Survival, Violence and Fear

Early in the course I presented “A Litany for Survival” to the students and slowly but surely they began writing their own poems, testifying to and hoping for their own survival in the face of violence. I realized that teaching on a campus that condoned and ignored sexual violence enacted upon and by its students made the act of standing to lead a lecture or sitting to lead a seminar discussion even more scary than my fear of public speaking provided for. And though Audre Lorde’s poetry and essays are often read in isolation (like the rest of literature in the academy) as brilliant products of a brilliant mind, it changed everything for me when I realized that while Audre Lorde was writing the poems that I needed about violence and difference and survival and fear she was a teacher. And she wasn’t teaching just anyone. Audre Lorde was the first black teacher in the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the City University of New York from 1970-1979. This meant she was teaching police officers in full uniform including loaded guns during the most visible period of racist police violence in the history of New York City. No wonder she was an expert in the permutations of fear. Reading Audre Lorde and teaching about trauma at Duke University during the lacrosse “scandal” taught me that teaching, being accountable to a volatile and vulnerable audience of students changes everything. Honesty in that setting requires a poetic act of faith every single time.

UBUNTU focused a large amount of energy on nurturing the stories of women and especially women of color at the colleges in our areas. After all, this entire movement was sparked by the bravery of a black college student who was brave enough to speak out against the violence she had experienced. At the same time, it was very clear to us, that while college classrooms and programming could make a difference in the lives of individual women, the college campus was not a non-violent space nor was it conducive to sustained healing.

Read ALL of it (please!) here.

I Am Your Sister (March 2009)

Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnetta B. Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, eds. I AM Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Audre Lorde was not only a famous black poet; she was also one of the most important radical black feminists of the past half century. I Am Your Sister collects her non-fiction prose from 1976 to 1990, and it is the first volume to provide a full picture of Lorde's political work (as opposed to her aesthetic work). The essays cover an impressive variety of topics: sexuality, race, gender, culture, class, parenting, disease, resistance, and power--both within the United States and across the African diaspora. While Lorde is best known as a progenitor of black feminist studies, I Am Your Sister stresses her signal influence in the creation of gay and lesbian studies. Lorde's work presaged the late 1980s shift in the academy toward the emphasis on the tight connections between race, class, gender, and sexuality--and later disability. Accordingly, the breadth of topics Lorde tackles in the various essays in I Am Your Sister capture the spirit of intersectionality that now dominates analysis in the humanities and critical social sciences.

Nice.

Two by Two: A Touch of Nerdy Link Love

GPhoto: Patrick "Pato" Hebert

WOC PhD has links to a plenary with Cherríe Moraga at the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Joto Caucus.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Wole Soyinka discuss the Future of Africa on the Vine (video) at the Root.

What Happens When Quirky Black Girls Discover the Erotic, or Summer of Our Lorde III

Get your erotic here.

Love Letter to a Bus Rider

This post is partially inspired by readings completed for Session II: Mothering Ourselves of Summer of Our Lorde.

The third myth of black women's self-perfection according to Audre Lorde:

"That perfection is possible, a correct expectation from ourselves and each other, and the only terms of acceptance, humanness. (Not how very useful that makes us to the external institutions!) If you are like me, then you will have to be a lot better than I am in order to even be good enough. And you can't be because no matter how good you are you're still a Black woman, just like me. (Who does she think she is?) So any act or idea that I could accept or at least examine from anyone else is not even tolerable if it comes from you, my mirror image. If you are not THEIR image of perfection, and you can't ever be because you are a Black woman, then you are a reflection upon me. We are never good enough for each other. All your faults become magnified reflections of my own threatening inadequacies. I must attack you first before our enemies confuse us with each other. But they will anyway."

I am processing being yelled at by a young black woman on the bus today because her nephew was hitting the back of my seat, because her nephew was hitting my back, because I looked up from my book and back at him with a pointed glance meant to condemn her maternal misbehavior, because who-did-I-think-I-was to look at her nephew any kind of way, because "she act like somebody wanna touch her anyway!"

Who was wrong?

Me? For the quiet glance I sent backwards that was meant to let her know I did not appreciate having my personal space violated any more than it already was on a crowded metro bus? Was I vibrating my class/color privilege from what I thought was a neutral posture of preoccupied scholarship?

