Forget Hallmark: Why Mother's Day is a Queer Black Left Feminist Thing

UBUNTU mamas this is dedicated to you!

The Anti-Social Family by Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh (1982)
Fear of a Queer Planet ed. Micheal Warner (1999)
Aberrations in Black: Towards a Queer of Color Critique by Roderick Ferguson (2004)
"Of Our Normative Strivings: African American Studies and the Histories of Sexuality" by Roderick Ferguson (2005)
"Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism" by Jose E. Munoz (2007)
"A 'New Freedom Movement of Negro Women': Sojourning for Truth, Justice, and Human Rights during the Early Cold War" by Erik S. McDuffie (2008)
Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith (2008)
Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother's Story by Asha Bandele (2009)*



My mother is black. So the means through which I was produced is a matter of national instability. My mother is black. So the trace of slavery waits every moment to ink my body with meaninglessness. My mother is black. So my living is a question of whether or not racism will be reproduced today. My mother is black. This same piece of information threatens my survival. But my mother is black, which is at the same time the only thing that makes my survival possible.

It's early morning. I am a little bit drunk on the sound of rain, but it occurs to me that I should get (you) ready for mother's day. It is very easy to notice that I am obsessed with mothering and mothers. Mother is the single most interesting and confusing word that I know. Next to black.

And here comes mother's day. For me this year mother's day means a million things. Expectancy, fear, obligation, inspiration, joy, admiration, deep reflection. A few weeks ago my mother told me that she thinks I will be such a great mother. It struck me that while I have always dreamed of becoming a mother, and intended to become a mother, it always comes as a surprise when anyone affirms that it is something that I can do, SHOULD do even. Because I live in a culture that criminalizes black mothers for creating and loving black children, a culture that criminalizes black kids for being born. And latino kids too. I have been taught that mothering is something that happens to you, and you deal with it, and fight for it, swallowing down shame and living with the threat that the state wants nothing more than to take your kids away from you in every way imaginable.

But it is not my mother who taught me that. My mother repeats again and again that mothering us is her greatest accomplishment, like asha her enduring joy and triumph despite everything. And trust, she has other great accomplishments. My mother, not through perfection, not through ease, but through sincere struggle, intense and even sometimes overwhelming love taught us something in her very being. My sister (now an ambitious account exec in New York) once confessed to me that though it might seem unfeminist the only thing she really cared about, the one thing that she knew she wanted to do for sure was to be a good mother. And I told her what I more recently wrote in a poem to one of my feminist theory students, who blessed up by bringing her daughter to class, "mothering is the most feminist act of all." My mother, like every black mother, has been slandered. But we know a lie when we see it. My brother wanted to punch every producer of CNN's disgusting "Black in America" series for daring to suggest that being raised by a black mother was the key liability destroying the life chances of black people. How dare they? How dare they? When our black mother is the only reason we know how to breathe and survive despite the toxic racism filling this world. How dare they?

It is no mystery why it is a cultural truth that talking about a black person's mother is a great way to unleash a universe of anger. Our mothers are slandered every single second of every single day. The media does it like it's it's job. And indeed it is.

And here is the risk. All this talk of mothering, all this affirmation and priviliging of mothering puts me at risk, not only in a mainstream narrative working to reproduce a nation built on racial hate and genocide, but also on the academic queer left. It is not very queer of me to keep talking about my mother this way. In fact (as Micheal Warner suggests) the only queer way for a black person to talk about a mother is the "irony" of the house mother in black gay ball culture. CNN is dead to me. The deeper betrayal is that queer studies participates in the slander of the black mother, agreeing with the story that says she should not exist.

Has Warner not considered (as Cathy Cohen makes very clear in Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens) that black mothering is already a queer thing? Because we were never meant to survive. So the Queen Mother in the house movement is not just throwing shade, the queen is doing the necessary work of mothering. Of saying these bodies black and queer almost to redundancy, these spirits that every facet of our society would seek to destroy, MUST survive and WILL transform the meaning of life whether you like it or not. That is what a black mother does. Sincerely. It is no joke.

So this week I have been picking a bone with a queer theory narrative that sees mothering as the least radical thing one can do, in so much that it becomes irrelevant to the majority of the discourse on queerness. Clearly, like Moynihan, they don't know my mother. Asserting that the labor of mothering is always in collaboration with the reproductive narrative that reproduces heteronormativity ignores the fact there has been a national consensus for centuries that black people should not be able to mother and every force, from coercive sterlization, to workfare has been mobilized to try to keep them from doing it. Where has the dominant (read white) queer theory been while politicians have been ranting and raving about how welfare queens, (which despite the actual statistics becomes a code name for poor and racialized mothers) are going to destroy civilization as we know it by not only creating black surplus children, but by influencing these children with their deviant and risky and scary behavior? And isn't this the organizing desire of queer theory....to destroy civilization as we know it?

I just wish everyone would listen to Cathy Cohen (who by the way is a black co-mother to a beautiful fierce black girl-child) so I wouldn't have to stand here screaming (or more accurately sit here taking deconstructing and rebuilding the premises of queer theory all week long). But here is the quick and dirty of it...mainstream queer theory as inaugurated by Warner's edited volume and influenced by a Marxist feminst tradition of critiquing the heteropatriarchal family as a complicit force in the reproduction of capitalist oppression throw the black babies out with the bathwater of their universalism. The "tyranny of motherhood" as described by Barrett and McIntosh does not leave room for those other deployments of "mother" and "hood" (excuse me "inner-city") in the American vernacular of culture of poverty discourse.

This is why Hortense Spillers should be required and repeated reading for queer theorists. Four words. Mama's Baby Papa's Maybe. Which means there is no reason that the act of mothering would reproduce patriarchy, or even take place within the confines of patriarchy along normative lines because the practice of American slavery has so fundamentally ripped the work of mothering from the bodies of black mothers (forcing them to do the labor of mothering for white and black children while fully denying them any of the authority of motherhood by killing and selling away and raping and mutilating their children. (I have posted here before about my discovery, while reading slave code, that even a free black mother had no legal right to defend an enslaved daughter from abuse by a slave master.)

The complexity of the term mother (next to black) requires a queer theory that deuniversalizes race and highlights the function of racism in reproducing the heteropatriarcal status quo. Cathy Cohen, Roderick Ferguson and Jose Munoz do this work of reminding us that Third World Feminism and the Third World Gay Liberation movement are an alternative starting point (contemporary with the Marxist feminist arguments that Warner's version of queer theory inherits). Their work is crucial because it says something very obvious. 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.

We were never meant to survive, and if mothers are part of why we are here (and they are), then they are the queerest of us all. But this is not even news. If we remember what black women have been up to in the United States we can just go ahead and let go of the asumption that mothering is conservative or that conserving and nurturing the lives of black children has ever had any validated place in the official American political spectrum.


