[black girl] talks back

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth: Ivie Ani

Photos by Alex Revina

"I don't want to perform my identity for people, especially when we're in industries that want to pay us to write about our pain all the time or pay us to write our Black experience."  

I met culture journalist and this month’s #LoudMouth, Ivie Ani, in my least favorite part of Brooklyn: Williamsburg. Speed walking down Driggs Avenue I could still notice the abrupt demographic changes that gentrification produces. Black and Brown youth coming home from school and just two blocks later middle-aged white women checking out overpriced vintage shops with their green smoothies in hand. When I arrive at the cafe, I spot Ivie through the large glass pane windows right away. She is the only Black girl in the space and she’s taking selfies.

It’s the second Friday in May, and her last month being 25. Since graduating from New York University with a degree in Journalism and Africana Studies, her pen has graced the pages of The New York Times, Women in The World, New York Magazine, The Village Voice, Teen Vogue, PAPER magazine, Complex, Grazia UK, NYU’s Social and Cultural Analysis Journal, and more. She's held positions at Facebook, BET Networks, and Associated Press, but now, she’s Music Editor at Okayplayer — a position that had yet to be helmed by a woman until she came along.

Since meeting Ivie as students at NYU, I knew she was a force, not because of what she said, but what she showed. A Nigerian girl from the South Bronx, she came to class with designer bags, glimmery nails, and hair to her ass. And when someone said some ill-researched, racist comment you could feel Ivie’s side-eye from across the room. Although not the first to talk back, it was clear to me that blending in has never been in Ivie’s interest. It is her visual attention to detail that makes her stand out.

DM: Did you have a relationship with the phrase “talking back” growing up and was it ever something you got in trouble for?

IA: That concept is non-existent for me. I'm African— you probably know how that goes. There is no such thing as disrespecting your parents or countering them or talking back. I think Black people in general are taught to respect your elders, but talking back was never a thing for me. I was always more so observing rather than responding, or observing and internalizing before responding. Now I am in a position where I have agency to be loud as opposed to before, especially in terms of my career. I understand that sometimes women, and Black women in particular, who are in these fields are quiet not out of convenience, but out of necessity and survival. They can't get on Twitter and start talking reckless about whatever's going on because it’s going to hurt their pockets.

I think that idea of navigating these spaces and monitoring yourself in order to survive these spaces is unfortunate but we have to do it....We don't have to do it, but it would behoove us. And When black women are criticized for being silent and responding to things, it’s counterproductive. Why are you criticizing the person, not the institution that keeps people from speaking up?

DM: That makes me think of Angela Yee who has been getting a lot of criticism for her silence on the Breakfast Club in the face of her male co-hosts misogynist comments.

IA:  There are valid critiques about her when she does speak up, because it’s about what she's saying. At the end of the day, you don't just want someone to talk. It's about the quality of what she's saying. So if people have critiques around what she says, that’s valid. But then the critiques about her being silent don’t consider that she gets cut off every single time she tries to talk.

Nobody's above reproach. In that situation, even if you are the marginalized person in the group, you're still a public figure and you still have a journalistic responsibility. If you're saying things that don't line up or that are just not sound, then, of course, you should be open to receiving that criticism. But yeah, it's just two different planes— you shouldn't be criticizing her for being quiet, you should criticize her for what she says when she's given the opportunity to even speak.

DM: Yeah and folks should criticize the Breakfast Club or Charlemagne and DJ Envy for not making that space for her. So have you ever been in a space where you felt like your voice wasn’t welcomed and if so how did you deal with it?

IA:  It's tricky. With workspaces, we're allowed into these spaces, but the tone is that you should feel grateful rather than you should feel valued. And I think that's where diversity falls short in a lot of spaces, whether it's tech, media, or the corporate world. When they give you a little bit of access rather than any agency to be heard or to have your voice amplified or to be in a position to grow past the position you were in. That's when diversity is just kind of optics at that point.

Every position that I've been in is because there needed to be that role filled. I was culture writer at the Village Voice and they needed that voice. They didn't have anyone young or who was a native New Yorker. They had black people, but they didn't have an African person to talk about music and politics and culture who could write about an African play or interview rappers from the South Bronx.

So in spaces like that I felt welcomed because they need that, but in other cases it gets to a point where there's a very specific need for content from a certain perspective, so they'll just commission for that type of stuff. You know the whole thing of black people writing about their pain? It gets to a point where that's your beat, like identity is your beat, but then you can’t write about anything else.

It was to the point where I kept getting called to cover all these African plays and African shows, which I like because it's great and nobody had the range to talk about them like I could, but it just becomes really obvious when people need that beat and on one hand it's necessary because you're just thankful that they're paying attention and they're hiring the right people to come and write things. On the other hand, it can feel kind of limiting personally because you're multilayered so you have an interest outside of African plays and rappers.

DM: Who are some #LoudMouths that inspired you to talk back and really advocate for yourself/others?

IA: I never had an overt racism experience at NYU, mainly because I was never there on campus. I was commuting from the Bronx every day. Except for this one time. You remember Natyna? I love her! I had a class with her and yo, she bodied this white girl.

DM: Natyna is that bitch! She's one of my really close friends and an incredible writer.

IA: Yes! We were reading something for class about Che Guevara in relation to Jay-Z's Decoded and there was a part where Jay-Z compares himself to Guevara because of their upbringing and this white girl goes, “I don't get why he's comparing himself to Che Guevara. There are no similarities whatsoever.”  And Natyna delivered this whole dissertation in 30 seconds, bodying this girl’s racist, blindsided commentary. She was responding to my analytical take that was in line with the Natyna's. But Natyna hadn't spoken yet and this white girl said something and I just looked at her. I'm a look person, I won't clap you in that type of setting. But then this girl goes, “You're looking at me like you have something to say.” Then Natyna jumped in like, “This is why you're wrong,” just poking holes in all of her logic. I was just like, “Thank you!” Because sometimes I'm not that loud person. That was a couple of years ago. I'll do it now, but back then I was just like, let me eat my food, just do my thing, say my piece. I was a lot more lax in those situations. I wouldn't say I was indifferent.

DM: But it is a lot to take that on, to confront racism head on.

IA:  Yeah, and I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to be the person being mad all the time. But I really learned something when Natyna did that because I could have done the same thing, said the same thing, but I didn't want to waste my energy on her— not realizing that it wasn't a waste of energy. Some things are rightful, and you can be loud.

I got back on Twitter around that time, 2013, my senior year of NYU. That's when Twitter was just turning into “Woke Twitter.” I remember, back then, getting in with a lot of the Twitter people who are big now, becoming online comrades then. When everyone was starting to build their platforms, I remember seeing a bunch of women that were just being loud: Feminista Jones, Trudz, Cherell Brown. Some of these people, I ended up getting to know in some capacity online, and that's when twitter shifted in purpose and I started using that as the platform to speak.

Twitter compared to Facebook is more brief, succinct. There is a different demographic of people on Twitter. There are media people on it and things you say gain a lot of traction very quickly. That's how I found my voice from there, which got me into a lot of writing gates. Twitter was a great tool— just as an addendum to my skill, my craft, my degree and my interests. My whole career is not based on Twitter. It's just the icing on the cake. It just accelerated it to a degree. Twitter is how I ended up in the New York Times when I was 23 because an editor saw my piece online and that led to a meeting. I've been booked for so many things just off people seeing me on Twitter. I've built so many connections off Twitter. But I’m not really on there as much as I used to be.

DM: You were doing Twitter right and so now you’re aware of the shift that its taking.

