WHY BLACK FEMINIST ART & LITERARY PUBLICATIONS ARE NECESSARY
Because Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.”
Because Barbara Smith said, “but some of us are brave.”
Because Toni Cade Bambara said, “The role of the revolutionary artist is to make revolution irresistible.”
Because Sylvia Wynter says our poetics is our politics is the way we make a world.
Because Anna Julia Cooper, a 19th century figure and former slave, earned a Ph.D. and wrote THE FIRST Black Feminist text, A Voice from the South.
Because Maria Miller Stewart was THE FIRST American woman of any race to serve as a public lecturer before a mixed audience of men and women, blacks and whites (proceeding the Grimke’s antislavery speeches by 5 years).
BECAUSE MANY OF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO THESE WOMEN ARE!
Because we cannot live without our lives, our contradictions or our words.
Because we fall in love with women of color every day.
Because young Black women STILL think critically and write prophetically.
Because publications are the ONLY way to communicate and globally interact with past, present, and future Black women.
Because nearly all of the Black feminist publications of the 70s, 80s, and 90s have become extinct.
Because Black people were the ONLY people in the U.S. ever EXPLICITLY forbidden to become literate.
Because if we don’t write ourselves into history, tell our own truths and experiences, can it be said that we were even here?
I am starting a Black Feminist Art and Literary Publication. I am using the term Black to refer to those within the African Diaspora. I am concerned about our limited options. I am calling on Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith. I am calling for Black women theory, criticism, and creative literature writers. I am calling all of my sisters to come and sit at the kitchen table.
Thank you for writing and reblogging this little bear.
I’m ready.