Eslanda Robeson
Charlotta Bass
Shirley Graham Du Bois
Mary Church Terell
Maude White Katz

Take the fierce black women writers, mothers, publishers, actresses, activists
who would become the Sojourners for Truth and Justice and their work starting in the 1940's to protest the imprisonment of Rosa Lee Ingram a black mother who was sentenced to death for standing up for herself, and defending herself against a white man who tried to rape her. It was black women activists who changed her sentence to life in prison and then eventually (after 12 years incarceration) got her released from prison. And always always the key word in their organizing strategy was "mother." Their key understanding of Ingram who was willing to fight to keep this violent man away from her body and away from her children epitomized the term "mother" for this set of black woman revolutionaries. They framed the state's violence against Ingram as a violence against black mothering itself. How dare this black woman take a stance against rape. Standing against rape is a mothering act. How dare she threaten the perceived truth about what happens to black people, that black bodies are infinitely rapeable. How dare she stand ferocious, daring and teaching. This is what will happen to you if you come at me. This is the act of mothering that mobilized a national movement, black women gathered twenty-five thousands signatures for a petition in 1949...way before the era of the text message e-blast petition. They made it an international human rights issue, contacting every single member nation of the UN. And I need you to know this, remember this if you remember nothing else:

On Mother's Day, exactly 60 years ago the black left internationalist feminists of Ingram Committee sent TEN THOUSAND MOTHER'S DAY CARDS to the White House and scared Harry S. Truman so bad that he made up an excuse to miss their scheduled meeting the next day.

Ten thousand mother's day cards from black women to the white house. Stolen holiday. No justice, no peace in the form of ten thousand paper-cuts. A floral dare saying: celebrate this. This is what mothering means: organized support for radical self-defense. A complete refusal of rape by any means necessary. Ten thousand Mother's Day cards. A threat saying we are black mothers. We are survivors. Try us.

Forget hallmark.

Have a revolutionary Mother's Day people.




*(Outside of the above timeline, sit Cathy Cohen's "Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens" and Hortense Spillers's "Mama's Baby Papa's Maybe" which i did not reread this week...but have completely internalized such that I should be understood to be citing them no matter what I am saying about anything.-apg)

BrokenBeautiful Blooming!: The Spring Update

It's Spring!!! That bright, sexy season when we remember the full color of the world and everything becomes possible again! So what better way to celebrate the rebirth of the planet than to break your beautiful spirit out of its shell?

BrokenBeautiful Press (www.brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com) is ready for your reawakening with exciting new projects for you to check out, participate in and support.

On the move:

a queer black mobilehomecoming

BrokenBeautiful Press is partnering with Queer Renaissance to embark on a monumental journey in celebration of the bravery and genuis of the trailblazers of the black queer/lesbian/gender-non-conforming community. Think "black lesbian Eyes on the Prize" y'all! A year from today Alexis and Julia will be getting in an environmentally sustainable RV and hitting the road to learn, document and transmit the legacies of brave black queer warriors who have been transforming the meaning of life since the 1980's or earlier and hosting amazing intergenerational community education events all over the US. To find out more and to offer resources, advice or financial support go to: www.mobilehomecoming.wordpress.com

SPEAK!: Support Radical Mamis of Color!
BrokenBeautiful Press is proud to celebrate the birth of the most radical spoken word CD ever. Think This Bridge Called My Back in audio form! Speak Media Collective, a group of radical women of color transforming the world through new media, has launched a self-titled spoken word CD as a grassroots fundraiser to support the participation of young mothers of color in the Allied Media Conference. Help moms and kids of color travel to this national media gathering and get your mind blown at the same time. The CD includes a zine and a curriculum guide for using the CD in your community and classroom. To get your copy go to www.speakmediacollective.com

Community Education:
Combahee Survival: A Movement Revival:
In 1977 a crew of radical black socialist lesbian feminists wrote a document that changed the landscape of social justice forever. More than 30 years later young black feminists are tracking the survival of the analysis of interlocking oppressions and holistic transformation that the members of the Combahee River Collective stood for in the progressive community at large. The Combahee Survival Project is a dispersed community education project that shines light on and nurtures the seeds of a radical intersectional approach all over our social justice movement. Go to www.combaheesurvival.wordpress.com to see poetic activities that draw on the words of the original statement, examples from community organizers who are still wrestling with the issues the collective raised and worksheets to use in your community, and look out for the Survival/Revival activity of the week brought to you by BrokenBeautiful Press all summer long!

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind
In Durham, North Carolina (aka vanguard city, center of the universe) a growing, diverse and beautiful group of folks have gathered in the name of black feminism. With delicious potlucks to discuss key essays by black feminists, fieldtrips to hear black feminist poetry, and more we are acting on our faith that the radical work of visionaries like Claudia Jones, Angela Davis, June Jordan can inform and transform our city and our lives. And like-minded devotees in Chicago, DC and other cities have joined in. Follow along, find out about upcoming events and download free reading material at www.blackfeministmind.wordpress.com

Interact!!!!!

Habit Forming Love: The Video Project:
They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, so your girl Alexis decided to cultivate the habit of loving herself and her people (you!) fully, bravely, loudly and proudly. What better habit could there be? Experimenting with (and teaching herself) the art of internet video production and sharing she created videos of love for self, love in community and growing love for her sweetheart. Now it's your turn! Go to www.habitforminglove.wordpress.com
to browse Lex's videos and make your own!

In Your Hands: Letters from Ancestors
Alexis started the year with a life-changing, spirit-humbling process of receiving letters from black feminist ancestors who gave loving advice, welcome reminders and sometimes difficult challenges and lessons. Read letters from Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, Lydia May Gumbs (lex's grandma), Toni Cade Bambara and more at www.motherourselves.wordpress.com and add your own letters about your communication with your chosen and familial ancestors.



It's Spring! Anything is possible, even you and the life-changing love that makes your spirit tingle and grow.

Stay fly!
love always,
BrokenBeautiful Press
brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

Flamboyance

Hey all. This is a talk I gave yesterday at Radical Intersections a performance studies conference at Northwestern University. Let me know what you think!
love,
lex



Flamboyance: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Dedicated to Pauline McKenzie and Andria Hall

May I begin with an invocation?
This instant. This triumph. Black feminism was never meant to survive. This instant. This triumph. This is ritual. This instant and this triumph. Black feminism was never meant to survive. But here I am. Here we are. That is the queer thing. In 1981 by the time I was in my mother’s womb every explicitly black feminist organization in the United States was defunct, and the black women’s writing publishing trend was effectively over. Some say that black feminism went academic, went textual. Some say black feminism went new age, got touchy feely, stopped taking to the streets. Some say black feminism is anachronistic, useful only as a referent, a supplement, a precedent for something else. Black feminism (remember) is how we got this idea of interlocking systems of oppression, demarginalizing the intersection. But I have not heard anyone talk about the Combahee River Collective here. I have not heard us lift up the name Kimberlé Crenshaw yet at this conference about Radical Intersections. Hmm. It seems, black feminism was never meant to survive. And the queer thing is, here we are.

This is how I make my body legible to ancestors who I cannot choose or name. This is how I make my work accountable to swallowed rage in the mouths of people who were not invited. This is how we commune with the forgotten, reframe the possible, this is how we remember that we don’t know where we come from. This is makeshift reverence for pathways that do not meet, a time space that is not continuous. This is what her hand writing has to do with my slow breathing. This is what her late nights have to do with my early mornings. This is what his bitten tongue has to do with my declaration. This method is survival as performance, speech as meditation, memory as clothing, ocean as audience. This room is full of something that I will name black feminism. Tell me when it starts to burn.

