For Black Women & Girls
Dear Us:
You were the rim of the world—its beginning. Primary. In the first shadow the new sun threw, you carried inside you all there was of startled and startling life. And you were there to do it when the things of the world needed words. Before you were named, you were already naming.
Hell’s twins, slavery and silence, came later. Still you were like no other. Not because you suffered more or longer, but because of what you knew and did before, during, and following that suffering. No one knew your weight until you left them to carry their own. But you knew. You said, “Excuse me, am I in the way?” knowing all the while that you were the way. You had this canny ability to shape an untenable reality, mold it, sing it, reduce it to its manageable, transforming essence, which is a knowing so deep it’s like a secret. In your silence, enforced or chosen, lay not only eloquence but discourse so devastating that “civilization” could not risk engaging in it lest it lose the ground it stomped. All claims to prescience disintegrate when and where that discourse takes place. When you say “No” or “Yes” or “This and not that,” change itself changes.
So the literature you live and write asks and gives no quarter. When you sculpt or paint, organize or refute, manage, teach, nourish, investigate or love, you do not blink. Your gaze, so lovingly unforgiving, stills, agitates and stills again. Wild or serene, vulnerable or steel trap; you are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured. Porch or horizon, your sweep is grand.
You are what fashion tries to be—original and endlessly refreshing. Say what they like on channel X, you are the news of the day. What doesn’t love you has trivialized itself and must answer for that. And anybody who does not know your history doesn’t know their own and must answer for that too.
You did all right, girl. Then, at the first naming, and now at the renaming. You did all right. You took the hands of the children and danced with them. You defended men who could not defend you. You turned grandparents over on their sides to freshen sheets and white pillows. You made meals from leavings, and leaving you was never a real separation because nobody needed your face to remember you by. And all along the way you had the best of company—others, we others, just like you. When you cried, I did too. When we fought, I was afraid you would break your fingernails or split a seam at the armhole of your jacket. And you made me laugh so hard the sound of it disappeared—returned, I guess, to its beginning when laughter and tears were sisters too.
There is a movement in the shadow of a sun that is old now. There, just there. Coming from the rim of the world. A disturbing disturbance that is not a hawk nor stormy weather, but a dark woman, of all things. My sister, my me—rustling, like life.
Toni Morrison
A Letter from The Guide’s Creator
This is a project of love to Black women and girls as well as a letter to younger versions of myself. This is also my attempt to be for other Black women and girls what I craved, whether I knew it or not, at other points in my life. This effort is ongoing as a means of self-definition and exploration for Black women and girls and also as a means of defining ourselves despite and beyond others’ expectations of us. Wherever you are reading this from, I see you, I hear you, I mourn with you, I stand with you, and I love you.
Why is this section just for Black women and girls? Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought
Black Feminist Thought is a field of knowledge, research, praxis, and a lens through which to understand the unique implications of Blackness and Womanhood. Since the intellectual work of Black women has been suppressed over the course of history and presently, reclaiming and centering these stories not only preserves the intellectual traditions of Black women of the past and also encourages continued contributions to Black feminist thought. To contribute to this project, please use the submission tool here.
This page will focus specifically on the identities, knowledge, experiences, and stories of Black women, specifically within the context of the United States. In doing so, this work aims to interrogate socialization as a cite of white-normative social reinscription that may incentivize white performativity as a means to measure success for Black women as the degree to which they assimilate into the dominant ways of being. Identity performance and socialization is a concept by which identity becomes a project or conscious effort taken to present oneself within social interactions (Duit, 2008).
Anti-Blackness: attitudes and practices of people and institutions, that work todehumanize Black people in order to maintain white supremacy -- an elevation of white culture or attempts to separate oneself from Black cultural norms (Amherst College, n.d.) As Dumas and Ross assert in Black Critical Theory or Black Crit, anti-Blackness is endemic. “Antiblackness is not simply racism against Black people. Rather, antiblackness refers to a broader antagonistic relationship between blackness and (the possibility of) humanity”
Misogynoir: Coined by Dr. Moya Bailey was developed to describe “the specific hatred, dislike, distrust, and prejudice directed toward Black women.” Examples are in racial dating preferences, tone policing, maternal mortality, political and job place leadership, etc. Crenshaw states that in theoretical discourse on Blackness, Black women are “Theoretically erased.” Black Feminist Thought or Black Feminist Theory can be used to center the dual marginalization of Blackness and Womaness as a result of racism and sexism.
The primary framework guiding this evolving project is Patricia Hill Collins Black Feminist Thought. Black Feminist Thought specifically centers both Blackness and Womaness as Black women have historically and presently not been centered in feminism which centers white women or Black thought which centers Black maleness.
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
The concept of self definition involves a rejection of the dominant group's definition of Black women and Black women's imposition of their own self-definition.
“She is beautiful, whole, and free. And she is also me.”
The matrix of domination, which illustrates how systems of oppression impact groups of multiple marginalities in ways that are supported structurally, disciplinarily, hegemonic ally, and interpersonally.
Collins also notes the importance in "discovering, reinterpreting, and analyzing the ideas of subgroups within the larger collectivity of U.S. Black women who have been silenced" meaning that we must also give equal attention to the groups of Black women who have been especially marginalized, such as Black lesbians, differently abled Black women, Black women of all body sizes, and Black non-binary folks. For more information on the intersections of Blackness with other forms of oppression, please visit the other pages on this resource guide.
Oppositional Gaze, bell hooks
bell hook’s Oppositional Gaze posits that Black women and girls can and should be represented, not as a reaction to existing white-dominated narratives, but creates a space for “new transgressive possibilities for the development of identity.” By using bell hooks’ (1992) “oppositional gaze” concept as a frame, we posit that the representation of Black women and girls in as well as Black women and girls’ development of a critical lens and analytic skills while consuming or creating media and interpersonal relationships is central to holistic and healthy racial and social development and performance.
For Further Exploration
On Trans Dissemblance: Or, Why Trans Studies Needs Black Feminism. Varun Chaudhry, 2020.
Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory. Angela P. Harris, 1990.
Unapologetic: A Black, Queen, and Feminist Mandae for Radical Movements. Charlene A. Carruthers.
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. Brittney Cooper.
Women, Race, & Class. Angela Y. Davis.
Bad Feminist. Roxane Gay Homegoing. Yaa Gyasi.
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. Melissa Harris-Perry.
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Patricia Hill Collins.
Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Bell Hooks. Killing Rage: Ending Racism. Bell Hooks.
Sister Outsider. Audre Lorde.
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, A Biomythography. Audre Lorde.
The Summer We Got Free. Mia Mckenzie.
Coming of Age in Mississippi. Anne Moody.
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. Monique W. Morris.
Beloved. Toni Morrison.
The Bluest Eye. Toni Morrison.
Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zora Neale Hurston.
Half of a Yellow Sun. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Assata, an Autobiography. Assata Shakur.
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Keeanga-Yamahtta.
The Warmth of Other Suns. Isabel Wilkerson.
The Urgency of Intersectionality. Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Angela Davis: 'Racism is embedded in the fabric of this country' | The Bottom Line. Angela Davis.
What Beyoncé Taught Me About Racism. Brittany Baron.
Pushout Trailer. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. Monique W. Morris.