Ask the Author: Rickey Gard Diamond
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Rickey Gard Diamond
I accept that procrastination is part of my process. Suddenly I get urges to organize kitchen drawers, or clean the carpet under my bed. The rhythmic movements of washing, or painting, or reaching helps my unconscious mind deal with fear of the blank white page. Under pressure, I come up with somewhere to start. It's okay if it's stupid, or leads to something far different. The thing is to start.
Rickey Gard Diamond
I learned the hard way, the way most of us do! I discovered the pay gap years after I suffered the shame of working full time, same as my ex-husband had, but NOT being able to make my budget work. I finally went to the welfare office. After that I joined the War on Poverty and learned and wrote about systems that disadvantaged women and people of color and the majority. I became curious about Wall Street's "creative writing" while teaching at Vermont College, and designed seminars connecting literature and economics, presenting at NOW's Economic Summit in 2008 on dangers of a male economic ecology. My critique of economics is language-based because language not only names things (and in economics, often wrongly or omitting women and nature). Language shapes how we think about things. Right now economics is waged as war. We need to wage life!
Rickey Gard Diamond
Whatever my work, I always looked to money and economics for unraveling problems and understanding power and how things get done. I grew up and began writing in Michigan, where huge economic and political changes were happening. In the 80s, I moved my family to Vermont where I was a grad student and a then-single mom, but also working full-time. I edited a statewide newspaper on poverty issues, and in 1985, became founding editor of Vermont Woman, which continues to publish today.
Later I helped Community Action establish a Vermont food bank, a parent child center, and a domestic violence service, but I continued to write for Vermont Woman as a contributing editor. I went on to teach writing and literature, feminist and media studies at Vermont College of Norwich University for over 20 years, while publishing articles and short fiction. In 1999, Calyx Books published my novel, Second Sight, which was republished by HarperCollins in 2000. My short fiction, published in literary journals, came out in 2017, titled, Whole Worlds Could Pass Away: Collected Stories. Even in my fiction, I include social and economic changes, and how these affect people.
I wasn’t alone. Women's literature often looks at money, and my seminars at Vermont College reflected this intertwined interest, as did my work at Vermont Woman. In 2008, I presented at the NOW Economic Summit in Atlanta, just months before the crash. I titled it, “The Skewed Language of Economics is Greek to Me or How can We Grow a Sexy Economic Ecology?” I had read widely, taken some classes, and had noticed the deliberate obfuscation of economic language, and the sexual messaging behind money. It was the opposite of love-making. I’d also noticed money’s ownership by a relatively small number of elite men.
So I learned about healthier alternatives. In 2011, I wrote a series of articles on my economic research, called “An Economy of our Own,” aimed at women, who were in short supply on Wall Street and wherever big decisions about money were made. In 2012, I won a National Newspaper Association award for Best Investigative or In-Depth Series. It cited my “atypical” sources—by which, I think they meant women!
In 2014, I was awarded a Hedgebrook fellowship to work on what by then I had named Screwnomics. I had decided I needed to tell an economy “story,” in a more personal voice than “news” allowed. I had also convinced Peaco Todd, one of my faculty colleagues at Vermont College, that Screwnomics needed cartoons about women’s lives. Our laughter together has been a mainstay of this work, as we’ve continued to post Sunday toons on Screwnomics’ Facebook page and Twitter.
Call us “amateurs,” and I don’t mind. The Latin root of amateur is “ama,” meaning love. That’s exactly what this current love-starved economy most needs!
Whatever my work, I always looked to money and economics for unraveling problems and understanding power and how things get done. I grew up and began writing in Michigan, where huge economic and political changes were happening. In the 80s, I moved my family to Vermont where I was a grad student and a then-single mom, but also working full-time. I edited a statewide newspaper on poverty issues, and in 1985, became founding editor of Vermont Woman, which continues to publish today.
Later I helped Community Action establish a Vermont food bank, a parent child center, and a domestic violence service, but I continued to write for Vermont Woman as a contributing editor. I went on to teach writing and literature, feminist and media studies at Vermont College of Norwich University for over 20 years, while publishing articles and short fiction. In 1999, Calyx Books published my novel, Second Sight, which was republished by HarperCollins in 2000. My short fiction, published in literary journals, came out in 2017, titled, Whole Worlds Could Pass Away: Collected Stories. Even in my fiction, I include social and economic changes, and how these affect people.
I wasn’t alone. Women's literature often looks at money, and my seminars at Vermont College reflected this intertwined interest, as did my work at Vermont Woman. In 2008, I presented at the NOW Economic Summit in Atlanta, just months before the crash. I titled it, “The Skewed Language of Economics is Greek to Me or How can We Grow a Sexy Economic Ecology?” I had read widely, taken some classes, and had noticed the deliberate obfuscation of economic language, and the sexual messaging behind money. It was the opposite of love-making. I’d also noticed money’s ownership by a relatively small number of elite men.
So I learned about healthier alternatives. In 2011, I wrote a series of articles on my economic research, called “An Economy of our Own,” aimed at women, who were in short supply on Wall Street and wherever big decisions about money were made. In 2012, I won a National Newspaper Association award for Best Investigative or In-Depth Series. It cited my “atypical” sources—by which, I think they meant women!
In 2014, I was awarded a Hedgebrook fellowship to work on what by then I had named Screwnomics. I had decided I needed to tell an economy “story,” in a more personal voice than “news” allowed. I had also convinced Peaco Todd, one of my faculty colleagues at Vermont College, that Screwnomics needed cartoons about women’s lives. Our laughter together has been a mainstay of this work, as we’ve continued to post Sunday toons on Screwnomics’ Facebook page and Twitter.
Call us “amateurs,” and I don’t mind. The Latin root of amateur is “ama,” meaning love. That’s exactly what this current love-starved economy most needs!
Rickey Gard Diamond
Everyone has a personal economic story. We're just not encouraged to claim it. Everyone knows economics isn't personal! But we can no longer pretend, as does Wall Street, that everyone and everything we love is disconnected from the numbers on the DOW and GDP. So I'm currently working on a personal handbook to go with my soon-to-be-released book, Screwnomics: How the Economy Works Against Women and Real Ways to Make Lasting Change (April 3, 2018).
Where Can I Get Some Change? will be designed to help women claim their own story, and reflect on it in the light of Screwnomic's chapters with its unpacked definitions, history, and new ideas. You won't need a Ph.D. The workbook will also suggest discussion questions for a book group that will help women support each other, as you gather to share a glass of wine or cup of coffee, and share what you learned about your economy and yourself. Believe me, it makes the subject MUCH more fun--as it should be.
Here in Vermont we're starting to form what I've named EconoGirlfriend groups to do just that. How will it work? We'll find out! We hope to gather data on what works in these groups or doesn't. Then we'll spread the idea with improvements and additions. Our goal is to begin an #EconomicMeToo movement, and to help women talk together about our last taboo, money.
I say "our goal" and "we" because economist and educator Susan Mesner and violence prevention educator Meg Kuhner are helping me design and evaluate the workbook. So are Tiffany Bluemle and Jessica Nordhaus. So I'll add my thanks here to the two pages' worth of marvelous people already acknowledged in Screwnomics.
in case you've forgotten, my word Screwnomics names what is now largely invisible: the widely applied economic theory that women should always work for less, or better, for free. That includes our mother earth. And it includes those girly-men who work at jobs like nursing or teaching, or do housework or childcare at home—what is generally thought of as "women's work."
Screwing is not love-making. It's essentially to be forced against your will, humiliated and controlled. Right now, being almost exclusively masculine, our economics is waged as war. But both genders CAN join to create an economy that wages life—but not until more women understand it.
Where Can I Get Some Change will not only help you reflect and share, but also introduce you to many more resources and allies for whatever particular part of the economy's million parts you feel most passionate about! Thanks so much for this question. I'd love to know what you think. You can learn more at www.screwnomics.org
Where Can I Get Some Change? will be designed to help women claim their own story, and reflect on it in the light of Screwnomic's chapters with its unpacked definitions, history, and new ideas. You won't need a Ph.D. The workbook will also suggest discussion questions for a book group that will help women support each other, as you gather to share a glass of wine or cup of coffee, and share what you learned about your economy and yourself. Believe me, it makes the subject MUCH more fun--as it should be.
Here in Vermont we're starting to form what I've named EconoGirlfriend groups to do just that. How will it work? We'll find out! We hope to gather data on what works in these groups or doesn't. Then we'll spread the idea with improvements and additions. Our goal is to begin an #EconomicMeToo movement, and to help women talk together about our last taboo, money.
I say "our goal" and "we" because economist and educator Susan Mesner and violence prevention educator Meg Kuhner are helping me design and evaluate the workbook. So are Tiffany Bluemle and Jessica Nordhaus. So I'll add my thanks here to the two pages' worth of marvelous people already acknowledged in Screwnomics.
in case you've forgotten, my word Screwnomics names what is now largely invisible: the widely applied economic theory that women should always work for less, or better, for free. That includes our mother earth. And it includes those girly-men who work at jobs like nursing or teaching, or do housework or childcare at home—what is generally thought of as "women's work."
Screwing is not love-making. It's essentially to be forced against your will, humiliated and controlled. Right now, being almost exclusively masculine, our economics is waged as war. But both genders CAN join to create an economy that wages life—but not until more women understand it.
Where Can I Get Some Change will not only help you reflect and share, but also introduce you to many more resources and allies for whatever particular part of the economy's million parts you feel most passionate about! Thanks so much for this question. I'd love to know what you think. You can learn more at www.screwnomics.org
Rickey Gard Diamond
Like most women, I've been thinking about money forever, often coming up short. But economics seemed like Greek to me, so I set out to translate it. I began to notice that whatever school of thought, or economic field, women generally did not own it. The field was hyper-masculine. Eventually I wrote a series of articles that won a National Newspaper Association award for investigative reporting, citing my "atypical" sources, by which I suppose they meant women. I decided the objective tone of news reporting didn't really capture what I'd discovered. I wanted to make it more personal, more cheeky and fun. Cartoonist Peaco Todd and I taught at the same university, and when I asked if she'd work with me generating cartoons about women and money, she said yes! We've been laughing ever since. We have regular toons every Sunday on Screwnomic's Facebook site. Check them out!
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