessary to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the cold winds of self-scrutiny?

Each of us is called upon to take a stand. So in these days ahead, as we examine ourselves and each other, our works, our fears, our differences, our sisterhood and survivals, I urge you to tackle what is most difficult for us all, self-scrutiny of our complacencies, the idea that since each of us believes she is on the side of right, she need not examine her position.

Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active being.

The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries. Nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries. To deal with one without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonality as well as our difference. For then beyond sisterhood is still racism.

What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face?

Staples sees in Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls a collective appetite for black male blood. Yet it is my female children and my black sisters who lie bleeding all around me, victims of the appetites of our brothers.

am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

We have chosen each other and the edge of each others battles the war is the same if we lose someday women's blood will congeal upon a dead planet if we win there is no telling we seek beyond history for a new and more possible meeting.

Zami. A Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers.

The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those differences. Nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries. To deal with one without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonality a well as our difference. For then beyond sisterhood is still racism.

J'ai léché les lèvres d'une louve, la colère, et je m'en suis servie pour illuminer, rire, protéger, mettre le feu en des lieux où il n'y avait ni lumière, ni nourriture, ni sÅ"urs, en des lieux sans merci. (...)

If I participate, knowingly or otherwise, in my sister's oppression and she calls me on it, to answer her anger with my own only blankets the substance of our exchange with reaction. It wastes energy. And yes, it is very difficult to stand still and to listen to another woman's voice delineate an agony I do not share, or one to which I myself have contributed.

Why wouldn't you talk to us Little Sister? I tried, Little Sister says. I did. But my voice was lost in sadness.

Most parents would not allow more than one daughter to remain unmarried. So if one daughter had already declared herself a spinster, her sister had to conduct a marriage ceremony with a dead man, called marrying a tablet, to retain her independence. These women later told historians that "it was not so easy to find an unmarried dead man to marry," so when one did become available, they vied with one another "to be the one who would get to marry him.

We have forgotten to be our brothers and sisters keepers. And we have forgotten that the Number 1 goal is to love one another.

As much as I love food, I'd have to save my girls!

When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us?

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.

We daughters of Circassian mothers were called "cats" by our sisters who had Abyssinian blood in their veins, because some of us had the misfortune to possess blue eyes. And then they spoke to us sarcastically as "your Highness," as further proof of their indignation at our having come into the world with white skin. Nor did they forgive my father for selecting as pets his two daughters Sharife and Chole from the loathsome tribe of cats.

I don't believe there is a bond between all women. I don't believe that sisterhood is powerful. I believe just the opposite. I believe these women were just in the right position to be kind. There was nothing to prevent them from it.