for colored girls

11 in 11 (Watchlist for 2012)

2012-01-05T14:01:00.001-05:00

2011 was a banner year for black women in art, culture, entertainment, and politics. Here are a few highlights I noted from the year + "colored girls" to watch in 2012:

Photograph: Joan Marcus Newyork.timeout.com

1. My first shout-out is a two-fer. The beautiful and talented Sanaa Lathan returned to Broadway to star in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage's By the Way, Meet Vera Stark. At once sad and funny, Vera Stark offered a sharp critique of Hollywood's racial "shuffles" without being overly dogmatic about it.

2. Speaking of maids and the paucity of diverse roles for black women in Hollywood, Viola Davis captivates audiences and breathes life into every role she plays. I didn't like The Help and I've made no secret of that, but I do like Viola Davis. I hope the Oscar nod and potential award she'll secure for that film will open up more and even better roles for her.

Dee Rees' Pariah

3. The success of Dee Rees' directorial debut Pariah may be at the pulse of a new wave of black filmmakers who are pushing the boundaries of representations of "blackness." Even if the critical success of Pariah doesn't herald a revolution in black filmmaking, it has definitely put Dee Rees on the map of filmmakers to watch in the coming years.

4. On the small screen, we'll soon be able to watch political analyst Melissa Harris-Perry host her own show on MSNBC. The Tulane professor and blogger for The Nation has made frequent appearances on MSNBC and has filled in for Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell. Claiming her own time-slot seems a natural progression for the savvy political pundit.

5. Political powerhouses President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and peace activist Leymah Gbowee of Liberia were among 2011's Nobel Peace Prize winners. No women had taken the prize since 2004 when Professor Wangari Maathai--whose passing the world mourned last year--received the award.

6. Taking National Book Awards for fiction and poetry respectively, Jesmyn Ward and Nikky Finney use the written word as witness. Veteran Finney and newcomer Ward keep company with a cadre of contemporary black women writers who use their imaginations in the service of cultural memory.

7. In a complementary way, Kara Walker's large-scale drawings conjure a past that has not yet passed (to borrow from Faulkner). Widely recognized for her cut paper silhouettes of plantation scenes that amplify the nation's racial subconscious, Walker's summer 2011 exhibition "Dust Jackets for the Niggerati--and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings submitted ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker" showcase a new direction for the artist: up from the horrors of slavery and lynching into the "promised land's" dark unknown.

8. Supersonic diva Jomama Jones' "Radiate" evoked black women's movements and migrations on a transatlantic scale. Back from her self-imposed exile in Switzerland, Jomama (chaneled by the inimitable Daniel Alexander Jones) dazzled audiences with nostalgic tales of love and adventure set to grooves that--aided by the vocal stylings of the Sweet Peaches (Helga Davis and Sonya Perryman)--transported us to a space and time that was both familiar and futuristic.

9. Martina Correia proved an untiring fighter for justice even as she battled her own fight against--and later succumed to--breast cancer. While Correira's leadership in an international campaign to save her brother Troy Davis from the death penalty did not spare his life, her courage helped reenergize death penalty abolitionists to eradicate state-sanctioned murder in the United States.

10. Twenty years after the infamous Senate hearings and eventual confirmation of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court judge, Brandeis University Anita Hill returned to DC to join the law firm of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll (lawyers for the women employees who filed a class action suit against Wal-mart). The firm will no doubt benefit from Hill's keen ability to seam matters of race, gender, and history, as her new book Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home shows. Further capping off Hill's achievements in 2011 was a conference held in her honor at Hunter College, "Sex, Power and Speaking Truth: Anita Hill 20 Years Later."

11. LMAO: If you didn't tune-in the first Thursdays of 2011 for Issa Rae's The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, you must have been sitting under a rock. For many quirky black girls, Issa Rae's character 'J' is the black female lead that has been missing in network comedy: witty, cute, ridiculously funny and a little socially awkward. Maya Rudolph also kept audiences in stitches last year with a hit film and a new t.v. show.

What were some of your hits for 2011? Who should we check for in 2012?

Lost in Language and Sound by Ntozake Shange

2011-12-13T08:49:00.000-05:00

image courtesy of Essence.com

Ntozake Shange, feminist author of the critically acclaimed choreopoem for colored girls who’ve considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, as well as numerous poetry collections and novels (most recently the 600-page Some Sing, Some Cry, co-written with her sister Ifa Bayeza), gets personal, political and lyrical in her latest work, Lost in Language and Sound: A Memoir of Coming to the Arts. The previously unpublished essays and poems ground the author’s love of language in a world of sound and movement, one shaped by her jazz- and poetry-enthusiast parents and by the melodious accents that were the soundtracks of the New Jersey and St. Louis neighborhoods she grew up in.

Continue Reading @ Ms.Blog

Black Women Still in Defense of Ourselves

2011-10-13T08:32:00.000-04:00

By Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

One of the lasting images of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas controversy was the photograph of the “Boxer rebellion,” the all-female Congressional delegation marching up the steps to the Senate to demand that it investigate credible claims of sexual harassment. Outside this frame, and perhaps more compelling, are the stories of when each of these women realized that intolerably destructive dynamics of power were being normalized or even defended by colleagues, spouses, friends and elected officials. Every woman who was prompted into action by Anita Hill has a moment like this.

Continue Reading @ The Nation

SlutTalk

2011-10-01T13:54:00.000-04:00

from SlutWalk Delhi

Picking up the momentum of over 100 demonstrations worldwide, SlutWalk New York is set to take place in Union Square Park today. The first SlutWalk march occurred in Toronto after a police officer told a group of students if they didn't want to be sexually victimized, they shouldn't dress like "sluts." Kinda like the NYPD's advice to women residents in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn where a spate of sexual attacks have occurred since March.

SlutWalk NYC is timely for other reasons too, like the victim-blaming that occurred in the highly publicized Dominique Strauss-Kahn case and the acquittals of NYPD officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata on charges of sexual assault against a woman (Moreno has since been sentenced to a year in prison for a misdemeanor charge of official misconduct). SlutWalk NYC organizers are planning to address both issues.

The organizers are also intending to address critiques of the walk, like the issues raised by Black Women's Blueprint in an "Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk" about its failure to address the concerns and acknowledge the histories of women of color when it comes to terms like "slut." To be sure, black women have been called sluts, jezebels, hos ... everything except children of God. And most times it doesn't matter what we wear, where we are, or what we are doing. My own experiences of street harassment compelled me to support the aims of SlutWalk though I have not been able to attend an actual march yet. I do have trusted friends who are black women and who have participated in SlutWalk events. Black feminist filmmaker, rape survivor, and activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons delivered a powerful speech at SlutWalk Philadephia and Salamishah Tillet, professor, writer, rape survivor and Co-Founder of A Long Walk Home, delivered a stirring speech at SlutWalk DC. Tillet details the mixed-reception of SlutWalk in "What to Wear to a SlutWalk" and maintains that "None of this negates the fact that SlutWalk has been the most successful protest against sexual violence in the United States since the birth of the Take Back the Night marches in the 1970s," a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.

The ultimate test for SlutWalk of course will be whether it can shape into a lasting organized movement made up of women and men of various ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality and committed to end sexual violence against women. In other words, it has to really "walk the walk."

Education, Not Incarceration

2011-09-22T13:58:00.000-04:00

More than a century after Ida B Wells led the charge against lynching, professor and feminist activist Angela Davis, through the organization Critical Resistance and national and international speaking engagements, critiques the proliferation of the prison industrial complex and asks us to envision a world without prisons. The day after Troy Davis's execution, those of us who think the death penalty is deplorable and maintain that there was far too much doubt for Davis's case not to be appealed are heavy-hearted and more committed than ever to changing the injustice system in this country.

Last year Angela Davis, spoke to Democracy Now about prison abolition. You can watch the video here:

Gloria Steinem Had Strong Influence on Black Women

2011-08-15T10:14:00.001-04:00

By Evelyn C. White | SF Gate

Steinem and Hughes c/o MISS

Tonight Home Box Office will air "Gloria: In Her Own Words" - a riveting documentary about the famed leader of the feminist movement. The masterful film augments "The Education of A Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem" by Carolyn Heilbrun, the first full-length biography of the activist/journalist who, in 1971, co-founded Ms. magazine.

Indeed, "Gloria" features hilarious footage of network anchor Harry Reasoner (1923 -1991) deriding the launch of a magazine that he ventured would last "six months before it ran out of things to say." Forty years later, Ms. boasts a global readership and was recently honored for an article on antiabortion extremists.

Continue Reading @ SFGate

Why I'm Not Looking Forward to The Help

2011-08-12T14:40:00.000-04:00

The British cover of Stockett's novel

By Jennifer Williams | Ms. Blog

I picked up a copy of Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel The Help at an airport bookstore. I figured the four-hour flight to Texas would be enough time to absorb 544 plot-driven pages, and reading the novel during one of my frequent trips south seemed appropriate. For some readers, The Help calls up memories of being nurtured and cared for by black women who might have been more like mothers to them than their own white birth mothers. The story conjures for me, however, the labor–and, at times, humiliation–those domestic workers endured.

True, some of those black women also no doubt felt genuine affection for the white families they worked for. But the dictates of race and class strained those emotional ties. Black women entrusted with the care of white households and children were often still forced to enter back doors and use separate facilities. Like it or not, this vexed dynamic of interracial intimacy and dehumanization is one of the founding stories of our nation.

Continue Reading @ Ms.

Jezebels, Welfare Queens—And Now, Criminally Bad Black Moms

2011-08-10T09:23:00.001-04:00

Monique as "Mary Jones" in the film Precious

By Julianne Hing | Colorlines

The shocking Cobb County, Ga., prosecution of Raquel Nelson, who law enforcement blamed when her son was killed by a drunken hit-and-run driver, has drawn national headlines and outrage. But criminal justice watchdogs and cultural critics point out that, while Nelson’s story is extreme, it’s not that unusual—and it’s the product of centuries worth of demonizing black women that has taken a new, insidious turn during the current recession.

“This hit and run story is such an apt metaphor for what’s happening,” said Nikki Jones, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “American policies have essentially been a hit and run on black women that leave them in circumstances where they’re managing day to day and then getting punished for their very victimhood.”

Continue Reading @ Colorlines

Spike Lee's "She's Gotta Have It" Turns 25

2011-08-06T11:46:00.000-04:00

By Salamishah Tillet | The Root

On the hot night of Aug. 8, 1986, a line of young black people wrapped around the corner of New York City's Cinema Studio 1, eager to catch Spike Lee's much-buzzed-about debut feature film, She's Gotta Have It. Eighty-five hot and sexy minutes later, they weren't disappointed with Lee's cinematic achievement.