Her? For giving a five year old boy liberties with my body and distancing herself from me in the same breath as someone too good, who thinks she's too good, who thinks someone wants to touch her, who thinks that book, or that backpack, or that aloof stance is going to protect her from the reality of black poverty in the air around me?

"I must attack you first before our enemies confuse us."

But if "they will anyway" why this anger? Why this vitrolic self-hatred that spirals outwards from her to me and back again?

Why did I look down my nose so easily at her nephew, before I knew he was her nephew, when I thought he was her son, when I thought she was just another young, black mother with an out of control child?

"One Black woman sits and silently judges another, how she looks, how she acts, how she impresses others. The first woman's scales are weighted against herself."

Black Girl with a Nephew, I am writing this to you. We both made mistakes earlier today. And I hold you accountable for your anger. But I don't hold you responsible for it. How can I? I love you as I love myself. Which may not be saying much--not yet. But perhaps we can work on this together.

"How often have I demanded from another Black woman what I have not dared to give myself--acceptance, faith, enough space to consider change? How often have I asked her to leap across differences, suspicion, distrust, old pain? How many times have I expected her to jump the hideous gaps of our learned despisals alone, like an animal trained through blindness to ignore the precipice? How many times have I forgotten to ask this question?"

After all, I can't heal as a woman of color until I begin to see my image more fully in the image of you, my sister. At the end of the day, I'm more in love with womankind than I am with my own individual self.

"I am hungry for Black women who will not turn from me in anger and contempt even before they know me or hear what I have to say. I am hungry for Black women who will not turn away from me even if they do not agree with what I say. We are, after all, talking about different combination of the same borrowed sounds."

I am starving for it, actually. Wasting away to my bones for a taste of it. Lusting in every cell of my body with desire for it.

That includes you, Black Girl with a Nephew. Like it or not. Disdain it or not. Reject it or not. Love is love. And I am a jealous, brazen, warrior lover, and I won't be taking no for an answer. My love doesn't need your permission or acknowledgment. It just is. As my anger just is. As I just am. As the feminine Spirit just is.

And, meanwhile, I "reach, advancing with the best of what I have to offer held out at arms length before me--myself."

I hope we grapple again in person, Black Girl with a Nephew. But I will grapple with you in spirit for the rest of my life.

Have a blessed day,

Kismet

Feminism, Partners, and Relationships

So...my doctoral student relationship with Mr. just became an ABD relationship. Complete with complaints about uncertain job locations, long distance & long term travel, ambiguous time to degree timetables...the works. The results are not pretty.

The details, of course, are NUNYA. (For all the allies out there, NUNYA = None of Your Business)

Still, as I sat at my computer at almost 1 a.m., frustrated after another pointless conversation on African Diaspora, Ph.D. romance logistics, and tried to figure out who to call to purge, I realized I had a more interesting problem.

Who do I--radical woman of color aspiring academic in a long-term heterosexual relationship with a man of color--talk to about these things?

Let's break down the politics of identity and love for those unfamiliar.

I am Puerto Rican and black. Mr. is black. Which means I at least want to discuss this with someone else of color.

I am female. Which means, for the most, talking to dudes about the problems are out of the question. For the most part. (But we will put this on reserve)

I am in a long term relationship. Which means, I don't want to complain to many of my single friends who so often turn my cathartic scream fest into a session of Romance Olympics ("Oh, but at least you are with someone!", "I would love to be able to complain about a fight with my boyfriend", etc.). I also don't want to complain to those in my life who are so fiercely independent that they are anti- relationships, period. I am in this because I am happy and it works for me. And I want to build it, not automatically assume that a fight between us is the End. And even if it is I don't want to celebrate that.

