Guest post by Jillian Ford Folks have called me crazy much of my life. For the first two decades, “crazy” was a term of endearment: a way to signal my individuality and creativity. In my 20’s, “creativity” slid into “eccentricity.” Now in my third decade, “eccentricity” […]
Category: Activism
Waiting to Exhale
(For Eric Garner, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and numerous others) Wait. Over the past few days, weeks, and months there have been eloquent words spoken, passionate poems and prose written, and thoughtful commentaries and reflections offered about the righteous rage, indignant indifference, fear, sadness and ambivalence that black folk and allies have felt as […]
New Series: Voices From Inside – Locked Away for a Lifetime: Barred from Becoming a Parent
This week the Crunk Feminist Collective is honored to bring you two pieces from women incarcerated in California prisons and jails. Their stories are here for us to read because of the incredible advocacy work of Justice NOW, an organization that works with incarcerated women by providing legal services, supporting prisoner organizing efforts, working with […]
Words to Live By
I’m ready to say “don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lorde split ya” to the month of October. Is it me or was this past month just extra ridiculous? From the ongoing shenanigans in Ferguson, to the exploits of so-called white allies in the anti-street harassment movement, to the tomfoolery of Thug […]
Reflections on Respectability
Trigger Warning: Discussions of violence Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they […]
Say What?: On Speechlessness, Racism and Respectability in #Ferguson
“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” (excerpt […]
The Blame Game: Black Women, Shame, and Victim Blaming
(Trigger Warning) I will never forget listening to the raging voice of a man I didn’t know on the other end of a phone line alongside my homegirl in Florida. We sat in a room with the door closed while she told me what had happened the night before to preface the voice mail I […]
Detroit Goddamn
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I mistakenly thought that environmentalism was something simply to do with saving the rainforest and the ozone layer. “Environment” was a fancy word for places far away from the working class former factory town where I lived. Certainly, “saving the environment” was important for all of us, but […]
Angels and Ghosts
Every day I walk or drive through historic Black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia where upwards of 50% of residential properties are vacant, abandoned and sometimes burned down (but not demolished). I see empty buildings that used to be schools, recreation centers, community centers, and businesses. I see extraordinary flooding each time it rains; rushing water […]
Black Queer Trouble in Literature, Life, and the Age of OBama: Part II
Originally Delivered by Cheryl Clarke as the Kessler Lecture on Dec. 6, 2013 at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center Scenes of black queer and feminist resistance; or “forced confinement and forced mobility” Recently I said the following at a “Symposium: Black Women’s Studies and the Transformation of […]