Yeah Right NO

Yeah right now.

NO.

Just no.

I do not feel like fixing feminism, planned parenthood , your website, your feelings, your ignorance .

I don't feel liek being called stupid , baseless ignorant and arrogant for typing on 15 minute breaks ,  in between life changing occurrences and dashes to be a human being to fix whatever pet fucking project you think I was  to stupid to know about.

No I am not crying , I am not even at this point that upset

BEcause for one apostate I have always known who you are, and for every other back road person who sees no problem in insuling my intelligence as publicly as possible and then being mealy mouthed, side winding and condescendingly specious in private.

You want to know what my beef is now.

Want to know why I am REALLY FUCKING angry .

BEcause that post had one sentence one.

ONE

with the words  planned parent hood in it.

Wasnt even about planned parenthood, was about MARGARET SANGER.

BUt hey fuck thats hit 

The majority of the post was about a small women's violence center in England struggling to stay alive being assaulted by the violence committed against the women they serve, teh ignorance and arrogance of white women, the racism of the country.

Remember teh ther oh I'd say  300 fucking some odd words  were about THIS 

THIS 

THIS

The Southall Sisters.

The organization that's in danger of being shut down, started by women of color BECAUSE

their are more streamlined versions.

And I swear on my life.

NO

Forgetthat sorry

Fuck this shit.

 YOu took one fucking sentence to bash me from an essay trying to save  a service to women of color

to call me an idiot 

to talk about EVERYTHING BUT  the organization I was talking about.

and suddenly my words have value.

GUess what

I'm still an idiot

I'm still stupid.

You're scared 

Guess what I'm WISHING i was  scared.

I'm  wishing that the person who overheard me talking about this didn't have MULTIPLE fucking storied from her family and her community about this organization and others for "choice"

I'm wishing that I MYSEF didn't have stories of it.

Oh that's right cause guess what I don't give a flying fuck about PP , Suuth hall, WHATEVER

I care about the WOMEN.

You talk about ME devaluing the women. You spent the entre essay calling me names ignoring the WOMEN I WAS TRYINGTO HELP AND THE HISTOry OF THEIr NEED

to prioritize AN ORGANIZATION.

See me?

I don;t care if it's called the pink teacup consortium . 

I CARE ABOUT THE WOMEN.

So no I f don't feel like laying stories of death distruction and sterilization in bits that you find APPROPRIATE or digestable .

IN THREADS WHERE YOU ARE STILL INSULTING ME AND TELLING ME MY    VOICE ABOUT MYSELF MATTERS LESS TAHN WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT ME.

so you can fix an organization

AFTER YOU SHAT ON ONE  TO TRY AND PROVE YOUR POINT

NO

someone else can do that shit.

I AM FUCKING DONE.

and if anyone asks butBA bridges and blah balah balh

Know what if being x yz gives ypu and excuse to be a fucking asshole jerk

I have had about all the patience for this  a 23 year old can manage.

And hey if you were paying anyattention to what i was saying in THE MOTHERFUCKING FIRST PLACE

Southall

Read more!

Know WhatFuck OFF

So saying that something has a racist classist history that preached the EXTERMINATIOn of women of color is  a "canard"

Mind you Nowehere in my selecively quoted piece do I malign their work but their history and their constant ignorance of it and the way it effects WOC 

But hey I got electe 

AGAIN THE VOICE OF WOMEN OF COLOR 

so someone could deelect me  to prove THEIR point which in no way makes any relaion to mine .

But you know what PP is GREAT  FUCKING GREAT.

And next time you wonder why Black women LAtino women AVOID that ish like the plague or why there are problems

Please tell me to shut up and ignore cause "m saying womens lives are cheap 

BEcause i want to talk about ALL TEH WOMEN

NOT JUST THE ONES  WHO ARE IN ONE ONLY ONE  ORGANIZATION

BUT I WANT TO HURT  WOMAN

YES YES I DO

But hey PP tried to get my ass aborted but that fucking doesn't matter

Hey i mean backwoods asshole shots at me aren't even fucking new.

