On Feminism

It has been eight months since I started my MFA at Bennington College. In the last eight months I have cooked half a dozen meals. I pack my children lunches and I clean up the kitchen after my husband when he makes dinner for the family after he comes home from working in a Silicon Valley tech company. Cooking has never moved me. Motherhood has—but not the baggage of social dos and don'ts that accompanied it. I have done fewer play dates than the meals I have cooked in the past few months, and I rarely go to a birthday party. My husband takes the children to their social engagements. “But is this fair?” you might ask and I answer, “It is not about fairness, it is about what moves you as a person and how to keep that flame of what keeps you alive, burning within you, while negotiating roles in an adult world that still largely favors men over women.”

- Chandra Ganguly

My husband has always wanted to be a father—he is a good father. He can play endless rounds of knock knock jokes with our four year old and he helps the older ones with their science projects. I spend a lot of my time reading and writing, finally able to legitimize my interests because I am in graduate school. In the summer I traveled to Yale for a conference, and then to my residency in Bennington. In total, my children saw me for ten days in June. “How can you do it?” some have asked me explicitly and some with judgment in their eyes. “I must do it,” I say, “to stay alive and be the mother I want to be to my children.” Eyebrows are raised, eyes widen in concern for my choices and their possible harmful effects on my children. “What about home cooked meals? And what about clean houses and laundry and the home and the hearth?” I turn to look at my children when I am asked these questions and they see me staring into space and ask me why I am not studying. “Study, mama,” they tell me.