For centuries, starvation has been wielded as a strategic and brutally effective tool of colonial and imperial violence. From the deliberate depravation of Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island to the Great Hunger in Ireland to the Bengal Famine, empire has repeatedly turned food into a weapon to control, displace, and erase. What is happening now in Palestine, Sudan, and the Congo is the latest chapter in an old and devastating playbook.
There are moments when the body remembers what the world would rather forget — the betrayals endured, the boundaries denied, the silences swallowed. For many women, especially those of the global majority, the past few years have peeled back illusion and exposed the cost of compliance. What rises now is not noise, but clarity. A quiet, unwavering return to self. To say no is not refusal — it is reclamation. Of voice. Of dignity. Of space. In a world that demands our silence, there is no act more powerful than loudly choosing ourselves.