Milles Merci's

So I have to start out by saying I couldn't let this post be my 666th one. Cause eep. I am superstitious.

But I wanted to say thank you to everyone from the bottom of my heart .


It's also funny because well the thing I am often most criticized for is my inappropriate forthrightness.

So yep I ask for things when I need or HEY EVEN WANT them. And you know what when I don't, when I can do it on my own , or make it through myself . I ask folks to stop .

( GOD HOW AWFUL AM I )

and it's not cool or funny to see that someone spend that much time formulating ways to tell the world they wish for your destruction.

it's not cool to see someone straight up abandon certain basics of erasure and POC representation just because the material comes from you

And I want to acknowledge that flat out , because a WHOLE bunch of you seem to have (re)found this blog and my tumblr from this ,and making a nice set of footprints all over my search and engine pages from it.

and sorely and sadly I'm sure you were

to notice that ,

I write( wrote) in the past year , about Antoine Dodson, the state of Jezebel ( ONCE) , a hope to get to portland for a friends wedding, Black Girls Rock, Duanna Johnson,stuntin, Stuntin part 2 , my big ole nappy head etc etc

And I write this to say that

I am not living in 2008, I am not ( unless provoked or reminded) focused on the Adele/WAM incident/Seal Press incident.

I am focused on Adele cause well she's Adele and AWESOME.

The apex and nexxus of my life is not defined by how I get attention from people and how it gets to be it's largest scale .

It is not structured and fizated around moment's white people or women act wrong or right.


It is meeting a classroom of kids and hearing how they use the internet, it is pressed into smell of a man's neck, it is the joy of a friend's laugh, it is learning a basic skill and getting to see how it makes something you love ( I learned a drumming para diddle!!), the smile of a baby , the work of you and your sister circle

it is curled around depression, watching your body expand and contract as if it is beyond you, it is every moment we grin when we want to scream, clench our fists when we want to cry, it is reaching for something and falling, and being crushed

and then getting up

After WAM I helped a SPEAK! CD . I advised AMC . I came to love a city everyone made fun of like a healing vacation . I linked up with sistren performed, wrote, sang , dreamed.

And no one who hates me or wishes to circumvent me wrote about that.

But I did.

Because for all the focus on what I DID , on how I failed, on how I was rowdy. The what's next ( YEP I TOOK IT TO WEST WING), the searching , the building the linking the creating, the part that sustained and made me able to do the rowdy but didn't draw the eyes of the " right kind of people" or made me more and more " irrelevant" seemed disappeares

More than anything else from this I have learned that so many of you have shared THAT with me.

Have let me into your lives and for a reason I have no idea but am so eternally grateful for been concerned with mine.

BUT

I don't know my own work they way I should. After 6 ( yes 6 GOOD GRIEF) years on the webs other peopel take my words and work far more seriously in minutae than I did or ever thought to.

Which I need to change.

I haven't fully told you about my work with certain groups which I am debating cause it is a concern for my safety but also because well this work needs to GROW

and things i just love and focusing on that love.

But thank you so much and please believe I feel it and need it and thank god for it.

A thing to learn

I am superstituous

Also

announced my tumblr on this blog! Nice try!

Please believe

I ain't never scared .

All anyone has for me is sorry

I couldn't write this on International Women's Day and that's probably part of why this happens to me.

Because it felt wrong. Because it feels wrong and mean and petty to me to bring something up like this on a day to celebrate women.

Like I shouldn't be furious and upset and fucking devastated that at least peopel I thought were with me would at least notice I got disappeared.

Like hey maybe on International Women's Day , me an international woman would matter, but hey this is a week where I'm starting to let go of illusions , and maybe this illusion of me being anything than a postcard to your revolution is one of the things I need to let go of.

Because certainly it's not like anyone else is changing or growing no matter how much they claim to be.

And people get applause and joy and shows for their wisdom and growth.

And I , I get the fucking grief and the debt and the wasted potential and the sorrow. I get to say really smart thing , and make really important observations and two hour communtes

but if you say what I said over cocktails in a way that makes people feel good you are leader and you get to feel bad about the way you came .

but you're conflicted so hey RIOTGIRLL HIP HOP FEMINIST SOCIAL MEDIA HOT STUFF BULLSHIT.

and yes I am talking about this

It must be nice to be able to write your woes and cares and concerns for being able to have your book ready by winter .

To write an entire section , well lets be honest MOST OF THE GODDAMN article about a moment you " witnessed"

to be assured that no one thinks your the failure of feminism when you penn your misgivings.

wonder what it's like to make that stand when all you have is your

crying friend in your arms

your tattered dreams of studying

your belief in fact that we are and forever will be enough?

The Seal Press debacle wasn't WOC engaging in negative discourse magically happening ( though the cut to the white women who wrote about instead of me was slick )

Ms. Nigga

I got to be that NIGGA BITCH for years.

Because I said fuck em.

To look at from a lens of wanting to believe in your friends good intentions, I got to look at it from being called a date rapist by no less than one of the premiere English language FEMINIST magazines

IN THE WORLD

" look to the comments"

You mean the one where a commenter spends here entire commentary going fuck me?

I looked to the comments , on 15 minutes at 9-5 job , wondering what the fuck I had done SO BAD vomitting into a toilet.

You didn't read the premiere African American site write you out for how hard things like this are ON WHITE WOMEN ( I WISH I WAS KIDDING)

And picking my shit back up and smiling.