Flamboyant. First an architectural term describing the construction of castles with framing blades, the colonial understanding of flowering trees, the Oxford English Dictionary remembers that flamboyant meant many things before it meant us, those of us who do not know better than to hide our brilliance, the transformative ones, burning like hell as we walk the earth. This meditation examines the way that black feminism survives in the queer bodies of work, bone, muscle and breath that remain, invoking the little known work of the Flamboyant Ladies, a performance group created by black lesbian feminists Alexis De Veaux and Gwendolyn Hardwick in their living room. This presentation situates the forgotten work of the Flamboyant Ladies, who created radical t-shirts, performance pieces, salons and a full day presentation about the impact of the nuclear moment on black communities in the 1970’s as a haunting, illegible precedent for the more contemporary work of UBUNTU and BrokenBeautiful Press, two initiatives based in Durham North Carolina that similarly use embodied poetics to respond to systemic violence, against women of color in the wake of the Duke Lacrosse and Dunbar Village cases and the torture and sexual assault of Megan Williams.
Seeking an embodied poetics of queer intergenerationality, a relationship between ancestors, elders and youth that survives by rejecting the social reproduction of oppression, rejecting the assumption that queerness and intergenerationality are mutually exclusive especially given the mandate that some of us are criminalized when we reproduce life and create family, this piece takes Flamboyance, that dangerous, queer stance, as a trajectory for the livelihood of feminism, taking seriously the (often cancerous) impact of the unceasing labor of and punishment for radical feminist work on the bodies of queer elders and ancestors including De Veaux, Hardwick, and collaborators, June Jordan and Audre Lorde. This is a work towards healing and survival. Healing and survival are queer methodologies for oppressed communities because we were never meant to survive. This is a collaborative offering of our bodies across time to the intergenerational work of performing, and making possible, the world we deserve.
The Flamboyant Lady Should Not Exist
Flamboyant Ladies co-founder and radical black lesbian feminist Alexis DeVeaux explains, “By the time Reagan came to power, opportunities for black women writers and artists, began to dry up in drastic kinds of ways. Publishers say ‘we have enough black books.’ The NEA becomes explicitly conservative.” Black women artists cannot support themselves with grants and publishing contracts from a lustful consuming public fascinated by the glamour of the self-articulation of black and feminine subjectivity. The novelty has worn off, it is no longer interesting that someone can be a woman and a black person at the same time. In fact by 1981 the Moynihan’s matriarchy thesis has become law and the danger of black women has become apparent. Reagan has by this time, coined the term welfare queen, that black woman who threatens the new neoliberal economic order by the criminal act of bearing black children, expendable and expensive drains on an increasingly anti-social economy, that black woman who threatens the logic that flesh and labor have differential values by loving black children as if they were priceless, that black woman who threatens the anti-social norms of late capital by raising children that will not consent to the terms of the economy, this crazy black woman who lives as if housing, and education, and food were community concerns. That crazy black woman, with the nerve to survive and to wear bright colors, big hair and a loud mouth while doing it. She is a problem.


The intersection is not a radical sexy place of queer and salient knowledge production at this point. The intersection is the place where June Jordan, Gwendolen Hardwick and Alexis DeVeaux have guns pulled on them by the New York City police occupying black neighborhoods in Brooklyn. That intersection has much more in common with the intersection that Crenshaw actually described, the traumatic scene of a violence that neither the law or the existing anti-oppressive theory could fully address, than with the logic of accumulation that we use to market ourselves as increasingly complicated scholars in an academic industrial complex primed to consume our difference. So maybe what these black feminists created at their particular juncture has something to teach us, now.
*
I never knew that waking up every morning with a new idea and ironing it on to a t-shirt for two years was an apprenticeship. I didn’t know that navigating the issue of socially transformative childcare with the idea that queer folks should dance and prisons should be abolished forever was a vigil I participated in towards the survival of my elders, I didn’t know that enacting healing as performance with a women of color led group of survivors of gendered violence was much older news than I could have imagined. I thought that I and we were, to quote Essex Hemphill, “making ourselves from scratch.” Our stories are not recycled and distributed on the wings of capital, so I became an eclectic priestess, ritualizing cotton, stickers, and the word yes. Experimenting in community with how our needs became analysis. I had no idea that I was an initiate in a practice called black feminism because the mode of black feminism that I practice, that we practice in my community is the forgotten, unpublished part of the story. But here we were speaking the lines, setting the scene, dancing the navigation home.

This is the only way I know how to tell you about the experience I had one day in the files of the African Ancestral Lesbian Archive, files of an archive that no longer exists, held in the all volunteer run brownstone of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn. My hand brushed across a flyer, a woman and then that same woman printed twice, partially hidden by the other’s hair, because it was big hair wild hair familiar hair, from my standpoint. Huge earrings, and full open mouths, the Flamboyant Ladies were hosting a performance in their living room to benefit “No More Prisons” a campaign by women to stand in solidarity with women in prison followed by a “women’s only” party with free childcare. I didn’t breathe as I turned to the next sheet with those same mirror image women thanking a community for supporting the daylong festival and t-shirt making initiative they had held about the question of how the anti-nuclear movement impacted black communities in the United States. I found an invitation to a traumatic (playing on the term dramatic) mythic performance designed to ignite healing by examining the sound, feel and timbre of embodied oppression. Alexis DeVeaux who held writing workshops and instigated public performances and self-published anthologies in her living room laughed on the phone when I finally got up the nerve to call her up and ask her how and why she did everything, but I nearly cried, because she was never meant to survive. And I had never expected to make sense.


Alexis DeVeaux uses the language of survival to describe the tactics that she and other black feminists who created their own alternative means of production used during that time period. “We did what we had to do to survive, if white publishers wouldn’t publish us, we would publish ourselves our resistance to being completely silenced was to be deeply creative. We are going to be here.” Looking at the work of the Flamboyant Ladies, an eclectic and radical black feminist performance group that has been almost completely forgotten by black feminist scholars and performance scholars alike, and meditating on the queer way in which that work survives, unintentionally and often unknowingly in the lives of some other, loud, belligerent creative, underfunded radical black women who came late to the game of black feminism, we have the opportunity to meditate on survival as a performance. Survival as a queer echo, a manifest lust in the bodies and work of those of us, who were never meant to survive. I think that this examination is especially crucial in this political and economic moment, which like the Nixon and Reagan eras is characterized by the gutting of social services, the channeling of huge amounts of public funds to the private sector and of course military interventions around the world in the name of so-called democracy. If we would survive, in any material sense, we must take heed of the strategies enacted by these earlier social actors.

So first let us remember that performance is not a stable mode of social reproduction, in fact, like the criminalized black mother, performance can be policed, paid, begged and pleaded with the re-establish the terms of the status quo, but it cannot never be trusted to do so. Homi Bhabha makes a famous distinction between the performative and the pedagogical in the imagination of the social and political unit of the nation reminds us that performance is queer, that is non-reproductive, and as we know the vast majority of performances remain undocumented, like classrooms, moments of possibility that you either witness, hear about after the fact, or miss completely. I have never seen any of the performances of the Flamboyant Ladies, and I never will. And before I was born all the black feminist organizations had fallen apart. And Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Gloria Anzaldua, Barbara Christian, Pat Parker…so many of my strongest feminist ancestors who would barely be elders by now are dead. Never meant to survive. But the queer thing is they do, and that survival is performative and it is happening right now. This performance of survival, the survival itself, protests and makes visible the conditions that make it unlikely, but it also threatens those conditions with the fierce reminder that, as Wahneema Lubiano has said, “Power is never complete.” This form of survival demands a queer rethinking of time and space, a queer reframing of body and memory, a diasporic inhabitation of the temporality of trauma, that our gaps in knowing, our post-dispersion decalage does not mean that our herstories are not everywhere waiting. This is research and it is also ritual because it requires action and faith. Does it burn? This is your part:

Consider the flame. Flickering. Transformative. Changing shape. That heat. That glow around those of us that, according to every story that keeps this anti-social society together, should be burning in hell. What is your flamboyance? That which keeps your flame alive, that which lives on you, bright through you that power had intendend to incinerate. Where on your body, where on your lips, where in your fingertips, where in your hair, does the blackened narrative emerge? What hollowed out remnant do you dance in now and what is the significance of what your longing remembers? Consider the flame. What cannot be forgotten even when it is not known? What will not destroy us even when we are flagrantly ourselves? What will we create instead?