The following day, the New York Times review said that the movie "has a touch of the classic." And the Washington Post praised its "rare quality: a sense of place."

Continue Reading @ The Root

The Case of the "Killer" Lesbians

2011-07-20T08:52:00.001-04:00

By Laura S. Logan | The Public Intellectual

Several African-American lesbians who fought back against an alleged attack spent time in jail and prison after being convicted of crimes related to the incident. Laura S. Logan looks at how press coverage of the group, dubbed the New Jersey 7, shaped a narrative about the women that portrayed them as predators rather than victims – a story at odds with how we usually think about LGBT people who’ve been harassed. In light of a recent popular campaign to end the bullying of LGBT people, Logan says, this case begs the question: It gets better for whom? Laura is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Kansas State University and managing editor of the journal Gender & Society.

Read @ The Public Intellectual

South Africa's Lesbians Fear "Corrective Rape"

2011-06-30T08:33:00.002-04:00

By Pumza Fihlani | BBC News, Cape Town

Noxolo Nkosana, 23, is the latest victim of a series of violent attacks against lesbians.

She was stabbed a stone's throw from her home in Crossroads township, Cape Town, as she returned from work one evening with her girlfriend.

The two men - one of whom lives in her community - started yelling insults.

"They were walking behind us. They just started swearing at me screaming: 'Hey you lesbian, you tomboy, we'll show you,'" Ms Nkosana tells the BBC.

Before she knew it a sharp knife had entered her back - two fast jabs, then she was on the ground. Half conscious, she felt the knife sink into her skin twice more.

"I was sure that they were going to kill me," she says.

Continue Reading @ BBC News

Black Woman Redefined

2011-06-28T09:07:00.000-04:00

Lynn Neary interviews Sophia Nelson | Talk of the Nation

On the surface, it might appear that many black women have achieved the American dream; they're excelling in politics, business, media and academia.

But Sophia Nelson, a political commentator and author of Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama, says that despite these women's having achieved a level of success that their mothers could only dream of, their accomplishments aren't being reflected in popular American culture.

Continue Reading and Listen to the Interview @ NPR

The Central Park Jogger Case Revisited

2011-06-20T18:36:00.000-04:00

By Maggie Nelson | The New York Times

In the wake of the 1989 rape and near-fatal beating of a 28-year-old white woman named Trisha Meili (known to many as the Central Park jogger), and after the arrests, confessions and eventual convictions of one Latino and four African-American teenagers for the crime, the media relentlessly asked: How did this happen? In her slim but ambitious book, “The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding,” Sarah Burns tackles this same question, but with a changed referent. “This,” rather than signifying a horrific gang rape in New York City’s bucolic backyard, here signifies a preventable miscarriage of justice that put five Harlem teenagers behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit. Each of the boys — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise and Raymond Santana Jr. — served between 7 and 13 years. Their convictions were vacated in 2002 by the New York State Supreme Court, after a confession and DNA analysis linked a serial rapist, Matias Reyes, to the crime.

Continue Reading @ The New York Times

Michelle Obama, First Feminist, Takes on 'Women's Issues'—Carefully

2011-06-11T12:08:00.000-04:00

By Sharon Lerner | The Nation

I was among more than 1,500 people who braved the 102-degree heat in D.C. Thursday afternoon to hear what Michelle Obama had to say about work-family issues and other matters close to women’s hearts. The occasion was, officially, the 40^th anniversary of the National Partnership for Women and Families, a major player in health care, paid leave, and workplace flexibility advocacy. But the event felt more rock concert than fundraiser when the first lady took the stage, dressed in hot pink and bangles. The audience immediately stood, craning our necks to catch sight of the woman who is to many a feminist megastar. The eruption of adulation in the giant ballroom made my eyes tear.

The First Lady spoke warmly and respectfully of the women’s movement. Referring to 1971, when she was just seven and the National Partnership was founded, Obama noted that “The ceiling wasn’t just glass back then, it was more like concrete.”

Continue Reading @ The Nation

The Real Value of Rihanna's "Man Down" Video

2011-06-08T09:04:00.002-04:00

By Akiba Solomon | Colorlines

Nowadays, when I see the phrase “the controversy over” connected to a black pop culture moment, I tend to tune it out. Too often, the outcry smacks of Christian morality, bougie* respectability politics (“See, now this is what’s wrong with our community…”), and empty role model talk.

Plus, a lot of folks don’t closely watch or listen to what they’re critiquing.

Such is the case, I believe, with the video for Rihanna’s latest Loud single, “Man Down.” The video begins with a tense Rihanna perched in the upper balcony of a crowded train station. When she spots a tall man with a “buck 50” scar on his cheek (in this context, visual code for “badman” or gangsta) she shoots him in the back of the head then winces. Toward the end of the clip, we learn why the tearful singer “shot a man down, in Central Station, in front of a big old crowd”: Because the night before, at a sweaty dancehall, she sets physical limits with him and he retaliates by following her home and raping her.

Continue Reading @ Colorlines

SlutWalk: A Black Feminist Comment on Media, Messages and Meaning

2011-05-27T15:25:00.000-04:00

By Tamura A. Lomax | WIMN's Voices

If you’ve been boycotting newspapers, magazines, TV news and the blogosphere for the past few weeks, or if terms like “rape,” “slut” or even “sex” lead you to hurriedly put down the newspaper or magazine and turn the TV channel (as they do for my media-savvy grandmother), then you may not have heard about SlutWalk, a grassroots anti-violence protest movement that has piqued the international media’s imagination. It all began when a Toronto policeman told a group of York University students in January that if they didn’t dress like sluts, they could avoid being raped. (His comment: “You know, I think we’re beating around the bush here. I’ve been told I’m not supposed to say this. However, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”) Little did he know his words would become a catalyst for mass anger and action – and much journalistic attention – throughout the world.

Media coverage has ranged from simple iterations of varying press releases to reproving op-eds. The latter is multi-fold. Some, like Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, find the demonstrators to be solipsistic and out of touch with reality, while others, like blogger Aura Blogando, find the demonstrations to be systemically racist. I stand somewhere in the middle. Like it or not, both Wente and Blogando make valid points. However, the nuanced critique that SlutWalk requires is lacking, particularly regarding women of color (WOC).

Continue Reading @ WIMN's Voices

Who Run the World? Uh ... Not Girls

2011-05-23T20:45:00.002-04:00

Maybe the refrain should be "Who should run the world?" Anyway, Beyonce's video for her high-powered girl anthem "Run the World (Girls)" just premiered. As usual, B's working that choreography and the beat's so contagious it makes us all want to shake our booties and yell GIRLS when B asks "Who run the world?" Watch it for yourself here:

Don't you wanna just put on your stilettos and kick some patriarchal butt.

BUT lest we rest too comfortably too soon on our feminist haunches, the bright and witty "Nineteen Percent" warns us that Beyonce's anthem is more of an aspiration than a reality. Girls do NOT run the world. Nor do we want to really. Equality and an end to sexual violence will do fine thanks.

Transfiguring Masculinities in Black Women’s Studies

2011-05-19T10:25:00.000-04:00

By C. Riley Snorton | The Feminist Wire

Although there continues to be controversy regarding whether men can create black feminist scholarship, numerous black feminist theorists have argued for the inclusion of black men and studies of masculinities as components of black feminist thought and practice. These debates are borne out of the relationships between racism and sexism, which have been important in figuring alliances across movements while also illuminating the tensions that emerge from privileging race over gender-based oppression. Black feminist scholars, like Angela Davis, Barbara Smith, Hortense Spillers, Valerie Smith, bell hooks, Hazel Carby, and Audre Lorde, among others, have taken this up in their work. However, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) Statement, a founding text in black women’s studies and a theoretical blueprint for numerous movements within the last several decades, is among the earliest texts to explicitly engage and theorize an inclusive black feminist politic. More than once the authors of CRC Statement make clear their commitment to a black feminist politic that does not leave out Black men, women, and children.

Continue Reading @ The Feminist Wire

Still More Questions Than Answers in Aiyana Stanley Jones’ Killing

2011-05-18T14:44:00.000-04:00

By Jamilah King | Colorlines

It’s been a year since 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones was killed by members of a Detroit Special Response team. The case garnered national headlines for all of the obvious reasons: an innocent child caught in police crosshairs, another black life taken in a city filled with heartache. But little Aiyana’s death was unique because it seemed to embody all that had gone so hopelessly wrong in our entertainment-driven society. The Special Response team that night had been followed by a camera crew shooting an episode of the A&E reality drama “First 48.” David Simon couldn’t have scripted it better.

Continue Reading @ Colorlines

Recy Taylor Speaks on Alabama Apology

2011-05-15T10:40:00.001-04:00

Cynthia Gordy | The Root

Seated on the stage of a packed room at Washington, D.C.'s National Press Club on Thursday night, Recy Taylor smiled softly as the audience stood and applauded her. Dressed in a royal purple skirt suit, her gray hair curled neatly behind her ears, the 91-year-old appeared slightly overwhelmed by the attention. When a young woman standing to her left announced to her that she is "worthy of the love and admiration that every single person in this room has for you," Taylor began to weep.

Continue reading @ The Root

What Were the Women Doing?

2011-05-01T10:12:00.000-04:00

Carla L. Peterson | New York Times

When my great-grand-aunt Maritcha Lyons recalled in her memoir that the backroom of James McCune Smith’s store served as a “rallying centre” for public-minded black New Yorkers, she was quite specific about those who came and went. Smith’s room, she wrote advisedly, was “visited daily by men, young and old.” It was these men, she continued, who constituted the “constructive force that molded public sentiment which had much to do in bringing about a more favorable state of things affecting the colored people of the State.”

Why were women not among those who visited Smith’s backroom?

Continue Reading @ The New York Times

Mother Sues Anti-Choice Groups Behind Billboards

2011-04-30T10:17:00.000-04:00

By Titania Kumeh | Mother Jones

On Tuesday, New Jersey mother Trisha Fraser announced she's suing anti-choice groups that used images of her 6-year-old daughter for a race-baiting ad campaign. "The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb" proclaimed billboards in New York and Florida that featured a then-4-year-old Anissa Fraser. Controversy over the ad erupted late last year when a billboard first went up near Manhattan's high-traffic Holland Tunnel. The ad was by the Holland Tunnel for four months before it was taken down following complaints by city officials, Al Sharpton, and Trisha Fraser. But in February 2011, the billboard went up again, this time near a busy intersection in Jacksonville, Florida.

