In Which I Came to the Motherland, Visited my Grandmama, and Learned about Problematic American Mothers in the '70s.

Hello again!

It's been quite an eventful week: (1) I've traveled to India, (2) battled (mostly unsuccessfully) the horrors of jet-lag, (3) fought (with increasing irritation) the bustling traffic, (4) started my internship in full swing, and (5) began reading some iconic feminist books.

I knew I was coming to India since a month ago- my grandma had scheduled a knee replacement surgery- so I actually had begun my internship with the National Organization for Women two weeks ago. However, because we aren't required to log those weeks as part of our "official" SP time-log, I was able to use those hours as a makeup for this week, which made it easier for me to travel without worrying about how I would make up the minimum requirement (15 hours a week).

One of NOW's board members (and my SP adviser), Kathryn Mitchell, has recently established a PAC (political action committee) for Arizona, and in the spirit of being politically educated, challenged me to the task of recording all the state, county, and local elections happening in Arizona this year. Initially, it had been sort of a mess- several Arizonian websites for city and county elections have not been updated since November of last year, which rendered it near impossible to collect accurate information. However! We have been bugging the local representatives with rather passive-aggressive emails, and there seems to be light now in the dark abyss of political information. 

As for my SP syllabus, I'm falling a little bit behind. Although I have finished The Feminine Mystique- a 1970 expose by Gloria Steinem which detailed the problem of middle-class housewives post WWII- I have not been able to finish the Kimberle Crenshaw paper which coined the term "intersectionality." For those who don't know, intersectionality is the concept that feminism belongs not only to the white, middle-class, educated women, but to all women, and really, to all people. Intersectional feminists fight for rights for POC (people of color), people of the LGBTQ community, and for people of varying socio-economic status. The term was coined in this particular paper. I'm hoping to finish it this week.

This week is going to be another jam-packed week! I have to evaluate different forms of media (3 different websites, Twitter handles, Instagram accounts, Facebook groups, and Google+ groups) for reliability for my internship, and I have to continue working on reading and researching the different waves of feminism in order to get a proper background to start working on my app. 

Stay tuned!