2019 Contest

Making Work Visible

City University of New York / Labor Arts

Cinthia Encarnacion

Poetry Honorable Mention

Cinthia Encarnacion

LaGuardia Community College

The Women of my Family

The Women of my Family

Collage by author, March 3, 2019

work, for me there is no better way to describe it than the image of my mother every day getting up at 5 am to take the bus, then the train and walk a block to her work. Her perseverance and fighting spirit when she leaves for another job and when she finally arrives home disheveled, with her feet swollen and her eyelids drooping, she still has time to give me a smile and help me in whatever I need. The image of my grandmother preparing the food, serving the table, washing the dishes in a house that is not hers, because that is her job, taking care of others with vocation and dedication, but who cares for her on the way home? When the cold winter breeze hits your face and the long way home wears your bones. Just as my aunts take care of my little cousins, they wash and iron each piece of their little clothes with love and devotion, bathe them, dress them, fix their hair every day, prepare their lunch boxes to take them to Daycare before going to work. They do all this and much more without neglecting their role as mothers, daughters and sisters, they are still women and for me there is no better example of overcoming, work and effort than they, the women of my family … Dedicated to my mother who teaches me every day to get up and raise my voice for what I think is fair, to my grandmother for her good example of persisting and never giving up, but especially to all those other women who like women of my family are “Home Attendant” because that is much more than just a job.

Back to the top