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FIVE POEMS | by Billie Tadros
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Latest issue of BLACKBERRY: a magazine
featuring artwork and words by: Abigail Bautista, Brenda Bell Brown, Maroula Blades, A. Emme Boyd, Alexandra Caselle, Ariel Ceylan, Cher Corbin, Michelle Currie, Iris Flow, Sherese Francis, InnaRae, Aly Hamilton, Lydia Johnson, Stephanie L. Kemp, Cynthia Manick, Erika D. Price, Seletta Raven, Alice Saunders, Simone Savannah, Imani Sims, Gale Weithers
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So three Black women in maybe two thousand pages of women’s magazines and all of them biracial or racially ambiguous, so they could be Indian or Puerto Rican or something. Not one of them is dark. Not one of them looks like me, so I can’t get clues for makeup from these magazines. Look, this article tells you to pinch your cheeks for color because all their readers are supposed to have cheeks you can pinch for color. This tells you about different hair products for everyone—and everyone means blondes, brunettes, and redheads. I am none of those. And this tells you about the best conditioners—for straight, wavy and curly. No kinky. See what they mean by curly? My hair could never do that. This tells you about matching your eye color and eye shadow—blue, green, and hazel eyes. But my eyes are black so I can’t know what shadow works for me. This says that this pink lipstick is universal, but they mean universal if you are white because I would look like a golliwog if I tried that shade of pink. Oh look, here is some progress. An advertisement for foundation. There are seven different shades for white skin and one generic chocolate shade, but that is progress. Now let’s talk about what is racially skewed. Do you see why a magazine like Essence exists?
—-An excerpt from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013)
I cannot wait to buy this book.
(via il-tenore-regina)
I’m gonna buy the shit out of this book. I’m buying the paperback, kindle edition AND the hardcover
(via theuppitynegras)
(Source: bxtchplease, via harriettumbles)
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2013 Tony Award Winners
Cicely Tyson: Best Performance By A Leading Actress In A Play (Carrie Watts, A Trip To Bountiful)
Courtney B. Vance: Best Performance By A Featured Actor In A Play (Hap Hairston, Lucky Guy)
Billy Porter: Best Performance By A Leading Actor In A Musical (Lola, Kinky Boots)
Patina Miller: Best Performance By A Leading Actress In A Musical (The Leading Player, Pippin)
y e s
cicely is just…lord.
y’all. i haven’t seen the tonys yet (IF YOU HAVE A LINK PLEASE HALP ME) but I am so excited/happy/teary about how marvelously black actors work was received this year.
i could cry.
(via wrcsolace)
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The old adage is true—writing is rewriting. But it takes a kind of courage to confront your own awfulness (and you will be awful) and realize that, if you sleep on it, you can come back and bang at the thing some more, and it will be less awful. And then you sleep again, and bang even more, and you have something middling. Then you sleep some more, and bang, and you get something that is actually coherent. Hopefully when you are done you have a piece that reasonably approximates the music in your head. And some day, having done that for years, perhaps you will get something that is even better than the music in your head. Becoming a better writer means becoming a re-writer. But that first phase is so awful that most people don’t want any part.
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(Source: yeahwriters)
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i do not feel
i need a name or a movement
to legitimize the defense of myself.
i am a woman of color.
my bones have been
cut and sold every morning.
so, now i carry a machete in my
mouth.— simple, nayyirah waheed (via nayyirahwaheed)(via foxxxynegrodamus)
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INCITE! Women of Color against Violence
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and our communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing.
WHO WE ARE:
INCITE! is made up of grassroots chapters and affiliates across the U.S.; other collectives working on particular political projects such as police violence, reproductive justice, and media justice; a national collective that works to leverage this grassroots organizing on a national and transnational platform; an advisory collective that helps increase the capacity of national organizing; and thousands of members and supporters.
WHAT WE DO:
INCITE! works with groups of women of color and their communities to develop political projects that address the multiple forms of violence women of color experience in our lives, on our bodies, and in our communities.
We identify “violence against women of color” as a combination of “violence directed at communities,” such as police violence, war, and colonialism, and “violence within communities,” such as rape and domestic violence.
The Color of Violence: The INCITE Anthology
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, a national organization of radical feminists of color, announces Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, an anthology of critical writings demanding that we address violence against women of color in all its forms, including interpersonal violence, such as sexual and domestic violence, and state violence, such as police brutality, militarism, attacks on immigrants and Indian treaty rights, the proliferation of prisons, economic neo-colonialism, and violence from the medical industry. Color of Violence presents the fierce and vital writing of 33 visionary radical feminists of color. These writers not only investigate the intersecting ways in which violence and oppression exist in the lives of women of color and our communities, they also map innovative strategies of movement building and resistance used by women and trans people of color around the world. Of the many topics they address, Color of Violence asks us to consider that:MORE>INCITE- The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
“I’m very much afraid of this ‘Foundation Complex.’ We’re getting praise from places that worry me.” -Ella Baker, June 1963
“I want us all to be real creative about our tactics and strategies to dismantle the empire.” - Joo-Hyun Kang, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded Conference, 2004
WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX ON REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT BUILDING? In this landmark collection, over 25 activists and scholars describe and discuss the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC)—a system of relationships between the state, the owning classes, foundations, and social service & social justice organizations that results in the surveillance, control, derailment, and everyday management of political movements. Naming what some might call “the elephant in the room,” the contributors to this groundbreaking and thought-provoking collection critical assess the NPIC’s impact on the practice and imagination of the political left in the U.S.
Of central concern is the emerging dominance of the 501(c)(3) non-profit, a model which some argue threatens to permanently eclipse autonomous grassroots-movement building in the arena of social justice. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded addresses the following questions:
What is the history of the non-profit model?
What drove its development?
How does it impact the form and direction of social justice organizing?
How has reliance on foundation funding impacted the course of social justice movements?
How does 501(c)3 non-profit status impact social justice organizations’ relationship to the state?
How does non-profit status allow the state to co-opt and control our movements?
Are there ways the non-profit model can be used subversively to support more radical visions for social change?
What are the alternatives for building viable social justice movements?
How do we resource our movements outside the non-profit structure? MORE
(via yourhue)
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Jamilah Lemieux: I'm Not Strong, I'm Just Human
Clutch Magazine || May 31, 2013
I never wanted to be a “strong Black woman”; in fact, I bristle when people call me one.
