Long Distance Love for Indigo Journeys: Support 7th Graders in their Black Feminist Brilliance!!!!

Greetings loved ones,
The Indigo Afterschool Program for brilliant black feminists in middle school (inspired by Ntozake Shanges Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo) here in Durham is evolving into the Indigo Journeys program, a curriculum of visionary black feminist fieldtrips and monument making!!!!    The Indigo Geniuses have grown and shown the divine skill of creating sacred space through developing and sharing their own Sisterhood Museum* with our local community and now we will be growing and showing the skill of creating sacred space and being sacred space WHEREVER WE GO!!!  Behold the power and creativity of black girls!!!

This weekend the Geniuses and their mamas are hosting an Indigo Tea Dance Support Raiser here in Durham to invite our community to support the resources, financial and logistical that will support the Indigo Journeys.   Since the groove transcends space and time you will all be dancing with us in spirit! I want to personally invite all of you who believe that the brilliance of black girls demands our collective resourcefulness and creativity to send support for this life giving project!
Here is the invitation to support from the Indigo Mamas:
Last year, Alexis Pauline Gumbs and our daughters created Indigo Afterschool, a creative superspace for the young geniuses to learn, create, and love with the guidance of sista docta Alexis. Their weeks together culminated in the creation of a beautiful museum full of stories and art. This spring, Alexis and the girls will venture on Indigo Journeys in the form of Mother-Daughter Art Outings and Indigo Legacy Field Trips to learn about important black feminist sites in North Carolina.
Contributions of any amount are appreciated, as well as gas cards, and gift cards for an oil change, a car wash, a Frankie's outing, or groceries. 
You can donate through Alexis' Donation Station: http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/make-love/
Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to get the address to send gift cards (Kroger, Food Lion or Harris Teeter cards will work locally)
Love,
Lex
*The Sisterhood Museum was adapted from the Brotherhood/Sistersol Curriculum in Harlem with much love and appreciation!

Tickets Now on sale: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/28965 Learn more about Body Ecology Performance Ensemble-- www.bettysdaughterarts.com

Black Feminist Babies on the Way! Suppot Lex's Intergenerational Journey to become a Doula!

from Lex and her mom's new project:  Dynamic Dou: A Mother/Daughter Doula Team

"54. everyone is waiting
to see what great thing
you'll do next." -from Wishful Thinking by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

http://alexispauline.chipin.com/rebirth-doula-dreams-coming-true
Following in her mom Pauline's footsteps, Alexis will be participating in the International Center for Traditional Childbirth's Full Circle Doula training Nov 1-4th in Dallas, TX.  Yay!!!!

From Lex:
When I was born my mother, like many young mothers of color, was forced to have an unnecessary c-section.  This was an act of disrespect by doctors who put their convenience over my family's wishes and it did not honor the way my mother and I wanted to come into each others lives.  What would have been different if there had been a black feminist doula (or two) at the scene of my birth affirming my mother's power?   My journey to become a doula and especially to do doula work together with my mother is a major act of healing.  It is my intention that every child will one day be born into a world where the magic and power of black women is revered and respected at every moment!  It is also a necessary act of revisiting my own birth that I see as a crucial part of my journey to become a mother someday soon! :)

Becoming a community supported doula is a dream coming true and a wish about to be fulfilled.  DO you believe that the world will be better with our mother/daughter doula project?  Do you believe in the power of a black feminist love evangelist poet facilitator in the birthing room?  Then YOU are part of the community that I am accountable to!
I am looking for 57 people to donate any amount that feels right to them as an affirmation of the necessity and power of this work we are doing together to rebirth the world!  Each donor will receive an original collage based around the 57 wish poem  Wishful Thinking.   I appreciate your support and your love!  Spread the word!  And donate here:

http://alexispauline.chipin.com/rebirth-doula-dreams-coming-true
Love,
Lex

Daily Bread: Nourishing Sustainable Practices for Community Accountable Scholars

(images by Mekhi Baldwin)

Audre Lorde’s contemporary and interlocuter James Baldwin talked about the passion of making love and breaking bread as equal versions of presence and purpose.  Last night during the LAST (sniffle) session of the first every Brilliance Remastered Webinar on a Sustainable Erotics of Community Accountable Scholarship we talked about how to make passionate and connected work our everyday practice and how to put spaces, places, times and reminders in our lives to bring us back to passionate purpose whenever we feel disconnected from the source of our transformative brilliance.
This may look like a group poem, but it is really a spell, blessing everyday forward and binding our love-filled Brilliance Remastered crew together forever!!!!!!!

Daily Bread
By the Sustainable Erotics Crew


connected to purpose like daily bread
giving thanks like daily bread
poetry like daily bread.
forgiveness like daily bread.
laughter like daily bread.
creating is my daily bread

loving like daily bread
making love like daily bread
loving my muscles like daily bread
(especially especially my heart)
smiling from the inside out like dailybread
celebrating me like daily bread
celebrating us like daily bread

embracing the now like daily bread
moving the body like daily bread, making new shapes
living in my body like daily bread

claiming my breathing like daily bread
shining my light like daily bread
affirming my being like daily bread

dancing like daily bread
sitting in silence like daily bread
listening like daily bread
listening to hear like daily bread
profound connection like daily bread.
sharing truth like daily bread


drinking water like daily bread
eating fruit like daily bread
good food like daily bread
deep breaths like daily bread
bubble baths and candles like daily bread

books on the bedside like daily bread.
feet on the ground like daily bread
walking with loved ones like bread (daily)
thanking my ancestors like daily bread

reaching out with love like daily bread.
showing affection like daily bread
touching things lightly like daily bread
being accountable like daily bread
being aware of surroundings like daily bread
immersing in the process like daily bread

questions rising like the bubbles of yeast in daily bread
speaking my mind even when my voice shakes like daily bread

thankful for another day’s daily bread

This is What it Feels Like: Cultivating Our Measure of Passionate Purpose

Last night was the third session of Beyond the Feel-Good, our Brilliance Remastered webinar on cultivating a sustainable erotics of community accountable scholarship.  We are right in the midst of it, using Lorde's definition of the erotic to create new standards of brilliance for our work as love-fueled intellectuals.   Helped along by Lorde and also by Aretha Franklin's Dr. Feelgood we created this group poem to affirm that we KNOW what it feels like when it is right and we do not need to "sit and chit chat and smile" i.e. waste our time with anything less than profound, passionate, purposeful, presence in our work!  Feel free to feel it!!!!
This is What it Feels Like