And

Yes I went to college 

I was also sexuall y mistreated told I needed to be dead am poor and am brown 

but shit why listen to me 

cause maybe maybe I want to talk about something besdes teh glory of PP and instead the atcully women

Read more!

Newsflash

Anybody name the first major party Presidential Candidate?

Hint: She didn't have to be the new black cause gasp she WAS black.

But you know what I fucking LOVE right now.

That my skin , my race, my culture is a fucking punchline cause god forbid anybody not want to pave the fucking path with rose petals to the white house.

SO making fun and invalidating voters choices and mocking race and wah wah.

It's oaky to mock a black woman and a nation of women who may support and enjoy her as FEMINISTS

and to use race to do so because Hillary has it so hard and she could be the first

except she wasn't .

FIRST FUCKING OFF LEARN SOME GOD DAMN HISTORY YOU RACIST PETTY MYOPIC ENTITLED ASSHOLES

but hey lets erase some more brown bodies ( including someone who was THE ACTUAL FUCKING NOMINEE)

cause your fucking figurehead trophy president ( who is actually you know DANGEROUS to my rights)

isn't getting the cakewalk she wanted.

And just to note

I haven't seen Oprah since 2006.

But right were gonna build bridges and fix rifts in feminism and progressivism and liberalism.

I'm a bitch and I am actually black.

Ain't shit new about it.
Read more!

SITTO... being eveyone's tragedy

I'm annoyed.

And I'm annoyed intersectionally at a few different points. Wait lets make that PISSED. Not that wohoo righteous angry pissed but that , okay and you see me I am going to make some trouble , cause there is certain ish you just don' play with
First and fore most .

Please.

PLEASE

Whatever you can do to help the Southall Black Sisters . They need your written support if you have financial support. Heck if you got a blog and keyboard. Please link away across the universe.

Maybe it's because they make me think of the wonderful women of UBUNTU ,

but there is something so achingly sad to me about not just the closing but the reason for closing the center.

It's not " necessary" or services need to be streamlined.

* Blackamazon face palms*

I want to say I have something witty and appropriately flip and searing but I can't get much past a FOR REAL.

The center translates into multiple languages covers women of MANY different areas and is told well your too specific?!?

Dear country living on a scottish SCONE!

Why is it that whenever we think of streamlining or making things more effective, somehow magically and mystically it involves eliminating, streamlining or destroying the resources and avenues for women/people of color?

ESPECIALLY ,ESPECIALLY IN SEXUAL HEALTH AND VIOLENCE response.

It's not like a women who reports her husband for domestic violence is more likely to get taken in herself if she's brown or po...

Wait a minute she is!

It's not like Planned Parenthood isn't formed on the basis of one of the most VIOLENTLY racist eugencists who literally compared Aboriginal peoples to apes, and flaunted this fact and EVERY DAMN TIME people damn near wet themselves over her little to no mention is made of it under the apallling guise and with real straight faces under BUT LOOK AT WHAT SHE'S DONE FOR WOMEN.

wait I'm wrong there too?

This is why the tepid bullshit that is passing for intersectional analysis is falling at life these days.
If you can for a minute in your day take a perspective and or " look at the big picture" of

a) someone believing YOU SHOULDN'T EXIST in as few generations AS POSSIBLE
b) or structures believing and improved FLOW chart is more important than you hearing love and support in Gujurati BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY LANGUAGE YOU KNOW AND YOUR HUSBAND BEATS YOU EVERYDAY WHILE IMMIGRATION DENIES YOU SERVICES

please welcome to your privilege if you're not going to actively challenge it , at least shut the fuck up and let those of us for whom the realities of NOT having it are constantly endangered by your bright ideas IN PEACE.

Because you see this isn't about the fact that WOC need saving or do nothing.

No this is the case for WOC doing something , surviving thriving reaching back to help and aid each other across race , linguistic, socio economic barriers and being told that it's not what's needed.

When I talked originally about the Vagina Monologues I feel I badly articulated it well because I am 23 talking about shit I was feeling at like 18. Sudy does it much better.