I am a rwoc who is ambivalent about marriage (yes, the two are tied for me). Which means, I don't really want to complain to my married friends, many of whom are very invested in ideas of subservience and honor that are repugnant to me. Ideas like I should "work with him" or that I should be the one to meet him where he is, that I need to be able to bend, that "men are just like that," or I shouldn't have made him so mad, or I should see it from his side. Excuse me, vomit in my mouth. I can promise that very few of his male friends are telling him the same thing, bump whatever the Bible or the preacher said about love, honor and obey. And there is often an underlying dig in these conversations about how I am still unmarried (which somehow makes my relationship "unofficial" for them), which then leads to the complaint that I'm just a shrill, single female (which has its own underlying dig that "well, that's why you got in the fight in the first place--too independent")

I am a graduate student in a Ph.D. program. Which means I am facing relationship problems particular to those pursuing or part of the professoriate (and those in similar or related professions). I am a nomad. My job prospects are multiplicate and yet dependent on the call for applications. I could as easily end up in Omaha, Nebraska as New York City. My prospects change whether or not I get tenure--and whether I want to make that my home department or not. And there is no one-stop African diaspora archive or repository. Which means to even secure a decent job and/or tenure, I need to travel. For long periods of time. To far away places. (Hence the fight with Mr.) Even if I wanted to--ha!--I actually can't cook, clean house, do laundry, keep the light burning in a way that most hetero men seem to expect out of their significant others because most of my time will be spent researching, writing, thinking, planning seminars/syllabi, etc.

I am also young but not that young. Mid-20s is about the time when I am ready to stop being flagrant and be happy with one person for awhile. It is also about the time that all the images and ideas of society--that I'm getting old, fat, ugly, uncompetitive; that there are only so many "Do Right Black Men," that I'd better grab him and hang on to him no matter what right now or else he'll get on and leave my ass for a white girl--are starting to actually nibble at my consciousness. I can feel myself entering the period of my life where I have to actively resist these damaging representations. I do. And I hope to always do so. But not all 20-somethings are where I am at--more power to them--are ready to have a conversation about my fears and struggle with these images the same way I am.

So...

That's a lot to keep in play at any one time.

Who do you run to? Who do you call? Who gets you, all of you? Despite the identity soup I just cooked above, I still have a few people I can depend on. They mean the world to me. Who, in this context, means the world to you?

But this is also a cautionary tale. Do you fall into any of the above categories? If so, stop doing this stuff!

Sorry, not the point I wanted to make.

This is the point I want to make. As women--whether you are a rwoc or an ally, a lover of men, women, both, or pan--we need to do a better job of coming together and supporting each other in our relationships in a way that centers our mental and physical health as women. Instead of in a way that bolsters institutions (church, marriage) or the other partner (esp. when they are men of color) or that becomes a self-reflective pity party. Maybe this means doing a better job of separating our romantic relationships from our self-identity so that we can stand, empowered, on our own two feet and offer someone else the same faith, confidence, and strength. Maybe it means becoming more intuitive and responsive to what the myriad women in our lives need at their particular stage--catching them where they are, respecting all their sides, and being open.

Or maybe I just need better friends.

Totally, Completely, Utterly Jealous

That I am not here:

Meeting the rwoc bloggers I admire from afar.

But I had personal commitments I couldn't shake. :(

*damn.

I've Been Respectful of Your Quiet Return Thus Far....

...but I can't resist any longer.

It is really good to see you in my Google Reader these days. :)

Firewalking...

In addition to Waiting 2 Speak, I'm now posting over at FireWalkers: Black Women Doing Women's Studies.

Gratuitous link love, I know. But it is not for myself. Seriously.

It's because that blog, that network of amazing women, is doing so much. So I want to share.

Visit, comment, be inspired!

The Questions: White Women, White Feminists

Via the Jaded Hippy:

And it is this jolt, not of racism, but of misorientation, that drives the
boundless rage. Because the misorientation is not just morally wrong, but it's
crazy-making. It's a rage that white feminists don't understand partly because
you don't see it as much between women of color and white men who don't
self-consciously identify as feminists. I'm not saying it's all good between
these groups either (!), but, you see, the boundaries are clear, and therefore
there is never a real chance for misorientation. One is never pulled in b/c one
knows what to expect. But if you have a group of white people who say, "Hey
we're feminists and that means we're all in this together and we call this
togetherness 'sisterhood' b/c we're supposed to have each other's backs" and so
on, but then you get stabbed in that very back that they were supposed to have
b/c, oh wait, they be white and you be not, then it's really fucking
startling.

