"Togetherness-in-Difference": Nonviolent Women in Turbulent Nations

                In retrospect, and though we did not explicitly discuss this while creating our maps, I believe Andrew, Ashley, and I saw Leymah Gbowee's 2011 Nobel Lecture as an example of the creation of a new community similar to that of the Chinese American rhetoric community contemplated by Mao in his "Rhetorical Borderlands: Chinese American Rhetoric in the Making" (the Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie preface, as noted by Meaghan). By expounding on her own indigenous community in Liberia, I believe that Ms. Gbowee, in her speech, took some steps toward creating a broader, new type of community: that of women actively working toward peace in their troubled countries.

                After reading her speech, the first theme I could think of was: "women!" This made me want to engage further by determining word usage and frequency. As you can see on our first map, the biggest "circle" (the bigger the circle, the more frequently the word is used) was the word "woman" or women" - used a total of 47 times.

                The next most used word was "world," used a total of 13 times.

                Ms. Gbowee also spent a good amount of time combining these two themes - "women" and "world", noting, with pride,  other female communities actively involved in nonviolent resistance within their home countries, including Women of Zimbabwe Arise, the Women of Congo, Women of Acholi Land in Uganda, and Women of Afghanistan.

                I believe Ms. Gbowee was attempting to, by combining the discourse communities of (1) women; and (2) those working toward nonviolent resistance in the face of atrocious violence, was calling her sisters to create a new global, inter-culture discourse community.

                I believe this is similar in theory to Mao's conceptualization of "togetherness-in-difference" which works to create Chinese American rhetoric. (Mao 434). The differences of these women is striking. Women from Uganda, from Congo, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan - they all have different cultures, different languages; they all face different challenges. As noted in Ms. Gbowee's speech, in Zimbabwe, violence includes "arrest and torture," whereas in Afghanistan, violence is "honor killing" and in Congo, violence is of a sexual nature. These differences in definitions should not draw the community of women for nonviolence apart, however - it should, like indirectness and indirectness, as instructed by Mao and other rhetors familiar with Chinese thought, be seen not as polar opposites but rather as complementary to one another. (Mao 444).

                Further, I believe Ms. Gbowee was encouraging the type of speech and actions taken by these women - strong actions, but actions of nonviolence. "Peace" was a major theme of Ms. Gbowee's speech, as she used that word ten times; justice and equality were also used often (five and four times, respectively).

                However, as Young did in "Reading Hawai'is's Asian American Literacy Narratives," Ms. Gbowee noted that the method of communication of these women warriors was often misunderstood, judged, or looked down upon. She noted that the women of Liberia chose "non-violence" over violence, noting that "the use of violence was taking us and our beloved country deeper into the abyss of pains, death, and destruction." She points out that she and the other women "succeeded when no one thought we would."

                Similarly, the minorities in Hawai'i were often judged, looked down upon, and scoffed at for their use of Pidgin. (Young 135). Like Young, Ms. Gbowee encourages women to continue using their own language of nonviolence and to take pride in it, rather than to submit to the belief that nonviolence is inferior. As a community, Ms. Gbowee believes that women can continue to work together to bring peace to their nations, and, eventually, globally.