Mrs. Bowser's Lying In Analysis

I have to recount the most profound statements I have read in Lying-In. After an exchange with an ignorant Montana Senator, a Kentucky House Representative defends child and maternal care as a governmental duty and the newly minted Children’s Bureau in 1919. He says “a right to expect that they will have an equal chance with every other child in the world, not only to be born in health… but… to survive.” I thought back to my high school introduction to feminism. I was sitting in the classroom of one of the only black teachers in my art school. Mrs. Bowser, a short brown woman who was actually an alum of the school. She had long, shoulder length naturally curly hair and a knack for taking notes during class as she expected her students. I was a senior and my top two schools were women’s institutions. I needed an elective that fit into my schedule it was between having a free period to work on my final monologue or take the innovative elective. Bowser taught what the students called “ the feminist class.” …show more content…
This was fall 2014 and we in the wake of war on black men waged by biased cops. I think Mike Brown was the last murder Twitter mourned when we started that semester. The first article we read posed Black Lives Matter as a reproductive justice issue. When I read it in that class I had a very surface value understanding of why feminists would want black women protected. I think the expansion of that to their children is what was riveting. Feminism wasn’t just about women but their livelihoods and those that they care about. I was taken away by the term “reproductive justice”. It was more that the right to have access to health care, birth control and abortions. It extended towards the right to have birth, parent and be able to raise your children in a society that isn’t hell-bent on killing