What bugs me and continues to bug me , is this sense of white women get the fun, the ability to be proactive with their stuff , men get attention as either good people for not being complete assholes or the people we have to CONVINCE, without at all being presented as human beings we DIALOGUE ( not teach not instruct not spoon feed) but DIALOGUE WITH

meanwhile Women of Color, hey we just survive build , thrive and damn near have to knuckle up every where we go to do so , while we get passed about as totems

In a world where most of these things happen to US , why is it constant our opinions are the first to be devalued, or support erased

or it is more important to find reasons to JUSTIFY this constant devaluing of us and our bodies and or opinions

THAN TO STOP DOING IT?!?!

----------------------------------------------------------

I put in this break cause it's me breaking my January promise and it's related to teh US election and while its related to teh amazing devaluing of WOC bodies and pisspoor inter sectional analysis, it doesn't stem form the blogospher but something I'm hearing in the streets that is getting repeated in the blogospere. I am writing so much cause I REFUSE to link to most of it as really me being ANY MORE blindingly angry can't be healthy.

But here goes me

*deep breath*

It is disgusting and defucking plorable on a level I am damn near gobsmacked at at teh way Obama's periodically comments are covered versus Bill O"Reilly's lynching comments were.

More so it is disgusting the fact that while peopel are damn near out of their minds to correct Obama and say the most longwinded ( may i never be trapped in that party with that woman again please lord) over involved claptrap about why Obama's SO SEXIST OH MY FUGHGING GODADHAI)*@&(*#@^%!

And can not agree about whether or not it was intentional or not while calling it a clear cut example of his sexism and call to tech base instinct of men

And either silent or stuttering fools on the Blatant calls to white racism by Hillary Clinton.

Or when doing so think being coy and professing their neutrality or the need to focus on the big prize hides the open fucking racism in their commentary.

It is no more apparent than in this bullshit which I will link cause this is a NECESSARY and open fucking call out. ( Oh don't be fooled I am STILL BlackAmazon)

IF your main concern is that one word may be taken out of your vocabulary and your doing so because your major makes you very "Careful" about restricting language balh blah navel gazing privileged bullshit

There is no problem with the use of the words there is a definite problem with the fact some let you out of college being that closed minded and unable to see varying points that your expression is that fucking limited. Your main concern is to go talk to whoever let you out like that AND DEMAND FUCKING BETTER.

OR for the people who went but but blh blah blee open sex discrimination on Hillary cakes/popular lexicon

HEy when your pearls were clutched EXTRA tight over the use of GANG BANG please note In AMERICAN HISTORY LYNCHINGS WERE OFTEN THE SITE OF RAPE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT TO WOMEN.

so if you can manage a good flip out for that THIS IS NO DIFFERENCE.

But wait Michelle Obama is dodging bullets with shit ass American security, having PORN MADE OF HER KIDS, and having her very femininity questioned EVERYDAY but that gets two lines.

but wait tehre is no difference in women it's not at all connected to power race and entitlement

and were Obama's comments sexist /dogwhistles/secret signals.

In my personal opinion no.

But he is running and participating in a very VERY sexist/homophobic /racist/xeno phobic election .

His wordings posture and interactions with Senator Clinton are DESIGNED to underscore his masculinity versus her femininity, hers is designed to play up her whiteness

And frankly teh continued handling of Denis Kuchinich and his wife was a veritable car wreck in sexism , ageism, and sexist cliches run amok.

THAT SHOULD be discussed , that needs to be discussed the signals we send as a society , the way we allow those signals to proliferate to the point we are both looking for and trained to see them both for ourselves and used against ourselves ( and also a prime time for folks to sit the fuck down and realize as a man of color you may be pre disposed to recognizing racism and not sexism and as a white woman you do the exact opposite and as both neither party is qualified to tell WOC what were betraying and missing)

None of which is accomplished by doing it ONLY when the thing at stake is why can't we make the powerful MORE powerful so I can feel good


But shhhh I am black and female and therefore angry and irrational.

Read more!

SITTO.......Free post!

Uh Someone tell me what to write free suggestion AWAY

Anything you want to know.

It's not that I have nothing to write but i feel i been pendantic so fire Questions AWAY
Read more!

SITTO..... Somethings are better than sex

You know those lazy good for nothing young people the ones that can't be trusted to speak for themselves.