This instant. This triumph. In you, something queer survives.

Habit Forming Love!

Introducing Habit Forming Love,

They say it takes 21 days to form a habit…so on March 4th 2009 I embarked on a journey to love myself, my community and my chosen romantic partner intentionally, bravely, loudly and proudly. And now I am ready to share the results with you! In addition to teaching myself how to love, by transmitting my love via internet video I was also teaching myself how to make simple yet effective at home videos using my computer, my phone and very basic editing software and how to make those videos internet accessible.

This experiment has taught me so much. I have emerged less self-conscious about my own face, more confident about the miraculous vitality of love in all of its forms and more adept at using online video as a tool for self-expression, affirmation and community education.

The three focus areas of my project were

Self:

for example:

(Go to www.loveforself.blogspot.com to see the whole 21 day process)

Community

for example…

(Go to www.habitforminglove.blogspot.com for the whole 21 day process)

and Romantic Love

(Sorry loves…the whole process is for Julia’s eyes only wink!)

Browse the “life” “love” and “community” sections of this site to see some of my more detailed reflections on each process and more examples.

One of the most important things that this process taught me is that even an analog girl in a digital world can make compelling, effective video. I don’t have to be perfect to carry the message of love that my ancestors are speaking through me and the video doesn’t have to be perfect to carry it’s message. The magic is in the medium. Try it yourself, and email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com if you want to share!

love (is a habit),

lex

Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative continues the "Working Our Rainbows: Critical Approaches to Africana Women's Performance Methodology" Series

Peace family. As I continue to think about "women's work", political division, art, community and sustainability, I am critically looking at these terms-feminist and womanist and how they create/define/conflate/re-iterate power, everyday "happenings" and creative performance dynamics among Black women.

The Working Our Rainbows Series is an at-home, mobile device, on line lecture series devoted to Black Women in Performance Studies. Please email bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com if you would like to host a lecture!


This weeks lesson:

1. Watch Staceyann Chin's performance of "Feminist or Womanist".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOmyebFVV8

2. Read Revisiting "What's in a Name?": Exploring the Contours of Africana Womanist Thought
Nikol G Alexander-Floyd, Evelyn M Simien. Frontiers. Boulder:2006. Vol. 27, Iss. 1, p. 67-89,131-132 (25 pp.)

I will email the essay if you would like.

3. Write a letter to yourself answering some or all of these questions: 1. Am I a feminist? 2. Am I a womanist? 3. How do I identify politically, culturally, socially?

4. If you were talking to Alice Walker right now, what would you say to her about womanism? 5. If you were talking to Clenora Hudson Weems right now, what would you say to her about womanism? 6. If you were speaking to Audre Lorde right now, what would you ask her about hybridity? 7. If you were talking to your mama right now what would you ask her about herself?

Hit me up on facebook or respond on my blog here!


Peace and performance!

Ebony Noelle Golden
bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com
bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com

How to Build a Community-from Noemi Martinez

Noemi Martinez offers this incisive and insightful feedback on how to building inclusive community from the perspective of a single mother of color.

How to Build a Community

that involves single parents, or steps to take so that I won’t be part of your community

first, what is your definition of a community?

• realize that parents are people. Realize that parents are people. Realize that parents are the same people you knew before.
• realize that parents can be activists, but they are also parents. They have different things on their mind. Single parents often have things such as food, rent, money, health on their mind. Unlike the single person, they are usually thinking of their child(ren) when they think about these things. Sometimes a single parent (take me for example) cannot concentrate on the latest protest, though important as it may be, because I may be thinking of what will my next job be, and the addition of subtraction of money in my head.
• to build a community, parents and children should be welcome and not feel they can’t attend a meeting/event because of their baby(ies).

• don’t roll your eyes when someone brings up childcare.
• realize the different situations of a single parent and a family that has 2 parents. If you don’t realize the difference, start asking questions.
• since when does your community involvement only concern the childless, or those that can leave their kids with someone else, the other parent, a spouse/ or friend. Yes, in theory, the children can be left with babysitters. Who need to be paid.
• ever think why parents stop being involved in community events and meetings?
• if single parents don’t feel you or the community cares about what it means to be a parent, a single parent, they won’t seek you out for help. This is not community. This is not a welcomed community.
• parenting and being a role model to kids in your community is important because they will be the activists of tomorrow.
• ask yourself why access to cultural events, planning and meetings for single parents is not important enough for you to have thought of before.
• why is motherhood and heavens forbid, single parenthood a step back in the eyes of activists and feminists? If the choice to terminate a pregnancy is radical, why isn’t the choice in being a mother radical?
• why don’t single parents attend your conferences, trainings, meetings, skill shares? Do you care that single parents don’t attend your events? Are you really thankful that snotty, bratty kids are not around to ruin your Utopian experience?
• don’t you want the next generation to care about the same things you care about? When will this happen?
• radical SINGLE parenting, heck, single parenting is so so fucking DIFFERENT than a family with 2 parents. SO SO DIFFERENT.
  
• racism almost always comes into play for single mothers of color.
  
• what new skills and influences will single parents give their children if the community doesn’t think it’s important for them to be involved? Luckily for me, I am awesome in all respects and will/am teaching my kids all about alternative media; non gendered play; violence in cartoons; baking vegan goodies; single mom awesomeness who uses a hammer are always the hero; that we will survive; writing; sewing; crafts… and so forth.

This questions and concerns, I believe, will never be resolved. But these are some of the reasons the single parents in your communities might not be receptive to your call for actions. Retreat, re-access, prioritize is the common measures taken by single parents when they see the resistance to others caring about their concerns.

Noemi Martinez
http://www.hermanaresist.com

Peace Gumbo YaYa Supporters,

Thank you for your generous thoughts, participation and support since the first cycle of Gumbo YaYa in 2007. Gumbo YaYa has travelled from NYC to NC drawing on the power of sisterhood and creative healing in every session or workshop. The second cycle of gumbo yaya is wrapping up in Durham, NC.

Here are a few updates:

New Community Support!
Gumbo YaYa is pleased to announce new sponsor, The Body Shop. The Body Shop (http://www.thebodyshop-usa.com/bodyshop/) is providing wellness and beauty items for the Gumbo Yaya Sister Circle and supporters. Many thanks to our awesome intern, Kenya C. Harris, for solidifying this sponsorship. You rock Kenya!

Love is Radical Performance!
Gumbo YaYa is wrapping up its second cycle on 3/29/2009 with a community performance, panel, and potluck.

What: Love is Radical: Performing Mothering, Daughtering, and Sistering
When: 3/29/09, 2:30 pm
Where: 214 Broadway St.
Durham, NC
Who: The Entire Community
Cost: Free
Why: Because we want to share our magic with you!

Please bring a dish, dessert, or beverage for the community potluck.
More Information: bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com or 919.423.3780

Please tell everyone you know to come out and support Gumbo YaYa!

Gumbo on the Go!
A Gumbo YaYa session was presented at the 5th Annual State of the Nation Arts and Performance Festival. Accepted with open arms by a diverse community of artists and activists, women and men engaged in "Brilliant Tomorrows: Sister(ing) as Creative Communal Performance" session in New Orleans, LA. www.sonfestival.org.

