Published 2002-10-17T00:00:00Z”/>

Lindsey Young<br>Staff Writer

Empowerment. It was more than just a word murmured among audience members.

It was a feeling that consumed students, faculty and community members who went to hear the motivation behind Inga Muscio’s best seller “Cunt: A Declaration of Independence.”

Most of the hour was filled by Muscio reading excerpts from her book, giving the words a personal touch.

“It is just the most inspirational book,” Chico State University senior Anna Neary told Muscio after her speech. “Thank you so much for writing it.”

Neary was just one of the estimated150 people who sat in silence as Muscio recalled the night she was inspired. The night she found out two men raped her mother.

“It is kind of my way of getting vengeance on the men that raped my mother,” Muscio said. “Realizing this event had such an impact on my life.”

It wasn’t until adulthood that Muscio found out about her mother’s childhood rape. Muscio said she always just thought that her parents were over protective, and then one night, it finally made sense.

In one passage of the book, she recalls one morning when she was 8 years old. She sneaked off to the mall to get a gift for mother’s day without telling her parents. She returned home to her mother, who was crying and shaking because she was terrified that something had happened to her daughter. After hugging her incessantly, her mother slapped her across the face.

“It stung,” Muscio recalled as she looked up at the audience.

She was grounded to her room for a week. As child, she said she had no idea why. It wasn’t until years later that Muscio found out her mother was raped.

Before moving on to the next passage from her book, Muscio invited the audience to join her in a stress-relieving scream.

She instructed everyone to take a deep breath through their nose, and then inhale further through their mouth.

“Think of something that angers you, that hurts you, that just sucks,” she told the audience.

In unison, the crowd clenched their fists and let out a scream.

“If you do this once a week,” she said, “you can just think better.”

With a sigh of relief, everyone sat down, and continued listening intently to Muscio delve deeper into her soul.

Muscio said she was terrified that men wouldn’t like the book, but it has been a gradual process of acclaim.

Although the audience consisted mostly of women, there were quite a few members of the opposite sex.

“I thought she was very insightful, empowering and uplifting,” senior David Hanley-Tejeda said.

He said liked the fact that the feminist perspective is very holistic.

Muscio said she wishes there were better words, other than feminism, to describe a powerful woman. She said she hopes her book will inspire all women to seize power.

Senior Andrea Brown got the book from a friend who bought it as a required text at University of California, Berkeley.

“It defines women. It makes us go back to our origin in a matter-of-fact way, but not demeaning to men,” she said. “It is really empowering.”

Summer Maroste couldn’t find a better word either, she said. All the words that Muscio spoke were really “empowering,” said the senior.

Cunt used to be a sacred word, and over the years, it has become derogatory, Maroste said.

“She is trying to reclaim it,” she said. “Make it empowering.”

Maroste said she thinks Cunt is trying to convey the message that women and children are not in a position of power, yet they make up so much of the world.

“(Muscio) puts thoughts that are running through people’s heads into words so eloquently,” she said. “And her words are so powerful.”

Maroste thinks Cunt appeals to college women because they’re realizing their status in the world, she said. And they are learning what they can do to better and empower themselves.

“It just flows out of her like she is speaking,” Maroste said. “I got liberation and a lot of empowerment.”

Muscio said that knowing she is an inspiration to others is quite an honor.

“If you open up your heart as wide as you can, and put it into words, into a book, and people don’t like it,” she said, “that would suck.”

<em>Lindsey Young can be reached at <a href= “mailto:[email protected]”>[email protected]</a></em>