They are willing to walk seven miles to get to vote .


GOD DAMN IT I LOVE MY PEOPLE!
Read more!

Sex in the time of.... Admittance

The first person I remember touching my genitalia

Essentially called me a whore.

That's how I remember it. That's how I always will.

Even though for ten years I didn't remember it.


I could have told you how it happened , where it happened, when . I could tell you all the real reason it wasn't so bad , even though writing about it right now makes me shaky and more than a little uncomfortable.

I remember it because of theatre. I studied with a wonderful professor Andrew Borthwick Leslie ( who should have a website but scroll down), What Linklatter technique does is make you aware of the places and areas you hold tension. I hold my tension in my tongue. As shocking as it sounds , on of the characteristics of my speech is how much I hold back . It's bad, to the point every vocal teacher I have ever had has reached into my mouth to pull it out.

My classical teachers viewed it as a technique problem, Andrew said it was me physically keeping things back. It was my body physically trying to keep it self from telling it's own truth. My body would have violent spectacular meltdowns to prevent me from speaking out loud my own attachments to certain life events.

I did not want to admit to my own life, it might break me apart.

We can not admit, how far we have gone, how short we have come , how little we have grown , how much we have changed.

These last two weeks have had events that made me seriously think about admittance, and to me the y all circle back to this concept of love .

First in my mind so far was the Apology to the Stolen Generations in Australia*. Sadly this is just one of the many MANY instances of the abuse and genocidal destruction of Native culture by assimilation.

What struck me most is that in a testimony by a woman who was taken*, she talks about literally being told her family did not exist. Remembering her siblings and her parents and KNOWING they were real and being told no , you better not.

What kind of love keeps that memory in front of all those odds, what kind of love keeps a family knocking on doors , a father walking door to door, a woman able to pick out her niece 20/30 years later?

What is the magnitude of love you have to bear , and what is the magnitude of heartache you deal with when that love is not enough ? What do you have to do to live through that ?

And what happens when with less than an hour , those years of cognitive dissonance , those years of emptiness and disconnection, that pain that every time you say your face , or a baby , or a car.

Is accepted not as your imagination but as fact. That it is not only accepted as fact but acknowledged that your work your life is what made it happen. That the conversation shifts ever so subtly from did it even happen , to this is what it is ,how we feel about it is a direct reflection of who we are?

Is it enough? OF COURSE NOT. But what shocked me is how little was needed to give so many people even the beginnings of some peace , and how VIOLENTLY it was denied.

But what does this have to do with sex Amazon?

On valentine's day one of the big events is the Vagina Monologues.

I have a strange history with that play , as I started out loving it , so much so I stuttered when I met the advertiser at college,went to being perturbed, having an overt twitching reaction, to just moving

What bothered me I guess and I am only recently able to come close to even remotely articulating it so excuse me as I flub was

everything it said was true , but for so many it was the truth.

In so much as , as a young woman of color I felt /feel used. I was only there to provide tales of damage and pain or comedy . To stop domestic violence that never did seem to focus on me and mine.

Because yes after a massive car accident scared out of my thirteen year old mine and wondering if my organs were punctured a doctor examined me and said

" This a very mature *wink wink* 13 year old"

And I responded and felt "wrong"

and have had intimacy issues ever since.

That is not my life, that my relationship with my body didn't start there and won't end there, that as much as there is pain there is joy and life

And love

That yes my tongue will pull back but my heart goes forward. That the end is not the fairytale but the joy in learning I am worth that journey.

And for a play for women, it felt wrong to have to be happy for the success of it despite feeling bypassed and realizing that for all it's talk about dialogs there was o real place for this discussion to happen.

And to realize that this is what all discussions centered around my body's place in the world felt like.

That I should be happy/grateful/why was I whining about the feeling of this not being enough.

That as a piece of property, or a child, or an amorphous ideal I would have to pull back on what I spoke and how I spoke it for to be good enough to be worth care

Except that is not it , it is true but it is not the truth.

The truth is that even after years of separation this love of culture love of family, love of sels makes people work for the things how ever small , however not enough , and make them make lives of worthwhile work.

