The Moth shares feminist stories at St. Thomas for Women’s History Month

The Luann Dummer Center for Women welcomed three feminist-forward speakers from The Moth to celebrate Women’s History Month at the University of St. Thomas on March 13 in the O’Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium.

With help from The Moth, three women shared personal stories regarding their experiences with feminism with St. Thomas students, faculty and community members. The Moth is a nonprofit organization based in New York that helps people tell stories about their lives on stage without notes. LDCW Director Liz Wilkinson said that centers are more important than ever in the wake of the elimination of some DEI programs.

 “If we are to find a way forward, it will be a way of feminism,” Wilkinson said. 

Wilkinson, also a professor of English and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, emphasized the importance of celebrating women throughout March: “We’ve got so much that we can talk about and so many women who are integral to the positive movements of history. And so it’s important to celebrate for the full month of March and always.”

Wilkinson and her eight interns create educational opportunities and connections with on- and off-campus organizations to support women and feminists at St. Thomas and in the surrounding community. 

The Luann Dummer Center has hosted a speaker every Women’s History Month since 1994. This year, it invited The Moth to make its first appearance, falling directly in line with the center’s theme for this year: the power of storytelling. 

The first storyteller, Susanne Schmidt, a professor of mental health at Southern New Hampshire University, spoke about her heritage and the impact her great-grandmother had on her life. 

“My great-grandmother was an Italian immigrant… she had been arrested so many times fighting for women’s rights,” Schmidt said. 

Schmidt’s story shifted to how Title IX impacted her as a young girl who wanted to play the drums, inspired by Karen Carpenter. 

“In 1972, I was making the transition from elementary school to middle school, and I needed to pick an instrument… But one night, I’m watching television, and there on TV comes Karen Carpenter…The other thing that was happening at this time, maybe not as significant, is that Title IX has just been passed, and girls, we are showing up in everything. And so the boys are not happy that I am there.“

After spending months practicing as the only girl out of ten drummers, Schmidt was offered a solo in her middle school’s annual Christmas concert.

“The band teacher comes up to me and says, ‘I would like for you to play the drum solo.’ And I was like, ’You bet I got this.’ And I run home and told my family, and my grandma is so excited that she says, ‘I’m gonna start working on a dress for you.’ And she makes me the most beautiful green velvet dress I’ve ever seen.”

Only on the day of the concert did Schmidt realize the problem her attire would cause: she would need to sit with her legs apart in order to play the drums.

“I look out in the audience and my entire family is taking up, like, three rows. And I see my grandmother and she’s so proud that she’s crying… I know what I need to do… I stroll up to the front of the stage to that red sparkle drum set, and I reach down, and I grab that gown, and I pull it up between my legs and I tie it off at the waist. And I sit down at that drum set, and I freaking rock it!”

Schmidt connected this experience to her great-grandmother’s fight for women’s rights. 

“I think (my great-grandmother) meant liberty. I think she meant the right for women to vote. I think she meant the freedom to show our legs on a hot summer day at the beach. And I think she meant the hope that comes when you work really, really hard for something, knowing that you may never achieve it,” Schmidt said. “But that someday, your daughter, your granddaughter, your great-granddaughter just might.”

Next, Becky Chan, who became the second female Chinese agent in the FBI’s history and worked with the Bureau for 22 years, spoke about her encounter with an infamous human smuggler. 

Chan had successfully extradited Sister Ping, a Chinese woman who made over $40 million in 20 years by smuggling other Chinese individuals into the United States. Chan and Ping traveled from Hong Kong to the United States, “two immigrants, with similar language backgrounds but we were on the opposite sides of the law, each doing something we thought was right: serving others.” 

Chan’s father, who arrived in the United States before the rest of the Chan family, faced many challenges as he adjusted to the new culture that he would soon bring his family into. She said she remembers being sent a picture of her father with the Statue of Liberty in the background — a sign that he made it to New York. 

“In Chinese, we call America the Gold Mountain,” Chan said. She said that her father was one of the many who reached the base but could not climb further. 

“He died a frustrated artist making minimum wage without realizing that the gold he was looking for was in each one of the members of my family and in the future generations of my family,” Chan said.

Lastly, Martha Ruiz-Perilla talked about her dental school residency at a hospital in Columbia. The hospital’s small town, Neiva, was known for its violence, such as armed conflicts, bombings and kidnappings. Despite the dangers, Ruiz-Perilla was encouraged by her father to go help those who needed it most and to “be careful, be smart and call your mother.” 

Her long days at the hospital focused strictly on dentistry until her evenings and weekends, during which she was on call in the ER to treat neck-and-above injuries. 

One evening, she awoke to a rifle being shoved in her back by guerrillas who had seized the hospital. She was led down a long corridor to her office, which housed a 15-year-old boy with a severe facial abscess that “made the left side of his face look like a hot water balloon” due to a rotten molar. 

After completing a complicated procedure, Ruiz-Perilla gave the boy some antibiotics and supplies and told him he should be healed in two weeks. His father, the commander of the guerrilla group, threatened her before leaving with his son and the rest of the guerrillas. 

For two weeks, Ruiz-Perilla waited in fear until she received a package containing a sack of oranges, a live chicken and a note: “…Doctora, no need to come back. Gracias.” 

“If you’re gifted with the opportunity of helping another human being, you do it,” Ruiz-Perilla said. “And that’s what I did.”

Ruiz-Perilla said that stories like hers are important to share to promote empathy and understanding through storytelling, especially from a feminist perspective.

“For me, it’s important to transmit the value of courage and how limiting fear can be, especially for a woman to live the life she wants,” Ruiz-Perilla said. “And I think storytelling has the capacity to touch your emotions … but the connection that is established between people in the process of storytelling really lets a message sit with you and stay.”

Sophomore Rose Hissom, one of the student interns at the LDCW who attended the event, said was encouraged by the women’s stories.

“There’s still a lot of positions today where women are a minority … just hearing that and knowing that there’s been so much progress made … was very inspiring.”

Grace Woelfel can be reached at woel8456@stthomas.edu.