Continue Reading @ Mother Jones

me, bell hooks, and ms. magazine

2011-04-18T20:45:00.001-04:00

The Spring Issue of Ms. is on shelves April 26! In addition to the other wonderful features, check out my feature and interview with fellow feminist, writer, and cultural critic bell hooks.

toward an intellectual history of black women

2011-04-18T20:30:00.002-04:00

Thursday, April 28, 9am - Saturday, April 30, 6pm

Location:

Columbia University Faculty House

This conference features emerging work on black women's contributions to black thought, political mobilization, creative work and gender theory. Scholarly Panels, Roundtables, and Keynote delivered by Professor Elizabeth Alexander will focus on black women as intellectuals across a broad geography including Africa, the Caribbean, North and South America, and Europe. Over a period of three days we aim to piece together a history of black women's thought and culture that maps the distinctive concerns and historical forces that have shaped black women's ideas and intellectual activities.

For more information, see the conference website

celebrating black feminism

2011-03-21T10:48:00.011-04:00

I get Google alerts every morning. All the news about "black women" and "feminism" gets sent to my inbox. I noticed some time ago that more writers and bloggers hurl charges against feminism than embrace it. A number of pieces that mention feminism chart how it has been "bad for women" or "bad for men" of just plain bad (meaning bad not meaning good). One of today's gems is titled "Does neo-feminism lead to prostitution or sexual freedom?" No, I'm not kidding.

A couple of weeks ago in observance of Feminist Coming Out Day, I noticed a similar scorn for feminism when I asked on Twitter: "What does feminism mean to you?" The overwhelming disdain for feminism made me post as my Facebook status last week:

"Jennifer Williams wishes people hated patriarchy as much as (some hate) feminism"

Because of my caliber of friends, the status hailed lots of "likes."

I know all the misconceptions about feminism: that it's a "white" thing, an anti-male thing, a lesbian thing, and on and on and on. To be sure feminism--particularly in its narrow, Anglo, classist sense--is not above reproach, but before we critique it, we have to agree on what it is, don't we? When I teach black feminist literature and theory, I notice that most of my students don't have a working definition of black feminism or feminism. Places I like to start for clarification:

"Only the black woman can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.'" Anna Julia Cooper

"I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect." June Jordan

"The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face." Combahee River Collective

“Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.” Alice Walker

"Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women. It does not privilege women over men. It has the power to transform in a meaningful way all our lives ... Feminism as a movement to end sexist oppression directs our attention to systems of domination and the inter-relatedness of sex, race, and class oppression." bell hooks

This past week, I was delighted to witness female and male black feminists embracing and celebrating black feminism. The brilliant and always timely Beverly Guy-Sheftall reminds us that black feminism has an "emancipatory vision" that can help us understand the complicated and interlocking nature of oppression in the U.S. and other parts of the globe. Filmmaker Byron Hurt recounts his process of becoming a "black male feminist." G.D. of Postbourgie joins the fray and celebrates the women in his life who have encouraged him to identify with feminism. I join these writers and scholars in celebrating and touting the continued necessity for a black feminist politics today.

Photo Credit: David Fenton/Getty Images

Ain't I A Woman

2011-03-08T09:21:00.000-05:00

Marian Wright Edelman | Huffington Post

I often wear a pendant that includes her image and her words: "If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it." Her name was Sojourner Truth. A staunch defender of the rights of women and an abolitionist, Sojourner inspires my determination to continue to fight for equality for women, citizens of color and children left behind. A brilliant but illiterate woman, she was a great orator and powerful presence who possessed great courage and determination. She was born into and lived the better part of three decades in slavery, but dedicated her life to combating slavery and her gender from second-class citizenship. She never gave up talking or fighting for justice and equality.

Continue reading @ HuffPo

The Myth of the Black Superwoman Revisited

2011-02-24T08:21:00.000-05:00

by Amanda Litman | Ms.blog

In January 1979, you might have walked past a newsstand in New York City and noticed the piercing brown eyes and free-flowing hair of Michele Wallace staring you down from the cover of Ms. “Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman … the book that will shape the 1980s” read the cover, in stark white text.

In the magazine’s excerpt from the then-about-to-be published book, Wallace explained the myth of the Black Superwoman: A woman who has “inordinate strength” and is “stronger emotionally than most men.” The Black nationalist movement, she said, viewed women as “one of the main reasons the black man had never been properly able to take hold of his situation in this country” and how “the black man has not really kept his part of the bargain they made in the sixties” during the fight for equality. The book, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, went on to include a separate essay on “Black Macho,” a term that encapsulated the anti-intellectual impulse within Black Power rhetoric.

Continue Reading @ Ms.blog

Photo Credit: Ms.blog

Anti-Abortion Billboard In SoHo Targets Blacks, Sparks Outrage

2011-02-23T16:15:00.000-05:00

By John Del Signore | Gothamist

The anti-abortion group Life Always just unveiled a giant billboard on the corner of Watts Street and Sixth Avenue that features a photo of a black girl and the caption, "The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb." Part of a national campaign, the billboard is about a half-mile from a Planned Parenthood facility on Bleecker Street. "During Black History Month, we celebrate our history, but our future is in jeopardy as a genocidal plot is carried out through abortion,” says Life Always Board Member Pastor Stephen Broden. Others, like City Council Member Letitia James, find the message a tad offensive.

"It is misguided to use Black History Month as a tool to promote this message," James said in a statement. "Every woman has the right to make personal choices in regards to her body, and I respect many different points of view, but to compare abortion to terrorism and genocide is highly offensive." (Life Always' press release also asserts, "There is a battle being waged in the United States that has taken more lives than any foreign war or act of terrorism. The enemy is abortion.")

Continue Reading @ Gothamist

Planned Parenthood Speaks Out on GOP Attack

2011-02-19T10:47:00.000-05:00

By Lynette Holloway | The Root

Just hours after the Republican-dominated House of Representatives passed a measure to strip Planned Parenthood of funding on Friday, the embattled organization hit back, setting the stage for a showdown in what is widely seen as a symbolic effort to repeal the health care law.

The Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, sponsored by Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, prohibits federal dollars from going to any organization that provides abortion services. It is an amendment to the omnibus spending bill now before Congress.

"In attacking Planned Parenthood, the House Republican leadership has launched an outrageous assault on the millions of Americans who rely on Planned Parenthood for primary and preventative health care, including life-saving breast and cervical cancer screenings, annual exams, family planning visits, birth control, HIV testing, and more," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a prepared statement.

Continue Reading @ the Root

James Baldwin's Global Imagination

2011-02-14T11:32:00.000-05:00

JAMES BALDWIN’S GLOBAL IMAGINATION

a multi-site conference event

February 17 to 20, Thursday to Sunday
various times

Contact baldwinconference@gmail.com for information

For conference schedule, locations and other details, click HERE (pdf format).

Staged in the context of global economic insecurity, a planet gripped by the ravages of war and climate change, ever-increasing gaps in wealth, as well as rampant fundamentalism (East and West), “James Baldwin’s Global Imagination” is intended as an examination of globality not simply as a matter of demography but as an urgent call to re-consider the contemporary utility of Baldwin’s expansive injunction to William Faulkner (and, in fact, to us all), “[t]hat any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.” These proceedings are thus proposed as an opportunity to take seriously Baldwin’s consistent and insistent proposal that categories of difference represent an early misnaming, a dangerous and cowardly misrecognition of the moral imagination required to confront not only our mortality but also the brutal legacies of our collective histories.

Taking Baldwin’s vision as our starting point, this conference aims, among other related concerns, to make legible the continued impacts of U.S. state racism in this putatively post-racial period. In this post-Civil Rights epoch saturated by disorienting fictions of progress circulating alongside the vulgar traffic in difference that characterizes much of late-capitalist popular consumption, critical appraisals of such processes are timely and necessary. This orienting intellectual posture illuminates the continued structural and identitarian restraints which remain the most dominant features of global life, and has particular implications for policy-making, interdisciplinary scholarship, as well as twenty-first century conceptions of the self that refuse the false, or, more precisely, rigid, character of borders and disciplines.

Continue Reading @ CSGS

will gay ugandan's death save lesbian ugandan's life?

2011-02-08T18:27:00.000-05:00

by Jennifer Williams | Ms.blog

On January 28, just two days after the brutal murder of Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato, the United Kingdom’s high court granted another Ugandan, lesbian asylum seeker Brenda Namigadde, a temporary reprieve from deportation. Namigadde’s initial application for asylum was rejected because she is not “lesbian enough.” Her appeal is scheduled for today.

Continue Reading @ Ms.

Photo Credit: The New Black Magazine

I Will Follow

2011-02-07T12:17:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I attended a screening of Ava DuVernay's I Will Follow as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Act Now: New Voices in Black Cinema festival. DuVernay's previous effort, the documentary My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women in Hip-Hop, aired on BET last fall to much acclaim. I Will Follow is the director's first feature film, slated for a wide release on March 11.

Starring Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Beverly Todd, and Omari Hardwick, I Will Follow chronicles a day in the life of "Maye" (Richardson-Whitfield) as she mourns her deceased aunt "Amanda" (beautifully portrayed by Beverly Todd) and moves out of the house they shared. The slow pace of DuVernay's film is enhanced by the scenic shots of the California Woodlands and the Topanga Canyon. In a Q & A with the director, she described her project as a simple film: "It's not edgy, it's not avant garde, it's just from the heart."

DuVernay's simple from-the-heart film explores a broad range of human emotions. It is a quality I often spot in feminist filmmaking practices and that I hope to see in more black films as well.

Womanist: Saying Who We Are

2011-02-05T09:36:00.000-05:00

by Irene Monroe | Huffington Post

Along with the pantheon of noted black heterosexual leaders who will be lauded this month, I want to personally celebrate one of my queer and crossover sheroes, renowned writer and poet Alice Walker for giving black women everywhere on the globe a new name we all can embrace -- "womanist."

While "sistah girl" is my favorite term to depict black women, no word captures the totality of women of the African Diaspora in popular culture today better than Pulitzer Prize author Alice Walker's term "womanist." Alice Walker coined the term in her 1983 collection of prose writings, In Search of our Mothers' Gardens.

Continue reading @ The Huffington Post

feminism on the front lines

2011-02-04T09:18:00.000-05:00

Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times

Kelley Williams-Bolar Update

2011-01-29T10:11:00.000-05:00

Dr. Boyce Watkins | Black Voices

UPDATE: Akron mom released early from jail in school residency case

Most of us at BlackVoices are familiar with the case of Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Ohio mother of two who was sent to jail for sending her children to the "wrong" school district. Williams-Bolar was sentenced to 10 days in jail, three years probation and community service for using her father's address to avoid sending her kids to the school she considered to be dangerous and inadequate. At AOL BlackVoices, we were one of the first to hit the issue nationally, and fortunately, other media outlets are starting to take notice.