“It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.  For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves. “
-Audre Lorde  Uses of the Erotic

When it’s right it feels like a note Aretha just sang.
When it’s right it feels like dancing in warm rain.
When it’s right it feels like the ocean, ever deep, ever lifting me up.
When it’s right it feels like still waters rushing nowhere, knowing its source is the same place it must return.
When it’s right it feels like a “first” experience.
When it’s right it feels like a longing for something true, true feeling.
When it’s right it feels like a yearning, like intimacy without physical contact, a yearning of the spirit.
When it’s right it feels soft.
When it’s right it feels like fresh air.
When it’s right it feels like air gently bristling in the hairs on the back of my neck.
When it’s right it feels complicated sweet, freshing sweet, like lemonade.
When it’s right it feels abundant and free.
When it’s right it feels limitless.
When it’s right it feels timeless.
When it’s right it feels deep and endless.
When it’s right it feels like a way out of no way.
When it’s right it feels like something out of anything.
When it’s right it feels like gospel choirs singing!
When it’s right it feels like Nina and Jill and E. Badu and Ella getting together for a jam session.
When it’s right it feels like the music of the heart.
When  it’s right it feels like lovers.
When it’s right it feels like a mother’s hug.
When it’s right it feels like everyone is there, ancestors, future beings, everyone I love.
When it’s right it feels like a prepared-perfected-my-craft-ready-to-serve orgasm!
When it’s right it feels like the word “YES!” bursting in my chest.
When it’s right it feels unstoppable.
When it’s right it feels like I was meant to be no other place in the universe.
When it’s right it feels like Audre whispered this to June once, full of hope.
When it’s right it feels like a dream I had that must have never ended.
When it’s right it feels.
This is what it feels like!

Here: Beyond Sensation Thru Inspiration-Webinar Participants Remaster Presence!

Audre Lorde and students at Hunter College

Last night was the second session of our Brilliance Remastered Webinar Beyond the Feel-Good: A Sustainable Erotics of Community Accountable Scholarship.   Amazingness.  Last night we worked with Audre Lorde's clarity that "the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the [person] who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough."  And for those of us remastering our presence in academic spaces it is important for us to clarify that within an economy that wants to tokenize our brilliance, BEING a sensation, a shining exception, a validated symbol is not enough.  We are doing the intellectual work we are doing for much bigger reasons.  Betta recognize!   


Here

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to ignite a flame
I am here to change the world

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to sow seeds of magic
I am here to love
I am not here to settle
I am here to set the tone

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am knowing as an act
I am here to expand the limits
of what counts
as knowledge

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to unshackle brilliance
wherever it grows
I am here to make manifest
the dreams of my ancestors

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to imagine
I am here to create
I am here to dance
I am here to laugh to sing to share

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to be myself
I am here to be connected
I am here to engender vulnerability
and to make it possible
for those in the room to do the same

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to find a path to reconciliation

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to be accountable
I am here to hold others accountable

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to humanize
I am here to become more human
I am here to make meaning
I am here to be love

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to glow
I am here to know and to share
that to be young gifted and black AND queer
is a MARVELOUS thing to be

I am here to steal back the goodies

I am not just a sensation
I am inspiration
I am here to interrupt injustice
Yes I’m here to demand answers
and to ask more questions
and to ask and ask and ask and ask

I am inspiration
I am here to be like water
nourishing, remembering what you chose to forget
reflecting back to you your own image

I am inspiration
I am here to be a question mark
I am here to be an x that marks a spot
where love will outlive everything
I am here to make fertile the soil of our dreams
planting for a harvest I won’t ever reap in my lifetime

I am inspiration
I am not just a sensation, a temptation a distraction
I am unstoppable love in action.

Reclaiming YES!!! Opening Affirmations from Brilliance Remastered

Last night was the first session of the Beyond the Feel-Good Webinar on Sustainable Erotics of Community Accountable Scholarship.  And oh my goodness did we go beyond!  The Brilliance Remastered process never ceases to amaze and reawaken me!
As Audre Lorde says in her essay Uses of the Erotic: Power of the Erotic, "We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves..."  Not at all coincidentally when we are out of touch with that YES within ourselves we are also more easily manipulated, bamboozled and led astray by the external maybes of capitalism, especially within the academic marketplace.   Our first step as a community in touch with our collective erotic power, our passionate purposefulness and our deep love for our communities is to reclaim YES and affirm YES in each other.  Here is our group poem. Feel free to read along (best articulated through grunts and screams).

Reclaiming Yes

YES!!! to acting on the impulse inside
YES!!! to defining the erotic as strength
YES!!! to claiming what we know deepest inside us as KNOWLEDGE
YES!!! brilliance remastered means brilliance unchained visible everywhere NOW!

YES!!! to our deepest desires
YES!!! to our power
YES!!! to being love
YES!!! to being me and not caring
YES!!! to being embodied in our classrooms and not being ashamed of that eros
YES!!! i tell my story. a black girl story without apology
YES!!! YESSSS to not apologizing!
YES!!! to facing fears
YES!!! to living in the moment and embracing all it brings
YES!!! to feeling even if it hurts
YESSS!!! to feeling
YES!!! i will create
YES!!! i will write. i am an author.
YES!!! my body knows and share its magic in my dance
YES!!! music and poetry, I will write and sing, play and work and dream a new world with you
YES!!! i will find the language to write within my community and not simply at my community
YES!!! to flying free and teaching others to soar
YES!!! to knowing that i don't know if ya'll don't know
YES!!! to creating together!
YES!!! to blurring and even better erasing boundaries
YES!!! to you in me and me in you and US!
YES!!! to learning and teaching!
YES!!!! i don't know if y’all dont know!!!
YES!!! to the communities to which we are called!
YES!!! to creating community wherever we are
YES!!! to love that circulates!

