It’s International Women’s Day!

Mar 8, 2022 | Is My Name Marie | 0 comments

what i’m up to

Today is International Women’s Day and here in Cambodia, it’s a national holiday. After three weeks of being swamped, sick, stressed, and not writing anything for myself, it also seems like a moment to reflect and send out a special and slightly themed edition of this newsletter.

A few weeks ago and just before I got sick (not COVID), I enjoyed an evening celebrating “Women’s Empowerment” and discussing challenges we face in the workplace and our personal lives at an event with the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia. I found myself thinking about how my own interest in the business world really ignited after my dad took me as his guest to an event with the American Chamber of Commerce in Slovakia years ago, when I’d just completed my first year of uni. I happened to mention both of these things to him on a brief chat last week and he said, “Oh yes, I remember taking you there. You burned so brightly that day, like a shining star.” I’m so glad and grateful to the women before me who strove and sacrificed so much for me to be able to live and build the independent and satisfying life I enjoy, and for men who don’t just reluctantly “let us” into spaces they’d rather keep us from, but who happily invite us into those spaces and who work to create an equitable world.

Me with my dad after that first AmCham event
Over this past weekend, I joined women from all across Phnom Penh to “brunch for a cause” and then enjoyed an afternoon with some girlfriends shopping in women-owned boutiques here in Cambodia. Tonight, the city is full of International Women’s Day special offers for dinner and cocktails and treats and I am anticipating a night free of work and worries and simply celebrating in the moment with friends.

what i’m reading

Honestly, my reading at the moment is entirely news out of Eastern Europe. But in celebration of International Women’s Day, some great and/or otherwise entertaining reads (not in any particular order) are:

  • Cantoras, a novel by Carolina de Robertis
  • Questions for Ada, a poetry collection by Ijeoma Umebinyuo
  • The Village Beyond: Poems of Nobuko Kimura
  • Flights, a novel by Olga Tokarczuk
  • With the Fire on High, a novel by Elizabeth Acevedo
  • Crescent, a novel by Diana Abu-Jabner
  • Queenie, a novel by Candice Carty-Williams
  • Good Talk, a graphic memoir by Mira Jacob
  • Stay with Me, a novel by Ayobami Adebayo
  • 19 Varieties of Gazelle, a poetry collection by Naomi Shihab Nye
  • America is Not the Heart, a novel by Elaine Castillo
  • Starlight in Two Million: A Neo-Scientific Novella by Amy Catanzano
  • Something to Declare, a novel by Julia Alvarez
  • The Girl in the Flamable Skirt, a short story collection by Aimee Bender
  • All the Single Ladies, non-fiction by Rebecca Traister
  • The Bride Test, a rom-com by Helen Hoang
  • The Bootleg Springs Series, a rom-com mystery series by Claire Kingsley and Lucy Score

what i’m thinking

I’m thinking today about the women in my community, near and far, close to heart and newly met. How grateful I am to have so many incredible women who have shared their lives with me – or a meaningful moment in it – or poured into my life in some way over the years.

I’m thinking about sisterhood and the many lives a woman may live and die in her lifetime.

I’m thinking about the babushkas and mothers and sisters and aunties and teens and tweens and little girls and infants in arms fleeing wars, staying to fight, sowing seeds and planting words and ideas, saying goodbye, standing together, loving and losing, hurting and grieving and going on somehow anyway. I’m thinking about the many who have fled over the years to safety only to face more rejection or ostracization. Thinking how we can do better.

Thinking how we must not forget our humanity. We must not forget to see our shared humanity in each other no matter what, loving each other as we love ourselves—or even better than we love ourselves.

I’m thinking about this poignant poem from Ijeoma Umebinyuo’s Questions for Ada:

I have always wondered
how women who carry war
inside their bones
still grow flowers
between their teeth.

This post is a snippet from a newsletter I originally published on Substack. You can read the complete publication there.