I’m going to sound like Nicki Minaj right now but….I don’t know about other people but I write. Let the record show I'm sipping my drink! There are a lot of people that's getting book deals and getting bylines off just being loud and visible. But if you're going to do something, it would behoove you to do it well or have some quality to it. I’m not on Twitter as much because I'm really doing the work.

DM: I really appreciate the amount of time you put into your work, it reads on the page. I would love to hear more about your writing process.  

IA:  Process. I've been trying to train myself for years to be faster, better, because in this environment of media and the writing world in journalism, you have to be fast. The news cycle is fast, people want hot takes, fast they want op-eds fast. I'm not that girl.

I can do a little op-ed quickly. The Kanye letter that's doing really well, I did that in about an hour turnaround. But profile pieces, there's no way. There's absolutely no way because I sit and I think, this is a person that I'm interviewing. This is a person who I'm trying to examine on a paper.

My process varies but for interviews particularly, I take notes when I'm there — what they're wearing, how they look, their mannerisms, facial expressions— because all those are the vivid details you want for a profile piece. So yes, attention to detail. I've always had a penchant for those types of details and then because of those details I'm able to contextualize people into greater themes and still get the intricacies of their personality and their being. But that takes a while to do. I'm not a microwave type of writer. There are people who can push out good work quickly. I could do that too, but these are bigger stories.

DM: I feel like when I read your work I know you're a scholar. I can tell when I read your work that you read. When I think about essays, when I think about good nonfiction writing, it's like braiding all of that work. The cultural thought, the scholarly work, your personal interests.

IA: I love that analogy because braids last longer than twists. A twist is quick little cute style, but braids are beautiful and they last long. There is a lot of braiding and weaving that I have to do. Online, it gets really hard because you have to appeal to different demographics. They need stuff quick so you have to condense everything to a digestible format. So I think that's a skill to be able to write well online and grasp attention. That's a feat. That's a difficult thing to do, and I'm doing it and navigating it.

DM: Why do you write and why your style of non-fiction, cultural critique?

IA: The process is not very enjoyable but the product is worth it. Writing is so terrible.

DM: Agreed.

IA: But I like the product. I like reading something I wrote, it’s a good way to express myself. I don't write personal essays though. I could write a memoir at this point in my life. At 25 I could write a memoir— let me tell you! But I never was interested in telling my personal story.

Part of being African is this very reserved stoicism. You don't really tell people your personal business. I don't know, my mother's full story. I didn't find out how my mother got to this country until a few years ago. I guess that's how I am. I'll tell you what I want to tell you when I want to.

I understand the importance of performative identity. It works in a lot of instances, especially with entertainers and just being a public figure, but I've seen performative identity functioning in certain places like on Twitter where it becomes fodder for this gaze, a voyeuristic gaze online of non-marginalized people and it just becomes this weird thing.

I don't want to perform my identity or experience for people, especially when we're in industries that want to pay us to write about pain all the time or pay us to write about our Black experience. I also feel like people only want to hear about the Black experience as it pertains to whiteness, but nobody wants to hear that I always knew I was black and loved it. I only lived around Black people. I'm from the hood in New York. I was around immigrants my whole entire life. Never engaged with or heard the word “whiteness” until I was an adult.

I came up with this phrase called “identity voyeurism” because I really do feel like white people in particular just love seeing black people reconcile their identity, whether in real time or in memoir— they want to see us unravel that for their understanding. I feel like that's how a lot of Black voices get heralded as the voice of a generation. Well no, they're not the voice of a generation, you just haven't engaged with anyone outside of this one encounter. It's fine if you’ve had that experience as a Black person but whiteness has only existed in my periphery.

DM: That's a word and a great place to end! My last question is who are your favorite contemporary #LoudMouths right now?

IA: Jasmine Sanders, Najma Sharif, Stephanie Smith, Shamira Ibrahim. Follow them on Twitter. 

Ivie is a multimedia journalist, writer and on-air correspondent covering culture. She has worked in print, television, social media and on the red carpet to enlighten, engage and produce work with a purpose. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, Women in The World, The Village Voice, Teen Vogue, PAPER magazine, Complex magazine, OkayAfrica, Grazia UK, and NYU’s Social and Cultural Analysis Journal. She has also held positions at Facebook as a Trending News Content Curator, at BET Networks, and at Associated Press. Ivie has been profiled in The Washington Post & APM Reports, Revolt TV, Apple Podcasts, Bustle, and Red Bull Radio. Ivie also speaks on panels about culture, pop culture, race, feminism, and journalism.

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth Reading List: Open Rebellion

 Janelle Monáe Frees Herself

Brittany Spanos

"No tears will be shed today. 'My musical heroes did not make the sacrifices they did for me to live in fear.' Her activism isn't the focus of Dirty Computer, but it's there, hovering above every note. She ended band rehearsal in Atlanta by asking the musicians to reflect on how American this album is. Monáe's America is the one on the fringes; it accepts the outsiders and the computers with viruses, like the ones she thought she had."

  To Own or Not to Own…My Body

Dr. Kyra Gaunt

"As a descendant of a slave “owning” empire and economy, and as a ethnographic scholar of immaterial and embodied culture and sociologies, I realize more and more that sole authorship over the self is an illusion of our ego. Paradoxically it’s the primary “thing,” the immediate means we have and use to do the biological, cognitive, intellectual, linguistic, and social transactions of being alive and living."

     The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action

Audre Lorde

“Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself - a Black woman warrior poet doing my work - come to ask you, are you doing yours?

And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.”

  Jewel Thais-Williams Changed Nightlife for Black Gays in 1973. She Hasn't Slowed Down Since.

Chanelle Tyson

"It was clear, though, that queer people of color needed a specific haven of their own. There were other gay discos in Los Angeles, like the famous Studio One, but even though gay was OK in those spaces, black still was not. Even women were often turned away at the doors, leaving LGBT people of color still in search of a haven where they could safely be themselves.

They got their answer in 1973, when Thais-Williams opened Catch One. Unlike her first club, Catch One’s intention was gay from the start."

   The Terrible Beauty of the Slum

Saidiya Hartman

“It is a human sewer populated by the worst elements. It is a realm of excess and fabulousness. It is a wretched environment. It is the plantation extended into the city. It is a social laboratory. The ghetto is a space of encounter. The sons and daughters of the rich come in search of meaning, vitality, and pleasure. The reformers and the sociologists come in search of the truly disadvantaged, failing to see her and her friends as thinkers or planners, or to notice the beautiful experiments crafted by poor black girls.”

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth: Glynn Pogue

Photos by Alex Revina

"I have a lot of times where I doubt the power of my voice. I'm consistently trying to tell myself that my opinions are valid. I have to remind myself not to be so afraid to go against the tide for fear of shaking shit up. "  

This month’s #LoudMouth is no other than the very-stylish, Glynn Pogue, also known as Bedstuy Brat. I met the Brooklyn-native at an MFA event and she has been helping your girl navigate this writing life ever since. She easily has one of the cutest apartments in NYC, looking like it was pulled straight from an Essence spread, which makes sense since the travel enthusiast grew up roaming the halls of the magazine on every Black mama’s coffee table. I sat down with Glynn to talk high school rebellions, the “chill-girl” trope, and the consistent struggle of finding your voice. 

DM: What is your relationship with the phrase “talking back”? Are you familiar with the term and did you ever get in trouble for it?

GP: It's so layered because I'm super familiar with that phrase. “Don't talk back!” and “Who you think you talking to?!” all that kind of stuff was everywhere, but I think I most experienced that when I was with my aunts or my grandmothers who are a little bit more old school. My parents, however, were these outliers that moved to New York and their way of raising me was a little more non-traditional. I also grew up in a Bed-n-Breakfast where my parents were always really busy so I was on my own a lot, very independent. So I spent a lot of time in my head more than being vocal and visible, especially because there were always other people in the house.

