quick share

the beautiful cree summers.

my newest love: Nneka

Nneka - Heartbeat
Uploaded by FourMusic. - See the latest featured music videos.

j'adore. i want to buy all of her albums and make lots of babies with her. preferably at the same time.

briefly,

I believe in the separation of church and state, in the plurality of religious thought and beliefs, in the recognition of a difference between "spirituality" and "christianity," and in the right to reject any belief system that does not lie in accordance with what you believe to be true.

honesty and me cont'd (a reply)

the more figurative response is that you might have to think about the more esoeric purpose of why you right? Do you just need to let the written word flow and whoever recovers the text recovers the text?

It seems like you like honesty working as a two-way street. Rather than, as gil scott heron says, "turn your sick soul inside out so the world can watch you die", you want a space where you can mine the intra-personal and not interrupt your various communal connections.

I guess that leads into another question: why do you write? and, attached to that, who do you write for?

part of writing is realizing that you can't reach/write to everyone. It's gonna be process that will inevitably reach some and alienate others.

- free like driftwood

word.

i mean, isn't that what life is (among a few other things)? a process and a project that will reach some and alienate others?

(writing a life if you will)

lately i've been thinking about the role that writing plays in my life, and that i want it to play in my life. thinking about it so gently that i only noticed it fairly recently, now that the din of academia has quieted somewhat.

which is one reason why this blog came about. (that and a vain assumption that someone somewhere cares what i think cough cough)

yesterday i was talking to a friend about writing to recover ("from some bearable blow" as the poet says), and writing in the midst of recovering (and how the writing inevitably echoes the blow).

at this moment i am not interested in dying (although i have been in the past), and i am not interested in having folk watch me die.

i am interested in evolution and that over-used yet sincere word, growth. i am deeply interested in what comes next.

now, concerning the intra-personal and my communal connections, and the simultaneous preservation of both.

FLD, yes, you nailed it. that is exactly what i want. and i think my anxiety arrives because i know that may not always happen. in fact i know it wont.

and im talking about my writings period, not just as far as this blog is concerned.

thinking about family-gathering times
thanksgiving and such
and thinking about my status as the golden child of my immediately extended family
cousins and such
and my status as only child
and the only twenty-something, everyone else is either much older or much younger
and how all these things isolate me
how i allow them to isolate me

thinking about how my parents decided to come up today instead of tomorrow
and my panic over my cluttered house
and unwashed clothes and dishes

thinking about how someone who i love says something
like why would you
or does something
like take a phone call
that cuts to my core

thinking about James Wright writing
"Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom."

thinking about all of these things.

and my body being my tongue
my blood-filled mouth
my body being only the parts
skin tooth and smile
that i've allowed others to see

what i am interested in is breaking. (in fact it's been what i've been doing for some time now)

breaking from this skin
breaking into blossom.

i believe that my writing is integral to this process of breaking.
especially at this juncture.

when im beginning to
understand
heal
leave
reach
return

would it really be that bad if people saw who i really was? who i am?

(the middle-school angst of that last statement made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.)

i guess at this point, and in this space, i'm writing primarily for myself.

not that im not aware that there's an audience. in certain writings i will actively seek them (my fiction work for example).

but im opening the two-way up to the possibility of disruption.

of someone that i know and care about not liking something that i've written
being angry
being scared
being anything else but approving and supporting.

because this is about growth
this is about exploration
this is about what's necessary
this is about recovery

and in my recovery people may recover what they may.

sunday show and tell

my morning peace:



YES, first of all, to janet jackson. YES to q-tip. YES to dilla beats. YES to beautiful cinematography and direction by mark romanek. YES to showing lived black realities (albeit stylized) of aparthied south africa. YES south africa. YES sohpiatown. YES YES YES beautiful black people, always.

survival: what do it mean and for who

first this, written by brilliant black feminist Alexis, founder of brokenbeautifulpress and all around bad-ass: Forget Hallmark: Why Mother's Day is a Queer Black Left Feminist Thing.

this isn't going to be a commentary on her post. i loved it. def had me thinking about motherhood (which is something im deeply interested and as i get older i find im thinking about it in more nuanced ways, blog post for another day) and my own mother and her struggles (n the nature of shared struggle. sometimes me and her aren't always about our own struggles because we're so busy being strong for each other. what does that do to our relationship? blog post for another day.)

this is in response to a comment on the article made by brilliantmind/brilliantpoet/mydearfriend Rickey. long story short, a mutal friend posted Alexis's blog in a note, tagged us. at one point in his comment Rickey asked quote

