20

Two other collective walls were painted in
1974 and 1975 by Lower East Side women under
the direction of Tomie Arai. The Wall of Re-
spect for Women (1974) epitomizes the non-
antagonistic type of feminism portrayed on
non-white community walls dealing with the
theme of woman. Rather than condemning
more traditional women’s roles (e.g., mother,
telephone operator), this mural celebrates all
the roles played by women. The second wall,
Women Hold Up Half the Sky (1975), painted
by many of the same women who worked on
the earlier wall, as well as some men, portrays
women'’s oppression within the context of the
larger social struggle. Although most of the
images come from a generalized women’s ex-
perience, the figures breaking out of oppression
are of both sexes. In both walls women are
shown performing their traditional jobs and,
with few exceptions, this is the way women are
portrayed in community walls.

Some murals about women emphasize the
biological factor, and almost all include the
mother-child theme. Yet these would be con-
sidered highly conservative images by the
Women’s Liberation Movement. The use of
such stereotypical images of women is not the
result of ignorance on the part of women mural-
ists. In part it reflects the goals of Third World
feminism, in which women'’s rights are seen as
one part of the more general social struggle,
and great care is taken to keep feminism from
appearing to be a divisive force.

Within political organizations like the Puerto
Rican Socialist Party (PSP), political education
courses discuss the need to overcome machis-
mo and the oppressive role definitions which
make it difficult for men and women to work
together as compareros. Some of the verses
from the song “Quiero decirte” (I Want to Tell
You Something), written collectively by Suni
Paz, Juana Diaz, and other Puerto Rican sisters
in 1972 and often sung at political rallies and
community events, state the changes in the

Haight-Ashbury Muralists. Unity Eye. 1973.
Haight and Shrader Streets, San Francisco,
California. (Photo: Tim Drescher.)

Eva Cockcroft. Warrensburg. 1976.
Oddfellows Temple, Main Street,
Warrensburg, New York. (Photo: Oren Lane.)

Tomi Arai, director, with Lower East Side
women, Wall of Respect for Women. 1974.
East Broadway and Rutgers Street,

New York City. (Photo: Cami Homann,
Cityarts Workshop.)

male-female relationship for which they are
struggling:

A la mujer me dirijo:
tu también debes luchar
para salir de una vez
de tu gran pasividad.

Al hombre le toca ahora:
entiende que la mujer
sabe pensar y sentir

y tiene derecho a ser.*

(To the woman | say

you must struggle to abandon
your conditioned passivity
and to leave it behind.

To the man I say

try to understand

that a woman can think and feel,
and has a right to exist.)

The mother in Latin culture is seen as the
moral leader of the household and the authority
in the education of her children. The forced
sterilization of women by the U.S. government
in Puerto Rico and other Latin American coun-
tries (as well as the poor at home) has served to
intensify the felt need for women to bear chil-
dren in order to preserve their race. This creates
certain differences in attitude about popula-
tion control and the family structure between
Third World feminism and the rest of the
Women'’s Liberation Movement.

Overtly feminist murals are found primarily
on Women'’s Center walls, within the university
world, and in certain selected city neighbor-
hoods —Haight-Ashbury, for example —where a
base of support exists. Most often, the feminist
consciousness of women muralists is expressed
by the substitution of female for male as a sym-
bolic or heroic figure, or even by the mere
inclusion of women as active figures in any
mural.

The problem of responsibility to the perma-