And it starts by admitting, by admitting something is wrong.

That we are not in balance, that the TRUTH is not being told.

The election in America has brought out an ugliness in politics and a disgust with people , I did not know I could muster. I have listened and watched and gaped in awe both at the vocal support for it’s marginalization of my life and the silence and piece meal half ass mewlings for peace and “consideration” of the “ coping” I have to do in a black female body.

The gasp and shock at the BETRAYAL and the feasting on crumbs of entitlement to my person and our lives for something we aren't included in anyway.

But that, that is not the story. I must admit I am wrong that in typing this I read through my links and realized.

I must admit to love. IF I am to work , if we are to work we must admit to love.

The love of the people , not the guilt in ourselves, the projects of ourselves, but the centering of the work and the lives and love of people that last generations and years.

That if it is about the love and not the power and the greed and the entitlement. There is little to small or to big that we can not begin to work with. Not solve not fix not allow our selves to sleep at night with.

We must admit to doing in the past and commit to doing more in the future.

I must admit to loving my sisters more than I love my indignation. I must admit to loving every part of our lives that brings us to be able to make so much of so little. I must admit to working not to make MY truth heard but THE truth , ALL OF IT.

We must admit this is true.-

* links courtesy of Livejournal sex_and_race

Read more!

For Valentines ( a lil late )

It is the return

of
SEX WITH THE AMAZON

This years week long ( or seven post whatevers longer) event shall feature exchanges with Sylvia my wifey and possibly and random odes and turn on's. Meditations on the serious the silly and finally were gonna define what in the hell is bringing sexy back and whether Justin Timberlake has to do with it.

Today is an ode

An ode to the back

You see The Amazon

is a tactile person. I touch and explore EVERYTHING.

The male back is a distraction.

I tend to fall in lust with that first.   my favorite thing is 

the passing scratch.

There is something about the push back of  moving across that muscle .

I love watching the male back . The different shapes the lengths.

. Where you can put two hands and have space at the side but it starts to arch forward into shoulders and then slants and slopes inth the waist.

what do you love , fixate desire deeply?

Read more!

Forgot to Laugh , Remembered to Live

So last week "Super Tuesday" I declared a holiday Fannie Lou Hamer Week. In which I am thankful to one of my heroes and more importantly I try to think and operate in the way I beleive she would ask me to. Then I had a SIX DAY work week.
and in my well I don't get to write or perform or think or breathe . I shut my whiny privileged ass up and realized that was a much part of my holiday as was declaring it because you know what change takes work. And what was my heroine but an agent of change.

The other is observation , the ability to look at what is going on around you and see places for growth

To be aware and to be willing to SPEAK

also to laugh , even in gallows humor to be in your

SO in no particular order thoughts/ideas/future posts/random musings as brought on by my new fave holiday

• There now. Make it a priority www.justice4nj4.com

• Every day I am thankful for my mother , my foremothers and the love and support of women of color and other women
• If you have ever worked six fourteen hour days straight I commend you
  

Democratic Party ( in honor of FLH)

• This is the first election i am voting in as a full tax payer.
  

• I think one thing that we really have to think about as a nation of people need to be real reflective right now. How did we get to a point when folks say with a straight face ( and more disturbingly partially correct) that having people feel their vote counts is un precendented in the past 20 years, says something very very SERIOUS.
  

• I am a recovering election/political junkie and I can tell you this black woman wants to hear nothing from no one, right about now. It has literally reached disgust levels. I am at the point where unless you are a woman of color I almost refuse to discuss the election with you. The freeness and ease with which both MSM and "progressive" "liberal" news sources have played fast and loose with my humanity , is so reminiscent of the auction block its not amusing . And no it's not "snarky" and you really don't get to laugh at it if you ain't going through it. Gallows humor is for those who have no other option , when you spend a good amount of time running you mouth on how this is backlash or patriarchy running amok cause of comments to Hillary ignore threats on MIchelle OBama's life , get a bit confused when i point out that this may be a good example of feminist preoccupation with power rather than ACTUAL safety of women, the dynamics race play and possibly a good illustration of why Black women aren't voting " as women". Do not bring me the same cartoon that circulated the internet a damn five days earlier as proof of your "getting it" but still why odn't we understand teh MISOGNY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I like my drink and my job id prefer not to lose either. Hence me not talking to anyone. As soon as someone wants to talk to me about issues I will but somehow in 2008 it's till about my breasts or my skintone so nope.
  