YES!!! to risking to love without guarantee or compromise
YES!!! i will love me even when I am pushed not to
YES!!! i love her even when its dangerous
YES!!! i will love the work even when it is difficult!
YES!!! i will embody my faith, even in the face of institutional judgment
YES!!! to knowing we were never meant to survive BUT thrive we must!
YES!!! love is lifeforce and I am meant to LIVE!
YES!!! to growing
YES!!! to conflict
and YES!!! to being angry
YES!!! to kicking ass :)
YES!!! to entering the room as a full being and when the door is too small for that, to break it down

YES!!! to bleeding....a cleanse
and bless the blood that has already been shed! YES!!!
YES!!! to new soil not stained in blood

YES!!! to imagining
YES!!! to exploding the closed circulation of capitalism with love that circulates
YES!!! to open not closed economies, yes to there being ENOUGH for everyone
YES!!! To knowing that there is NO ZERO SUM GAME, you are not required to die so I might live
YES!!! to loving and being loved :)

YES!!!! to  LIFE!!! YOUR LIFE, MY LIFE, OUR LIVES!!!
YES!! to FAITH in YES!
YES!!!

3 Big Decades: 3 Tiny Books of Poetry by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I've decided to celebrate 30 years of being a teeny tiny poet by amplifying my poetic work in a big grown up way.  

You now (only until the end of June) have the opportunity to buy one, or two or three or several tiny origami folded poetry books by yours truly as part of my fundraiser to publish my chapbook Such Rainbows a series of love poems to my inspired community edited by Mai'a Williams!  Poetry for poetry's sake indeed!
These teeny tiny books of poetry that has never been published anywhere before are perfect for your pocket, for a gift or for a fabulous fan during this hot hot summer!

Donate $5 for one little book, $10 for 2 little books and $14 to take three little books all the way home.  Be sure to specify which books you want and your current address!!!
Black Poetry
A big claim for a tiny book right?

Enjoy some strong impact small poems inspired by Phillis Wheatley, Kanye West, Saidiya Hartman, Countee Cullen, Margaret Danner and the blackest things you know, like the ocean at night and wrought iron.


 




After Dark: Remix Haikus for June
This series of remix haikus based on June Jordan's Things That I Do in the Dark is a deep breath.  A to do list. A prayer in a darkroom, a black feminist afterglow.   The perfect thing to read this June.




 




 Harlem Sidewalk Monument
to Straight Hair Gone Forever
This experiment is a memorial to the over-rated straightness of a girl born crooked.   A series of intentional square poems engage the anthropology of Zora Neale Hurston, steam of a Dominican hair salon, breakdancing, cardboard and the undead Aaliyah.  Yes.

Eternal Summer Potluck Series Continues with Samiya Bashir's GOSPEL

By popular demand we bring you back the series that started it all…the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Potluck series!

Sunday June 17th
5pm
at Inspiration Station 2 (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for directions)


Continuing our 2012 focus on contemporary poetry we will be focusing on Samiya Bashir's GOSPEL:


Brilliant poet, educator and smiling visitation of sunshine Samiya Bashir's poetry rocks in your heart whether you read it with your eyes or your mouth.  There is something so Sunday-perfect and sanctuary ironic about these poems that you will not want to miss this session!  Read Lex's overjoyed review of Bashir's Gospel here: http://blackademics.org/2009/05/18/independent-black-gay-and-lesbian-publisher-redbone-press-presents-gospel-by-samiya-bashir/

The Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Potluck Series is a never-ending series of delicious gatherings celebrating, lifting up, studying and utilizing the legacy of Black feminist thought to save our lives and transform our communities in Durham, NC (and in your community if you choose to read along!)   All people who are excited to be transformed by the brilliance of Black feminists are welcome to this child-inclusive space!

#pridepassionjune Mobile Homecoming Celebrates June Jordan this Pride Month!

It is June!!! My (Lex's) birthday month and pride month and the official launch of the Mobile Homecoming social media presence so how do we want to celebrate?  With the words of our beloved chosen ancestor June Jordan of course!   This month as we remind you to help us get 30 new Monthly Sustainers, we will be signal boosting the brilliance of June Jordan, especially her passionate words about what it means to love ourselves with full PRIDE!    We invite you to check it out by:
following us on Twitter  @mobilehomecomin or tumblr (mobilehomecoming.tumblr.com)
or
liking us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mobile-Homecoming/169518796401406
AND feel free to submit your own favorite June Jordan quotes to be included here: http://mobilehomecoming.tumblr.com/submit
Best. June. Ever.  Happy Pride y'all!
Love,
Lex

Making Something Out of Anything: Insights from the Eye to Eye Collaborators

Last night was the last session of  the Brilliance Remastered Webinar Eye to Eye: Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars!    I know that I'll be missing the weekly webinar wavelength sharing love exchange until the next unit of the webinar (Beyond the Feel Good based on Lorde's Uses of the Erotic) starts in July.   But I also know that we created something powerful and I have a whole new clarity about the collaborations in my life and some exciting new collaborations that pranced right into my life from my dreams this month!

Using the Mothering Ourselves Manifesta we acknowledged the fact that collaborating allows us to evolve out of the language of struggle into the language of creativity we are not making "something out of nothing" we are honoring what is present in our lives and our communities and mobilizing our creativity to make something out of ANYTHING!  This week's group poem celebrates that clarity. Enjoy!

Something
by the participants in the Eye to Eye Webinar on Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars

“We can make something out of anything.”  From the Mothering Ourselves Manifesta distilled from Audre Lorde’s Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger

We can make something out of anything.
We can make home out of movement
We can make a movement out of feet stuck in the same mud.

We can make reality out of dreams
We can make family out of distances
We can make eternity out of the shortest stolen moments

We can make mothers out of brothers
We can make mothered mothers mothering abundant out of would-be martyrs suffering  in silence (ourselves)
We can make love out of heartbreaking laws.
We can make delicious banana fritters out of overipe fruit we forgot.
We can make ourselves anew in order to recognize & show up for our brillance...
We can make  difference be the springboard for greatness...
We can make our own cool, cultured collabos!
We can make it ALLL. Right!