Continue Reading @ Black Voices

Feminism Needs Better PR

2011-01-12T20:35:00.000-05:00

by Jamilah Lemieux | Clutch Magazine

You ever been to what could have been an amazing party- drinks flowing, nice little hors d’oeuvres, great DJ, swanky space- but hardly anyone shows up? That’s how I feel about feminism sometimes. The persons responsible for putting the party together are great, but maybe some of the promoters could use a little help in getting the word out…

Continue Reading @ Clutch

Photo Credit: Clutch Magazine

Mississippi Goddamn ... Again

2011-01-06T10:43:00.000-05:00

Quiet Lockdown: The Scott Sisters, Black Women and Miscarriage of Justice in the South

by Stephane Dunn | TheLoop21

After serving sixteen years and their young adult lives behind bars, the Scott sisters are finally good headline news; Governor Barbour’s pardon of the Mississippi sisters and the stipulation – the gift of one sister’s kidney to the other is the feel good story of the moment; in truth it remains a tragic commentary about unjust justice.

Continue Reading @ TheLoop21

Thinking of Aretha

2010-12-26T09:28:00.000-05:00

Thinking of Aretha

by Bob Herbert

Nineteen sixty-seven was a tough year in many respects — riots, protests, an unwinnable war — but I can’t think of it without thinking of the glory of Aretha Franklin, a woman in her mid-20s, introverted and somewhat shy, who sang soul and rock ’n’ roll with the power and beauty of a heavenly choir.

Newark and Detroit went up in flames in 1967, and neither city was ever to recover. Muhammad Ali, a perfect physical specimen in his absolute athletic prime, was convicted of dodging the draft and stripped of his world heavyweight championship. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. endured a hurricane of criticism when he came out publicly against the war in Vietnam and called the United States government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

If you were lucky, you could close the door on the din, at least for a little while, and reach for the record album with the head and shoulder shot of Aretha positioned at a precarious angle on the cover. The album was called “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You,” and if you listened closely, if you paid attention, it would just thrill you, take you to a place of exquisite human feeling. A region of laughter and tears. Of love and joyous possibilities.

Continue reading @ The New York Times

DADT Repeal

2010-12-23T09:26:00.000-05:00

Black Women Win in Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
by Jamilah King

It’s official: President Obama signed a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on Wednesday morning. The move marks an end to the 17-year-old Clinton-era policy that’s kept thousands of gay and lesbian soliders to stay in the closet or risk being discharged from the military once their sexuality came to light. It’s especially welcome news for soldiers of color, who were already disproportionately impacted by the policy.

Continue Reading @ Colorlines
Photo Credit:
Corporal Evelyn Thomas 13WHAM

10 for 2010

2010-12-16T22:36:00.000-05:00

10 Colored Girls Who Deserve Mad Props in 2010:

1. Aretha Franklin - 1 word, 7 letters:
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Since the Queen of Soul has been ill lately, I want to take this time to honor her and her golden voice. She is truly legendary.

2. Shirley Sherrod - The forced resignation of this worker for justice was one of the low points of 2010. Ms. Sherrod handled libel and racism with dignity and strength. I look forward to witnessing her further development as a spokesperson for poor and underrepresented Americans.

3. Michelle Obama - Every first lady takes on a social platform and Ms. Obama has chosen childhood obesity. Despite attacks from the Right, Ms. O's work has not been in vain. The President just passed a child nutrition bill to ban greasy food and sugary soft drinks from schools.

4. Beverly Bond - for empowering black girls through the arts and letting the world know unequivocally that Black Girls Rock!

5. Ntozake Shange - for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf is on The New York Times bestseller list. While the film by the director who shall not be named was a failure in my opinion, the publicity surrounding it got more people to read Shange's classic choreopoem. Shange and her sister Ifa Bayeza also published an epic novel this year Some Sing, Some Cry.

6. Willow Smith - for releasing one of the most infectious and black-girl-self affirming singles this year and for being so darn cool! Whip it Willow!

7. Viola Davis - for taking home a Tony for Fences and being a true master of her craft.

8. Oprah Winfrey - OWN! After over two decades at the helm of the Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah is set to launch her own network. Journalist, philanthropist, author, publisher ... Oprah indeed has her own.

9. Janelle Monae - For releasing one of the best albums of 2010 and maintaining her funky individuality.

10. Tanya Hamilton - The debut filmmaker of Night Catches Us was the only black woman to have a film at Sundance this year. Here's hoping that the critical acclaim Night is receiving means we'll see more from this brilliant storyteller.

divas of dance

2010-12-14T21:41:00.000-05:00

Modern-Dance History Times Five, With Plenty of Theatricality
by Roslyn Sulcas

NEWARK — It’s slightly astonishing that “Fly: Five First Ladies of Dance” hasn’t had a longer season in the New York precincts since its premiere at the Kumble Theater in Brooklyn in May of last year. The women of the title are Germaine Acogny, Carmen de Lavallade, Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, all contemporary-dance royalty who direct
schools and companies. Seeing them on a program together is like going to a female, modern-dance version of those all-star ballet gatherings like “Kings of the Dance.” Only interesting.

Part of that interest is that “Fly” is a record of black women in dance over the last several decades. The women range in age from almost 60 to almost 80, and while their solos are mostly new, their dance styles, vocabularies and histories are resonant in every onstage gesture.

Continue Reading @ The New York Times

Photo Credit: Victor Jouvert

dreaming a world

2010-12-12T12:46:00.000-05:00

A New World for Black Men and Boys by 2025
by Rhonda Tsoi-A-Fatt

"A world I dream where black or white, whatever race you be, will share the bounties of the earth and every man is free..."

When Langston Hughes penned these words in 1926, I am certain he didn't envision that 84 years later, the dream would remain unrealized. But here we sit at the dawn of 2011 a nation divided... a nation weakened because black males not able to participate fully in the American dream.

The conversation about the conditions of black males in America is not a new one. Noted scholars and corner philosophers alike have a lot to say about the black male predicament -- who they are, how they got there, and why they seem to remain. Most often, the stories that make it to mainstream media paint a grim picture and offer little room for hope or imagining a better day. But I, like Langston, dream of a different world -- a world where our black men are healthy and whole. The distance between those two worlds does not have to be as far as we think.

Continue reading @ The Grio

*Am I alone in hoping this vision also entails addressing the issues of black girls and women?

night catches us

2010-12-04T19:58:00.000-05:00

Director and writer Tanya Hamilton's Night Catches Us is in theaters this weekend. The film, starring Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington, is set in 1976 Philadelphia in the aftermath of the black power movement.

Check out reviews of the film @ NPR, NY Times, and TheRoot.

Hamilton also tells the NY Times about her inspiration for the film here.
A lengthier interview with the director is posted below c/o Reelblack:

Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday and "Barbie Feminism"

2010-12-02T08:55:00.000-05:00

Rapper Nicki Minaj burst onto the male-dominated hip hop scene and signed to Lil’ Wayne’s Young Money records after winning the 2008 Female Artist of the Year Underground Music Award. Her lyrical skill placed her on par with her male peers. Her constant reinventions in Wonder Woman and Harajuku Barbie costumes and through various accented lyrical personas caused The New York Times to dub her the “Cindy Sherman of rap.” Her raunchy, playful, and sex-positive lyrics and image gained her a throng of girl fans (who she calls her Barbies) and won her accolades from some feminists and a lot of gay boys. A September 2010 issue of Out magazine with Minaj on the cover predicted that Minaj’s first album would not only qualify her as “the “baddest bitch,” she would be “a bona fide phenomenon.”

Nicki Minaj's much anticipated Pink Friday just dropped on November 22, but even prior to her debut album, the twenty-five year old Lil' Kim-Lady Gaga mash-up released a number of critically acclaimed mixtapes, collaborated with Kanye West, Mariah Carey, and Usher, among other coveted artists, and boasted seven simultaneous hits on the Billboard Top 100 chart. The first female hip hop artist to get a number 1 hit on Billboard since 2003, Minaj easily won this year’s BET Best Female Hip Hop Artist Award. As the title of her recent MTV documentary confirms, "It's [Her] Turn Now."

Predicted to be a game-changer for women in hip hop, Pink Friday is more of an indication of the changes that have already happened in the mainstream rap industry: high profile collabos, electronic beats, auto-tuned vocals, and at least one “no-homo” disclaimer (made by Eminem). Minaj displays her lyrical prowess best on “Blazin” with Kanye West and “Roman’s Revenge,” a high-powered track with Eminem where Minaj disses a “has-been” rapper rumored to be Lil’ Kim. Echoing her predecessor-turned-nemesis Lil’ Kim, Minaj boasts:

I’m a bad bitch

I’m a cunt

And I’ll kick that ho, punt

Force trauma, blunt

You play the back, bitch I’m in the front.

“Roman’s Revenge” demonstrates that unfettered rawness reminiscent of Minaj’s climactic verse on Kanye West’s “Monster” and of the mixtape “Beam Me Up Scotty,” which made Minaj a major player in the masculinist rap game. Few tracks on Pink Friday feature the quick spitting lyrics and the ability to weave in and out of various personas that make Minaj interesting. Instead, Pink is composed of mostly rap ballads like her second single “Your Love,” which samples Annie Lenox’s “No More ‘I Love Yous,’” and her latest “Right Thru Me.” “You see right through me/How do you do that shit?” she croons in a syrupy chorus between rapped verses set to an ambient electronic beat.

Minaj says the shift from hard to soft was deliberate, telling Billboard, "mixtapes were saying I can rap and the album is saying I can make a song - that's a big difference." Judy Berman wonders if Minaj’s hip-pop angle has more to do with the difficulty of marketing female MCs in the hip hop industry than it does with an aesthetic choice. To be sure, Rihanna sells more records than M.I.A. And highly skilled women MCs like Jean Grae and Psalm One rule the underground but refuse to heed the command to “sex up or shut up” that greets women who dare run with the boys in mainstream hip hop. Minaj tempers her vocal dexterity by flaunting her sexual assets and appealing to the male gaze, especially those who hope her hinted-at bisexuality might land them a ménage with Minaj, but Nicki seems to be more thespian than lesbian.