"Although something else to think about it what "black mother" is this article referring to? I heard "lower-to-working class black mother." I'm not sure if I hear "middle-to-upper class black mother.""

mmmmm. which just got me going. i left a long ass comment is response then decided to turn it into a blog. (so alot of this is just copy and paste but hey, no need to make my fingers all tired lol)


mmkay.


so. at one point in her blog Alexis says "We are people of color. The whole system wake up every day trying to exterminate our bodies and our spirits. Our very survival is queer."

which is so powerful, right? esp if we use Michael Warner's idea of "queer" = not just opposing heteronormativity, but normativity itself.

the norm says we weren't meant to survive. and by we, i mean black/colored/queer folk. we weren't supposed to make it. we still aren't. we know this.

what i've been thinking about is just how class plays a role in the survival of black folks. esp in how black folks of a certain class talk about these issues of survival. esp how those of us in the academy or thereabouts talk about it.

(and hey. i come from a middle class background, born and raised in a predominately black southern city. i attended undergrad at a northern, private, "elite" liberal arts college, and im working on a masters degree at a public, southern university with it's own "elite" history. this is my context. this is one of the places that i write from, and this is the primary place i am writing from in this post. back to)

esp how those of us in the academy or thereabouts talk about it. how we may unconsciously appropriate the struggles of working class folks as we explore/talk about/define being black, and the struggles thereof.

to some degree this is understandable. we spend our time reading a loooooot of revisionary texts. and since the vision that these texts are re-ing is a white middle-to-upper class hetero one, we spend a lot of time reading about working class queer colored people, understanding and adopting their/our struggle. and sometimes in the name of solidarity, we dont reeaallly interrogate our own subjectivity in the midst of all this resistance and revolution.

(following examples not meant to call anyone on the carpet hence no names because while i dont agree i think i understand where they coming from)

for example, there's this one young black college educated woman i know. she posted a link to this on her FB: LA Rep. Considering Plan to Pay Poor Women $1000 to Have Tubes Tied, along with an all caps angry note about the government wants to sterilize her.

while yes this definitely warrants anger (like theFUCK????? on SO many levels), and yes an injury to one is an injury to all in that these ideas of black women are applied to our bodies across the board regardless of class or achievement (we can look at the media reaction to michelle obama to see that), at the same i thought she was kinda doin a little dance of misappropriation there because of the following: she didn't live in louisiana nor was she from louisiana, she didn't come from a working class background, she wasn't in any kinda situation that might make make her go, hmm that $1000 might be fuckin worth it, she wasn't in any kind of situation where she might have to make that choice. it was her, but it wasn't HER they want(ed) to sterilize.

and in a way she performed a kind of erasure. by saying HEY look at what they are trying to do to ME, ME ME, as opposed to saying HEY look at what they're trying to do to THEM, and finding another way to show the connections between THEM and US without making it all about ME.

(i feel like a race traitor even typing this. and what does that say? somehow i got it in my head that it's a betryal to point out that black folk aint monolithic. who told me that? where'd i pick up that idea?)

im not saying that those of a certain class shouldn't concern themselves with the issues of another class, esp cause in certain instances race can blur class lines. but as rickey pointed out, at certain points this article seemed to be speaking more to the lived realities of working class black mothers. which is fine. there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

what we're talking about is survival. and how folks of color survive.

i guess what i'm wondering is if we took into account the lived realities of middle and upper class black women? how would the notion of "survival" change? how would the notion of struggle change?

cause the struggle isn't always about having to hustle to put food on the table. or about some white govmnt man trying to keep you from making babies. sometimes struggle looks like the only black face in the classroom tensing up when someone mentions hip hop and everyone either looks at her or tries not to look at her. and feeling silly/ashamed about feeling stressed because she's got food to eat and a place to stay and things could be much worse. and she feels silly because she's been told by her mom by her girlfriend who's pregnant and working two jobs lil wayne and by that book on black feminist politics that TEH STRUGGLE(tm) looks like THIS: _______ and since ______ dont look nothing like what she's going through then she's not actually struggling, so there's nothing to survive, only to enjoy.

obviously this is personal. but isn't it always, especially the political?

i guess what i am asking for is an interrogation into the notion of "survival," and by extension, "teh struggle" as it applies to colored folks, taking into account issues of class, gender, sexuality, place, etc. multiple subjectivities. what does survival look like for Whitley (yes, THAT whitley. i went there. dont you love it.)? or for, hell, michelle obama? or for a black middle class family in Salt Lake City?

multiplicity of subjectivities. multiplicity of struggle. multiple ways to surivive. i want to know what they look like.

oh and i can't

stop listening to this song.