Just Saying/See You There: Love Languages for Collaboration

Yesterday was our third Eye to Eye Webinar session on love, faith, difference and communication entitled "The Only Language I Know."  We shared our poetic clarity about how we communicate differently based on our experiences, our approaches, our fears and our longings and how sometimes words seem to fail us all together.  Our group poem represents our visioning process of creating a space where there is room for everyone we are, and who we are not, and who we might become together.

Just Saying/See You There

By the Brilliance Remastered Eye to Eye Participants
After Audre Lorde’s “At First I Thought You Were Talking About…”

I speak the language of roots up, all the way everything must be changed.
She speaks the language of measurable deliverables.
I speak the language of rainwater-clarification-process-matters.
They speak jampack big words together like a train

I speak the language of here right here at home.
He speaks the language of inevitable uprise class struggle like science.

I speak in things felt a knowing of my bones
He through well thought out equations elaborate logic models
I speak in hope
Him pragmatism

I speak "like me"
She speaks I like you, but not always
She speaks me first. She speaks my kids first. She speaks secrets

I speak 69 years. He speaks FaceBook

I speak plan with flexibility.
They speak plan and stick to it.
I speak student wants and needs
They speak stick to what we need to see only

I speak possible risky let's do it
they speak practical hedged bet sacrifice
I speak concepts & ideas are real, they are tangible, touchable.
They speak “huh, what you what you talking bout sistah?”

I speak seek the relationship
They speak: seek the product(s)

I speak the language of the academy sometimes
he speaks shyness, grammar of booze and sex
sometimes I speak no grammar language

But I know that:
“Black girls are from the future”[1]  and that
“Everything we do is insignificant. Yet it is incredibly
important that we do it.” [2] And that
Children are full people who have something to say
And that trusting is like tree roots and we reach down, tangled up
And that everything we need is already within us
And that I am who I am doing what I came to do
And that our silence will NOT save us.

SO I am seeking the place where the language of risky radicalism
meets the pragmatism of those who have seen the consequences
the place where afrofuturefearlessness meets blackbloodsoilhistory
the place where we feel whole meets
the place where we are allowed to be prisms of light

the place where faith meets shaking legs

the place where level headed realists can meet starry eyed dreamers
the place where good intentions meet critical implementation
the place where longing meets listening
the place where yes meets i know
the place where why meets when

the place where--as white people--we remember without expectation of forgiveness
we account for what has been lost and stolen
the place where but i have _______ friends, so I couldn't be __________
meets self introspection

the place where bourgie balancing meets grace
where press and curl meets this is my natural curl

the place where longing children meet absent parents
the place where wholeness meets brokenness
where miracles equal a mere embrace

the place where courage (like jumping into a cold river)
meets self-determination (where are the rocks at the bottom)
the place where the long night meets the pale kiss of morning
the place where water and sky are indistinguishable

the place how i was raised meets raise UP!
the place where can't get right GETS RIGHT

the place where hope meets salvation
where the souls of the living dance hot and fast in love, light
and treating each other right

the place where the love you always wanted meets the love you always had

See you there.

---

[1] Renina Weems

[2] Ghandi

Starting THIS SUNDAY the Eternal Summer Potluck Series is Back!!!!

 

By popular demand we bring you back the series that started it all...the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Potluck series!

The Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Potluck Series is a never-ending series of delicious gatherings celebrating, lifting up, studying and utilizing the legacy of Black feminist thought to save our lives and transform our communities in Durham, NC (and in your community if you choose to read along!)   All people who are excited to be transformed by the brilliance of Black feminists are welcome to this child-inclusive space!
This summer we will be gathering on 3 Sunday
This summer we will be gathering on 3 Sunday evenings at the new Inspiration Station to eat together and nourish our community and our movement with the brilliance of 3 of Lex's favorite contemporary poets, Mendi Obadike, Samiya Bashir and Evie Schockley.   Bring food, receive photocopies of a selection of the featured poets poems and we'll have a conversation that will change our lives!

2012: Focus on Contemporary Black Feminist Poets
This Sunday May 27th 5pm

Mendi Lewis Obadike

Former Durham resident, friend and inspiration to Lex and many others,  Mendi Obadike is a deep experimental tribute to reflection, manifestation and love.  A student of Lucille Clifton and a everyday example of how to bring poetry to life, her work makes space for conversations we need to have!   Join us for a discussion of a sampling of Mendi's poems from Armor and Flesh and get ready to experience an open heart and a tingling of skin!  Check out Lex's review of Mendi's recent opera masquerade collaboration with her partner Keith Obadike in  4 Electric Ghosts  here to get a sense: http://thefeministwire.com/2012/02/get-there-four-electric-ghosts/
Save the dates for the other two sessions!

Sunday June 17th 5pm
Samiya Bashir

Brilliant poet, educator and smiling visitation of sunshine Samiya Bashir's poetry rocks in your heart whether you read it with your eyes or your mouth.  There is something so Sunday-perfect and sanctuary ironic about these poems that you will not want to miss this session!  Read Lex's overjoyed review of Bashir's Gospel here: http://blackademics.org/2009/05/18/independent-black-gay-and-lesbian-publisher-redbone-press-presents-gospel-by-samiya-bashir/

Sunday July 22nd
Evie Shockley

Evie Shockley, also a former Durham resident and student of Lucille Clifton offers urgent experimental resources for Black feminist time travelers and our cluttered pockets.   As a scholar and artist her work allows us to speak with historical figures, re-meet ancestors we thought we knew and challenge the ways we internalize space.  Half-Red Sea is featured in the Mobile Homecoming web series The Real Reading Rainbow's Kwanzaa poetry recommendations video (actually along with the books by the other poets featured in this series!   Check it out here:  https://vimeo.com/34218165

Be Like: A Poetic Vision of Collaboration

like water, like sunlight, like stone

Yesterday was the second session of the Brilliance Remastered Eye to Eye Webinar on Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars.
We talked about what is at stake our collaborations, nothing less than the world we want to live in and create together.   We supported each other in holding ourselves to a standard where our collaborations themselves embody the values we have for our future, and where the impact of that collaborative work on US is not sacrificial, but also consistent with the nourishing vision we have for our species on the planet.
We made ourselves poets with this similie standard for what our collaborations can feel like, what our futures can feel like, what our days right now can feel like.