Plus, b/c we have this wrong idea that the trajectory of history is that
things are getting better so surely white women will figure it out one of these
decades, but then they don't, you start feeling a little like, goddammit, you're
getting stabbed A LOT. For a really long time. Like, for hundreds of years, the
stabbings.

And the now classic (I am late on posting this) BFP Final Words.

If the question is why do women of color have issues with white women and/or white feminists....

Above is the answer. Read both in their entirety. Misorientation is a b*tch. Betrayal is a b*tch. And if you're a white woman, you probably never had to deal with either as they are conceived of in those two friggin brilliant posts.

If the question (continues to be) why do women of color have issues with Mrs. Clinton....

Above is the answer. And yeah I'm posting this again (because I just can't seem to get enough)

"But Kismet," you ask, "aren't you a woman of color?"

*

*

*

*cricket, cricket*

Let's be clear, Kismet has white female friends that she is proud to claim as friends, confidants, comrades. That she considers sisters in the struggle. The fact that, few as they are, they continue to rise above and beyond the boundaries of race, class and sexual orientation is what makes them allies.

But....well....

Don't think that a part of me isn't still watching my back...just in case.

"this past was waiting for me
when i came"

How to turn this around? Take a step, ally-to-be. Try this one.

Untitled

Because finding your space opened up--and continues to open up--new worlds for me. I am not the same person I was before.

Because I never met you--have yet to meet you, may never meet you--but that was okay with you and you still accepted me. And even acknowledged me.

Because through you I found a chorus of voices I never knew existed but have become inspiring and fundamental for me. To wake up everyday and find them there, patient, fierce, and understanding--just to know that they exist--helps me wake up the next day. Helps me write myself into this world. Helps me speak.

Because I am more disturbed by this loss than I probably have a right to be. (And I hope I am misunderstanding, I hope it isn't true...)

Because I have learned so much from you!

Because there is no way outside of overwrought poetics of saying how much I appreciate you....

...I thank you.


Paz y claridad,

Kismet


[Updated: Why ask why?]

Academe. Again.

Which is why I love La Chola's 1, 2, 3, and 4-part take on academe--and respect the change being worked from all kinds of directions.

From a post I (Kismet) wrote a few weeks ago on understanding latinidad and the importance of praxis and theory to that understanding.

Because I don't believe you can have one without the other.

Despite the academic industrial complex.

And despite the vagaries of appointments, tenure, and promotion. And the spirit injury done to radical women of color academics in educational institutions across this country (the world).

I still believe...

That at the end of the day...

The textbooks that are circulated in schools...

They matter. A lot.

And the history that is done by men and women who care that the world is not ALL heterosexual, upper middle-class, Anglo-American and white....

That violence is done to make it appear that way...

That such violence wraps ALL of us in a history we have yet to understand....

That none of us are actually at peace and free to be until we are ALL at peace and free to be...

When that history is brought into a classroom and it is taught right....

I believe it changes lives.

Because it has changed mine.

(This was first. This was second. This will probably be third.)

Any questions?

Good.

Let's get on back to movement building.....

Thank you for listening.

Puerto Rican Women Writers

For those like me, who are searching...I am sharing....
Autorretrato VIII, by María de Mater O'Neill

From the introduction, by Consuelo Lopez Springfield:

This special issue of Callaloo is a colective effort by art and literary critics, translators, teachers, artists and writers to make Puerto Rican art and writing accessible to a wider audience. Inspired by its editor, Chalres Rowell, whose commitment to promoting the creative accomplishments of colonized peoples is exemplary, Callaloo is the first publication to offer outstanding art, photography, literature, interviews, and critical essays by and about Puerto Rican women. It is also the first feminist publication to unite exiled and island women in intellectual debate and artistic exchange on such major themes as the sexual control of women, the nature of identity, race, and class in colonized societies, and the challenges of bicultural life.

Check your local college/university collection. (If only I could post the articles here and not break copyright laws, I would!)

Friday Speak Out: Alice Walker

In honor of karnythia's share of Alice Walker's "open letter to my sisters who are brave" below is her audio speaking at the Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization event in New York, October 2004.

Click Here

Gumbs on Zines and Self-Expression

Brownfemipower linked to brokenbeautiful press founder Alexis Pauline Gumbs being interviewed with Jaime Danehey by Frank Stasio on North Carolina Public Radio