Minaj claims in interviews to rep for the ladies, something she reaffirms in her confessional opening track “I’m the Best,” “I’m fighting for the girls/that never thought they could win.” Her (Harajuku) Black Barbie antics, however, have some feminists charging her with Orientalism and others claiming Minaj’s defiant mantra, “It’s Barbie, Bitch!” as an act of subversive yet playful feminism. Barbie’s plasticity may be the perfect metaphor for a performer who molds herself into as many identities as Minaj does. Mutability can be an empowering form of self-fashioning if the molder is the artist herself. As Erica Rand notes in Barbie’s Queer Accessories, “Barbie suggests that roles are only as fixed as costumes.” Minaj has a lot of costumes, but do her theatrics subvert hip hop’s gender roles or reinforce them?

beverly guy-sheftall on black feminism

2010-11-24T08:26:00.000-05:00

The noted Spelman College scholar and author talks to The Root about what Oprah should be doing, Michelle Obama and why the president is a feminist

By Akoto Ofori-Atta

Known for her eccentricity and boldness, Beverly Guy-Sheftall has never been scared to take the brave action necessary for change. (With her fondness for bright colors and head-to-toe leopard prints, she's also not scared of taking fashion risks.) A pioneer of black feminism in the 1960s, she took the helm of black feminist studies, raging against strong sentiments that positioned black feminism as obsolete once black women gained access to the labor force. Since then she has worked tirelessly to institute black feminist studies as a legitimate discipline, and continues to do so as the founder and director of the Women's Research and Resource Center at Spelman College, where she is also the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies.

Continue reading @ theRoot

let's stage some read-ins

2010-11-22T11:35:00.001-05:00

Gaps in literacy can lead to a path of poverty
by Mark Anthony Neal

This past weekend, a group of Black scholars convened in Princeton, NJ to discuss current concerns about the lives of Black men and boys. The group, the Scholars Network on Black Masculinity, headed by University of Michigan Sociologist Alford Young, Jr. covered topics like, single headed households, rigid gender expectations, the criminal justice system and mental health among others. The gathering made it clear that there are no magic bullets—or rather magic solutions to address the crises among Black men and boys, only strategies wedded to the kinds of in-the-trenches work that will get little attention.

Continue reading @ TheLoop21

single mothers and the recession

2010-11-18T10:36:00.001-05:00

Always Tough, Single Motherhood Gets Worse
By Lynette Holloway

Forty-four-year-old Cassandra Jackson recently returned home to Chicago from Memphis, Tenn., in hopes of upgrading her quality of life and beating the odds faced by so many single African-American mothers: finding a job.

Continue Reading @ The Root

for colored boys

2010-11-15T22:38:00.000-05:00

This week, I'm over at Ms.blog writing about For Colored Girls and male sexual abuse:

On November 5, Oprah Winfrey aired the first of a two-part episode on male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Two hundred men stood in the audience, each holding a photograph taken at the age their innocence was stolen by the priest, babysitter, or parent who molested them. Filmmaker Tyler Perry was among them, just two weeks after he had shared his childhood experiences with physical and sexual abuse for the first time with a television audience on Oprah.

Continue reading @Ms. blog

more on perry and black feminism

2010-11-13T08:45:00.000-05:00

For Colored Girls, Is Tyler Perry's Film Enuf?
by Courtney Young

What is the price paid when a director widely considered to be anti-feminist interprets a beloved black feminist text for film? Can a piece as endearing as Ntozake Shange's 1975 classic choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Not Enuf reach its full cinematic potential outside the hands of a black female director? When movie mogul Tyler Perry first announced he would be reviving the celebrated text for the screen, many fans of the original production reacted with dismay, worry, even anger. A deft combination of poetry, music and movement, the choreopoem gives life to the voices of seven unnamed women distinguished on stage only by a singular color of dress. The piece allows each woman to relay her story frankly, at times through a collective narration, airing a host of issues that affect black women's lives—rape, abortion, domestic abuse and child murder, but also love, sex, and friendship. Would the complexity of black women's lives and voices survive in Perry's hands?

Continue Reading @ The Nation

black feminism and tyler perry

2010-11-11T09:08:00.000-05:00

Check out these two provocative and different black feminist approaches to Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls by Penn professor, scholar, and activist Salamishah Tillet and author and Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal:

Black Feminism, Tyler Perry Style
by Salamishah Tillet

Leave it to Tyler Perry, a man best known for playing Madea, a modern-day Mammy, to try to redefine black feminism for the mainstream.

Perry admits that he didn't know much about Ntozake Shange's choreopoem, For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, but that didn't stop him from taking on this black feminist bible nevertheless.

continue reading @ The Root

Has Tyler Perry Found a Voice within Black Feminism? by Mark Anthony Neal

Despite many predictions, Tyler Perry’s screen adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s 'For Colored Girls' was not a debacle. The film was by far, the most nuanced and accomplished film in Perry’s oeuvre, owing much to the power and genius of Shange’s original work, the most consummate cast that Perry has worked with, and perhaps all those days on the set watching Lee Daniels at work filming 'Precious'. 'For Colored Girls' may represent Tyler Perry, perhaps finally, finding his own cinematic voice.

Continue reading @ The Loop 21

black girls rock!

2010-11-04T08:22:00.000-04:00

Say it Loud: Black Girls Rock
by Jacque Reid

Call it perfect timing. Black Girls Rock makes its television debut this weekend on BET as the public image of black women continues to be dragged through the mud.

It is difficult to miss recent reports, blogs and viral videos exploring why many of us will never marry or even come close to finding a good man, complaining that our standards are way too high and that we have attitude problems, or explaining that our credit is bad.

For the black woman left feeling a bit deflated, what a refreshing surprise to find BET coming to the rescue with the premiere of the Black Girls Rock Awards show. The event honors outstanding women in entertainment, community service and science. This year's show honors Ruby Dee, Raven-Symone, Missy Elliott, Keke Palmer, Iyanla Vanzant, Teresa Clarke and Major General Marcelite Harris.

Continue Reading @ The Root

nicki minaj

2010-11-04T08:13:00.000-04:00

What Nicki Minaj Means to Black Women
by Regina Bradley

I’m not a fan of Nicki Minaj. Yeah, I said it. Her voice and “characters” already took my last nerve. But with her much anticipated freshman release Pink Friday dropping November 22, Minaj is in the mouths of fans and haters alike.

I’m not concerned here, however, with Minaj’s lyricism or talent. I’m interested in what Minaj’s multiple identies suggest about women in hip-hop.

During the 2010 BET Hip Hop Awards, DJ Khaled introduced self-proclaimed entertainer Minaj as “Nicki Minaj, Nicki Minaj, Nicki Minaj, Nicki Minaj, and Nicki Minaj.” As Minaj began to speak, she significantly altered her voice five times to show her “multiple personas.” People cheered.

Whether in the capacity of video models or (f)emcees, women in hip-hop are so underrepresented that they are always fighting against the current. In the powerful (and long overdue) documentary My Mic Sounds Nice old school artists like Roxanne Shante, Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte, and Yo Yo talked about the need to lyrically keep their game up. Battling for them was a way to be acknowledged, heard, and visible.

Continue reading @ News One

Photo Credit: hiphopmusic.com

kimberly elise on "for colored girls"

2010-11-01T08:40:00.000-04:00

Actress opens up about Perry's ‘For Colored Girls'
by Nedra Rhone

When Kimberly Elise first arrived in Hollywood, all of her jobs were on sitcoms. When she trained on stage, it was comedy. But after a star turn in the mid-'90s gangsta film “Set It Off,” it seemed Elise couldn’t shake the drama.

“I would love to be in a comedy,” she said. “Some people just gravitate to the dramatic roles I play.”

That’s not likely to change given her latest project -- a starring role in “For Colored Girls,” a film adapted and directed by Atlanta’s Tyler Perry. The film opens Friday.

Elise was just a kid in 1976 when a strangely titled production began winding its way through the theater circuit. From California to New York, to off-Broadway and finally, to the Great White Way, “For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf” was like nothing the theater establishment had ever seen.

Continue reading @ AJC

Photo by Ben Gabbe/Getty Images North America

representation and colored girls

2010-10-31T08:32:00.001-04:00

For Colored Girls ... Is Representation Enuf?
by Christa Bell

The Tyler Perry film version of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls opens this coming week. What better moment to consider the representation of black women in popular U.S. culture. Forgive us if we cringe in anticipation …

Continue reading @ Ms. blog

And while you're over at Ms., check out "10 Things" to Know about Ntozake Shange and For Colored Girls by C. Davida Ingram.

hijacked and hackneyed?

2010-10-27T08:28:00.000-04:00

Early reviews are in for Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls and, from what I glean so far, they... ain't ... good. I'm silencing much of the critical chatter about the film for the moment. While I have little to no faith in Tyler Perry's ability to take an amazing piece of literature and a tribe of class "A" black actresses and make something remarkable, I want to be an informed and fair cultural critic.

I've said much of the same to my NYU students in our discussions about film adaptations of black women's literature. I'm teaching a course on black women's writing traditions that spans from Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to Sapphire's Push. I couldn't help but notice that a number of books on our reading list have been adapted to screen: The Color Purple, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and now, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf (yes, the whole title is important).

If far more black women's texts have been adapted to the screen than black men's, it is likely due to the renaissance of black women's literary production in the 1970s and 1980s (coupled with Oprah's bankrolling of several book-to-film projects). But I'm also interested in the fact that (black) male directors seem to be at the helm of a number of these projects. I don't think that only black women should head black women's cultural productions. I would much rather a skilled director of whatever gender bring black women's stories to screen. Unfortunately Hollywood privileges dollar signs over skill and, like it or not, Perry is one of the most lucrative black directors of all time.

Even more fascinating for me is the appeal of black women's trauma stories to Lee Daniels and Tyler Perry. Both directors have disclosed experiences of abuse that informed their interest in Precious and For Colored Girls. Perry's appearance on Oprah to recount his childhood sexual abuse, in the weeks leading up to the release of his film may be an effort to identify with black women's sexual trauma. To be sure, black men's literature seldom explores the sexual abuse of black boys. It is not unlikely, then, that Daniels, Perry, and other men may see their own experiences reflected in the stories of black women.

At the same time, Hollywood greenlights Tyler Perry's film projects because they draw box office receipts. The events that led up to Perry taking charge of a film Nzingha Stewart was set to write and direct are fuzzy and while Stewart is credited as an executive producer on the project, I can't help but wonder if the power Perry wields in Hollywood enabled him to hijack the film that he claim's "chose him."

Next week, I'll be teaching Shange's choreopoem and allowing her words to take hold of my students' imaginations. Most of them have never read it. As the national release of Tyler Perry's film approaches, I can only hope that others who haven't heard the music in Shange's words will read it along with us.

tyler perry's new image with "for colored girls"

2010-10-25T07:44:00.000-04:00

Madea Takes a Break, and Tyler Perry Gets Serious
by Brooks Barnes

LOS ANGELES — Is Tyler Perry capable of highbrow cinema? The studio behind his 10th movie is determined to make audiences and Oscar voters look beyond his track record and answer yes.