Be Like: A Poetic Vision for Collaboration 

by the participants of the Eye to Eye Webinar on Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars

like breathing, like recognition, like gratitude
like manna from heaven, free and plentiful for all
like eye contact, like risky breath, like skin
like ease, like willingness, like welcoming
like food on the table, like real justice for all, like freedom
like deep earthy soul bearing funky togetherness
like sisters I never had, like a family we are making everyday
like the joy of decoding a secret language
like celebration, like faces touching, like cherished communion and congratulation
like everyday cheer for your graduation from another insight-filled day of being you
like a shower, refreshed remembrance that I don’t have to be everyone
like a rub on the back looking at me eye to eye
like face to face, foreheads pressed in affirmation
like life sustained, like clean water, like no more premature deaths
like being excited and grateful you exist
like love, like love, like loving
like coming home at last

Black Feminist Film School (The Website) is Born!

Spring is thoroughly SPRUNG and collaborators Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ph.D. and Julia Roxanne Wallace, M.Div. are proud to present their newest dream come true: Black Feminist Film School!!!
.
Read our founding document Create Anew: Black Feminist Filmmaking as Spiritual Leadership by Julia Roxanne Wallace!
.
Read about our first superstar public event on Black Feminist Filmmaking featuring the early works of Cheryl Dunye and the brilliance of Yvonne Welbon, Katina Parker and Julia Roxanne Wallace here: http://blackfeministfilmschool.wordpress.com/events/
.
Check out our first Black Feminist Film forum on Camille Billops and Suzanne Suzanne with reflections by Kai Green, Julia Wallace and Alexis Pauline Gumbs here: http://blackfeministfilmschool.wordpress.com/films-filmmakers/#reflectionssuzanne

.

How can you get involved?

1. Email mobilehomecoming@gmail.com to get on our Black Feminist Film School update list so you can get notices about our screenings and workshops!
2. Save the date August 15-22 to come to Durham, North Carolina for our first experimental, healing, ancestor accountable exercise in performance and documentation as part of Queer Black August in Durham! (email mobilehomecoming@gmail.com to get updates about Queer Black August specifically)
3. Contribute!  Do you have a rare Black feminist film to send to our library? Are you a Black feminist filmmaker that wants to donate a film or speak at a screening?  Do you just love the project and want to donate money towards this crucial and long overdue manifestation of brilliance?  Email us at mobilehomecoming@gmail.com or donate here:

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About Black Feminist Film School

Born out of our frustration with the glaring exclusion of films and discourse by, about or for Black women in Julia's film school experience and our deep love for the possibility of Black feminism in all forms,  Black Feminist Film School is a collaboration between Black feminist scholar/filmmaker Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ph.D and Black feminist filmmaker/scholar Julia Roxanne Wallace, M.Div.

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Our project has 2 key components:

1. Is there Black feminist tradition in film? Make space for a discourse about Black feminism in film and a conceptual framework in which contemporary filmmakers and theorists of film can participate in, measure, look out for and/or critique the presence or possibility of Black feminism specifically in the medium of film/video by

• screenings and discussions of rare/underdistributed films by Black women directors/writer/producers in our hometown of Durham, North Carolina and around the country.
• online forums on this site by Black feminist scholars about the possibility of Black feminism in important films by Black women
• sharing information about the locations of rare/hard to see films by Black feminist filmmakers
• developing a curriculum on Black feminist film, piloted in a community setting

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2. Where my Black feminist filmmakers at?  Infuse Black feminist community, and in particular under-represent Black women and genderqueer filmmakers and future filmmakers with the skills to use film to express their visions and transform our society by:
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• hosting a series of accessible community workshops that share the skills of script-writing, producing, shooting, lighting, editing, sound and all the other skills crucial to making high quality films
• creating partnerships between existing institutions/equipment sources and potential Black feminist filmmakers
• building community between existing Black feminist filmmakers, with an emphasis on queer and genderqueer Black filmmakers
• creating an all queer of color and allied cast and crew for Julia's upcoming film!

Not Meant to Be Alone: Towards Collaboration

from Brilliance Remastered
Yesterday was the first session of the webinar Eye to Eye: Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars!  We gathered to talk about my VERY favorite essay by Audre Lorde and how we can create the collaborations we dream of beyond the individualism, tokenization and internalized oppression that often gets in the way of the collaborations we most urgently need and deeply want!  Our first group poem comes from a line from Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter  appropriated by Barbara and Beverly Smith as the title of their collection of letters between Black Feminists in Conditions 4 and then again by Audre Lorde in Eye to Eye:  "I am not meant to be alone and without you who understand."   This longing to end isolation, to build community and to be seen and understood in the context of our vision is the grounding desire (aka LOVE) that inspires our collaborations.  Name your longing!  Who and what are you meant to be with in this life?

Not Meant to Be Alone (A Poem for you Who May Understand)

created by the participants in the Eye to Eye Webinar on Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars 

I am not meant to be alone and without the love of black women bourgie, broke, booklearned, backbreaking or otherwise.
I am not meant to be alone and without black men at the age the prison eats up in my life, at my table and on my team
I am not meant to be alone without those who try to answer my intellectual and spiritual questions
I am not meant to be alone and without someone to call to say silly black feminist nonsense to
I am not meant to be alone and without my reflection: black women educators...
I am not meant to be alone and without my family created & given
I am not meant to be alone and without the listening of my family even when my ideas are radical and dangerous
I am not meant to be alone and without my mama
*
I am not meant to be alone and without inspiration
I am not meant to be alone and without warmth, roots, the world
I am not meant to be alone and without purpose
I am not meant to be alone and without books
I am not meant to be alone and without good poetry
I am not meant to be alone and without a good party
*
I am meant to be here
I am meant to be with of each of you
I am meant to be with more rad women of color
I am meant to be with my ancestors and yours!
I am meant to be with the love, support & freedom of my beloved communities despite our differences
I am meant to be at home, but able to have conversations with the rest of the world too
I am meant to be in different forms of schooling/learning spaces other than the academy
I am meant to be a supporter of friends and family
I meant to do work that is community accountable
*
I am meant to be with my closeted cousins in the Caribbean who are scared because I am loud
I am meant to be with those hurt by organized religion learning again their undeniable worth
I am meant to be with those who choose stability, without judgment but with open quit-your-job-invitation arms
I am meant to be with people of color who have been battered by the academy but who can learn to love themselves and each other again
*
I am meant to be with those seeking to practice freedom
I am meant to be with clean water and good food
I am meant to be with peace of mind
I am meant to be with deep loving conversations with strangers
I am meant to nurture and be nurtured by people who carry similar visions
I am meant to be with my own superpowers, awake and necessary
I am meant to be with you.