• Obama's campaign is not the spoiler to Hillary's campaign he's her opponent.
• If the Democratic party reseats the delegates from Michigan or Florida, or turns it over to superdelegates after abandoning black people in 2000 and 2004 , the love will be gone.
• Why I won't vote ofr Hillary ,multitudes of reasons but really Nevada when someone tries to actively disenfranchise people for being poor and colored. I am out. If it's her and McCain I'm voting for Mosley Braun, wait I may do that anyway
• The reason BFP , Sylvia hell even me weren't take seriously when we said this stuff was .. oh wait there is NONE. BUt tahnk you ladies for making me not cringe every time i see a " feminist" take in the MSM
• and can we for a minute stop pretending that we lose our analytical ability when we see whose getting press with what views .
  

News/Views

• IF anyone thinks the timing of the announcement of the charges for 9/11 considering the utter fail that has preceded it isn't suspect please explain to me why
• Sanesha Stewart got stabbed and now SHE'S the problem cause she had the all to not signal she was a MAN MAN I TELL YOU! New York not transphobic, me queen of England. .
  
• There needs to e a REAL discussion of poverty , ( and no not spearheaded by your favorite white man) and the ridiculous gap in the haves and have nots cause this shit is merely a honest reproduction of the common thoughts we think about poverty.
• I have given up on CNN.

Music/Culture

• Esthero is my new crush
• There is new Gnarls Barkley.
• WOHOOO Writer's strike over. If I had a minute I'd want to write about how we value any perceived labor vs "creativity"and the way we portray certain groups in media.
• See Brent sing. See me be all adorably " yeah my friend" , Act accordingly! I wubber him
  
• Give Kortney support. That is not optional
  
• I am so pissed I missed Persopolis the movie !
  
• My hair is in a rebellious phase
  
• Santogold go look up.

All About Amazon

• I think I want to go to Grad School
• I am deep in lust with someone who I can't explain why. That makes it even more arousing.
• My wife is a good PA
• Add is serious when your under stress.
• Anyone who reads this blog and wants to send me hair product cause my hair is literally rebelling. Just does not care what happens
  
• Dancing fixes most things in terms of mood.
• I think I may have been assaulted when I was younger and discovering that freed me up, that was both joyous and saddening.
• I miss teaching volunteering and general doogooding.
  

Please take this as my final holiday celebration. One thing I must be is thankful so for all of you who past or present have supported me and as i am about to throw my hands up and restart my email from the 23 please accept my loving gratitude and appreciation. I promise after February I'll be more integrated.
Read more!

Learning to be a daughter

Some days I am okay.

And some days I have dreams of falling teeth and wandering streets bleeding from my mouth in tears and wake up unsure of my mouth of my teeth of my very being.

Because I call for her and know in dreams that she may not come. And know some day there is no may.

She will not come.

Knowing she loves me , infuriates me , envies me, worries for me, worries me.

Knowing what I am.

I am her daughter, and hers and hers as well.

" To be a woman you must learn to be a daughter".- Toni Morisson Tar Baby

To dream of losing teeth in our culture is to dream of death or illness. And I am scared, worrying about how it could get worse or will get worse, having lived a life where " it could be worse " often sounded like a weather forecast rather than plea or tempt of fate.

Yet it never felt like all we had was it could be worse.

When we didn't have food, when we barely had shelter, when we nearly had no family, to when our family was scattered, to and to and to again.

Because of my mother.

She is ill , she will be for the rest of her life.

I went from barely telling people hesitant to speak it aloud , to make it real , to a child like relief of being able to tell a big secret.

Hello , My mother has MS, my dad s deported, and the United States government has spent more time in my life than it has balancing the budget since Truman!

Part of me wishing that the mysterious matter in her brain that is disintegrating would grow back.

