Black feminism is not just an American phenomenon. Black women across the diaspora have articulated how they do and conceptualize feminism, taking into account how their surrounding environment calls for specific strategies. Black feminism is global and diverse. To understand Black feminism then means taking into account all these voices and how we can learn from them.
Scholars Brenda Nyandiko Sanya and Anne Namatsi Lutomia give an overview of the importance of including African women in the vision of a unified African Diaspora in a 2015 Feminist Africa article. Click here to read the article and learn more about African women and feminism.
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Writer Audre Lorde is known for her poetry and works like Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Audre Lorde identified as a Black lesbian feminist. She brought to the forefront a critique of White supremacy, imperialism, as well as homophobia among Blacks. Today her work is central to Black feminist studies on sexuality and identity.
In 1979 Audre Lorde gave a speech about Lesbian and Gay Rights. Click the video below to hear Audre Lorde speak to the importance of LGBTQ rights. Day 15: Listen to When Identities Collide: Sexuality and Black Feminism by Kimberly Springer11/15/2016 Sexuality is a central theme of Black feminist discourse. Black women have been subjected to sexual stereotypes like the Jezebel and Welfare Mother. These stereotypes characterize Black women as sexually deviant and in need of restraint. Beyond that, these stereotypes serve to reinforce heteronormativity, rendering the lived experiences of Black queer women invisible.
Kimberly Springer, a Black sexualities scholar, discussed the importance of using Black feminist theory to understand sexuality with WBEZ in Chicago. Click here to play the interview. Sister Circles refer to gatherings that center on spirituality, healing and coming together as Black women. Research shows that Sister Circles provide Black women an outlet for anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.
Today we encourage you to engage in self-care. Check out this blog on Black women and self-care for suggestions.
Assata Shakur is known for her role in the Black Power Movement. Today she inspires a number of Black feminists, like Patrise Cullors, a co-founder of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
To learn more about Assata Shakur, watch her in her own words in the documentary below. One purpose of Black feminism is to combat controlling images of Black women. Controlling images of Black women exist due to historical and cultural beliefs that define them as hypersexual, aggressive, or conniving. Some responses to the stereotypes, however, are equally restrictive.
In a 2015 Feminist Wire article, Sikivu Hutchinson writes about how the church is one such place the presents alternative images of Black women that actually serve to reinforce sexism. Click here to read the article. One misconception of feminism in general is that it is exclusionary to men. On the contrary feminism exposes the ways gender inequality affects both women and men, especially men who are queer or trans. However, many Black men correctly critique mainstream feminism for its role in perpetuating racism and discrimination against Blacks. Unfortunately, many Black men are unaware that Black feminism is an alternative or that Black feminists have the exact same concerns.
Today we read two blogs explaining why this form of feminism is Black men as well for them as well.
On the 10th Day of #BlackfeministLit, we reflect on the Black women activists who laid the foundation for the concerns of Black feminists which include mass incarceration, reproductive and environmental justice, and anti capitalism.
Angela Davis became known as a prison abolitionist when she protested the unlawful treatment of Blacks and other groups of color. Heavily involved with the Black Liberation and communist movement, Davis has become a scholar-activist whose work highlights alternatives to systems of oppression including Are Prisons Obsolete?. Click play on the video below to hear Angela Davis in her own words.
Today's Black feminist thoughts are brought to you by Toni Morrison. Born in 1931, Morrison began writing about Black experiences in novels, poetry, and prose to center the experiences of people who looked like her. Morrison is known for over dozens of works including Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Sula. She became the first Black woman in the United States to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Click play on the video below to learn more about the life and work of Toni Morrison
Today's #BlackFeministLit is brought to you by Zora Neale Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston was a Black woman artists and scholar whose work centered on Black American life during the Harlem Renaissance. She is best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Thus, Black feminists have created space for Black women in art as well. Hurston was also a well-known playwright. The Library of Congress holds a collection of ten of Hurston's plays that can be viewed online or even downloaded in PDF version. Browse the Zora Neale Hurston collection at the Library of Congress here. Check out 20 other important Black women artists here.
Legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw is one of the foremost thinkers in the field of Black feminism. Her groundbreaking work on the theory of intersectionality includes not only legal scholarship, but also scholar-activism as the executive director of the African American Policy Forum.
Google trends shows that interest in intersectionality has been on the rise. Intersectionality refers to the way that systems of oppression merge to create cumulative experiences of disadvantage and privilege depending on one's social identity. To learn more about intersectionality, read Crenshaw's 1993 Stanford Law Review article "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color." Day 6: Watch a Minidocumentary on Ida B. Wells - A Black Woman Journalist and Antilynching Advocate11/6/2016 This week we have focused on the way Black women have laid the foundations for Black feminism as a field, movement, and a form of critical praxis. One woman whose work exemplifies Black feminism as critical praxis is Ida B. Wells. Ida B. Wells was an antilynching advocate during the Jim Crow era. Her work investigating lynchings in the South brought to light how widespread these anti-Black crimes were in the US.
PBS has a documentary detailing her life titled The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow | Ida B. Wells: A Lifetime of Activism. Click here to view the brief documentary and learn more about this courageous woman. The Combahee River Collective was an organization of Black lesbian feminists founded in Boston during the 1970s. In 1973 they released a statement that would go on to serve as a foundational text in the field of Black feminism in the United States: "We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. [1] During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face." Read the rest of their statement here. Join us on Twitter Friday at 1 pm EST with #BlackFeministLit to chat about this week's readings.
As the days before the Presidential election winds down, we reflect on the Black women who have protested and labored for the rights of Black citizens in the United States. Fannie Lou Hamer represents one of many Black women civil rights activists.
Born in 1917, Fannie Lou Hamer grew up in a family of sharecroppers in Mississippi. At age 37 she became active in voter registration drives in Mississippi. As an activist she was assaulted by the police and the KKK, years after she had also been a victim of forced sterilization. Fannie Lou Hamer lived the Black women's struggle in many ways. She used it to call for equal protection under the law. Play the video below to here Fannie Lou Hamer's speech to the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Yesterday, we highlighted the work of Maria W. Stewart, an abolitionist whose passionate speeches and prose inspires the work of many Black feminists today. One Black feminist scholar who writes about Maria W. Stewart and other Black feminists of history is sociologist Patricia Hill Collins, author of Black Feminist Thought.
Collins gives an outline of the various ways Black women practice Black feminism in her 1996 Black Scholar article "What's in a name? Womanism, black feminsim, and beyond." Collins published this piece as Black feminism entered the academy through the writing of scholars like bell hooks, Angela Davis, and Alice Walker to name a few. She writes of Black feminism at the time: "Current debates about whether black women's standpoint should be named "womanism" or "black feminism" reflect this basic challenge of accommodating diversity among black women." (Collins 1996:9). Read the rest of the article here and join us Friday from 1pm - 3pm EST for the #BlackfeministLit Twitter chat to discuss this week's topics. |
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