I had to play the background and was mostly observing more than I was asserting my voice. But, as I'm thinking about it, when I was a kid I wanted to be an actress. I put on plays and shows and stuff, so I was ostentatious in a way but I wasn't necessarily challenging authority with my own voice as an adolescent. Of course, when I was in high school I was an asshole and had a rebellious moment. By then my parents didn't know what to do with me because that had never been my style, that’s not how they raised me.

  DM: Have you ever felt like your voice was not welcomed or there wasn’t a space for your voice? How did you deal with that?

High school was a hot mess. I was doing the most. It was partially because of my fear of being, seen and heard that I was rebellious. So I was going to school – I'm from Brooklyn. I went to public school in Brooklyn my whole life and then I went to high school on the Upper West Side and I'm in class with a bunch of white, very privileged students for the first time in my life. And I just automatically felt like they were smarter than me, just more competent. They read more than I had before I got there and in class I was afraid that my opinions were not as good as theirs. So I just retreated from school, I just never went. So a part of my rebellion was that I cut school all the time.

I’m also curious if you've ever felt this way, sometimes even in my romantic relationships, I sometimes feel like I can't ask for what I want because I don't want to be too pushy or whatever.  I don't want to make shit too complicated or whatever when it doesn't need to be complicated.

DM: I definitely feel that. When you're in the relationship as the woman, you're supposed to be easy-going, don't cause too much raucous or that's who you are as a person – you don't appreciate things. You're just the girl with the attitude.

GP: Yeah and there's some allure to being like, “Oh my God, she's so chill! She's down. My girl is so cool.”

DM: Yes! Absolutely! The chill girl is the girl to be. Chill girls don't got no attitude they don’t got no problem, everything is cool.

GP: Fuck that.

DM: Yeah. You’re ass is raggedy, and I’m going to tell you.

GP: Deadass.

DM: But also there's this idea that because you say something – and I think this is something I actively work against as I get older – the relationship is completely threatened. Because you say how you're unhappy or how something has impacted you in a negative way, then you feel like you might lose the relationship.

GP:  I think that might be a thread in all of these times when I've been afraid to speak because I'm afraid to compromise something. I'm not giving people enough credit, or giving the possibility of debate, or conversation enough credit – that I can raise something and then we can just talk it out and see what happens, and it not  automatically be chaos . . . or you lose the person . . . or an opportunity. Something I've been talking about recently with people as I'm starting to freelance more is asking for how much money you want. When someone asks you how much you want to be paid, just tell them what you're worth versus being like “Well, let me see. . . how much do I think that they can offer me? l want to make sure that I don't overstep. I don't want it to be too much for them.”

DM: Absolutely. That goes to my question, who are some of your earliest encounters with other #LoudMouths? Who inspired you to talk back and really advocate for yourself/others?

The kinds of girls I started hanging out with when going through my rebellious phase. I admired them so much because they were fearless in the way that they spoke and talked back to everyone – a professor, the other girls in our class. They didn't give a fuck. And I loved that so I tried to model myself after them.

When I was growing up, my mom was the Editor-in-Chief at Essence. So I'd be going from seeing those girls on the playground and then maybe another given day I'm with my mom at “Take Your Daughter to Work Day,” roaming the halls with these black women who shaped culture, consistently voicing their thoughts and opinions within the pages of a magazine that black women widely read.

And then of course growing up in this Bed-n-Breakfast and I would also see my mom hosting guests and constantly hearing her voice all the time. And when I was in high school she wrote a book, so I used to go to all her speaking engagements. So it's literally my mom talking, talking, talking, and I think I never really appreciated what she was doing growing up. I took it for granted or I just assumed that’s just a thing that my mom does without realizing that that it’s a very big deal, that she has a platform that people listen to her. And people feel empowered to speak to reclaim their space.This is what I want to write about in my work and how I am thinking about reshaping this memoir I'm working on. It's about centering different women and girls in my life that I tried to model myself after and tried to emulate because I liked the way that they were so comfortably themselves, especially in speaking their minds, which is something I was always afraid to do and I'm still kind of afraid to do vocally, which is why I can do it in my writing more than anything.

DM: When did you first learn that your voice held power?

GP: This is an interesting conversation to have because it's constantly a thing that I'm struggling with and working through, the power of my voice. I have a lot of times where I doubt the power of my voice. I'm consistently trying to tell myself that my opinions are valid. I have to remind myself not to be so afraid to go against the tide for fear of shaking shit up.

So I realized my voice had power when I started taking myself seriously as a writer, so probably within the last three years. I remember the first time I wrote a piece to have it workshopped.  I was so afraid of how it was going to be read, I was worried if people would think it was good enough. But then it resonated with the class and I was like, oh shit. People are interested in what I have to say. I have a point of view!  That was really empowering.

It came to a point that once I was at the end of my MFA program, I confidently turned in things for people to read without fear because I already believed that what I had to say was popping or the prose was good. And I think that's what it really comes down to in a lot of cases. It's a confidence thing and I'm trying to work on mastering it every fucking day.

DM: Nice! My last question is who are your favorite contemporary #LoudMouths right now? 

GP: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah. She's amazing. Her pieces flow and wind and you're just in this story, in this flow and you're with her as she’s uncovering and the pieces are constantly opening up and broadening and broadening and broadening. So she's fucking goals. She's such an amazing writer.

Glory Edim and Dianca Potts who work on Well-Read Black Girl. When we saw them on that panel, they were great. I loved Dianca’s energy and humor and she's one of those people that say how they feel. And she definitely is using social media as that space and within her articles. She’s also working on a book that's coming out and I'm really excited for that. And you know, Glory, just did an anthology of Black women writers and it’s amazing! Yeah, I, I love that she champions black women writers and champions community.

You can find Glynn’s latest piece in the most recent print of HANNAH magazine and her words can be found all over the web on places like Essence, National Geographic Traveler, Travel Noire, Jezebel and Guernica, among others. Learn more about Glynn on her website, GlynnPogue.com.

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth Reading List: Week of April 15th

 The Significance Of Beyoncé Using Massive Platforms Like Coachella To Celebrate Blackness

Brooklyn White

"Coachella has a dark past of excluding Black artists, appropriating and disrespecting marginalized cultures, and its owner supporting anti-LGBTQ politicians — but Beyoncé was wise enough to know that headlining this festival was a historic opportunity to uplift her people and community. While the majority of the people who could afford to witness Bey’s set live were not aware of the multitude of details that went into her performance, it didn’t matter. Her true fans — those who could understand in full — watched at home for free. Ha."

 The Unapologetic Trans Women of Color Who Helped Me Love My Body

 Kuchenga

"I have always had a warm sense of kinship with women we have historically seen as disreputable. Today, I see Lil’ Kim in trans women of color like Shauna Brooks and TS Madison, whom me and my girlfriends refer to as “Mother”. Both are former sex workers turned internet celebrities and vloggers, and these women on YouTube have sustained me deeply throughout my transition. Their siren voices boom from my mini speaker and headphones. They make me howl the house down. TS Madison simulating fellatio like she’s actually chomping on bratwurst is what gets me every time. "

    The Shakedown: The 2000s Lesbian Strip Club Party That Helped Define Club Culture Today

 Rooney Elmi

“Making its US debut at True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, Shakedown has been receiving glowing reviews for showcasing a diverse lineup of the queer community from studs, plus size women, to femme lesbians, and cultivating a intoxicating odyssey of hedonism without veering into voyeurism. While many will reference Jennie Livingston’s iconic 1990 documentary, Paris is Burning, one thing is certain: Weinraub completely avoids Livingston’s by-now-notorious exploitation accusations by grounding Shakedown as a community-focused film, positioning her gaze not as a spectator but as an insider looking in.”

