Dear Eavan Boland,

I have had the pleasure of reading and discussing your poem with my fellow classmates. I find your piece of work “It’s a Woman’s World” very intriguing. I can relate my mom's life to the different examples you used about how woman are portrayed in life.

In lines 18-20, “Like most historic peoples we are defined by what we forget,” the woman works hard for her family, but they never praise her about it, they only remember when she forget to do things. Like my mom, she is a typical hard-working housewife always cooking, cleaning, and driving me and my siblings around. She puts the family’s needs before herself, yet no one acknowledges the work she does. I speak for myself, that most of the time rather than thanking my mom for always doing things for me, I tend to get upset at my her instead when she has those days where she puts onion in the food, forgets to buy me something I need, or is five minutes late while picking me up from places.

My mom’s role in the family is to keep the house clean and filled with food and to neuter her kids while my dad takes care of the decisions that have to be made and bills that have to be paid. My mom has set goals for herself and has had dreams when she was younger. She wanted to be a nurse, she made an effort, went to school and started working, but once she had her first kid, she put her dreams aside and decided to take care of her children. And now it seems like she forgot about those dreams she once had because she has given up on them. “By what we never will be: star- gazers, fire eaters” everyone has dreams, including woman. Society makes it harder for woman to have a voice and accomplish big dreams they set up for themselves. Although society has a blame in this, I believe woman should take a little blame too, because after watching the speech “Why we have too few women leaders” by Sheryl Sandberg, I realized that woman have to really be devoted to their work in-order to want to keep on going and earning those higher positions and wages.

When you wrote “And it’s still the same: By night our windows moth our children to the flame of hearth not history” in lines 37-41, I pictured the children being excited to come home to a warm house in the middle of the winter when it’s snowing outside.  I can relate that to my mom too, because she is the hearth to the fire place. She brings the love and warmth to the house that we appreciate, while my dad is out making “history” or money to provide for the family.

I thank you for speaking up for woman and after reading your work, I came to conclusion that I will not let others underestimate a woman’s ability. Just like my mom, I have set goals I want to achieve in my life, but unlike my her, I WILL achieve those goals.

Sincerely,

Sali Bunny