But no.

You see my mom is the only person who touches my hair the way I do. Each curl seperate m loved individual. To her my hair is not as it is for most of the world some imposing mystifying seductive cloud .

It is something she made, and loves.

I am her daughter.

I am here because of her. I admire her stubbornness. I am in awe of it at times. But most of all I treasure it , and thank God and the Orisha's for it .

It is why I am here.

No one wanted me here.

I may talk about it or hint at it , but very early in my life and before she even told me I was aware my mother

Was not supposed to have me.

She had miscarried twice before and would twice after, had just come to America, and was holding a good job.

And I kicked her.

She was told it was folly, all she would do if she had me was clean houses.

And so she did.

You see when folks talk about reproductive rights, and the whole abortion sex abortion meme spins . I must be honest I can't be dispassionate, about it's meaning or its co option and erasure.

I am what happens when a black woman exercised her reproductive rights in the 80's. She works for paltry health care 40 or more hours a week , still does not make enough to not need food stamps, or have decent health care, or ever finish that degree.

Raises her daughter on people's floors , ignoring intermittent dizzy spells,fainting spells when her daughter needs to go to good schools, vomiting, losing children

Because she decided to have a little girl to have hair to play with, even though I only gave it to her now.

When I finished Tar Baby . I HATED Jadine Childs and still do . Like most it is because of the things I saw in her that have/had hated myself, the desire to be good, to be white, to thank the WRONG people the white people with power and money rather than the woman who breaks her back and while I have come to the right side in my mind. That shame doesn't go

I am her daughter and she had me when NO ONE valued a lil brown baby.

And I think in pieces mostly these days my ADD exacerbated by stress and a tiredness that leaves me often walking from room to room, watching her sleep making sure she is breathing. Culminating in a weeping session outside a burger joint on the Upper East Side

Having to gird myself up to tell my boss I need a schedule change, Doing a budget and realizing I make enough to not tank my FICO score any lower also realizing I have to start free lancing as I Make enough to survive but not to hopefully " take her off her feet"

Even in illness she pushes me better.

And I think about what to do , about what I will say in March about being a young woman of color. In a place where I don't feel safe, or valued

And the only thing I can think of is

We must learn to be daughters.

Even as I write this in awe of this woman who I love , I also remember the fear and shame she instilled in me for my sexuality and spirituality.

I remember her anger and her frustrations.

Her pigheadness and her ignorance

And I love her more.

Not because of them but because she was my mother and she taught me how to deal with them , that even when she was scared and perturbed she never let me be evil to those who would beg, or she would ask God to be better every night.

How she would counsel anyone

And how big that effect is /was/ ever will be on me.

And i think of friends whose mothers were not mine. Bandied by addictions abuse, government violence.

And that effect.

And I think we must learn to see the world as daughters.

To walk not claiming nothing has harmed us , or we can overcome it , but that it has formed us lovingly , uinlovingly, painfully and truthfully , that our mothers, our streets, our fathers, our lovers have birthed us in some ways.

setting us out to make ourselves.

Birthing others, loving them , holding them, betraying them. We cast out webs and entanglements and it is not the solution to cut them but to use them to make us stronger.

And I realize I see this at 23 because I am her daughter.

And i Get mad when people talk about these choices she's made this life she bore in theories.

I get mad when the Patriot Act is a set of words that just is Anti - American rather than the thing that tore her husband away.

I get mad when folks talk about Welfare Reform as a move to work instead of the thing that stopped her schooling.

I get mad when people say not voting for someone who would support these things is me saying I don't love women when I love this woman and so many like her so much.

And I am her daughter and realized itis this that made me carve a path to do something about what I am knowing.

Knowing that she avoided getting a MRI for nearly 15 years because she couldn't afford it , that was not her right. Because she was scared , didn't want to scare me, had no time, had no health insurance.

Because she didn't want to know.

And I am FURIOUS. I am angry she could do this to ME to herself to us. I am angry she ever had to make that chance.