  The Body On The Other Side Of Self-hatred

Keah Brown

"Imagine how many people would feel better about their bodies if they had a positive representation of their body as a child. The ability to see your body without disgust and without the influence of a culture that sees your body as an inconvenience is something we all deserve. Selfishly, I want so much more for myself and my community—to be seen so that no one else feels the need to mark their bodies the way I did or feel the urge to be someone else simply because the world expects us to hate our bodies the way they hate our bodies. The good news is that this unruly body is one that I love now, even on the days when it is aching and I hate it, even when self-hatred and sadness come knocking at my door, looking for a trip down memory lane."

 5 Somali Creatives On How Surveillance Culture Shapes Their Work

 Najma Sharif

“More and more people are slowly becoming cybersecurity-literate, but while some people rush to cover their webcams with tape, others can’t escape their more intimate, long-standing relationships with surveillance. As black Afrofuturists have contended with before me, black people have always been ahead of their time, and thus are no strangers to navigating and subverting the kind of mass surveillance used to police and control parts of the populace; black people have been surveilled long before the invention of any GPS device. And so, knowing this, knowing we are being watched, how do we document our current realities without filtering ourselves? How can we create without feeling like we need to censor our thoughts and feelings about the way the world is engaging with our many identities?”

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth: Deria Matthews

Photos by Alex Revina

"Black women will always be too loud for a world that never intended on listening to us."  

Growing up I quickly learned that it was dangerous for a Black girl to speak up for herself. My voice was policed from the jump and if I had a response I was seen as talking back or acting grown or ghetto. These labels made me fearful of using my voice to provoke change and making noise about things I felt were unjust. However, as I've grown older I've recognized the ways that asserting your ideas as a Black woman is imperative in dismantling and transforming an oppressive society that has always expected silence from us. Thus, the Loud Mouth hashtag is for me is a reclaiming of a label that is often given to Black women who are too loud, too angry, and too ready. Black women who speak up and out against oppressive systems are my biggest inspiration and I coined the term in celebration of their writing and of the mounds of brilliant knowledge they have shared with us. For this series, I will be profiling one of those #LoudMouth writers of nonfiction once a month. I often feel that there is not a space for solely Black nonfiction writers of women/femme/gnc identity, and I wanted to create that hub for myself and other upcoming writers. 

The first person is me :) I thought this would be a great way for you all to get to know me and learn more about my journey to writing nonfiction. Get into it!

Did you ever get in trouble for talking back?

“Who do you think you’re talking to?!” That was my mother’s favorite line when I said something “smart” to her or responded (often with wit) when silence was expected of me. Growing up, I knew good and well that I wasn’t supposed to talk back to adults but in the heat of things that didn’t stop me. If I felt that I needed to explain myself or if something didn’t make sense to me, then I expressed that. It got me in trouble often, with that death stare Black mamas have perfected, with a verbal whipping, or with a simple pop in the mouth. The pop was always the worst and I got it a couple of times, and I remember the red of embarrassment and shame that came over me. I also remember later in life just not speaking or trying to fight back to get what I want. It felt futile to me so I would start to just do as I please without conversation, that got me in more trouble but at that point, I stopped caring.

When did you first learn that your voice held power?

I think I was in 10th or 11th grade and it was a day or two after Kanye had hopped onstage to defend Beyonce when she lost Video of the Year Award to Taylor Swift. I was in Sociology and our teacher asked what we thought. There was a lot of conversation but most of my classmates were saying “Yes, Beyonce should have won, but the way that Kanye went about it was wrong. I was kind of annoyed so I started to speak up about it and referenced Kanye doing a similar thing for New Orleans and people being fine with his speaking out then. I think what really annoyed me was that in my household Kanye was praised, he did what was right because he said what we all knew to be true. How he did it was not really a concern, but that he did it, that he stood up for the work and art of a Black woman was enough to defend him. But I remember after I spoke up, the conversation shifted and my teacher making note of that. He was a Black man and he was really respected in my school so for him to acknowledge how I articulated my thinking provoked a shifted the thinking of others really stuck with me. I later went on to argue for the legalizing Marijuana in a debate and he said I should consider being a lawyer. For a long time I wanted to be a lawyer because of that class, but I’m a long way from that now.

Have you ever been told your voice was not welcomed or there wasn’t a space for your voice? How did you deal with that?  

My first year at NYU I was so insecure about my voice. I was often the only Black girl in the room and I was experiencing all of these microaggressions, that I was really questioning myself and what I cared about. At one point I was considering transferring and going to an HBCU. I felt that no one understood my point of view, and honestly, that’s how I was going to deal with it. I was going to leave. But I had to take these creative writing classes my first year and those courses really saved me. I was putting my thinking on the page and on the page I had the room to pull from my own experiences and histories that I didn’t feel were taken seriously elsewhere. And my professor really saw me and saw what I was trying to do. She was one of the first people who encouraged me to pursue writing as a career. I remember calling my mother up and being really excited about this new direction.

What are some of your earliest encounters with another #LoudMouth?

My earliest memory of #LoudMouth women were of the women in my family. My mother was always about pushing back against systems especially for the wellness of her daughters. Although she often punished me for talking back to her, she is the one who taught me to talk back. I grew up listening to her “cuss someone out” get what she knew she deserved.

Also, my late grandmother is the biggest shit talker I know. I still think about her cracking on my dad when he tried to shut her down about something. They would always be carrying on about this and that, but I remember my grandmother really standing her ground about the labor women take on to care for children and not letting up on men holding their weight either financially or by doing more.

And lastly, bell hooks. The same professor who encouraged me to write was the first person to introduce me to hooks. We read an essay from Real to Reel and I just remember being blown away at how direct she was, but also how she was pulling from her own personal experiences. bell really taught me that our personal lives are a source of information that can support theory, and by our, I mean Black folks’.

Why do you write, and why nonfiction?

I write because I think. I write because I feel. Writing for me is an extension of my thinking and feelings. It is a way for me to move through and process both of those things. I write nonfiction because it is for me the most direct way to engage in the public sphere, in a public conversation that I find deeply personal. Public conversations about Beyoncé or Nola Darling or Cardi B are important to me because I share an identity with these women and how people think about them not only impacts how they perceive me and other Black women but also how they make political decisions about our bodies. If you don’t believe that Black women have the fundamental right to their bodies and that comes up in how we talk about Beyoncé’s body suit or Nola’s sexual partners or Cardi’s decision to have a baby then how you feel about laws and policies around street harassment, access to family planning, sexual assault prevention, etc. That’s why it’s really important for me to write on pop culture because I think it is a way to get at the fundamental beliefs we have about society in a way that is interesting and not so philosophical and distant. It gives some grounding, a shared language if you will.   

 Who is one of your favorite contemporary #LoudMouths right now?  

This is such a hard question, there are so many, and that’s why I create a weekly list of them! But someone I always enjoy reading and being challenged by is Doreen St. Felix. I would love to see some long-form stuff from her but I’m also just super impressed with how quickly she gets a take on paper. It takes me weeks to put my thoughts together on something. (That’s most likely my Taurus Sun and Sagittarius Rising working against each other.)

But yeah, I also really love Kimberly Drew as a writer and thinker. Whenever I see her speak or when I read her work I’m always just like YES!! and not in an agreement kind of yes, but like yes this bitch is shaking the table yes!! I love when people push the conversation and or just my own thinking deeper (that’s my Scorpio moon speaking). I think that’s the mark of a really great writer and what I aspire to do in my own work.