Brilliant Tomorrows will also be presented at the first We Are 1 Women's Conference in Durham, NC. The conference seeks to bring women together regardless of sexuality, faith, ethnicity. Check them out at http://www.infinitydiamondclub.com/infinity_diamond_club_015.htm.

On the Horizon...
Gumbo YaYa, the movie!
Gumbo YaYa, the curriculum!


We want to hear from you!
-Join our list serv at http://bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com/contact.php.

-Check out our website and leave a comment at www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com.

In sisterhood and community building,
Gumbo YaYa/ or this is why we speak in tongues

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind: Claudia Jones

Jones was known for giving out book lists to women she met on the street, in the laundromat and everywhere else. Our radical reading group honors this legacy.

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind: Session 3

Claudia Jones---Co-Sponsored by the People's Durham Initiatve

March 31st 6pm

Potluck at Lex's House (alexispauline@gmail.com for directions)

In her crucial book on the political life of Claudia Jones, Carole Boyce Davies describes Jones as "Left of Karl Marx." Jones is literally buried in the same cemetery as Marx, to his left, but Boyce Davies is also suggesting that Claudia Jones a rarely remembered black feminist Trinidadian communist organizer who was deported during the McCarthy Era for her radical beliefs and activities, is also left of Marx politically because her black feminist approach and her empahsis on cultural transformation challenged the limits of Marxism.

In her essay "An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Women" (download here) Claudia Jones articulates her understanding of how black feminism can transform the left in a revolutionary way. Join us, in Durham or wherever you are in reading and discussing this essay this month (because every month is women's history month!!!!)

love,

BrokenBeautiful Press

ORIGINAL FOR COLORED GIRLS CAST MEMEBER OFFERS PEFORMANCE WORKSHOP!!!


The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)
--a member of The Institute for Popular Education at the Brecht Forum--
--founded in 1990--
451 West Street
New York, New York 10014
(212) 924-1858
toplab@toplab.org
http://www.toplab.org


The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory presents

Confronting Diabetes with Theater

Two Workshops with Robbie McCauley

Saturday, March 21,2009 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm
Register online at http://brechtforum.org/events/diabetic-dramas-1?bc=

Saturday, April 25,2009 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm
Register online at http://brechtforum.org/events/diabetic-dramas-2?bc=

Award-winning actress Robbie McCauley returns to the Brecht Forum to lead
a series of workshops called "Diabetic Dramas" based on subject matter
from her performance piece *Sugar*, which looks at everything there is to
see about sugar, from slavery to colonialism to American mythologies to
diabetes. An ongoing work-in-progress, *Sugar*, which will be presented
again at the Brecht Forum in June, will incorporate some of the story
exchanges by participants in the "Diabetic Drama" workshops facilitated by
Ms. McCauley. Through the interweaving of stories, images, facts and lore
we will see that diabetes is not only a medical issue but also one of race
and class, and we will also see how sugar is sometimes something that is
very bittersweet.

The first Diabetic Drama workshop took place in January and will continue
with two more workshops on March 21 and April 25. It is not necessary to
have attended the January session to enroll in the March or April
sessions.

Robbie McCauley has been an active presence in the American avant-garde
theater for three decades. One of the early cast members of Ntozake
Shange's *for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is
enuf*, Ms. McCauley went on to write and perform regularly in cities across
the country, striving to facilitate dialogs on race between local whites
and blacks.

In the 1990s, she received both an OBIE Award (Best Play) and a New York
Dance and Performance (BESSIE) Award for *Sally's Rape*, which she wrote,
directed and performed.

A core member of the American Festival Project, she has practiced and
taught theater in several communities throughout the US and abroad. She is
anthologized in several books, including Extreme Exposure; Moon Marked and
Touched by Sun; and Performance and Cultural Politics, edited respectively
by Jo Bonney, Sydne Mahone, and Elin Diamond.

In 1998, her *Buffalo Project* was highlighted as one of the "the 51 (or so)
Greatest Avant-Garde Moments" by the Village Voice, a roster that included
work by artists such as Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, and John Cage. Her
recent piece, *Sugar*, a work in progress, was presented at Ohio State
University in collaboration with several institutional departments and
organizations, and with members of Columbus' Near East community.

Robbie McCauley is on the Performing Arts Department faculty at Emerson
College in Boston.

Co-sponsored by the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) and the
Brecht Forum.

Tuition--sliding scale: $15-$35

Pre-registration required.

Register online by using the links above or contact TOPLAB at
toplab@toplab.org or (212) 924-1858.

All sessions take place at:

The Brecht Forum
451 West Street*
New York City

* travel directions below

*****

Other Upcoming TOPLAB Workshops

March 28-29: The Rainbow of Desire
(info at http://brechtforum.org/events/rainbow-desire?bc=)

March 29: Closing party for Refuge and Resistance: Reflections on Gendered
Violence (an installation and performance piece conceived and executed by
Ocean Ana Rising)
(info at
http://brechtforum.org/events/ocean-anna-rising-presents-refuge-and-resistance?bc=)

April 18-19: Cop-in-the-Head
(info at http://brechtforum.org/events/cop-head-0?bc=)

May 23-28: Workshops with Augusto Boal
(info from toplab@toplab.org or [212]924-1858)

May 25: An Evening with Augusto Boal
(info at http://brechtforum.org/boalperformance-2009?bc=)

*****

Travel Directions

The Brecht Forum and TOPLAB are at:

451 West Street *
(between Bank and Bethune Streets in the far West Village,
1-1/2 blocks north of West 11 Street)
New York City

* Note: West Street is the same as the West Side Highway

Subway

IND Eighth Avenue A, C, or E to 14 Street or BMT Canarsie L to Eighth
Avenue (take a few minutes to look at "Life Underground", Tom Otterness'
series of whimsical bronze sculptures scattered throughout both sections
of the station). Walk down Eighth Avenue (against the traffic) to Bank
Street (at Abingdon Square). Turn right on Bank and walk west to West
Street. Turn right, walk a quarter-block to 451.

IRT Seventh Avenue 1, 2, or 3 trains to 14 Street. Exit at the south (12
Street) end of the station. Walk a short block west, across 12 Street, to
Greenwich Avenue. Turn left and walk one block to Bank Street. Turn right,
walk west on Bank Street to Abingdon Square. Bank Street continues on the
other side of the park; keep walking on Bank Street to West Street. Turn
right, walk a quarter-block to 451.

New Jersey PATH train to Christopher Street. Walk north (with the traffic)
on Greenwich Street to Bank Street. Turn left, walk west on Bank Street to
West Street. Turn right, walk a quarter-block to 451.

(From Penn Station or Port Authority Bus Terminal take the IND Eighth
Avenue A, C or E trains downtown to 14 Street and follow the directions
above. From Grand Central Station take the IRT Lexington Avenue 4, 5 or 6
trains downtown to 14 Street/Union Square and then change to the BMT
Canarsie L train heading toward Eighth Avenue. Follow the directions
above.)

Bus

#8 (Ninth/Christopher Streets crosstown) to Christopher and West Streets,
walk up West Street to 451.

#11 (Ninth and Tenth Avenues): From uptown--to Abingdon Square (at Bethune
Street). Walk south one very short block to Bank Street, turn right, walk
west to West Street. Turn right, walk a quarter-block to 451. No service
from downtown--Abingdon Square is the terminal stop.

#14A (Grand/Essex Streets/Avenue A/Fourteenth Street crosstown) to
Abingdon Square (at Bethune Street). Walk south one very short block to
Bank Street, turn right, walk west to West Street. Turn right, walk a
quarter-block to 451.