Mr. Perry is the most successful black filmmaker ever. His nine pictures — from the comedic romp “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion” to the melodramatic “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?” — have brought in over $530 million at the North American box office. He also has an enormous business in stage shows and two television series on TBS.

But Mr. Perry — who writes, directs, produces and frequently stars in his films — also has a reputation as a one-man schlock factory. His movies are reviled by many critics, who complain that his original source material panders and stereotypes, while his directing is sloppy and unsubtle. Now comes “For Colored Girls,” an attempt by Mr. Perry to make a radical turn toward the art-house crowd.

continue reading @ The New York Times

a joyous case of whiplash

2010-10-22T09:35:00.000-04:00

The Best Week Ever for Black Girls
by Veronica Miller

This week, a precocious and adorable 9-year-old premiered her first music video on cable television. At the same time, a two-minute clip from a classic children’s show went viral and won the hearts of many.

Continue reading @ NPR

black marriage negotiations

2010-10-19T08:56:00.000-04:00

Black Marriage Negotiations Video Perpetuates Stereotypes and Ignores Context
By Rose

The video isn’t just bunk because it misuses the term “womanist,” a label meant to convey that black women’s emancipation cannot be achieved without black men and children also being fully equal in society. Simply stated, it’s another baseless attack on educated, professional, single, African American women who seek healthy partnerships with men. There are so many stereotypes about black women that this video affirms without providing any context, but perhaps the ones that sting the most are about sex and money.

Read more @ Feministing

don't believe the hype

2010-10-19T08:51:00.000-04:00

Don't Believe the Media Hype ... When it Comes to Black Women
by Charing Ball

As a black woman, I find it particularly odd that my lifestyle choices, finances and other habits are, all of the sudden, under the suspicious glare of the mainstream media spotlight.

If the media isn’t speculating on why as many as 70 percent of us are supposedly single, than it’s citing erroneous research on the various reasons we might not be able to get a man, including: our likelihood to catch an incurable STD, or our over-reliance on Jesus or why we are either undesirable or unlikely to date or marry outside of our race.

still no justice for civil rights-era rapes

2010-10-16T10:20:00.000-04:00

"For many years, they tried to say that women were the cause of this, that (black) women wanted sexual activity. ... It hasn't been true, but the courts used that to justify not taking action on behalf of the women. It was very demoralizing to all of us."

read more here

more on morehouse

2010-10-13T08:30:00.001-04:00

Thinking about "The Mean Girls of Morehouse" from a different perspective, I've been wondering about transgender policies at single sex institutions. Do trans students have to be FTM (female to male) to attend a "men's college" or does admission extend to women-identified men? What if the student transitions while matriculating? Would a female-identified (pre or post-op) be more accepted at a women's college? And what about genderqueer or nonconforming students who identify as neither male or female (as is the case with some of the genderbending "plastics" at Morehouse)? Where do they belong? As biological and cultural gender identities become more fluid, non-sex-specific and single-sex colleges are being encouraged to address these changes on applications, in classrooms, and in very material ways, like ensuring that bathrooms and dormitories accommodate students of varying genders safely. The recent controversy over Morehouse's "proper attire" extends beyond the clothing to the body itself. The policy in part reflects the homophobic culture that has long plagued Morehouse but the "dress code" also challenges us to reconsider our definitions of gender.

morehouse manhood mayhem

2010-10-12T11:53:00.000-04:00

A year after the controversy surrounding Morehouse's "Appropriate Attire Policy" and on the heels of a string of suicides committed by LGBT youth, Aliya S. King profiles former and current gender-bending students in "The Mean Girls of Morehouse" @ Vibe.com. Morehouse president Robert Franklin lobbed a preemptive strike against the piece in his letter to alumni. One alumnus, R. L'Heureux Lewis hopes that King's piece will spark necessary dialogues about fear, intolerance, and narrow definitions of manhood in black communities.

Having also attended an HBCU, I witnessed the silence surrounding sexuality firsthand. Students at my alma mater, Howard University, are mourning the death of Aiyisha Hassan, a nineteen year old whose struggle with her sexual identity caused her to take her own life. With the founding of the Coalition of Activist Students Celebrating the Acceptance of Diversity and Equality (CASCADE), Howard is beginning to address the issues that LGBT students face. Similarly Morehouse College's Safe Space has increased awareness of homophobia on campus. Long perceived as safe havens from the racism of majority institutions, can black colleges provide spaces of belonging for our queer youth?

more on the occult of single black womanhood: the BBC doc

2010-10-07T07:47:00.000-04:00

The BBC Plays Black Matchmaker
Dr. Jason Johnson

African Americans have been meeting, falling in love, getting married and having kids, and getting divorced and looking for love long before the BBC, CNN or any other media outlet decided to make Black matchmaking the stop gap story for a slow news day. And I’m pretty confident we will continue to do so without any outside help. Besides, what’s so wrong about 30-plus Black women continuing to explore their options until they find Mr. Right? When white women do that, it’s celebrated to the tune of five seasons and two Hollywood movies of Sex and the City.

continue reading

YOU smile!

2010-10-06T21:04:00.000-04:00

Nobody's Smilin'
Jamilah Lemieux

If we are rating annoying, inept macking on a scale of “Yo, shawty!” to “Damn, you got some sexy ass lips,” then the “smile” lines would fall somewhere in the middle. But while they may not be as offensive as drive-by sexual innuendo, I still find them to be patriarchal power grabs, and I’m no fan at all.

continue reading

"white girls dipped in chocolate"

2010-10-05T08:05:00.000-04:00

For Models, Black Beauty Means White Features
by Tamra Winfrey Harris

In a society that privileges a typically European (read: white) standard of beauty — pale skin, straight hair, slim noses and lips — there is a penalty for being the opposite of that standard, for having physical features common to people with African ancestry. Black people pay the cost for their physicality everywhere from the bedroom — where blackness can reduce a woman's sexual currency — to the boardroom, where employers develop policies that penalize African-Americans for wearing their hair in natural styles. But in no career is the penalty for "looking black" higher than in fashion, an industry devoted to beauty and to framing, promoting and defending whiteness as its standard.

continue reading

some women wait for something

2010-10-02T08:54:00.000-04:00

ill-fated fairytales
filtered through girlhood
dreams
Mr. Right sits high
on his white stallion
her smile beckons him
to rescue a maiden,
one fair as she
waiting.
eager to flee
into the security of man arms
and gallop off into fairytale world.
somewhere beyond the sunset
or at the rainbow's end
there is a nest
the lady bird's wings
are clipped
the nest does not offer rest
but seclusion from the world outside
she sits perched high
atop a tree
and beholds the sky,
unable to fly.

*found this digging through some old journals
title is a nod to Audre Lorde's "Stations"

feminist mothers, flapper daughters @ the nation

2010-10-01T08:36:00.000-04:00

Katha Pollitt writes:

"Young feminists, in short, are not like the '20s flappers who repudiated Elizabeth Cady Stanton or their "I'm not a feminist, but..." apolitical descendants today. They're claiming feminism—they just want a bigger place in it."

continue reading here

SBW part 2 (or 3 or 4, I'm losing count)

2010-09-30T14:51:00.000-04:00

SBWs (single/successful/strong black women) are in the news ... again. This time the BBC's Nina Robinson hops the pond to interview single black women in NYC and find out why there is a such a shortage of marriageable black men.

At first blush, Robinson's report departs from most previous accounts because she focuses on the lack of marriageable partners for black women instead of presuming that something is lacking in black women.

The report attributes the shortage of marriageable black men to inordiate high school drop out and imprisonment rates. Black men who are college educated and economically stable tend to have a world of dating options available to them. They are also much more likely than black women (10% more likely) to date interracially.

We've heard this litany of statistics before. But Robinson does not take them as a pronouncement of black women's inevitable solitude. She ends her segment with the assertion that successful black women have options and that they can have fun exploring them. She also suggests that black men and women confront the negative stereotypes they have internalized about one another.

While Robinson's story is more even-handed than say, Steve Harvey's unsolicited relationship advice, "The Occult of Single Black Womanhood" (nod to Ann duCille) is troubling in myriad ways. I could think of any number of "states of emergency" concerning black women: sexual violence and inadequate health care are two issues that immediately come to mind. Why, then, is there so much pronounced emphasis on black women's marital status? I come away from most of these stories feeling that the media's attention to black women's purported "undesirability" is yet another psychic assault that--in combination with the white aesthetic that remains dominant in American culture--serves to reinforce (in case you didn't get the memo) the message that black women are not valued. The devaluation of black women in part explains why many black readers of Essence magazine were so disappointed with the mag's decision to hire a white fashion director.

The devaluation of black women extends beyond beauty and marriage markets, of course. Audre Lorde credits a "systematic devaluation of black women" for the historical abuse and sexual assaults against black women. Perhaps, then, we should redirect the conversation to the way the convergence of sex, race, and class impact black women's well-being, despite our marital status.

dispatch from new birth

2010-09-27T11:24:00.000-04:00

Long Odds by Jelani Cobb

The cars began streaming into the parking lot at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church even before the sun had risen. On a normal Sunday church traffic chokes the off-ramps at Interstate 20, down to Bishop Eddie Long Boulevard that leads onto the grounds. This, as the news vans lining Bishop Eddie Long Boulevard attested, was not a normal Sunday.

continue reading

the grace of silence

2010-09-25T09:44:00.000-04:00

Michele Norris' new book reveals "The Grace of Silence"

By Michael Sragow

At first, Michele Norris didn't think her revelatory, heart-piercing book, "The Grace of Silence," would get so personal. The co-host of "All Things Considered" presumed that writing about race would extend the work she had done in 2008 for a multipart National Public Radio series that asked residents of York, Pa., straightforward questions. "Do white Americans underestimate discrimination? Do black people make too much of it? How would the country be different if led by a black man?"

continue reading

the african american rosie the riveter

2010-09-24T09:27:00.000-04:00

Remembering the African American Rosie the Riveter
by Callie Shanafelt

Now at 88-years-old, Soskin has had time to process her role on the home front during World War II. Despite the great social changes of that time, she still remembers the pain of the discrimination she faced as a black woman.