Oh and my absolute favorite is Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, she makes me want to write and just be a better nonfiction writer in general. She has been quiet recently, I think maybe because she’s working on her book, but if you have a chance read her profile of THE GOAT, Toni Morrison. Its a gem.

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth Reading List: Week of March 18th

   Our Nails Will Shine Forever: The History Of Acrylics And Appropriation

Brooklyn White

We fearlessly create our own cool and as much as people resist and complain, the masses still follow suit. We rarely have to look beyond ourselves for the next big thing in fashion, art, or literature. Instead, we carve out our own lane and thus construct our own beauty ideals. Our collective confidence has and will continue to skyrocket due to our ability to x-out any naysayer and press forward in our journey toward self-love."

 Black Health Matters

Jenna Wortham

"Ms. Leigh’s work is carried out in the black radical tradition, one that declares that holistic health care is not a luxury, but rather an act of resilience, survival and disobedience — a necessity. “If you can’t be a human being in public, you take it to a private place,” she said.

Making space to deal with the psychological toll of racism is absolutely necessary. "

   Life Balms — Vol. 1: Hannah Giorgis on Cooking and What It Means to Be Beautiful

Amani Bin Shikhan

“I’d always been at least vaguely interested in cooking and baking (insert oldest immigrant daughter joke here), but it definitely became a source of comfort after the election, largely because it was a means of creating that allowed me to lean into the visceral rather than the intellectual. As a writer and editor, I’m in my head all the time, even when I think I’m not.

The beauty of making a seven-hour oxtail ragù isn’t just that I get to eat it or share it with friends after. It’s also a lesson in patience, a chance to use my hands to produce something tangible, an opportunity to flex sensory muscles I don’t prioritize exercising throughout the workday.”

  The Orange Peel

Celeste Scott

"Showers became a daily avenue for self-discovery. Running conditions and shampoo through my newly formed curls was a gentle reminder of the ways in which softness can be powerful. Much like soft curls that spin in every which way, soft power is adaptable and ever-changing. There is no rigidity in softness. Rules and regulations do no apply. There is only grace and patience. Softness doesn't beg for the appearance of power. It just simply is.'"

    The Power of Self-Preservation: On Redefining Resilience and Resistance

Chelcee Johns

“Black women have historically been socialized to work in service to others. We have been conditioned to embody a posture of servitude, despite ourselves. Self-preservation creates space for vulnerability in the lives of Black women and resists the notion that we are designed solely for work and service.

We are then able to claim more power over re-defining our own individualized identities outside the framework of how we may be perceived, and can move freely within our own existence.”

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth Reading List: Week of March 10th

Women's Herstory Month is in full swing with Black Women taking over a magazine stand near you! If you know me, you know I live for a Black girl cover, and have been collecting them since I became aware of the disparities in Black Women cover stories in 2011. But this moment in 2018 is especially special because all of these stories are WRITTEN BY BLACK WOMEN, which is, sadly, very rare. This week I am celebrating #VeryBlack covers by encouraging you to support  #LoudMouth writers with ya coin. This time I want you to go out and buy at least one of these magazine covers and send me your favorite quote! Comment below or tag me @deriatalksback.

*Teen Vogue is no longer in print, so you can read Jessica Andrews' profile of Letitia Wright here. 

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth Reading List: Week of March 2nd

  Why It Hurts When the World Loves Everyone but Us

Janaya Khan

"...it saddens me to say that this moment serves to remind black youths that the world cares less about them than it does other children. The rush of support for the Parkland youths from mainstream-media spots, to sizable financial contributions from celebrities, to high-powered activists helping to organize their march and amplify their work, is exactly what young people deserve—and it’s why the drastic difference in how Black Lives Matter was received is all the more apparent."

 How Black Women Shaped the Law Banning Sex Discrimination in Education

Nnennaya Amuchie

"After 15 years of organizing, Black communities were able to intervene in the legal system and shift the cultural norm around who was seen as a sexual assault victim in the eyes of the law. With each of these organizing efforts, more Black people were energized around activism and challenged the different ways people face state violence (including legal impunity for white perpetrators). They created more organizations to carry on the work and build leadership. With Betty Jean Owens’ case and those who came before, Black women and communities had built the power and capacity to implement sit-ins and deliver formidable policy ultimatums, both of which would set the groundwork for a broader movement and the Civil Rights Act itself.”

 To Be Young, Gifted, Black, Depressed, and Anxious

Dianca London

“Later that night, I watched Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart with a marrow-deep sense of hope. My deadlines, already late, were still looming on the horizon, and my self-doubt, although muted by the thrill of the day, seethed beneath the surface of my bliss. The world was still white and racist and the threat of the blank page still filled me with apprehension, but as minutes slipped away and the documentary progressed, I found an unwavering peace. There in the dark of the Langston Hughes Auditorium, Hansberry helped me remember that no matter what, “I am a writer. I am going to write” — and that yes, that’s radical. Centering my day around her legacy and the impassioned urgency of the words she left behind, forced me to embrace my own future with eagerness. Despite my fears, my heart was open and filled with joy.”

  The Power in Being an Angry Black Woman

Joy Reid and Brittney Cooper

"[Eloquent Rage] is a way to think about black women's anger as a legitimate political emotion that can create worlds, that can give us clarity, that can help us tell the truth. I call it eloquent because there is a way when you are in the presence of an angry black woman that you are really clear about what the problem is. Very often many of us have been asked to try to be respectable so that we don't reinforce the “angry black woman stereotype” and I want to say in this book: 'Let's say that we're mad as hell. Let's own the truth of that and then let's see it as a thing that actually strengthens us and if we embrace it can become a superpower.'"

  BLACK BUTCH VISIBILITY IN THE TIME OF #METOO

Roya Marsh

“In the time of #MeToo I have been longing (selfishly enough) to see women that look like me coming forward. It is not that I wish us to be victims, it is more that I want the world to know there isn’t one type of woman as victim. I’m calling us to the front because I know we are out there. Women that present like me trapped in yet another closet. I want google to equate strong black woman and bad bitch with images of us, too. The Masculine of Center (MoC) women, the butch, the Colored Dyke, the survivor who struggles with forgiveness. I am forever indebted to writers and artists that showcase these characters and narratives. It is my hope that our visibility grows and the support supersedes any level of hatred and backlash.”

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth Reading List: Week of Feb 23rd

 On Killmonger, the American Villain of “Black Panther”

Doreen St. Félix

 "'Black Panther' shoulders an outsized assumption that it will function as feel-good propaganda as well as art—an exercise in providing confirmation to black people of their essential beauty, their lost and abstracted lineage of nobility. But Coogler, a chronicler of the American city, knows that for the fantasy to take hold, he must create an outlet for the enraged and jaded black id. Killmonger’s pursuit of the Wakandan throne brings a thrilling ambiguity to the film’s politics.

 Don’t Play With Our Emotions: Black Panther and Queer Representation

Briana Lawrence

"Let’s be real: T’Challa and Nakia are getting whole-ass scenes that go beyond, 'I looked at you, then you looked at me.' That’s what I want more of in my queer representation, especially considering the source material that people were referencing when discussing Okoye and Ayo: World of Wakanda. / Written by Roxane Gay and Yona Harvey, this story is about Ayo and another Dora Milaje named Aneka (who doesn’t appear in the movie, but people suspected Okoye had taken her place as a love interest). In the book, Ayo and Aneka are the focal points, and they’re allowed to develop as both characters and lovers with each turn of the page.”

