Born To Run. By Andrea Askowitz

Bonnie Askowitz and Hillary Clinton

This story by our teacher was just published in Manifest-Station.

MY MOM has spent her entire adult life volunteering for the Democratic Party. She’s also an artist and was also very active in the women’s movement. She was the president of the local chapter of National Organization for Women and the head of the Miami Women’s History Coalition. 

 

She campaigned for equal pay for equal work and worked so hard for the Equal Rights Amendment that I can still recite the language: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. The amendment died in 1982. I was 14.

My brother and I grew up under women’s lib, which meant there were no distinctions between chores. There was setting the table and taking out the garbage. There were no boy colors or girl colors. I had a purple bicycle, my brother had yellow. There wasn’t even a distinction in clothes. My mom tells me that at three years old, I only wanted to wear my brother’s clothes, so in every picture from that era there I am in beige corduroys and a brown T-shirt that said, “Keep on Truckin’.”

Click here to read the full essay in The Manifest-Station

ANDREA ASKOWITZ is the author of the memoir My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy and the editor of Badass True Stories. She is also the co-host, teacher and co-producer of the podcast Writing Class Radio. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon.com, xoJane, Brain, Child, and other places.