Because that's what you damn well do.

or that around all this new found LEARNING and analysis of the role of what happened here

NO one talks about what happened here

About how when I asked those questions pointed out these gulfs , I got slapped around , because that is not at all pert of what happens to women who ask questions and the isolation of feminism

It's not just a silent isolation but often a pragmatic one a loud dusty Bloody rageful silencing for the " greater good"

or that to this day I am still called a beggar

because when I turn down jobs and book deals and " offers of partnership" and possibilities of panels I'm just playing the game badly

and when I have to chase people for 25 or 50 dollars because this week this is the difference between being able to give my mother the money for this weeks Doctor's appointment of having the lump in her breast go unchecked for possibly another month.

or begging may be the only way i got to see my father THIS FUCKING decade. Because of the same state violence everyone likes TALKING about

and no one gets BACK to you or even fucking ANSWERS .

but they respect your work

Right?

The cut the deep bit , the part that drips tears onto this keyboard that , makes my heart hurt.

is that it still is the " Seal Press" debacle.

It's not the Blackamazon/Adele Nieves/BFP/Sylvia attack

It's not the racist cartoon problem.

It's the Seal Press debacle because no matter what in the end everyone is still more concerned with how the white press house felt about it.

It's the Amanda Marcotte controversy because dying jungle natives are incidental?

It's not coincidental that the issues around white women are given deep thought , the concerns of " cool" women of color are revolutionary and thought provoking ( and let's not even talk about how much of that is connected to their proximity to white media)

but "those" women , those who scrape it together, who make words and sounds and little pieces of earth for ourselves

are not enough.

Aren't diversified enough could " use some critique"

Need to tell you what they want?

and now after all of that you still can't say my GODDAMN NAME

but wait for it wait for it

I am sure you're sorry

All anyone has for me is sorry

I couldn't write this on International Women's Day and that's probably part of why this happens to me.

Because it felt wrong. Because it feels wrong and mean and petty to me to bring something up like this on a day to celebrate women.

Like I shouldn't be furious and upset and fucking devastated that at least peopel I thought were with me would at least notice I got disappeared.

Like hey maybe on International Women's Day , me an international woman would matter, but hey this is a week where I'm starting to let go of illusions , and maybe this illusion of me being anything than a postcard to your revolution is one of the things I need to let go of.

Because certainly it's not like anyone else is changing or growing no matter how much they claim to be.

And people get applause and joy and shows for their wisdom and growth.

And I , I get the fucking grief and the debt and the wasted potential and the sorrow. I get to say really smart thing , and make really important observations and two hour communtes

but if you say what I said over cocktails in a way that makes people feel good you are leader and you get to feel bad about the way you came .

but you're conflicted so hey RIOTGIRLL HIP HOP FEMINIST SOCIAL MEDIA HOT STUFF BULLSHIT.

and yes I am talking about this

It must be nice to be able to write your woes and cares and concerns for being able to have your book ready by winter .

To write an entire section , well lets be honest MOST OF THE GODDAMN article about a moment you " witnessed"

to be assured that no one thinks your the failure of feminism when you penn your misgivings.

wonder what it's like to make that stand when all you have is your

crying friend in your arms

your tattered dreams of studying

your belief in fact that we are and forever will be enough?

The Seal Press debacle wasn't WOC engaging in negative discourse magically happening ( though the cut to the white women who wrote about instead of me was slick )

Ms. Nigga

I got to be that NIGGA BITCH for years.

Because I said fuck em.

To look at from a lens of wanting to believe in your friends good intentions, I got to look at it from being called a date rapist by no less than one of the premiere English language FEMINIST magazines

IN THE WORLD

" look to the comments"

You mean the one where a commenter spends here entire commentary going fuck me?

I looked to the comments , on 15 minutes at 9-5 job , wondering what the fuck I had done SO BAD vomitting into a toilet.

You didn't read the premiere African American site write you out for how hard things like this are ON WHITE WOMEN ( I WISH I WAS KIDDING)

And picking my shit back up and smiling.

Because that's what you damn well do.

or that around all this new found LEARNING and analysis of the role of what happened here

NO one talks about what happened here

About how when I asked those questions pointed out these gulfs , I got slapped around , because that is not at all pert of what happens to women who ask questions and the isolation of feminism

It's not just a silent isolation but often a pragmatic one a loud dusty Bloody rageful silencing for the " greater good"

or that to this day I am still called a beggar

because when I turn down jobs and book deals and " offers of partnership" and possibilities of panels I'm just playing the game badly

and when I have to chase people for 25 or 50 dollars because this week this is the difference between being able to give my mother the money for this weeks Doctor's appointment of having the lump in her breast go unchecked for possibly another month.

or begging may be the only way i got to see my father THIS FUCKING decade. Because of the same state violence everyone likes TALKING about

and no one gets BACK to you or even fucking ANSWERS .

but they respect your work

Right?

The cut the deep bit , the part that drips tears onto this keyboard that , makes my heart hurt.

is that it still is the " Seal Press" debacle.

It's not the Blackamazon/Adele Nieves/BFP/Sylvia attack

It's not the racist cartoon problem.

It's the Seal Press debacle because no matter what in the end everyone is still more concerned with how the white press house felt about it.

It's the Amanda Marcotte controversy because dying jungle natives are incidental?

It's not coincidental that the issues around white women are given deep thought , the concerns of " cool" women of color are revolutionary and thought provoking ( and let's not even talk about how much of that is connected to their proximity to white media)

but "those" women , those who scrape it together, who make words and sounds and little pieces of earth for ourselves

are not enough.

Aren't diversified enough could " use some critique"

Need to tell you what they want?

and now after all of that you still can't say my GODDAMN NAME

but wait for it wait for it

I am sure you're sorry