Angie Koponen 1

4/30/01
revised 4-21-05

LOOKING FOR THE WOMEN OF MY HOUSE

Throughout history “muted voices” have sought to be heard above the oppressing roar of dominant

voices. In Western history, those voices have been the voices of white males who monopolized access to

education, the vote, the right to own property, control of the property of the women in their families through

inheritance laws, and to politics. These men also controlled access to power by limiting access to

employment, banking, and law.

Daisy Zamora writes for the women of her family, the “muted voices” whose contributions to both

the family and to society were unacclaimed. She writes for the women considered insignificant in the

shadows of the men of her family. “Who were these women?”, she asks in her poem, Lineage. The poem

reads:

DAISY ZAMORA
From the PBS series The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets
With Bill Moyers, 1995

LINEAGE

I am looking for the women of my house.

I’ve always known my great grandfather’s story:

scientist, diplomat, liberal politician
and father of many distinguished sons.

But Isolina Reyes, married to him

from the age of fifteen until her death,
what was her story?

My maternal grandfather graduated Cum Laude

from the University of Philadelphia.
We still preserve his dissertation written in 1900.
Angie Koponen 2
4/30/01
revised 4-21-05

He oversaw the construction of miles of track

and only a sudden death cut short his dream
of bringing the railroad to the Atlantic Coast.
Nine sons and daughters mourned him.

And his wife Rudecinda, who gave birth

to those children, who nursed and cared for them,
What do I know about her?

My other grandfather was the patriarch

beneath whose shadow the whole family lived
(including brothers-in-law, cousins, distant relatives,
friends, acquaintances, and even enemies).
He spent his life accumulating the fortune
they wasted when he died.

And my grandmother Ilse, widowed and impoverished,

what could she do but die?

I am looking for myself, for all of them

the women of my house.

Daisy Zamora’s own story reads like an adventure tale from an Ernest Hemingway novel:

• Well-known painter, psychologist, teacher - teaches literature at the Universtad

Controamericana in Managua, Nicaragua

• Poet - Poetry is a lifestyle, her life. In Nicaragua two national sports exist - baseball &
poetry, where everyone attends poetry readings

• Revolutionary fighter - Combatant in the National Sandinista Liberation Front that

overthrew the dictator of her homeland in 1979 - she carried her poetry into battle fearing she
would die and it would be lost

• Cultural revolutionist - After the revolution served as Vice Minister of Culture and
returned to writing poetry about family relations, in particular the life of women in her
country. After the revolution, it was difficult not to return to the way life was for women
before the revolution. In spite of what women had gained, when the fighting ended, there
was a need to start ordering society. The tenancy to go back to old cultural patterns,
dominated, especially in Latin America.
Angie Koponen 3
4/30/01
revised 4-21-05

Zamora lived at an extraordinary time in her country’s history, a time when it was necessary for

women and men to ignore centuries of social conditioning and send women to fight a war which could not

be won by the efforts of men alone. Women fought side-by-side with the men for a basic need that

outweighed the need for hegemonic status quo, freedom. For Zamora, the fighting stimulated questions

about her family and the way in which the women’s stories, their very histories, were unknown to even

Daisy herself. Her sidestep from the culturally acceptable role of housewife and mother caused her to reflect

on and to question the lives of her grandmothers. This is evident in the first line of the poem:

I am looking for the women of my house.

Where could these women have gone? What were they about? What were their stories? Zamora questions

herself, her family, and society. She questions for all women whose lives go unrecorded and whose

contributions are forgotten.

In the next stanza she laments that the stories of her male ancestors were the stories of her family:

I’ve always known my great grandfather’s story:

scientist, diplomat, liberal politician
and father of many distinguished sons.

Her grandfather did not stay home to keep the hearth and raise the sons. Yet, her grandfather is remembered

not only as a scientist, diplomat, and liberal politician, but as a parent of many distinguished sons. And so,

the term distinguished becomes associated with sons and grandfather. No such term becomes associated

with the woman whose life was spent serving these men’s needs and thus helping to make it possible for

them to become distinguished.

But Isolina Reyes, married to him

from the age of fifteen until her death,
Angie Koponen 4
4/30/01
revised 4-21-05

what was her story?

The woman, Isolina Reyes, Daisy’s great-grandmother, who gave the sons life, who fed them, comforted

them, loved them, was not celebrated nor was she labeled distinguished. Her voice was a “muted voice.”