I Would Transform: Anger, Hatred and Magic

This Sunday in the Angry Intellectuals: Channeling Rage for Transformation Webinar we honored the fact that our anger is sparked by deep love and a profound desire for transformation.  We realize that our anger requires transformation from each of us and from the world around us.   At the end of our session, as we practiced recognizing the distinction between hate (the impulse to destroy...an impulse we reserve for the interlocking forms of oppression we indeed wish to destroy) and anger (the creative energetic impulse for transformation that we are bringing into our communities with intention), we created this group poem about what we would transform.  And how!

I Would Transform
A group poem by the Angry Intellectuals

i would transform the need to be right into a desire to be in community
i would transform fear of honesty into courage to be held accountable.
i would transform punishment into healing.
i would transform color-blindness into full color.
i would transform ownership into profound communalism
i would transform whiteness into the presence of unconditional love and accountability.
i would transform supremacy into relationship/community.
i would transform self-righteous white women into anti-racist warriors
i would transform individual solutions into collective power, into unstoppable contagious collective power

i would transform SCAF (Egyptian Military Leadership) into sons and fathers in their homes, taking care of their own families and communities

i would transform those who are now police into profound listeners in the face of violence

i would transform schools into places of critical consciousness and liberation

i would transform the academies tendency to overwork, underpay, and devalue revolutionary scholarship into valuing these ways of knowing and these people.
And that doesn't seem like a radical enough transformation!

i would transform hierarchical organization structures to co-created spaces of accountability.
i would transform exclusion to equity
i would transform isolation and borders into abundance of love

i would transform ICE and immigration policies into organizers rooted in care- using all their radical energies to reunite families.

i would transform racist teachers who seem to hate kids into hologram designers for spaceship child safety seats

i would transform bullies into bootdancers

i would transform the public school system to satellites of black feminist schools across the country.

i would transform homophobic church leaders into humble hip hop hooray cheerleaders for love in all forms

i would transform rent into the most alive soil ever

i would transform my landlord into a rose garden curator

i would transform the property manager into  a beloved son embraced in the middle of the dig deep get it done committee

i would transform legal recourse into delving deep for life-giving resources

i would transform street harassers into corner poets singing love to mother earth


i would transform scarcity into abundance and communities to hold us.

i would transform fast breathe speech and thinking into patient grounded inclusivewisdom.

i would transform the instinct to devalue in the face of anxiety to the impulse courageously honor

i would transform the feelings of betrayal into the gratitude for new knowledge

i would transform defensiveness into deep breaths of listening

I would transform self pity into confidence

i would transform doubt to determination

i would transform fear into freedom

i would transform guilt into action and growth

i would transform forced silence into song.


i would transform myself

Sign up by April 30th! Eye to Eye: Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars

Greetings Bright Thunder!
Applications are now open for May's Webinar Eye to Eye: Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars!  Sign up by April 30th!
Eye to Eye will meet on four Tuesdays in May (8, 15, 22, 29)
Eye to Eye is an opportunity to get real about how individualism, internalized oppression and a capitalism-produced need to seem smart can get in the way of creating meaningful collaborations and useful intellectual partnerships with the communities that we love the most.  It is also an opportunity to find partners to collaborate with and to create plans for becoming the unstoppable, interconnected, community accountable scholars we want to be!
Required reading: Audre Lorde's Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger
The Eye to Eye Webinar Includes:

• a workbook based on Audre Lorde's Eye to Eye
  
• 4 live webinar discussion sessions facilitated by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and attended by aligned visionary underrepresented scholars
• inclusion in an ongoing networking google-group for webinar graduates
• theme songs to release internalized oppression as we reach out into collaboration!

Rate:  $25-50 per participant per session ($100-200 for the whole course) or FREE for one-on-one coaching clients.
To apply for the Eye to Eye Webinar email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your responses to the following questions:
Contact information: (phone, email)
Who are you and what are you up to?
Why do you want to take this webinar?
What times are you available on Tuesdays in May? (Include your time zone!)


Love,
 Alexis Pauline Gumbs, PhD

journeystones: angry intellectuals release!

This Sunday was the second session of The Angry Intellectual: Channeling Rage for Transformation! We are training ourselves to use the energy and insight of our anger to create transformative relationships, not to reproduce domination. Here are some stones on our path.

Journeystones:

After Audre Lorde’s “Journeystones I-X”

a quarry of clarity from the Angry Intellectuals

(or a can of stones to kick)

i can drop my need to be right all the time

i can drop my fear of seeming like a failure

drop my need to be liked

drop my need to fix things for other people

i can drop my tendency to bear it alone....

i can drop the need to always do more...sometimes i have already done (MORE THAN) enough. capitalism kills.

i can drop my fear of being judged

i can stop faking the funk like any revolution has gone smoothly

i can drop the need to fit in completely. i'm different (in some ways) and it's good.

and my shoes are cute :)

i can drop my hard rock need to seem like i can never be hurt

i can drop the fear of never being hurt...and suspecting that the present is simply the past in a new body, time, and person

which also must mean i have to drop a refusal to deal with past hurts

i can drop my expectations of other black women to be the perfect me i wish i was

i can drop my fear of seeming needy

i can drop my fear of being my mother

and me of being my father...

and me of being reactionary

i can drop my need to be right/to focus on just my hurt so that i can see that other’s actions are really out of fear

i can allow compassion, instead of pushing it away.

i can drop my shoulders and release the pent up tension. that's not even a good warrior pose!

i can drop the teacher/academic/professional pose which hinders the possibilities of radical education

i can drop those standards of grace that were not mine/ours to begin with

i can drop those perfectionist tendencies....

i can drop the idea of speaking to anger or emotion as taking up too much space.

i can drop my fear that i'm taking up too much space.

i can drop my fear that my community won't hold me.

i can drop my fast conclusions which foreclose the possibilities of allies

i can drop my fear of my own healing and give others permission to heal

i can drop my need to hide love. I feel deeply and I need to say it often.

i can drop my need to seem rational when I KNOW my feelings hold truth

i can drop my distrust of my body. my body knows the truth!