SOSKIN: We were forced to hire men too old to fight, boys to young to go, women out of their homes disrupting the entire American mystic of what it means to be a man or woman in order to gear up for that great mobilization. Even at that time we were willing to sacrifice on the altar of racial segregation, human potential of a huge, huge percentage of people based upon color.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/kalw/detail?entry_id=73045#ixzz10SA7BYKl

Photo Credit: Gordon Parks, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

ntozake shange and ifa bayeza

2010-09-23T08:12:00.000-04:00

Yes, I love Ntozake Shange! There, I said it.
Check out the conversation between Shange and her sister and co-author Ifa Bayeza at WaPo.

for black men

2010-09-21T07:48:00.001-04:00

For Black Men, Goal Remains the Same
And that is educational and professional success, not pursuing 'manly' careers.

by Joshua Alston

In some ways, trying to mimic a traditional model of masculinity has been part of the problem for us. If men define themselves through doing blue-collar work, and getting dirty and making things with their hands, they find themselves in a pinch when those sectors shrink, as construction and manufacturing have recently. That's an issue that affects white and black men in the same way. The difference seems to be in pursuit of education. When white, blue-collar men find themselves out of work, they're more likely to have at least a high- school diploma to fall back on.

continue reading here

a new work and a reprise

2010-09-20T10:18:00.000-04:00

Felicia Lee speaks to Ntozake Shange and her sister, Ifa Bayeza, about their new co-written family saga Some Sing, Some Cry. Lee also talks to Shange about Tyler Perry's film adaptation of For Colored Girls:

"For years, filmmakers talked about a movie version, but it came about courtesy of Mr. Perry, the writer and director of a successful string of films (and television series) about African-American life that some observers have criticized as clichéd and racially stereotypical. Much of his work has featured Mr. Perry in drag as the saucy matriarch Madea. Ms. Shange said she explicitly told Mr. Perry that Madea could not be in 'Colored Girls'."

continue reading here

hey baby

2010-09-17T08:44:00.000-04:00

I first bought an I-Pod mini so I could listen to music while working out at the gym. I had finally retired my portable CD player. Remember those? I had to rest it on the ledge of the treadmill or crosstrainer and hope it wouldn't fall to the floor.

Now my I-Pod mini does double duty as a harassment blocker (or at least a blunter). I'd complain to friends that my walks through my Brooklyn neighborhood--on my way to yoga, the train, or the store--were always punctuated by lewd and sometimes aggressive remarks from men who loiter in front of buildings all day. And I have a swift gait! I navigate my 'hood like most New Yorkers: walk with a purpose and keep my eyes straight. But neither haste nor sweaty gym clothes discourage random men from commenting about my appearance or body or suggesting that I smile.

Photo Credit: Life.com
Street harassment is a daily occurrence for most women and for queer and trans people. Last week, my friend sent me a link to this animated scenario of street harassment @ Jezebel. Yesterday, the Crunk Feminist Collective reprinted a poignant piece by Elizabeth Mendez Berry about the insidious trauma of street harassment. Sites like Stop Street Harassment and Holla Back host women's stories and recommend empowerment strategies. Street harassment is so tied into our misogynistic culture that both women and men will have to work to make public spaces safe for women and men. My white ear buds may block out daily annoyances but they don't always quell my anxiety and hypervigilance. I know as a woman who stakes a claim to public space--to my city, my neighborhood, and my stoop--that at its worst, street harassment can turn violent or deadly.

Stop Street Harassment recommends a multilayered approach to ending public harassment: educate, empower, raise awareness, and campaign. How do you address street harassment?

fashion in action

2010-09-16T08:01:00.001-04:00

Young Women Stage "Fashion in Action!" Demonstration at New York Fashion Week

By Geneva S. Thomas

On September 9, the opening day of New York Fashion Week, a group of young Black women staged a silent demonstration. The 20-something ladies wanted to acknowledge the first time in their lifetimes that Essence magazine—a formidable Black women’s print beloved by scores Black girls for 40 years—does not have a Black fashion director.

continue reading @ Clutch

Photo Credit: Fashion photographer Marc Baptiste

for colored girls ... the trailer

2010-09-15T08:03:00.000-04:00

The actresses are fierce! To echo Ball, will Perry be enuf?

for colored girls who can act, will tyler perry be enuf?

2010-09-15T07:38:00.000-04:00

Is Tyler Perry Enuff [sic] to Direct For Colored Girls by Charing Ball

"I sort of have this love/hate relationship with Tyler Perry.

I love Perry, the self-made millionaire, who first achieved success outside of the mainstream and uses his creative gift to not only build an empire but to put many black actors and actresses to work.

With that said, there are a few things about Perry that I just can’t stand: First, the quality of his writing, which relies heavily on the one-dimensional, campy themes of blackness in each and every film and play he has ever made. And secondly, his character development, which often times straddles the line between coonery and exploitation is especially disturbing."

continue reading here

us against the world

2010-09-11T08:36:00.000-04:00

Proenza Schouler called up Harmony Korine to direct a film for their new ad campaign. Korine is best known for writing Kids (1995) and writing and directing Gummo (1997). He brings his usual surrealist and nihilistic aesthetic to Act Da Fool, a short shot in the Nashville projects, featuring a crew of black girls.

The film is shot beautifully. The juxtaposition of fashion and the detritus of the projects is provocative enough to make viewers think critically about consumerism, if we weren't being encouraged to go out and buy Proenza Schouler's hip gear. There are also parts of the voice-over narrative that I think adds brilliantly to the setting: "I believe that the earth is a big ball of shit. That's why the dinosaur died out." "Sometimes I can spend up to an hour staring at a bird in a tree. I wish I was that bird and could just fly away." I couldn't help but think of similar lines Richard Wright penned for the iconic Bigger Thomas who would stand and watch airplanes and dream of flight.

The narration supports scenes of the girls lingering near trash heaps and old tires and downing 40s. In one uncomfortable scene, the girls's lips form a tight seal around the bottles and they drink the malt liquor like babies taking in milk. Korine is clearly trying to critique poverty, but what, if anything, does all of this have to do with fashion?

Or maybe it's just that black poverty seems to be in fashion as of late. Echoing some of the responses to Lee Daniels's controversial film Precious, critics are weighing the artistic merit of Korine's short film against the exploitative nature of it. Sharon Toomer at BBN encourages readers to call retailers who sell PS and express their anger about the ad's debasement of black girls. Geneva Thomas at Clutch reads the film very differently, describing it as "a deeply honest, strong and undisguised narrative about an underclass of obscured urban Black girls in America." Nsenga Burton agrees with Toomer that the film is exploitation posing as art and argues that the girls are objects of a colonizing gaze. A spot-on critique by Minh-ha Pham over at Threadbared discusses the film as a kind of cultural tourism. The largely white fashion industry as well as PS's target consumers (preppy and wealthy white girls) get to fetishize exotically classed and racialized "others" from a position of comfort and privilege.

I find the film both artistic and exploitative, problematic and provocative. My brows furrowed when the girl narrating the short says she and her friends are a "gang of fools" who can "act like wild animals." To be sure, all kids kinda act like wild animals, but when the subjects of a cultural product are black, a line like that carries with it racist insinuations.

Also, in a fashion industry in which the underrepresentation of black women sparked a silent protest at the beginning of this year's fashion week, it is important to think about when and where images of black women enter the fashion world's imaginary. There are as few, or perhaps fewer, black women in powerful creative and editorial positions as there are on magazine covers and runways. Is there a connection between the aestheticization of black poverty in the Proenza Schouler ad and the lack of black influence in the fashion industry at large?

I'm not certain, but what I do know is that excess tends to draw attention to absence and Korine's exaggerated displays of youth cultures highlight stuff we'd prefer to pretend doesn't exist. Couple these displays with the promotion of a fashion collection, however, and we are forced to reckon with what exactly is being marketed and to whom.

act like a feminist

2010-09-10T11:30:00.000-04:00

Bene Viera's "Calling Yourself a Feminist Isn't the Same as Being One" has sparked an interesting dialogue at Clutch and on Twitter. The issue of what feminism is and feminism ain't always elicits fiery responses from those of us who proudly wave the blood-stained F-word banner and others who insist "I'm not a feminist, but ..." (I support all the same things that all of you who call yourselves feminists support).

Like Viera, I often use bell hooks's popular definition for feminism in Feminism is for Everybody to streamline feminism for my undergrad students. I also turn to the Combahee River Collective Statement to place black feminist organizing and activism in the historical context of the civil rights and black power movements. Combahee's opening lines still resonate with black feminists today:

The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.

The part of Viera's piece that seems to concern most readers is her example of feminist misconduct. She writes:

I know readers of CLUTCH hate when Kat Stacks is brought into the equation. We are all so perfect and believe her to be the lowest of the low, undeserving of respect because she doesn’t respect herself. Personally, I disagree. Kat Stacks is not molded to fit our idealistic definition of a woman so she is deserving of the disgust people have for her? Yet Lauryn Hill is revered because she’s a deep soul sister, despite the several children she’s had with a married man.

But any time Kat Stacks is mentioned, women rush at the chance to tear her down. And, again, it’s when I see the degrading, hateful, and ridiculous comments of the feminists that I shake my head.

If we, as women and “feminists,” participate in the degradation of other women, how can we then condemn systematic oppression by men?

If, like me, you are wondering "Who's Kat Stacks?" check out this link. From what I gather, Kat Stacks is the new "Superhead" and, like her predecessor, has received a fair amount of vitriol from the sistas. To be sure, feminist time can be better spent on something other than the Nicki Minajes or Kat Stacks of the moment, but it seems to me that critiquing Hill's lifestyle choices is no different than disparaging Kat Stacks. Whether women are sex workers or rappers or soul singers who have unconventional ideas about family, feminism is first and foremost about women's freedom of choice, right?

There is no one way to act like a feminist but there are many ways to put our feminism into action. How are you acting out your feminism?

before she sat down, she stood up

2010-09-08T08:45:00.000-04:00

Historian and Wayne State University Professor Danielle L. McGuire's At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance: A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power unpacks the history of racialized sexual violence that fueled black women's activism during the Civil Rights Movement. Before Rosa Parks helped initiate the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she worked as the NAACP's chief investigator of the sexual assaults and rapes of black women in the South. Reminiscent of Ida B. Wells's tireless documentation of lynching, Rosa Parks gathered evidence to expose the scourge of sexual violence against black women and to seek justice for their injuries.

Listen to an interview with Danielle McGuire and Robert Corbitt, brother of mother and sharecropper Recy Taylor, whose brutal gang rape set off a movement against sexual violence.

Read more Q & A with Professor McGuire at Time.com

grown folks' novels

2010-09-07T07:40:00.000-04:00

I liked Disappearing Acts. Mapping the course for black chick lit, like Janine Morris's Diva Diaries and Connie Briscoe's Sisters and Lovers, Terri McMillan wrote a "girlfriend" story that black women could discuss in beauty shops, at the water cooler, and in university hallways.

