With all the excitement going on today - Malaysians voting for a better Malaysia and a better tomorrow - it slipped my mind that today is International Women’s Day. I only remembered when I went to Marina Mahathir’s blog. Does that make me a bad girl? 
No one had questioned Nana-Asante’s authority, and within a few hours she had restored order to the village. She began by effecting reconciliation between the Bantu population and the Pygmies and reminding them of the importance of cooperation. The Bantus needed the meat the hunters provided, and the little people couldn’t live without the products they obtained in Ngoubé. That would force the Bantus to respect their former slaves and be reason for the Pygmies to forgive the mistreatment they had suffered.
“How will you teach them to live in peace?” Kate asked Nana-Asante.
“I will begin with the women,” the queen replied. “They have more goodness within them.”
Forest of the Pygmies, Isabel Allende
“If women ruled the world, it would be a good thing.”
(Joan Armatrading)
Hear, hear!
In the midst of reading Forest of the Pygmies by Isabel Allende, I discovered that it’s the third and last book of a trilogy that includes City of the Beasts and Kingdom of the Dragon. Of course, now I have to go and get those two books.
It’s not the first time I’ve read Allende’s books in chronological dis-order. I’d read Daughter of Fortune before The House of The Spirits, and when reading the ending in Portrait in Sepia (sequel to Daughter of Fortune), learned that all three books are actually related and I’d read them in the wrong order. Anyway, Allende had not written and published the three books in the right order!
Allende is a wonderful writer (among other things), and she’s coming to Ubud later this year, and now I’m thinking I should be there, too.
She’s a witty speaker, too:
Inspiration from Allende
Got this off the Moleskinerie site. Thanks, Armand, for sharing this very inspiring talk by one of my favourite authors. From the TED site:
In one of the most beloved talks from TED2007, novelist Isabel Allende talks about writing, women, passion, feminism. She tells the stories of powerful women she has known, some larger-than-life (listen for a beauty tip from Sophia Loren), and some simply living with grace, dignity and ingenuity in a world that, in too many ways, still treats women unjustly.
It’s just over 18 minutes long, so sit back and get ready to be inspired!
At the special 2-hour “Idol Gives Back” charity show yesterday evening, comedian and talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres, announced on air that she was personally giving US$100,000/-.
Now the cynical part of me immediately thought “Yeah, yeah, I bet it’s tax exempted.” But does it matter? It’s still US$100,000/-. And it didn’t sound staged; she was babbling on and suddenly it came out. Plus she was looking visibly touched by the various video clips that were being shown as part of the show.
Way to go, DeGeneres.
Related Posts:
The Face of Peace
If women rule the world …
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Thanks to the reminder from Dina, here’s my tribute to the three most important women in my life.
My mother who left her hometown of Sandakan, Sabah after the second World War (after burying both her adopted parents during the war), sailed to Singapore in search of an uncle, travelled up north when she could not find him, and eventually settled in Kuala Lumpur where, helped by women friends she’d met along the way, she found a place to stay and a job, too, and later met my father, married him, had three children, but continued working till the 1970s when she stopped working outside but came back inside to help my father in the Chinese medicine shop started by my grandfather in the 1930s. Despite an active life, she succumbed to Alzheimer’s a few years ago and now lives in a nursing home where she is well cared for by a team of care givers.
My sister who, when my mother told her I wanted to go to university after being retrenched in the mid-1980s, asked why didn’t I think of it earlier, and went on to support me through my three years at the University of East Anglia in England. If not for her, I would still be a katak di bawah tempurung.
And then there was our nanny who had to come out to work after her husband squandered the family fortune and ran away, leaving her to look after three small children (he returned later), was introduced to my mother who was looking for someone to care for her first-born while she went to work, and went on to look after the two who came later. Nanny was more “mother” to us than our real mother was, but in the process, neglected her own children when they needed her most. She lived with us until the mid-1970s before moving in with her eldest daughter and family (her reasoning was that she better spend time with her own family while she was still able-bodied to help them in any way, instead of waiting till she got too frail to be anything but a burden to them). We kept in touch with Nanny; she would visit and stay a few days now and then. She was with us when I flew off to England for my studies and had told me she might never see me again (she was in her 70s by then), but was one of the first persons I saw when I stepped into the shop on my two visits home. She passed away in 1996.
And then there are all the wonderful women I’ve met along the way. Some have exited my life, others have stayed, and a few have left more than an impression. No names, except maybe for one …
Beth Chin in Turners Falls, MA!
Love ya, Beth.
