A poem about gender inequality by Wesleyan University student Lily Meyers has gone viral, with a YouTube video of her reciting her poem having already been viewed more than 3.3 million times.
“I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking, making space for the entrance of men into their lives not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave. I have been taught accommodation. My brother never thinks before he speaks. I have been taught to filter. How could anyone have a relationship to food he asks laughing as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs. I want to say we come from difference Jonas. You have been taught to grow out. I have been taught to grow in,” she tells an audience at the College National Poetry Slam in New York City last spring.
Her poem, titled “Shrinking Women”, won the award for Best Love Poem at the poetry slam.
Jacqueline was CT Mirror’s Education and Housing Reporter, and an original member of the CT Mirror staff, joining shortly before our January 2010 launch. Her awards include the best-of-show Theodore A. Driscoll Investigative Award from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists in 2019 for reporting on inadequate inmate health care, first-place for investigative reporting from the New England Newspaper and Press Association in 2020 for reporting on housing segregation, and two first-place awards from the National Education Writers Association in 2012. She was selected for a prestigious, year-long Propublica Local Reporting Network grant in 2019, exploring a range of affordable and low-income housing issues. Before joining CT Mirror, Jacqueline was a reporter, online editor and website developer for The Washington Post Co.’s Maryland newspaper chains. Jacqueline received an undergraduate degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University and a master’s in public policy from Trinity College.