The girlfriend novels of Terri McMillan are not the stuff we use to teach close-reading in our lit classrooms, but they are a valuable cultural study. The recent national media attention to the love lives (or love lack) of black women presents an interesting opportunity to think about black women's popular writing and reading communities. Before Living Single and Sex and the City, McMillan's Waiting to Exhale told a story of black female friendship and love relationships. The writing wasn't perfect and the characters did not necessarily evolve, but it kept pages turning. Forrest Whitaker's film adaptation of the novel was a box office success, which makes me wonder why there was no "domino effect," like the trend of "hood" films that followed Singleton's Boyz.

Getting to Happy is McMillan's sequel to Waiting. Click here for a review of the novel in WaPo. Perhaps McMillan's novel and the recent release of Helena Andrews's memoir Bitch is the New Black (which has been optioned for film) will energize conversations by black women and about black women's lives that don't center on the triple S syndrome (Successful, Single, and Sad).

esperanza=hope for jazz

2010-09-03T07:43:00.000-04:00

Jozen Cummings profiles Esperanza Spalding at The Root. The brilliant and talented jazz bassist and vocalist defied jazz's decline to sell 72,000 copies of her self-titled debut album in 2008. Her latest, Chamber Music Society, debuted at #1 on I-tunes, Amazon, Billboard's Heetseeker chart, and the CMJ Jazz chart.

New Yorkers can see this dynamo perform live at the Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on September 30!

who should be first?

2010-09-02T09:38:00.000-04:00

Janell Hobson reviews Who Should Be First?: Feminists Speak Out on the 2008 Presidential Campaign, Edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Johnnetta Betsch Cole (SUNY Press) at Ms.

beautiful girls

2010-09-01T07:47:00.000-04:00

Princeton Professor Imani Perry discusses black beauty and the Ms Universe pageant:

"As a Black woman, for centuries now, flesh like my flesh has carried the burden of presumed inferiority. Black women have been cast as hypersexual or desexualized, always available yet undesired, ridiculous and often ugly, the mules of the world. Notwithstanding a few beauty icons, public figures, and celebrities, these stereotypic representations are still common. And perhaps this is why the fantasy of a beauty culture that includes Black women has so much allure. Fantastic images of Black women who are desired yet untouchable, pristine, flawless, and admired, lie so contrary to how we have been cast throughout history. And that feels kind of good."

read more here

black bottom at bold

2010-08-10T10:41:00.000-04:00

Blog updates soon come but for now, check out my interview with the uber-talented Tamar-Kali over at BOLD. And make sure to buy or download Black Bottom!

a woman speaks

2010-07-23T14:47:00.000-04:00

Moon marked and touched by sun

my magic is unwritten

but when the sea turns back

it will leave my shape behind.

I seek no favor

untouched by blood

unrelenting as the curse of love

permanent as my errors

or my pride

I do not mix

love with pity

nor hate with scorn

and if you would know me

look into the entrails of Uranus

where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell

within my birth nor my divinities

who am ageless and half-grown

and still seeking

my sisters

witches in Dahomey

wear me inside their coiled cloths

as our mother did

mourning.

I have been woman

for a long time

beware my smile

I am treacherous with old magic

and the noon's new fury

with all your wide futures

promised

I am

woman

and not white.

-- Audre Lorde

ain't i a woman

2010-07-15T22:42:00.000-04:00

Brooklyn's MOCADA featured a group exhibition titled for the purported refrain from Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio. Curator Kimberli Gant assembled a group of women artists and paired each of them with a female African poet from the Heinemann Book of African Women's Poetry as inspiration for their work. While the flow of the exhibit was as confusing as the Truth theme and African women's poetry collabo, there were some innovative pieces among the bevy of mostly brown bodies crammed in the tight, almost maze-like space. Elizabeth Columba's Phyllis combined shadow with vibrant color. The thoughtful piece also embraced the show's theme without being too literal.

As a literary scholar, I like projects that bring together text and visuality but I found that some pieces drew from the poetic inspiration in much too literal of a way, by incorporating lines from the poem, for instance. It's a subjective critique to be sure but I just looked for more clever ways to think about the poetic-visual pairing. While I found Phoenix Savage's "Antithesis" to be a well-conceived and visually striking piece, for instance, I thought the way she brought text into installation was distracting.

Kimberly Becoat's pieces, on the other hand, integrated text into her paintings in a subtle yet powerful way. Her blazes of color, floral patterns, and small patches of black gave a nod to Henrietta Lacks. "Soon Henrietta Come Hela" captured the vision of the exhibition without recourse to cliche or reductive tropes of black womanhood.

a radiant genius child

2010-07-12T23:35:00.000-04:00

Nobody loves a genius child
Kill him -- and let his soul run wild!
--Langston Hughes

Tamra Davis's documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child opens with the text of Langston Hughes's "Genius Child." Initially I bristled at another reference to Basquiat's childlike quality as I had seen Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic, and while I thought Jeffrey Wright was a dynamo (as usual), I found that Schnabel's portrayal of the artist as a troubled and temperamental "child" undermined Basquiat's brilliance, skill, and wit.

Davis's documentary does just the opposite. She unveils an interview she conducted with her friend Jean over twenty years ago and supports it with the recollections of others who were close to the artist like his longtime girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk and his running buddy, graffiti artist and hip hop pioneer, Fab 5 Freddy. Davis intersperses these personal reflections with footage from the 1970s and 80s that chronicles downtown artists, the disco scene, the "high" art world with its "white walls, white people, and white wine," and an emerging hip hop culture. Basquiat negotiates and creates art that reflects all of these different worlds as he graduates from tagging his signature SAMO on city streets to creating enigmatic artwork that propelled him to international fame.

But with "mo money" came "mo problems" as sycophants and star fuckers surrounded Basquiat and, in spite of both critical and commercial successes, he never received due respect from the elitist and racist art world. The death of one of his best friends Andy Warhol worsened Basquiat's heroin addiction. And like far too many radiant, genius children, he died too young at 27.

justice for a life

2010-07-09T09:15:00.000-04:00

For many, Oscar Grant III's murder and the ensuing trial of transit police officer Johannes Mehserle immediately recall Rodney King's videotaped beating and the acquittal of the police officers who used excessive force against him. While both cases rested on visual evidence of officer misconduct, the critical difference between the two trials is that Oscar Grant is dead. Grant joins the numbers of unarmed black men (like Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and a host of others) whose very presence on "the scene" was perceived as threatening, whose lives were "disposable." That Mehserle will serve time is a comfort to some (certainly not for Grant's family). For others, his conviction on involuntary manslaughter instead of murder is just further evidence of the devaluation of black life.

out of the ruins

2010-05-22T17:15:00.000-04:00

Detroit still looks like a bombed out city. It looks as if the riots just happened yesterday. As an assistant prof at a small-town Michigan college, I would take the hour and a half drive often for the Jazz and African festivals, to find a natural hair-care salon, to go to Ikea, check out established and emerging art museums, and visit a good friend I met half-way across the world.

Detroit still looks like a bombed out city. And then you turn a corner and stumble upon a street that looks like an exploded candy store.

Bubblegum blues and cotton-candy pinks cover houses and discarded doors nailed into sculptures of the everyday. Shoes, stuffed and unstuffed animals, salvaged auto parts ... the ruins of a city made into art.

FLASH! BANG! Bombed out city. No place for a little black girl to sleep. No bubblegum blue and cotton candy pink dreams await Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

Inflated balloons and plush stuffed animals mark the site of her murder but inanimate objects can't reanimate a life. And a mother and a father's tears can't extinguish the flames of poverty and injustice that still threaten to consume a city.

Detroit still is a bombed out city. What will emerge from the ruins of a girl's stolen life?

black male privilege: tonight at the brecht forum

2010-05-17T13:30:00.000-04:00

rethinking racial capitalism

2010-04-27T12:56:00.000-04:00

Rethinking Racial Capitalism is a Two-Day Symposium sponsored by the American Studies Program in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. Panelists include Nikhil Singh, Alys Weinbaum, David Kazanjian, David Roediger, Penny Von Eschen, Fred Moten and others. For full schedule, click here.

Dorothy Height

2010-04-20T14:57:00.000-04:00

Black Feminisms honors and mourns pioneering black feminist and civil rights activist Dorothy Height. Height served on the national board of the YWCA for thirty years, acted as National President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority from the late 1940s until the mid 1950s, and as President of the National Council of Negro Women for over forty years. She worked tirelessly on a national and international scale for the rights of women. May her journey be filled with peace and light.

who will save black girls?

2010-04-13T09:31:00.001-04:00

Salamishah Tillet wrote a poignant piece on black girls and modern-day slavery in The Root this past week in response to the Rowan Towers sexual assault case and other unspeakable incidents. The April/May issue of Heart and Soul magazine also takes up the "state of our girls." Could a movement be brewing?

In response to the sexual assault of the 7-yr old in Rowan Towers, an impromptu march was organized by Trenton's Mayor Doug Palmer and hip hop mogul Russell Simmons and addressed to men. While I think it's useful for men to educate one another about domestic violence and sexual assault, the rally's purpose seemed to be "peacekeeping" and policing(read male protection of women). Nation of Islam's David Muhammed contends:

You can't go into a community that loves itself and brutalize it [...] I believe it has always been the duty of men to protect his community, to protect the women.

And yet, patriarchy (male authority and dominance) is part of the problem. Why not organize a rally to encourage dialogue between women and men around violence, sexism, and black male privilege? The knee jerk response to crises in black communities tends to be one in which men are encouraged to assume leadership of their communities instead of building coalitions with women. In order to begin eradicating sexual and other forms of violence in black communities, black women and men have to be seen as equal partners in struggle.

lisa gail collins at barnard

2010-04-08T09:51:00.000-04:00

Art historian Lisa Gail Collins will offer a lunchtime lecture Tuesday April 13 at noon in 101 Barnard Hall. Click here for more details.

Return of the Ankh

2010-04-02T11:51:00.000-04:00

Meanwhile, over at Bold check out my review of Erykah Badu's New Amerykah Part Two.

what health care reform means for women

2010-03-23T11:09:00.000-04:00

Columbia Journalism Review's Trudy Lieberman and NOW president Terry O'Neill discuss the ways in which the health care bill may help and hurt women.

Haitian Women: Key to Haiti's Survival

2010-03-18T08:16:00.000-04:00

"If you want to learn about the dream for new relations of power in Haiti, ask a Haitian woman." (continue reading here)

black feministy events

2010-03-17T16:40:00.000-04:00

No Longer in Exile: The Legacy and Future of Gender Studies at the New School
Friday, March 26 (6:00-9:00 p.m.) and Saturday, March 27 (all day), 2010

Venus 2010: They Called Her "Hottentot," An Interdisciplinary Symposium

Event Date and Time:
March 27, 2010 – March 27, 2010
9 am to 6 pm

Location:
Riese Family Student Lounge
721 Broadway, Rear Lobby
New York, NY 10003