{"id":4772,"date":"2019-07-10T10:54:21","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T15:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/?p=4772"},"modified":"2020-07-07T16:38:51","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T21:38:51","slug":"writer-professor-feminist-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/2019\/07\/10\/writer-professor-feminist-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Writer. Professor. Feminist. Leader."},"content":{"rendered":"
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By: Alicia Otto<\/p>\n

Turning negative into positive came easy for Dr. Marianne Kunkel as evidenced by her collection of poems about the first major-party female presidential candidate. Poems aren\u2019t a new thing for Kunkel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I would say I was four or five,\u201d Kunkel said of her first efforts. \u201cI remember writing songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kunkel\u2019s mother was able to stay home with her and would help with the songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember coming up with the rhymes, and my mom would help me with the words,\u201d Kunkel said. \u201cMy dad actually wrote songs on guitar, and my mom was very musical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kunkel did not write a lot after her first poem at three, but really began focusing on English and writing in high school. In college, she received a B.A. in poetry from Auburn University<\/a>, An M.F.A. in English (poetry) from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Google search shows one of Kunkel\u2019s most popular poems, \u201cA Sloth First Hears Its Name.\u201d \u201cWho doesn\u2019t do a Google search on themselves now and then?\u201d asked Kunkel.<\/p>\n

Written by Kunkel was around ten, the poem speculates what it means for someone to be called something that also means something else \u2014 in this case \u2014 one of the seven deadly sins. But the sloth just thought he was a sloth.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, Kunkel read a lot of second-wave feminism, specifically Gloria Steinham, but did not associate with that time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was intrigued by the women that came before me and wanted to understand their impact on my present time,\u201d Kunkel said. Kunkel feels that now is an exciting time to be a feminist. \u201c\u2026 more than ever, feminists are thinking about gender equality in relationship to many factors of ethnicity, race, age, sexual orientation, physical ability and more \u2014 though feminism could always be doing more to support these intersections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kunkel\u2019s most recent publication, \u201cHillary, Made Up,\u201d has gotten more attention than her last book. It is a collection of creative poems from the perspective of makeup and hair products speaking to Hillary Clinton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book is political because Hillary is very political,\u201d Kunkel said. \u201cBut at the heart of it was me kind of thinking about makeup and these rituals that women and some men go through to be taken seriously in the work place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton was an obvious choice for the comparisons because she is an aspirational woman who has tried to be President of the United States twice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to talk to [Clinton] directly, but I could not, so I thought the poems were interesting, because makeup could get this direct access to her,\u201d Kunkel said. From all that Kunkel has read or can read between the lines, Clinton is not one to \u201cdream about the next lipstick color.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAround the time I started writing the book after the election, there were some things coming out about Clinton making public appearances and whether or not she was wearing makeup,\u201d Kunkel said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t the one to create the correlation, but I took it and ran with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if politics aren\u2019t your eyebrow pencil, hopefully these words help draw a clearer picture of both Clinton and Kunkel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you. Thank you for helping women dream big,\u201d Kunkel would say to Clinton.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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By: Alicia Otto Turning negative into positive came easy for Dr. Marianne Kunkel as evidenced by her collection of poems about the first major-party female presidential candidate. Poems aren\u2019t a new thing for Kunkel. \u201cI guess I would say I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[92],"tags":[765,656,230,764],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4772"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4938,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions\/4938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}