I Know: Angry Intellectuals Testify

This past Sunday was the first session of the second webinar in the Brilliance Remastered series The Angry Intellectual: Channeling Rage for Transformation and it was a testimony service indeed! As part of our process of acting on Audre Lorde's wisdom that "anger is full of energy and insight."

This group poem highlights some of the wisdom that our anger reminds us to act on!!!

I Know

A Group Poem by the Participants in the Angry Intellectuals Webinar

Channeling Rage for Transformation

I know that there is magic in my rage, and power in its love

I know that every emotion I express is valid

I know transformation is possible possible possible

I know I have the power to create create create from something, from anything from nothing

I know that my work is valuable and matterfact PRICELESS!

I know that the lives of black girls are priceless and sacred everyday. Including Sunday!

I know I'm happy I got to go to black feminist "church" this afternoon :)

I know I am grateful for this space.

I know that we need more of these spaces, for the many more like us out there

I know that state sanctioned, vigilante style, wrongful death--genoicide--is wrong

I know that love is always the answer

I know the power of our knowledge and love is stronger than capitalist ignorance that has those i love captivated.

I know that the revolution begins with the self

I know I have more to learn. I know I must be held accountable.

I know that being present is an uncomfortable lifestyle I must embrace

I know Superiority, Supremacy is not used to having to listen to the invisible.

And, I will not remain invisible.

I know that I am beautiful.

I know that I am more than enough

I know that I am bigger than any institution

I know that we can do this work....

and I know that I am not yet who I desire to be but all things in due time...

I know I am not limited by my physical challenges

I know I have what I need to do the work I am here to do. Actualize!

I know, as a white woman, other white people often don't want me to respond to racism.

and yes I know that wrong is not my name

I know that my ancestors are right here right now.

I know I am not alone. I am surrounded in love.

I know that I am surrounded in and filled with transformative LOVE!

I know that letting go and not holding on is healing. Pack light

I know that we have strength in community. Not alone at all.

I know that my emotional clarity and expression will not only heal myself, but my community

I know when we come together to give others the space to express themselves

we give ourselves permission to be who we are

I know that my knowing is growing by the day.

I know that I know that I know that I know that I KNOW!

I know “they” betta act like they know

I know we betta act like we know!

(I know that I don't want this to end just yet :-)

Grooves to Get Thru Grad School!: The Remastered Tools 101 Podcast

This audio goodness comes from the newest educational program of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind which is Brilliance Remastered (alexispauline.com/brillianceremastered) especially for community accountable scholars and visionary under-represented graduate students based on the ever blooming brilliance of Audre Lorde!
This podcast is inspired by the brilliance of the participants in the first webinar Remastered Tools 101! It includes group poems and definitions that we came up with during the webinar sessions and some of my favorite music from NC and the rest of the world! (Nneena Freelon, Bradford Marsalis, Pierce Freelon, Apple Juice Kid, Fantasia, Frou Frou, Fela Kuti, Stevie Wonder, Suheir Hammad, Goapele, Phillis Hyman and Res!)

At first I had planned for this podcast to be only for the webinar participants and our pre-existing monthly sustainers, but it is just TOO good not to share more widely! So anyone who makes a donation to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind or becomes a monthly sustainer in APRIL will get a link to the podcast to groove to yourself or to share with a visonary under-represented graduate student/emerging community accountable scholar who you LOVE!

Daily Truth: Mantras for Remastering the Day

In the middle of the fourth and final session (it's so hard to say goodbye) of the Remastered Tools 101 Webinar, we affirmed the fact that daily truth is a crucial tool for empowered community accountable intellectual work. In order to stay in each other's lives every day beyond the webinar we shared the daily mantras that remind us WHAT IT REALLY IS! We will be putting these affirmations in our homes, pockets, bags, offices so that we can see them everyday and we invite you to do the same!

Remastered Tools 101: Daily Mantras:

"you here to remind people of free" -marvin k white

“I am who I am doing what I came to do.” –Audre Lorde

“Being open to receiving and giving blessings will keep you in touch with your passion, the passion you need to make it to the finish line. Get excited about your work and know that when you change the way you look at things, things you look at change. Go get em’ girl. I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your being.” –Melissa’s Auntie

“Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water, yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible nothing can surpass it.” –Tao Te Ching

“I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love.” Lorraine Hansberry

“Salt water can heal anything.” Lex’s Pop-pop

“Go on and be what we couldn’t.” Mississippi Damned

“We can learn to mother ourselves.” Audre Lorde

“How you treat yourself if how you treat God. You are the representation of God in your life.”

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” Lao Tzu

“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well.” Minnie Ransom from Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters

“Consistency is manifestation.“ Queen Hollins

“There is an invisible red threat that connects all human beings and though it may stretch or tangle it will never break.” Chinese Proverb

“Love is lifeforce.” June Jordan

“A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.” –Zora Neale Hurston

“There is a close connection between sexual repression and extreme aggression.”

“This is my granddaughter the poet.” Lex’s Grandma

“Caminante, no hay puentes, se hace puentes, se hace puentes al andar./ Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks.” –Gloria Anzaldua

“Listen to each person as if she is your great teacher uttering her last words.”-Hafiz

“Safety is always necessarily an illusion.” –James Baldwin

“The work is the diva.” Zakia

“The best way to do it is to do it!” Toni Cade Bambara

“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.” Rumi

“Movement is medicine.” Brown Femi Power

“Relationships not resumes.” –Thaura Distro

“Wrong is not my name. My name is my own my own my own my own.” –June Jordan

“We have the opportunity and the responsibility to become fifty times greater than we thought we could be.” Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs

“We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be?” Marianne Williams

“Warrior get up!” Climbing Poetree

“So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.” Audre Lorde

“Black girls are from the future.” Renina Jarmon

Active Being: Clarity from the Remastered Tools 101 Webinar Participants

Active Beings Speak the Truth!

