Janet Zandy > Quotes

“But then,
what are the men doing?
If we are going to be the sole financial, physical
and emotional support of our families;
if we are going to do two-thirds of all the work
for one-tenth of all the money,
what are men going to do?

[Could Someone Tell Me What’s Going On Here? Helen Potrebenko]”
― Janet Zandy, Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings

“Most people look straight ahead at the doors of the store as they approach and pass our picket lines. The kids are confused and ask why these people walk past us, can't they read?

I tell them, maybe these people have a disease and we're invisible to them. You know, kinda like color blindness, only when you have class blindness you can't see workers, you can only see things like waffle irons and Winnebagos.

Or maybe they've had an operation so life is now like a game show where you compete for prizes against other workers. This operation is called a lobotomy.

[Down on the Strike Line with My Children, Donna Langston}”
― Janet Zandy, Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings

“Class oppression is cultural as well as economic. I have encountered progressive Left academics who are unself-consciously classist in their dismissal of working-class epistemology, working-class knowledge acquired through lived experience. They may be adept at quoting Marx and super cautious about the language of race, but blinkered when it comes to recognizing the dominance of their own middle- or upper-class perspective.”
― Janet Zandy, Working-Class Girls Don’t Become Artists: Looking at Art and Class

“This is the inseparability of the labor of mothering and the labor of art making—as”
― Janet Zandy, Working-Class Girls Don’t Become Artists: Looking at Art and Class

“book. Art is not extracurricular. This philosophical root is less visible, but more important from a human development”
― Janet Zandy, Working-Class Girls Don’t Become Artists: Looking at Art and Class

“This is the dilemma of finding the right language to write about class and culture from a working-class perspective to a mixed-class, likely more middle and upper, audience. I have not perfected that language, but I am conscious of its complexity.”
― Janet Zandy, Working-Class Girls Don’t Become Artists: Looking at Art and Class

“Art can’t be the exclusive domain of the elect. It has to belong to everyone. —Elizabeth Catlett”
― Janet Zandy, Working-Class Girls Don’t Become Artists: Looking at Art and Class

“Most working people don’t go to museums. . . . They are frightened at the bigness. They feel left out. Going to a museum is like going into a rich man’s house. They may have a lot of respect for art, for culture, but museums are like an obstacle course for them.5 Ralph Fasanella answers those class-biased inhibitions. His paintings welcome people home. He affirms emotional knowledge.”
― Janet Zandy, Working-Class Girls Don’t Become Artists: Looking at Art and Class

“the obstacles she encountered, she respected herself. Self-respect is no small”
― Janet Zandy, Working-Class Girls Don’t Become Artists: Looking at Art and Class

“But then,
what are the men doing?
If we are going to be the sole financial, physical
and emotional support of our families;
if we are going to do two-thirds of all the work
for one-tenth of all the money,
what are men going to do?

Get drunk?
Play soldiers?
Assault our children?
Make pornographic movies?
Develop space programs?
Make half the men police in order to stop the other half from assaulting us and our children?

[Could Someone Tell Me What’s Going On Here? Helen Potrebenko]”
― Janet Zandy, Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings

“In 1990 I had a conversation with Manning Marable when he visited the Rochester Institute of Technology.29 I asked him how best to understand the differences between ethnic (considered white) working class and Black working class. He said, as I remember, “imagine you are forced to hold a rope in your hand. If you are ethnic/white, the rope marks your skin, if you are black it cuts into your flesh.” I have not forgotten that difference.”
― Janet Zandy, Working-Class Girls Don’t Become Artists: Looking at Art and Class