#20 (Seventh Avenue and Hudson Street/Eighth Avenue): From downtown--to
Abingdon Square (at Bethune Street). Walk south one very short block to
Bank Street, turn right, walk west to West Street. Turn right, walk a
quarter-block to 451. From uptown--to 12 Street (near St. Vincent
Hospital). Walk a short block west, across 12 Street, to Greenwich Avenue.
Turn left and walk one block to Bank Street. Turn right, walk west on Bank
Street to Abingdon Square. Bank Street continues on the other side of the
park; keep walking on Bank Street to West Street. Turn right, walk a
quarter-block to 451.

Car

Drive west on 11 Street all the way to West Street (West Side Highway).
Turn right for one block, to 451, between Bank and Bethune Streets.

Along the West Side Highway: From downtown--stay to the right and follow
the Highway to 451, between Bank and Bethune Streets. From uptown: Take
the Highway to Clarkson Street (exit left), make a U-turn at Clarkson and
proceed back up the Highway to 451, between Bank and Bethune Streets.

Note that there is no legal parking on many parts of West Street before
6:00 pm, and parking on the surrounding streets is scarce. Fines for
illegal parking are a minimum of $115, and your car could be towed.
Retrieval can cost you as much as $300. Fees at parking lots and garages
can run as high as $35 a day. WE URGE YOU TO USE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.


===
The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)
toplab@toplab.org
http://www.toplab.org

"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the
battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
--George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

"...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and
that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are
prevailing."
--George W. Bush, June 28, 2005

"Our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary....America is engaged in a new
struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can and we will
prevail."
--George W. Bush, January 10, 2007

"Prevailing in Iraq is not going to be easy."
--George W. Bush, March 19, 2007

+U.S. military fatalities through May 1, 2003: 140
+U.S. military fatalities through June 28, 2005: 1743
+U.S. military fatalities through January 11, 2007: 3017
+U.S. military fatalities through March 19, 2007: 3217
+U.S. military fatalities as of March 10, 2009: 4256 (this figure exceeds
the number of people killed in all of the incidents that occurred on
September 11, 2001)

+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of September 2004 (estimated by
The Lancet): 100,000+
+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of July 2006 (estimated by The
Lancet): 654,965
+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of March 10, 2009 (estimated
by Just Foreign Policy): 1,311,696*

*These figures are based on the number of deaths estimated in The Lancet
(the British medical journal) study through July 2006, and then updated
based "on how quickly deaths are mounting in Iraq". To do that, Just
Foreign Policy multiplies The Lancet figure as of July 2006 by the ratio
of current deaths reported by Iraq Body Count (IBC), divided by IBC deaths
as of July 1, 2006. The IBC numbers, considerably lower than those cited
by The Lancet, Opinion Research Business (a British polling firm which
estimated 1.2 million Iraqi deaths as of September 2007), and even the
Iraq Ministry of Health, are based on the number of fatalities cited in
various news reports and have been criticized, with much justification,
for not giving an accurate assessment of the real Iraqi death count. The
much more rigorous and statistically-reliable study, conducted by teams
from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Al-Mustansiriya
University, and published in The Lancet in September 2004, put the figure
at around 100,000 civilians dead. However, that data had been based on
"conservative assumptions", according to research team leader Les Roberts,
and the actual count at that time was credibly assumed to be significantly
higher. For example, The Lancet study's data greatly underestimated
fatalities in Fallujah due to the surveying problems encountered there at
that time. The second Lancet study, released on October 10, 2006,
indicated that 654,965 "excess" deaths of Iraqis have occurred since the
outbreak of the aggression and genocide committed by the United States
against the people of Iraq. The current figures provided by Just Foreign
Policy seem to be logically consistent with the increasing rates of death
from 2003 to 2004, and 2004 to 2006.

Sources: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
http://icasualties.org/oif/
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/Iraq_war.html
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6271
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20041025/008279.html
http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journal/lancet/s0140673606694919.

SPEAK!: Words of Radical Womyn of Color

Greetings loved ones,
I am THRILLED to let you know about the release of a CD created by SPEAK! a Radical Womyn of Color Media Collective that I have been learning and growing in for the past few years. SPEAK! the self-titled CD is an amazing resource and I'm so proud to be a part of it because I truly believe that it is fierce and transformative in the tradition of This Bridge Called My Back. I know that being part of this process has changed my life.

The CD is available for purchase at www.speakmediacollective.com. The CD is part of a pilot grassroots fundraising project to fund young mothers of color to attend national gatherings within the progressive movement starting with the Allied Media Conference in Detroit this summer.

I am super super proud to be part of this project (even though I am freaked out about the recorded sound of my own voice). One of the featured poems on this CD is "Wishful Thinking" a poem that (as most of you know) I wrote for the National Day of Truthtelling in Durham, NC. I.e. it's a poem a wrote for you.

Your support for this project means everything to me.

love,
lex

p.s. To listen to an interview with Adele...the loving genius diva who first spoke and facilitated the idea that became this CD click here:
http://madamaambi.blogspot.com/2009/03/adele-nieves-speak.html

p.p.s. here is the official press release...SPREAD THE WORD!

SPEAK! WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA COLLECTIVE RELEASING SELF-TITLED DEBUT CD
UNITED STATES — March 7, 2009– SPEAK! Women of Color Media Collective, a netroots coalition of women of color bloggers and media-makers, is debuting March 7, 2009 with a performance art CD, accompanied by a collaborative zine and classroom curriculum for educators.

handful of Speak! members at the Liquid Words studio

Compiled and arranged by Liquid Words Productions, the spoken word CD weaves together the stories, poetry, music, and writings of women of color from across the United States. The 20 tracks, ranging from the explosive “Why Do You Speak?” to the reverent “For Those of Us,” grant a unique perspective into the minds of single mothers, arrested queer and trans activists, excited children, borderland dwellers, and exploring dreamers, among many others.

“We want other women of color to know they are not alone in their experiences,” said writer and educator Alexis Pauline Gumbs of Broken Beautiful Press, one of the contributors to the CD. “We want them to know that this CD will give sound, voice and space to the often silenced struggles and dreams of women of color.”

The Speak! collective received grant assistance from the Allied Media Conference coordinators to release a zine complementing the works featured on the CD, as well as a teaching curriculum for educators to incorporate its tracks into the classroom environment.

“Speak! is a testament of struggle, hope, and love,” said blogger Lisa Factora-Borchers of A Woman’s Ecdysis. “Many of the contributors are in the Radical Women of Color blogosphere and will be familiar names… I can guarantee you will have the same reaction as to when I heard them speak, I was mesmerized.”

To promote the initiative, the Speak! collective is coordinating listening parties in communities across United States, creating short YouTube promotions illustrating the CD creation process, and collaborating with organizers and activists online and offline.

The CD is available for online ordering at http://speakmediacollective.com on a sliding scale beginning at $12. All inquiries for review copies should be directed to us at speakcd@gmail.com. Proceeds of this album will go toward funding for mothers and/or financially restricted activists attending the 11th Annual Allied Media Conference in Detroit, MI from July 16-19.

###

Please spread the word on your blogs and websites!

Because We Are

Hey loved ones,
Here is a video that I made for us on this day of healing and commmunity.

Also linked here:
http://habitforminglove.blogspot.com/2009/03/for-my-ubuntu-fam.html

Gumbo YaYa Celebrates Women's History Month
with Love is Radical:
Approaches to Mother(ing), Daughter(ing), and Sister(ing)


Contact: Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative
Media Alert
bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com
www.bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com


Durham, NC- March 5, 2009

Gumbo YaYa, ushers in Women's History Month with a four-part series of creative arts workshops, performances, and community-wide discussions about the beautiful complexity of relationships among women of the African diaspora.

Gumbo YaYa Dates of Importance:
March 8: The Aesthetics of Intimacy: Daughter(ing) as Communal Performance with Ebony Noelle Golden

March 15: Love is Radical: Performing Mother(ing), Daughter(ing), and Sister(ing) with Gumbo YaYa Sister Circle

March 22: Performance Rehearsal

March 29: Community Performance and Panel Discussion with the Gumbo YaYa Sister Circle (this performance is open to the entire community)

Nancy (Nia) Wilson, executive director of SpiritHouse-NC, shares, "Thank you to our sponsors: The North Carolina Humanities Council, Healing with CAARE, Inc., betty's daughter arts collaborative, and everyone who has supported this process by providing child care, cooking a meal, or attending a session. Gumbo YaYa is such a wonderful way to begin or continue building a healthy relationship between women and girls in our communities."

Ebony Noelle Golden, creative director of Gumbo YaYa, is over-joyed by the response. "Our sessions have been generously attended every week. Mothers have brought their daughters and granddaughters. I can't wait to see what the final performance brings, and what the lasting effect of this 12-week session will be."

The "sista circle" uses improvisation, dance, journaling, meditation, storytelling, photography, theater, poetry, and music to explore the intergenerational relationships among black mothers, daughters, and sisters.

All sessions, materials, performances, and discussions are free for participants and audience members. Gumbo YaYa provides child care and dinner during every "sista circle". Participants do not have to be students, or affiliated with any particular institution to participate.

For more information about Gumbo YaYa visit www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com, or email bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com.

--
Ebony N. Golden, MFA, MA
Creative Director
bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com

Hire Betty's Daughter for your arts consulting needs!
"creating radical expressiveness in community"

Check out...Gumbo Yaya/or this is why we speak in tongues
"Creative Healing and Expression for Women of the Diaspora"
www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com

Sweets for the Sweet: Queer Intergenerational Language Practice

Hey all,
This is a video that the brilliant, dashing, delightful, delectable (okay i'll stop) Julia Wallace made for a panel that she, Bea Sullivan, Moya Bailey and I collaborated on last month. Enjoy!
love,
lex



Sweets from the Sweet: intergenerational language (re)production from J. Roxanne on Vimeo.

Gumbo YaYa Celebrates Women's History Month
with Love is Radical:
Approaches to Mother(ing), Daughter(ing), and Sister(ing):
Creative Arts Workshops, Performance, and Panel" (2:00-5:00)




Contact: Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative
Media Alert
bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com
www.bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com


Durham, NC- Feb. 26, 2009

Gumbo YaYa, ushers in Women's History Month with a series of creative arts workshops, performances, and community-wide discussions about the beautiful complexity of relationships among women of the African diaspora.

Gumbo YaYa Dates of Importance:
March 1: Alt(a)rations: Building Sacred Space in Community with SpiritHouse (this session will begin at CAARE and move to other sites.)
March 8: The Aesthetics of Intimacy: Daughter(ing) as Communal Performance with Ebony Noelle Golden
March 15: Love is Radical: Performing Mother(ing), Daughter(ing), and Sister(ing) with Gumbo YaYa Sister Circle
March 22: Performance Rehearsal
March 29: Community Performance and Panel Discussion with the Gumbo YaYa Sister Circle (this performance is open to the entire community)

Nancy (Nia) Wilson, executive director of SpiritHouse-NC, shares, "Thank you to our sponsors: The North Carolina Humanities Council, Healing with CAARE, Inc., betty's daughter arts collaborative, and everyone who has supported this process by providing child care, cooking a meal, or attending a session. Gumbo YaYa is such a wonderful way to begin or continue building a healthy relationship between women and girls in our communities."

Ebony Noelle Golden, creative director of Gumbo YaYa, is over-joyed by the response. "Our sessions have been generously attended every week. Mothers have brought their daughters and granddaughters. I can't wait to see what the final performance brings, and what the lasting effect of this 12-week session will be."

The "sista circle" uses improvisation, dance, journaling, meditation, storytelling, photography, theater, poetry, and music to explore the intergenerational relationships among black mothers, daughters, and sisters.

All sessions, materials, performances, and discussions are free for participants and audience members. Gumbo YaYa provides child care and dinner during every "sista circle". Participants do not have to be students, or affiliated with any particular institution to participate.

For more information about Gumbo YaYa visit www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com, or email bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com.

--
Ebony N. Golden, MFA, MA
Creative Director
bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com

Hire Betty's Daughter for your arts consulting needs!
"creating radical expressiveness in community"

Check out...Gumbo Yaya/or this is why we speak in tongues
"Creative Healing and Expression for Women of the Diaspora"
www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com

some kind of way

for Shirlette

sometimes the only way is stomping your foot
'til your words get thunder cousins
beating up through the floorboards
ready to represent

sometimes the only way is to close your eyes
throw your body towards the ceiling
bumping chests with god in greeting
sometimes the only way is to jump

sometimes the only way is slippers
refrigerator refuge
sometimes the only way is a seat
made of prayer, shifting like hello

sometimes the only way is words
clapped together and throat lined with silver
to echo off our faces
fill our small fists of nothing

some people would call
what you do
making a way
out of no way

but i think

you are proof
that there is always
always always
some kind of way home.

Gumbo YaYa Continues Feb. 22
with "Meditation and Creative Visioning:
Building Intergenerational Bridges Among Black Women and Girls" led by Kenya Harris (3:00-5:30)




Contact: Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative
Media Alert
bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com
www.bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com


Durham, NC- Feb. 17, 2009

The North Carolina Humanities Council and SpiritHouse-NC sponsor a creative healing and expression process for women and girls of the African diaspora in Durham, NC. We are pleased to announce that Kenya Harris, Gumbo YaYa's Intern, will lead this session along with two youth participants Bryonna and Nadirah.

The 12-week process, Gumbo YaYa, began January 4 and as is now gearing up to enter its third month with a series of performance workshops that will lead up to the final performance, March 29. Gumbo YaYa continues to incorporate methods for growth,expression, and community-building to actualize individual and artistic processes. The theme of this session is "Love is Radical: Approaches to Mothering, Daughter(ing), and Sister(ing)".

The "sista circle" uses improvisation, dance, journaling, meditation, storytelling, photography, theater, poetry, and music to explore the intergenerational relationships among black mothers, daughters, and sisters.

All sessions, materials, performances, and discussions are free for participants and audience members. Gumbo YaYa will provide child care and dinner during every "sista circle". Participants do not have to be students, or affiliated with any particular institution to participate.

Ebony Noelle Golden, Creative Director of Gumbo YaYa thanks the North Carolina Humanities Council, SpiritHouse-NC, and Healing with CAARE, Inc. for their generous sponsorship.

Nancy "Mama Nia" Wilson, Executive Director of SpiritHouse-NC said, "We are really looking forward to hosting Gumbo YaYa. This process will definitely help to continue conversations black women and girls are having about how we relate to each other. We hope this process helps mothers, daughters, and sisters strengthen their relationships with each other and the larger communities."

For more information about Gumbo YaYa visit www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com, or email bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com.

--
Ebony N. Golden, MFA, MA
Creative Director
bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com

Hire Betty's Daughter for your arts consulting needs!
"creating radical expressiveness in community"

Check out...Gumbo Yaya/or this is why we speak in tongues
"Creative Healing and Expression for Women of the Diaspora"
www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com

Gumbo YaYa "Sista Circle" Continues with Feb. 15
with "Dancing with Our Spirits: Understanding Our Lives Through Rhythm" with
Mabinti Shabu (3:00-5:30)



Contact: Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative
Media Alert
bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com www.bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com


Durham, NC- Feb. 12, 2009

The North Carolina Humanities Council and SpiritHouse-NC sponsor a creative healing and expression process for women and girls of the African diaspora in Durham, NC. We are pleased to announce that Mabinti Shabu of The Magic of African Rhythm will lead the Gumbo YaYa Sisters in a 4-session choreolab that will inform and enhance the participants individual lives and craft the choreography for the final community performance, March 29.

The 12-week process, Gumbo YaYa, began January 4 and as is now in its second month. Gumbo YaYa continues to incorporate methods for growth,expression, and community-building to actualize individual and artistic processes. The theme is "Love is Radical: Approaches to Mothering, Daughter(ing), and Sister(ing)".

Up-coming Sister Circles Include

Feb. 22, "Meditation and Creative Visioning: Building Intergenerational Bridges Among Black
Women and Girls"

The "sista circle" uses improvisation, dance, journaling, meditation, storytelling, photography, theater, poetry, and music to explore the intergenerational relationships between black mothers, daughters, and sisters. The "sista circle" series culminates in multimedia theater performance March 29.

All sessions, materials, performances, and discussions are free for participants and audience members. Gumbo YaYa will provide child care and dinner during every "sista circle". Participants do not have to be students, or affiliated with any particular institution to participate.


Ebony Noelle Golden, Creative Director of Gumbo YaYa thanks the North Carolina Humanities Council, SpiritHouse-NC, and Healing with CAARE, Inc. for their generous sponsorship.

Nancy "Mama Nia" Wilson, Executive Director of SpiritHouse-NC said, "We are really looking forward to hosting Gumbo YaYa. This process will definitely help to continue conversations black women and girls are having about how we relate to each other. We hope this process helps mothers, daughters, and sisters strengthen their relationships with each other and the larger communities."

For more information about Gumbo YaYa visit www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com, or email bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com.

In Your Hands

Introducing In Your Hands: A Letter Receiving Project
Since love is not scarce, our ancestors bathe us in it every moment that we dare to receive.

I have learned that there are sources of nurturing that are older than us and swifter than our bodies. I am noticing that those who are no longer here in physical form are teachers in the wind, showing us how we must relate to each other, if we want to survive longer than our bodies and longer than a system that denies us.

I have been writing urgent letters to my ancestors since before I knew they were watching and on the cusp of this new year they whispered a suggestion to me. “How about for this new year, as a gift to yourself, you receive some letters from us, the spirits of women that love you from eternity?”

As ever, my answer was yes. These daily letters from the most beloved of my known and chosen ancestors on behalf of all of the ancestors who have sent us love with their lives and dreams without us knowing came at exactly the right time. When I was afraid to trust myself, I was not afriad to trust their guidance for me. I re-learned a shifting methodology of loving myself firstly as their vessel and secondly as their recipient

Here is a letter I received from Ella Baker:

Big little sister,

Get your guard up against the traps that would seduce you away from your purpose and steer you towards convenience and charisma. Set yourself in the hard work of accountability and sharing. Sharing the work, sharing the skills, sharing the connections, sharing the insight. Like everyone else, I am talking about your health here.

As a worker, for justice, I was able to situate myself in the crucial places where my selflessness could birth community, but I was not so tied up in my own popularity among the inner circles of the movement(s) that I was not able to make the difficult choices, especially for economic justice, that had me excluded from so many spaces and conversations.

You are right to be youth-focused because this is about access. You are right to be obsessed with both the old and the dead because that is where you will get your grounding and context. You are right when you remember that you are not the one inventing this.

It is the example of your grandparents, your accountability to the youth and your living relationships to your sisters that will make your life and work meaningful. Never forget who your people are and what they deserve, which is all of who you are.

You have work to do.

EB

And my ancestors are socialist, so of course they would ask me to share these intimate insights and gifts with you. Of course they would want me to bring their messages to your waiting ears, but more than that I want to share this practice and encourage that you engage it for yourself.

I don’t know what ancestors speak to you or why and when they do, but I have been asked to ask you to listen, lovingly for what the universe wants you to know.

Can you join me? Think of the people who have influenced you, while they were living or through their written, or retold legacies. Just think about them and let your mind relax, let their energy surround and fill you. Create quiet times in your days in case they have something to say.

I encourage you to add your insights here on the “your letters” page if your feel that what you have received could provide healing and wisdom for the rest of us. I encourage you keep your writings for yourself if you feel that they should remain private. The messages of our living dead are sacred. They transcend the norms of intellectual property, and they should be treasured by your best impulse.

My intention here is to share with you an abiding sustaining faith in presence of those who have gone before and their participation in our everyday.

I invite your observance or participation with love.

Always,

alexis

Get Hip and Get Some Free Poetry in Your Life!

Get Hip and Get Some Free Poetry in Your Life!

Greetings lovers of poetry, art, and culture!

Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative is now accepting poetry, residency, and performance bookings for Black History, Women's History, and National Poetry Months.

If your organization, non or for profit, is located in New York and California, as well as in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Seattle, New Orleans, Tucson, and Washington D.C, you are in luck! Poets & Writers, an organization dedicated to bringing literary arts to communities across the country, will help pay the honorarium. Just visit http://www.pw.org/funding for more information.

Here is a short list of what I can offer:

1. Residencies: Poetry, Spoken Word, Performance Poetry, Experimental and Community-Based Performance
2. Readings: Poetry, New Works, Performance Works (original works)
3. Workshops: 1 hr, 1 1/2 hrs
4. Combos: Performance and Workshop
5. Teacher/ Artist Trainings: 1 hr, 1 1/2 hrs

Visit
http://bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com/a-poetics-of-process.php for teaching philosophy and sample lesson plan.

Bio:
Ebony Noelle Golden is the daughter of Pearl Glover, Bertha Sims and Betty Sims. She is a native of Houston, TX. Ebony holds a BA in English Literature and Poetry from Texas A & M University an MFA in Poetry from American University and a MA in Performance Studies from New York University. Ebony is an artist and cultural worker who has been awarded grants from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Fund for Southern Communities, North Carolina A & T University and New York University. She has been published by Black Issues and Books Review, American Book Review, Obsidian, Pluck, and Third World Press. Ebony serves as the creative director of Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative, a boutique arts consulting group, based in NYC and NC. Her current projects include, “Gumbo Ya/Ya or This is Why We Speak in Tongues”, Images: for Younger SiStars, The Community Writing Intensive, i hear you breathing for me/ an embodied blues for meagan williams (multi-media performance) and “again, the water carriers” (a full length book of poetry). Ebony’s work is informed by her ancestral and spiritual family, guides, and homes, primarily. She can be reached at bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com or ww.bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com.

Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative looks forward to working with you to create "radical expressiveness in community".

Yours truly in the arts,

Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative
www.bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com
www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com

The Revolution Starts at Home!!!!!

Hey all,
Check out a review by Aaminah Hernandez of the zine "The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Violence in Activist Communities" which features a segment on the work of Durham NC's UBUNTU family!

http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2009/02/revolution-starts-at-home-confronting.html