In her essay A Room of One's own, renown writer Virgina Woolf states that “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” She argued that it was the poverty of women that kept them from making strides in the feild of writing. I disagree. Unlike Ms. Woolf, I do not believe that poverty is the obstacle, but expectations. Society expects women to act in a certain way, be seen in a certain light, and live a certain type of life. It is the weight of these expectations that keep women from accomplishing literary work as well as anything. In order to become society's image of a women, one must sacrafice their individual talents to conform. The following poem focuses on this sacrafice and answers the questions : "Who am I?" and "How does that relate to my community?".
just salmon
In a sea of The Same,
is where I dwell.
Caught in the current
of its unifying spell.
Where we are all just salmon,
swimming up stream,
and life is nothing,
but a dream. No Trout nor Tuna
nor Carp nor Bass,
we are all just salmon
clumped in a mass.
And the Fishermen standing,
looking down from the shore,
to them we are just salmon,
and nothing more.
And when they fish us out
from the pool,
in us they see no difference
from the rest of our school.
Fishermen are lucky.
They aren't the same.
They are individuals
with seperate names.
But we are just salmon.
And it doesn't matter,
what Fishermen we get.
For we are still captured
with the very same net.
Or dare we try
swim against the tide,
because to defy the norm
is practically suicide.
For The Current is survival,
and The Current is strong.
We are just salmon
swimming along.
How can we invent, accomplish,
or discover? We simply don't.
We are just salmon
trying to keep afloat.