 ‘Black Panther’ Is Ready To Take Dark-Skinned Actresses (And Colorism) Seriously

Clarkisha Kent

“Colorism makes it so that loving dark-skinned black women is not seen as lucrative, beneficial or valuable when it comes to amassing cultural, social, economic or even political capital. This results in us getting denigrated, dogged out and devalued at every turn. / So you imagine how radical it is to have a dark-skinned woman portrayed as the main love interest at the center of the Afrofuturistic utopia known as Wakanda.”

 What The Dora Milaje Means To Black Women

Faridah Gbadamosi

"With the Dora Milaje the goal could not be and, thankfully, was not just representation, but meaningful representation. Black women both on and off screen are frequently treated as either comic relief or merely vessels for another person’s growth or salvation. To have the Dora Milaje simply exist as just the King’s bodyguard and possible wife candidates would play into that concept, a byproduct of misogynoir that exists not only in society at large but also within the black community. One of the best parts about reading the reviews for “Black Panther” has been seeing that not only are the Dora Milaje given the space to shine but they do so in a way that serves Wakanda, not simply Black Panther. They are more than just bodyguards, they exist to defend their homeland."

  “Black Panther” Forces Africans And Black Americans To Reconcile The Past

Kovie Biakolo

“The influence of Killmonger’s black American experience caused the Black Panther to not only change how Wakanda interacts with the world, but how he later saw his relationship to other people who looked like him. It is unequivocally illustrative of how the black American experience has come to impact blackness as a global identity, indeed for the world, but directly for the African diaspora.”

[blackgirltalksback]

(x)Change - Black Wealth: A Love Letter

(x)Change: a monthly salon series for Black & Brown folx February 22nd - Black Wealth: A Love Letter  This month, media-strategist and love consultant, Vanessa Newman, will be leading us in a re-imagination of what love can look like when formed through a lens of Black liberation and socio-economic independence. What is Black love if our idea of love is a capitalist structure meant to uphold white wealth?   Evening Rundown: Rants & Refreshments Opening & Community Guidelines Love vs Capitalism Presentation Open Dialogue Room to (x)Hale Closing Meditation About (x)Change:  We, like the earth we live on, are in constant rotation. Everything our elders have ever known and everything we will ever need is housed within each of us. Is present on Earth- even if it has not yet manifested on our tongues. With this space we create the possibility of transferable energy. Recognizing that connecting and sharing space to allow for the transfer of knowledge, wisdom, power, and energy is crucial for building momentum and continuing liberatory work. We honor the holistic sense of community wealth. We share, create, return to, and discover language that gives way to tapping into these energies. We are committed to the transformation of ourselves and each other and we offer these salons as one site of many where we, the Black & Brown community can come together, to activate change.

[blackgirltalksback]

Cardi B Refuses to Be Our Cinderella

It’s the morning of Christmas and after hours of sulking in bed, I drag myself to the kitchen to help my mother with dinner.

“I’m sad,” I exhale over a sink of dirty dishes, “Offset cheated on Cardi.”

My mother, always up on the latest celebrity gossip, responds with her repertoire of questions and theories that ultimately ends with a neat solution: “She should just leave him, she can do better.” Not in my mother’s direct line of sight, I roll my eyes and give a cute “mhmm” at this weak consolation. The only thing I can see at the moment is my steaming anger, my solution being: she has to kill him.

Just a few days prior, I was talking to friends about our love and excitement for the 25 year-old Bronx rapper whose winning streak seemed endless - landing covers of top magazines like Fader and Rolling Stone, big endorsement deals with companies like Steve Madden, chart-topping songs on US and Latin Billboard charts, a Grammy nomination, and a marriage proposal in front of thousands. Everyone knew 2017 was Cardi’s year, yet still I could sense the angst many of us were feeling about her quick rise to fame. Something was going to tarnish the sparkle of Cardi B’s reign. As she herself prophesied, something bad always comes after so much good.

The news of Offset’s infidelity broke only two days after she dropped her second single, "Bartier Cartier." The fairy tale life we had dreamed up for Cardi B was cast from our grips and I began to loathe Offset–the one to block her shine. The man who she openly loved and bragged about in her lyrics, was now responsible for the media circus that cast a dark cloud over her song release.

Later that night, at Christmas dinner, I make my obligatory men are trash comments and plan to take my apple pie to go. I didn’t want to stick around for the “not all men” retorts, but one could imagine my face when my mother for the first time ever defends my feminist sentiments and chimes in with “she’s right!” Shocked, I remain seated listening to my grandmother struggle to list men in our family that might not be assigned to the dumpster pile, while my mother and aunt sat at the edge of their seats ready to counter with the trashcan behaviors of any man she named. At this point, I am flabbergasted. How has my mother found her way to the winning team?! Writing this helped me discover the answer: Belcalis Almanzar.

My mother’s love for Cardi B is unmatched to the point that she has taken to referring to the young superstar as her daughter. Never has my mother embraced a celebrity in this way but seeing this shift helped me to understand my own embrace of Cardi and other Black woman stars alike.

My sister and I are our mother’s princesses, literally and figuratively. Still to this day, my mother greets me with “Hi, Mommy’s Princess!” In the figurative sense, she sees us as the perfectly good, innocent, beautiful young women who will grow up to live the picturesque life - get married, have a career, bear children and live happily ever after.  Now that Cardi is no longer living the hustler life, she fits perfectly into that mold. Her star-studded career, tall dark fiancé, and unrelenting desire to settle down and have some babies made her the quintessential princess adoptee in the eyes of my mother. Perhaps, then, my mother and I found solidarity in our disdain of men because we were loving the same woman in a similar vein - we revered Cardi and only wanted the best for her. Any person that threatened her happiness, threatened our happiness.

But I, unlike my mother, held many Black women in this light. So when I listened to Jay-Z confirm the cheating rumors and go into detail about Beyoncé’s miscarriages, I could feel myself reeling out of my shoes as I stomped down Greenwich Street. I felt a similar kind of rage-filled hurt when the photos of Rihanna’s battered face were disgustingly released by TMZ when I heard Evelyn Braxton talk about the violence she witnessed Tamar experience at the hands of Vince Herbert, and when I learned of my mother’s experience with abuse at the hands of my father. When I learn that any woman I love is being harmed by a person they trust, love, have children with, defend even, the sadness sits in, the hurt feels like my own, I wear it. To witness the women I hail be harmed, be violated, be betrayed, the first thing I want to do is to get them out of harm’s way, and the second, is attack. I want to maim the offender out of love for the person I hold dear, but also in fierce protection, like a mother shields their child, or like a kingdom safeguards their princess.  

But Cardi is not a princess, and has explicitly rejected that narrative, despite it being layered on her by so many, including radio hosts, fellow celebrities, and everyday fans. Nor is she the first Black woman celeb to deliberately renounce her crown. We might read Whitney Houston’s decision to date and later marry Bobby Brown as a rejection of being dubbed America’s Sweetheart, or Rihanna’s nude instagram posts smoking marijuana as her rejection of the label, "Pop Princess." The same could be said for Beyoncé’s entire self-titled album and Janet Jackson’s Control. I, myself, have struggled with with this labeling by not just my mother but by teachers, peers, and lovers.

Any sign of opposition to the pure, ladylike image of a princess by young Black girls was and is still met by an intense policing of our language, physical appearance and the company we keep. If you were caught using profanity, if you wore booty shorts, if you dyed or shaved your hair, if you had lip piercings, if you decided to not to go straight to college, if you acted in a way that seemed  "loose" or "ghetto," and/or were close with anyone seen as such, someone was going to tell you about yourself.