Last night was our second session of the Remastered Tools 101 Webinar. The brilliance, clarity, faith and bravery of the participants continues to rev my heart!! By the way...if you want to sign up for the next Webinar series get details here. We talked about the difference between being used and being on purpose. Check out these insights about what we believe is required to embody what Lorde calls "active being":

“Interdependency…is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active being.”

Audre Lorde “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”

Actively being embodies a way of life and living, continuous conscious decision making. And that sometimes means you will fall short but recognize the "uh-oh" moments.

Active being is being okay with making mistakes, having compassion for yourself and others, not being perfectionist, sharing works-in-progress.

Active being means letting go.

Active being is hard when most of my days I’m on autopilot.

I cannot practice humility on auto pilot!

Active being is starting with creativity. Asking what should we do? instead of

looking around at traditional models and saying how do we most quickly reproduce that?

As a disabled person and a survivor, part of my active being is doing enough healing & rest & self care & self-awareness that when I step up into being and doing I can actually sustain it accountably.

Active being is growing roots such that your vision starts unfolding in all ten directions, but the road has become one.

Radical self care is the foundation of active being for me. When I take good care of me, I do good work. Such simple things like drinking enough water, cooking good meals, praying, putting on lotion.

Active being is listening to myself and listening to my community and physically putting my body where it needs to be

Active being is trusting my intuition.

Active being requires creating and seeking spaces which affirm us completely.

Survival is Not: A Group Poem by the Remastered Tools 101 Webinar Crew!

Last night was the first ever Remastered Tools 101 Webinar session for visionary under-represented graduate students and emerging community accountable scholars! It was an amazing cyber love-fest in the name of the Lorde across at least 6 time zones! How awesome to engage the context and challenge of Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" with such brilliant love filled computer screen beams! It was a faith-building and clarifying experience for me and I am filled with gratitude for the bravery and clarity of the participants!

Check out one version of the group poem that we made based on Audre Lorde's statement that "Survival is Not an Academic Skill."

Survival is Not

(when academics kill)

“Survival is not an academic skill.” -Audre Lorde “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”

“Capitalism of the mind makes us all stupid.” Anna Torres’s advisor

Based on a group poem activity by the 2012 Remastered Tools 101 crew!

Survival is not the death of me.

Survival is not the death of you.

And I wish people would stop making it so complicated.

Love is not an academic skill.

Listening is not an academic skill.

Liberation is not an academic skill.

Compassion is not an academic skill.

Care is not an academic skill.

Comradeship is not an academic skill.

Courage is not an academic skill.

Mindfulness is not an academic skill.

Humility is not an academic skill.

Self-correction is not an academic skill.

Feminism is not an academic skill.

Speaking truth to power is not an academic skill.

Visibility is not an academic skill.

Affirming the beauty of others is not an academic skill.

Honoring one another and our visions are not academic skills.

Ethics are not academic skills.

Trust is not an academic skill.

Trusting intuitive power and hope are not academic skills.

Nurturing spirit is not an academic skill.

Being human is not an academic skill.

Being yourself is not an academic skill.

Creating family is not an academic skill.

What our grandmothers taught us

and what we learn through the body are not academic skills.

Dancing is not an academic skill.

Making love is not an academic skill.

Snap.

Survival is not an optional skill.

Survival is not a game for pay.

Survival is not the illusion of safety.

Survival is not thinking we need to fit into boxes.

Survival is not becoming who you need me to be.

Survival is not holding our breath.

Survival is not made possible by overriding our bodies.

Survival is not possible without rest.

Survival is not scary when we know what we are living for.

Community is everything.

Indigo Night School Session #2: Healing Wounds That Can/Not Be Seen

Friday March 16, 2012

6pm-10pm

At the NEW Inspiration Station

Durham, NC

(email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for directions)

"Rock in the manner of a quiet sea. Hum softly from your heart. Repeat the victim's name with love." -from Indigo's "Emergency Care of Wounds that Cannot be Seen" in Ntozake Shange's Sassafrass Cypress and Indigo.

Inspired by Ntozake Shange's brilliant novel Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, I present to you INDIGO NIGHT SCHOOL (aka night-time is the right time). We will be convening on the Fridays closest to this season's new moons into Spring for evening long rituals based on the magical remedies, recipies and rituals of the healer-girl sister in the novel, our beloved Indigo. This is a special sacred space for grown black warrior healers who identify as black women and/or black two-spirit, twinspirit, gatekeeper or genderqueer folks.

Please join me in participating in three sessions of luxurious, fragrant, nourishing evening rituals where we can set our intentions, support each other and bask in the brilliance of a Black Feminist literary legacy!!!!

Save the Dates!
Healing (Wounds that can/not be seen) Friday, March 16th, 6pm-10pm

Dreams Coming True Friday, April 20th, 6pm-10pm

Call for Contributions for Every Heart Beat: a Podcast for Whitney Houston

this is how i know

that skin is thin and bright and precious

that song can be broke

love slice the veins

that beauty is a call

and we are all responsible

-excerpt from Almost Bop for Whitney Houston by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Falling in love is so bittersweet. The life and death of Whitney Houston offer an emotional, spiritual and political challenge to black feminism. How do we balance the brilliance of her voice and offer up optimism for her spirit transition while also taking seriously the issues of addiction, relationship violence and the exploitation of black women that continue to harm our communities? How do we feel about R. Kelly having space at the altar at her funeral? Is her long time aide and companion Robyn being written out of the story in a way that hides the complexity and depth of black women's love?

There are many conversations to have and a lot of healing still to do. The upcoming Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Podcast Every Heart Beat seeks to honor the complexity of a black feminist relationship to Whitney Houston's life, brilliance and struggles.

Please send your:

• written letters/poems and statements for Whitney
• recorded messages of healing for all of us who face addiction, interpersonal violence and exploitation (send recordings as mp3 files if possible)
  
• and song requeststo brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com by Feb. 27th at 5pm to be included in the podcast.

With love,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs