Abstract
This poem is a response to my experiences at The State of Women of Color in New York Higher Education symposium that occurred in March of 2025. During this symposium, keynote speakers and panelists shared their stories--their real life experiences--navigating higher education in the United States and the impact of intersectional oppression that was part of their daily lives. Underpinning all of it was the way that labels are used to both highlight people and make them hypervisible while at the same time dehumanize them. This poem is born out of my own thinkings about what it means to navigate these labels, harkening back to the well known character "Hester Prynne" to play with the way that labels are used to both create coalition and segregation. I specifically chose the irony of a white woman who was part of a colonizing mission but then branded and excluded, and eventually finding the need to embrace her abject position, in order to remark on the hypocrisies in this system.
Recommended Citation
Irons, Jeanine A.
(2025)
"No More Hester Prynne,"
Gatherings: Vol. 2:
Iss.
1, Article 10.
Available at:
https://fisherpub.sjf.edu/gatherings/vol2/iss1/10