As I get older and less attached to pleasing my mother, I see all the ways that Princesshood is coded with heterosexism, classism, and a misogynoir that renders young Black women infantile. No matter their age, Black women are seen as impressionable and mindless, their decisions read as lacking in sound judgment. Through the lens of Princesshood, my desire to then sneak out of the house was because of my “hoodrat” friends, my queerness now is a phase, and my growing collection of piercings and tattoos is bodily experimentation and a refusal to grow up rather than an exercise of personal and bodily autonomy.

If Black women celebrities are consistently read as the princess, then we, the audience start to act as the monarch. We begin to impose our beliefs and ideas of a proper heiress on these women and we do so with the paternalistic understanding that it is in their best interest, and that only we, so empowered by the internet, know what those best interests are. Therefore, to dismantle our own attachment to princesshood, we must ask ourselves: 1) What informs our ideas of how we believe Cardi should behave? and 2) Why do we think we know what is best for this woman?

In the rags to riches Cinderella story, the rags are eventually discarded and replaced with a more glamorous image. As Cardi rose to fame, we were quick to praise her outspokenness, her wit, her feminist takedowns of men like Peter Gunz. Now we seem even quicker to make sure she hides any remnants of her rags as she takes claim of her throne. “She’s at the Grammy’s, why she still addressing the haters?” So many of us are quick to police and ridicule Cardi for not letting up on her responses to trolls (something even Oprah does), hoppin’ in some beef, and her fierce commitment to Offset and her outward love and affection for him.

Her ratchetness is profitable, entertaining, and appealing until it ain’t. Cardi can rap about her haters like our Queen Beyonce in “***Flawless”, but she can’t actually be willing to curse out a hater in her comments. These critiques of Cardi don’t just reek of misogynoir, they are riddled with contempt for the poor, for the working-class, for the hood. In the age of social media, where celebrities’ interpersonal decisions are blasted on our timelines for the sake of commentary warfare, it is easy for folks to disguise their paternalism as advice and a genuine desire to see Cardi grow. Put comments like “She is too famous to be popping out like this” in the context of Princesshood and these comments read as a public scolding that fits into a respectability understanding of maturity prescribed as the ability for one to essentially ascend hood behavior.

"I felt like my life was mine. Now I feel like I don’t even own my life. I feel like the world owns me. It’s crazy because I never been the type of person to ever really care about anything. I never had to censor myself. Now I feel like everybody is so sensitive, and it’s sad. Some people have written me off or tried to make me feel like I’m something I’m not or wanted to tell me how to manage my relationship."  -- Cardi B, CR Fashion Book, February 2018

A few days after Christmas, my mother drives me to the bus back to New York City. During the ride, she tries to insinuate that my father has lost his daughter to the city I now call home. Her insinuation that some part of me has died, annoyed and hurt me; my response being: “You really need to pack whatever fantasies, whatever ideas you have of me up in a box and mourn them.” It was time to put her princess dreams to rest. And I think it is time we as fans, as lovers of these Black woman artists, do the same for our oppressive dreams of Cardi.

Cardi B is not – and refuses to be – the container for our greatest srtivings and desires. It makes us uncomfortable to read why she has decided to stay with Offset despite his infidelity because of its rawness. The insecurities that Cardi wears on her sleeve is of her very essence. Seeing Cardi live so unabashedly, so openly, makes us squeamish, because she doesn’t hide what still lingers even when you get the success you reach for. What if we see the threat to our loved one’s happiness as the very person themselves?

I have now come to trust that Cardi B is with Offset because it is the best decision for her, I trust her to make that decision as a young woman, and I trust that she will leave Offset if and when she goddamn pleases. My anger with that man is all my own and it is not Cardi who asked me to carry it. When we seek to fight the battles of our loved ones, especially without permission, we strip them of their agency. Cardi doesn’t need saving from Offset, from her haters, or herself. She got this far by listening to her own voice, and it is that self- awareness that will protect her.

Rather than a princess, Cardi B is the mirror, reflecting back to us our own frailties. In response to our vain pondering, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, who's the finest of them all?” Cardi laughs tongue out and says in her Bronx accent: go find out your fuckin' self. She’s not going to do the labor of living out our antiquated fantasies of glamour and success. Still, in the persistency of her gangsta girl refusal, Cardi opens up a new world of infinite possibilities of success that are inclusive of Black women and/or femmes who the princess mold was never meant to encompass in the first place. That is the magic of these photos from Cardi's February i-D magazine feature taken by Oliver Hadlee Pearch. In the words of parenting coach, Dr. Shefali Tsabary, the Black bodies we see in these photos are flying, "danc[ing] to a song that revels in freedom." If you've ever been in a room when Cardi comes on, you have witnessed this reveling. It is those enchanting, liberating moments that compel me to only celebrate the woman who gave me the music, to honor all the unpolished ways that she lives out loud and inspires all that encounter her light to do the same.   

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth Reading List: Week of Feb 9th

 Bresha Meadows Returns Home After Collective Organizing Efforts

Mariame Kaba and Colby Lenz

"“Collectively, we demanded freedom and care for Bresha. We opposed her further traumatization and structural abandonment by criminalization. We refused to accept that, for defending her life, Bresha would be further victimized by state violence, compounding her existing trauma and adding her to the list of girls and women filling cages nationwide — to be counted among the fastest-growing segment of the incarcerated population. We connected Bresha’s placement on suicide watch to the traumatic effects of incarceration and isolation on youth and adults. We tied our need to increase support for Bresha to organizing against the suicide crisis in California women’s prisons, demanding an end to the deadly practice of incarceration.”

 Cardi B Opens Up To Zendaya In The New Issue Of CR Fashion Book

"My role models are the people around me who I see working. Like for example, my mom would come home from work and get cooking right away. Me, if I work, after that I can’t do no other shit. I’m not trying to cook. I’m not trying to do anything. I also admire my homegirl, right? She used to strip. As soon as she would come home at five or six in the morning, she would finish counting singles, then get her son ready for school, and boom, take him to school. Then she would go to sleep at 9:00 a.m., wake up around noon, and pick her up soon again. Things like that, I really admire. "

 This Is the Journey: Commit to the You that Sets Your Soul Ablaze

Chelcee Johns

"When the world shakes abundantly, when the news tells me fear is the undergarment of everyday living, when the romance quakes itself into a slow rumble, when the mirror acts like it doesn’t know my name, when the vision feels pregnant and the birthing a low tide of praise and break and an altar unto myself." 

 Seeing Myself and Other Suburban Black Girls in Jodie Lando

Britt Julious

"She was, in essence, the perfect manifestation of the quiet, suburban black girl struggle. Jodie was as much a glance in the mirror for black girls like me who could code switch in less than a second, as she was a glimpse of the future struggles this constant splintering could bring. By high school, black girls are already made intimately aware of our blackness, and how that identity is purposefully shut out from the mores of white American life, from social politics to cultural rhetoric to beauty standards. I recognized in her what I might face in my teens, and I was fascinated."

  The Sentencing of Larry Nassar Was Not ‘Transformative Justice.’ Here’s Why.

Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes

"When you say, “What would we do without prisons?” what you are really saying is: “What would we do without civil death, exploitation and state-sanctioned violence?” That is an old question and the answer remains the same: Whatever it takes to build a society that does not continuously rearrange the trappings of annihilation and bondage while calling itself “free.” To know freedom or safety, and to make peace with our own fears, passive punishments must be replaced with active amends and accountability. Transformation is possible, but it will not be televised, and it will not be facilitated by the likes of Judge Rosemarie Aquilina. "

[blackgirltalksback]

TW: Suicide If you haven't yet heard, a 12-year-old Black girl committed suicide this past week. Her death has caused me to think a lot about racialized bullying and the ways that so many of our young people go unprotected by the very institutions that claim to value their growth and well-being. This week's #LoudMouth writers helped me think through this in the form of interviews, essays, poems, and short stories. Take care of yourselves and each other my loves. Be the model of light you want to see in this world. ✨(Link in bio)

[blackgirltalksback]

have you started the #LoudMouth reading list for the week?! The weeks writers helped me think more about dreams. How do we commit to a dream? How do we protect our dreams under a capitalist regime? Where does a dream live in the body? What realities do we see our dreams through? Why do we share our dreams, who do we hope they're reaching? (link in bio) 🗣🗣🗣: @azemezi, @janicerhoshalle, @lynne_bias, @kailanthropy, @jamaranyc. . . . #blackwriters #thefloridaproject #cardib #amberrose #blacchyna #freshwater #lorrainehansberry #moonlight #mta #sightedeyesfeelingheart #tangerine #readingisfundamental 📚🖊👩🏽‍💻✍🏽

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth Reading List: Week of Jan 21st

 Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart — Talking to Filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain  

Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn

It makes sense Kanye West named his newborn daughter after the midwestern city that has given us so many young, gifted, and Black women writers, from storytellers like Lena Waithe and Sam Bailey to poets like Jamila Woods, Noname and Eve Ewing.  At the helm of these Chicago-born #LoudMouths is Lorraine Hansberry whose journey as an artivist is chronicled in Tracy Heather Strain's latest documentary, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart. This interview highlights Strain's interests and motivating decisions in creating the film, but I most appreciate that Strain also shares forthcoming projects by Black women that are exploring the brilliance that was Lorraine and the love of life to which she was committed. 

 Paradise Lost: The Florida Project and the New Proletarian Cinema of 2017 tell of the persistence and loss of dreams 

 Kaila Philo

The Florida Project was the last movie I paid to see in theaters and it was worth every dime. I loved Tangerine and had high hopes for Sean Baker's latest picture, thus didn't mind spending my coin on a film with a predominately white cast, which is typically against my ministry. In her latest essay, Kailo Philo puts both of these films in conversation with recent films Moonlight and Good Time to explore the function of a dream in our current economic landscape. I appreciate Philo's holding of these cinematic choices to zoom in on stories of the working-class as a place we might look and return to in the future when reflecting on what now feels like a political nightmare. 

 Transition: My surgeries were a bridge across realities, a spirit customizing its vessel to reflect its nature 

Awaeke Emezi

I've been following the Emezi siblings since Tumblr was poppin, and now they're my Instagram faves and have a stunning profile in the February Issue of Vogue. Awaeke Emezi is also debuting her latest novel, Freshwater, in Febraury and its been on many must-read lists of 2018, but this week she gave us a very personal, very touching piece of nonfiction where she explores her relationship with gender dysphoria and Nigerian spirituality. 

 Take the J Train  

Jessica Lynne

I have a love-hate relationship with MTA. Yes, the world's largest public transportations system is trash with the constant delays and grossly violent police harassment and the putrid odor and the cat-sized rats. But it is on these trains that the great Tale of  Two Cities plays out and you can both smile and shake your head at what you've just witnessed on your way to work. Photographer, Andre D. Wagner's capture this tension mercifully in his latest series Here for the Ride, and and it isn this essay that art critic Jessica Lynne profoundly questions what language an image can create when the lens is in the hands of someone that is aware of the trace.

 P*ssy Not War: Meet the "Artivist" Behind Cardi B's Fave Looks

Jamara Whitfield

When Cardi B is pussy-poppin on the charts she makes sure to do so in style. The young rapper is intentional about the designers she's decked out in and does not hesitate to shout-out and tag the artist on her IG posts - one of them being visual artist Iris “Barbee” Bonner. Barbee's work is vibrant and unapologetic much like the women and/or femmes who don them - Amber Rose, Blac Chyna, and Alicia Keys included. This profile, by art and culture writer, Jamara Whitfield, reads as a celebration of sex-positive feminism that is being embraced by our latest pop icons and adds Bonner to  a list of creators championing the movement. 

[blackgirltalksback]

Loud Mouth Reading List: Week of Jan 21st

 Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart — Talking to Filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain  

Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn

It makes sense Kanye West named his newborn daughter after the midwestern city that has given us so many young, gifted, and Black women writers, from storytellers like Lena Waithe and Sam Bailey to poets like Jamila Woods, Noname and Eve Ewing.  At the helm of these Chicago-born #LoudMouths is Lorraine Hansberry whose journey as an artivist is chronicled in Tracy Heather Strain's latest documentary, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart. This interview highlights Strain's interests and motivating decisions in creating the film, but I most appreciate that Strain also shares forthcoming projects by Black women that are exploring the brilliance that was Lorraine and the love of life to which she was committed. 

 Paradise Lost: The Florida Project and the New Proletarian Cinema of 2017 tell of the persistence and loss of dreams 

 Kaila Philo

The Florida Project was the last movie I paid to see in theaters and it was worth every dime. I loved Tangerine and had high hopes for Sean Baker's latest picture, thus didn't mind spending my coin on a film with a predominately white cast, which is typically against my ministry. In her latest essay, Kailo Philo puts both of these films in conversation with recent films Moonlight and Good Time to explore the function of a dream in our current economic landscape. I appreciate Philo's holding of these cinematic choices to zoom in on stories of the working-class as a place we might look and return to in the future when reflecting on what now feels like a political nightmare. 

 Transition: My surgeries were a bridge across realities, a spirit customizing its vessel to reflect its nature 

Awaeke Emezi

I've been following the Emezi siblings since Tumblr was poppin, and now they're my Instagram faves and have a stunning profile in the February Issue of Vogue. Awaeke Emezi is also debuting her latest novel, Freshwater, in Febraury and its been on many must-read lists of 2018, but this week she gave us a very personal, very touching piece of nonfiction where she explores her relationship with gender dysphoria and Nigerian spirituality. 

   Take the J Train  

Jessica Lynne

I have a love-hate relationship with MTA. Yes, the world's largest public transportations system is trash with the constant delays and grossly violent police harassment and the putrid odor and the cat-sized rats. But it is on these trains that the great Tale of  Two Cities plays out and you can both smile and shake your head at what you've just witnessed on your way to work. Photographer, Andre D. Wagner's capture this tension mercifully in his latest series Here for the Ride, and and it isn this essay that art critic Jessica Lynne profoundly questions what language an image can create when the lens is in the hands of someone that is aware of the trace.

 P*ssy Not War: Meet the "Artivist" Behind Cardi B's Fave Looks

Jamara Whitfield

When Cardi B is pussy-poppin on the charts she makes sure to do so in style. The young rapper is intentional about the designers she's decked out in and does not hesitate to shout-out and tag the artist on her IG posts - one of them being visual artist Iris “Barbee” Bonner. Barbee's work is vibrant and unapologetic much like the women and/or femmes who don them - Amber Rose, Blac Chyna, and Alicia Keys included. This profile, by art and culture writer, Jamara Whitfield, reads as a celebration of sex-positive feminism that is being embraced by our latest pop icons and adds Bonner to  a list of creators championing the movement. 

[blackgirltalksback]

cerulean havoc

i haven't seen the moon in days now but i am sitting across from a man who reminds me of its light

a flashing smile & talks of a gold plated grill & a wanting tenderness take me for a ride bring me to a bar & another bar

with a woman & another woman i hold long to them but not long enough

before

  i am taken on another ride & another ride & another ride.

joy & regret.

that is the trickery of darkness & a phone's light & red wine.

men do not hold up to moons, here.

here, they wreak upon    a reckoning sky.