Her life was always secondary to the life of her husband and sons.

Zamora also questions the life of her “grandfather’s wife,” Rudecinda. She knew again the story of

her grandfather, but not the story of her grandmother.

My maternal grandfather graduated Cum Laude

from the University of Philadelphia.
We still preserve his dissertation written in 1900.
He oversaw the construction of miles of track
and only a sudden death cut short his dream
of bringing the railroad to the Atlantic Coast.
Nine sons and daughters mourned him.

And his wife Rudecinda, who gave birth

to those children, who nursed and cared for them,
What do I know about her?

The story is the same for her paternal grandmother:

My other grandfather was the patriarch

beneath whose shadow the whole family lived
(including brothers-in-law, cousins, distant relatives,
friends, acquaintances, and even enemies).
He spent his life accumulating the fortune
they wasted when he died.

And my grandmother Ilse, widowed and impoverished,

what could she do but die?

Not only was Ilse’s story untold, but the story of how the family wasted the “grandfather’s money” became

the predominate story. With her voice muted, Ilse lost her fortune and did the only thing she could do. She

died.
Angie Koponen 5
4/30/01
revised 4-21-05

I am looking for myself, for all of them

the women of my house.

Daisy Zamora, through her own voice, unlocks the prison in which the voices of her family’s women was

kept silent.

Zamora’s matriarchal ancestors were not heard, but along with not being heard they were not seen.

“Out of sight, out of mind”. Hence, the old proverb brings up another question, “Where are the “muted

(suppressed) images?” While Michel Foucault writes about the archeology of knowledge, power, governing

rules, and the role of humans, through the lense of texts, his work could also contribute significantly in

looking at the role of the image. Zamora’s female ancestors voices were muted. Equally significant is that

these women were simultaneously “not seen.” They could not speak for themselves so they could not be

seen, and they were not seen so their voices were not heard. To question only the voice without the image

fails to complete the process of uncovering the “muted.”

Zamora’s poetry, and this poem in particular, encourage the reader to begin searching for the truth

about our own histories. The first time I read this poem, I cried for all the women of my own family whose

voices and images are forgotten. I began to question not only what they had done, but the choices the

women in my family are still making. Only my sister, my youngest aunt, and myself have a college

education. The rest of the women’s lives succumbed to the status quo, marriage and children. The one

woman who did something with her life outside the box of expectations was my paternal grandmother,

Bernice Bellisle-Lalande. She became the state president of the Parent Teachers Association of Wisconsin.

I didn’t know this until I was in my late thirties and she was already fading in old age, her mind dulled from

years of inactivity and drugs that kept her from having a stroke and dying. Her story and the images that
Angie Koponen 6
4/30/01
revised 4-21-05

went along with that accomplishment were “muted.” I, along with all my cousins and aunts and our

daughters, nearly lost one of the few women’s histories that demonstrated that we as women have many

choices and alternatives in life other than the status quo.

Daisy Zamora’s poetry gives voice to her ancestors and to all women whose muted voices beg to be

heard by writing in opposition to the existing order. In doing so, she fits the description of the specific

intellect as theorized by Foucault - an ordinary person who has knowledge of her/his circumstances and is

able to express her/himself independently of the universal theorizing intellectual (Foss, Foss, and Trapp, p.

226). She critiques through her poetry and affects change in attitudes toward women and their roles in

society, even if only changing one mind at a time.

Even though this poem offers an awakening, it does not offer solutions. Solutions to overcoming the

female muted voice still lie within each woman, and it is each woman’s duty to speak out to other women.

Women must share their own unique accomplishments, their dreams, and their thoughts, through narratives,

writings, and visuals. Women must be seen to be heard, and must be heard to be seen.

Michel Foucault understood muted voices and his theory guides and encourages rhetors to step

outside their comfort zones of conventionality. In ‘Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault,’

in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, October 25, 1982, editors Luther H. Martin

and Patrick Hutton quote Foucault as saying, “My role - and that is too emphatic a word - is to show people

that they are much freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as evidence, some themes which have

been built up at a certain moment during history, and that this so-called evidence can be criticized and

destroyed” (Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988, p. 10). Foucault put into words what

Zamora’s poem puts into hearts, a seed of opposition that when nurtured enables its vessel to become
Angie Koponen 7
4/30/01
revised 4-21-05

“unmuted.”

I am looking for the women of my house...