That voice montage in the movie “Her Story” moves me no matter how many times I watch it.
The mundane details of mother Tiemei’s daily life become grand natural phenomena in daughter Jasmine’s ears:
the vacuum cleaner becomes a tornado
frying eggs becomes a downpour
washing fruit becomes dolphins leaping from the sea.
These seemingly ordinary actions are also “knowledge within the body” – wisdom passed down from mothers and grandmothers through sound and movement.
This is the source of the quote in the image, from American educational researcher and sociocultural scholar Cindy Cruz’s article “Toward an epistemology of a brown body.” She discusses how for women and other marginalized groups, knowledge isn’t always transmitted through “speaking” or “writing.” Often, it happens through interactions with mothers and grandmothers:
- Watching how they do things;
- How they survive;
- How they express, endure, and resist.
This gentle yet powerful way of transmitting knowledge belongs to women, yet has long been ignored by mainstream academia (knowledge systems dominated by white men).
Men have upheld “logic, method, data” as academic gold standards, while viewing the “emotional and sensory” as inferior, unworthy of academic discussion.
But Cindy reminds us that emotions, behaviors, and movements – these responses from the body – are themselves transmitting survival wisdom. They aren’t “lower” than “rationality” but rather another way of understanding the world, closely connected to the land, rhythm, and life itself.
It’s a simple yet profound “Earth Mother” type of intergenerational inheritance.
So don’t be hindered by others’ claims that you’re not “rational” enough. Your body, experiences, and emotional responses are all carriers of knowledge. Sometimes, the deepest understanding is hidden in our body language, in our unconscious movements, in the sensory memories buried deep within us.
Just as mother Tiemei’s household chores transform into natural wonders in daughter Joy’s eyes, knowledge flows in these seemingly ordinary moments – from fingertips to palms, from body to earth.
💫 This is also why I named the account “Her Body Knows” in English. Never doubt yourself – your body knows all the stories, and the female connections hidden behind them.