And then I am awed. I am full of laughter amazed at her WILL. I want to tell people

" My well of sheer obstinacy HAS YET TO BE TAPPED"

I want to fight the world and laugh and bounce on my heels and say my mother fought the WORLD

I CAN DO ANYTHING CAUSE I AM HER DAUGHTER!

and then I also understand she fought her brain and her body

And I pray she can fight them more.

and I am 6ft tall 200+ pounds curled into her 5'7 170 and dropping watching her play with my hair

Every curl precious and I listen for her breath

Running my tongue against my teeth thanking whoever will listen that for now she is still here.







Read more!

My Friends Are Awesome and Talented

In the spirit of me for one day talking about good things

I GET TO BRAG ON MY FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First and foremost


GIVE KORTNEY WHATEVER YOU CAN AND GIVE IT TILL IT HURTS

I personally think and have always thought that the real power of media was not about making power structures remaking power structures or becoming big and shiny, but about telling the truth.

Not in giving voice to the voice less but about tearing away the pretense that their is such a thing as voiceless people. Rather than a society that creates the illusion they are. And to tell the stories of how they live ( not struggle not survive but live ) so that when we move forward in society that rather than an illusory compilation of memes and falshoods we work form the reality of life.

Blackademic was/is ( I know Kortney but I get to be hopeful) one of those blogs. One of the best.

SO how shocked are you that her film is one of those.



Ooh and best believe at WAM I'mma hustle at least my session if not all of em in that tank top .


------------------------------------------------------------------

Next up the boys

Who have a super hero nickname that only one of them knows and I will not tell them cause no.THEy don't answer emails when I volunteer to cook for them and yet I Still love them. But I wubber these three gentlemen for different reasons, and their all talented.

And wonderful

and caring

and smart

and hot. Three different kinds of HOT


Perfectly dreamy! ( I did that for the SOLE purpose of annoying at least two of em should they find this)

My name is Blackamazon I am an imp

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

WARREN HAS A WEBSITE WARREN HAS A WEBSITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So warren was the guest capstone writer for the Carnival of Radical Education ( which IS getting it's on website)

He's also a game designer, and a poet and a writer, one of the loves of my life.

With a twisted sense of humor a love of postmodernism ( also hes the kind of friend you can have what has now been a SIX YEAR debate on post modernism with . I still hold firm Hip Hop is postmodern , Irony and sarcasm are not they are just lazy . Also post modernism only has value as it grounds people in the effects of the performative aspects of our society's effect on individualism, which irony and sarcasm don't do.Warren believes they have some value. Warren is a kinder person than I am)

But his use of words and his thoughts and ability are a must see GO NOW!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carlos is going to the World Poetry Slam for louderarts! *KERMIT YELL*

I love him well for many reasons

but most importantly

How many human beings can make the phrase

" THIS IS THE SNACK" so adorable.

At the

old

DUSTY

so much older than I am

age of

25.

Here's to old man Gomez.

He makes fun of me for being young so he's now old.

( plus one of my favorite women said I could keep her at the event he won at bonus points for that)


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last and Not Least ( it occurs to me I put my peeps in height order HEE )

My knight in shining SHINY!

besides being wonderful and talented and awesome and generally just fantastic

I have a special love for this human being right here.

He is tall. wears interesting jewelry

and has tattoos

Which means EVERYTIME and I do mean EVERYTIME I see him I go " HI"

*proceeds to physically investigate,poke, and stare unabashedly cause well SHINY*
and he doesn't run away screaming He is good peoples!

And tall! Really TALL!

with absurdly long eyelashes that as a female who has poked herself in the pupil with a mascara wand ,I growl in his general direction

HE"S PUTTING OUT AN ALBUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and you can see him!

AND YOU SHOULD!
BRENT SHUTTLEWORTH ALBUM RELEASE SHOW - BUY TICKETS NOW!

The Zipper Factory
336 W. 37th Street
(between 8th & 9th Avenues)

Saturday, Feb. 23rd
9:00pm

TICKETS ON SALE NOW:
www.zippertheater.com powered by OvationTix
( expect this one for most of February)


PLUS



Dear Lord

He's pretty

*dodges incoming tailwap*

AM EXPLOITING FOR FRIEND WIFEY EXPLOITING FOR FRIEND!



Read more!