Fire in Freetown

Writing | Card Shop | Jewelry Contact Me Writing published in EBONY, Rewire and more. Cards featured on MTV.com, Buzzfeed, Cosmo and on. Jewelry highlighted in Huffington Post, Etsy Fresh newsletter and on your favorite local Black girl.

[fireinfreetown]

From Auntie Paula.

This is also why I post on Instagram and while the things that inspire us are mainly different, the principle is the same.

Black women don't have to be your political mules and we don't exist to fill your feeds with intersectional insight. There are plenty Black women writing books about that. There are plenty Black women on Patreon right now writing about the intersection of class, race and the virus. Go support them and kindly fuck off thinking every Black woman you come across must be rending her clothes and gnashing her teeth for your woke porn.

We are not tour goddamn mules.

[fireinfreetown]

I'm sitting on the precipice of something new in me.

There is art in me that wants to be made, although I am still unsure of the medium. The stirring in me is something that wants to be said, needs to be expressed as it comes. However that may be.

I'm letting go of the need to have MY medium, a title I can safely fit into. The one designated space for me to dump all of my creativity and need into.

That apparently, isn't how this works.

In the meantime my eyes and my heart has been drawn to what's small and arresting, little universes unfolding unnoticed.

I don't know where the art is taking me just yet. Hopefully you join me here anyway.

[fireinfreetown]

“What you see in ‘This Is America’ is really about what you see in Donald Glover.”

Donald Glover is back in a big way. While debuting new music on SNL, he dropped the video for one of the songs, ‘This Is America.’By Monday morning he was close to 20 million views (a mark he sailed far past by Tuesday) and has dominated Twitter’s trending topics and all our favorite pop culture sources since. The visual itself is laden with shocking violence, religious symbolism,easily haunting visuals and the latest dance trends. But the reception has been largely mixed.After putting out two towering works, Awaken, My Love! and ‘Atlanta’, Donald Glover is still not entirely forgiven for his past sins-something that’s almost entirely his own fault as he has never apologized and still repeats some, in new ways. So as the video climbs it’s way past 50 million views in under a week, the question remains what is it that Childish Gambino is really saying here?There are a few messages and/or critiques that pop out of the visceral display but which ones you see and how you choose to see them depend on how and when you view Donald Glover the person and Childish Gambino the artist. There are two ways we’ve collectively decided to look at this video.You can look at the video and see :a critique of Black coping mechanisms and behavior in the face of violence. a critique on America’s focus on Black trends/popular culture while violence is occurring It depends on who you think the perspective of the video was shot from (is this White America cherry picking the focus?)and who it is for. And all of that is skewed by who you know Donald Glover as and what that version of him is most likely to be saying. the entire thing here 

[fireinfreetown]

Don't forget why you started. I almost did. (From 'Questions for Ada by Ijeoma Umebinyuo) #poetry #blackwomenwriters

[fireinfreetown]

Who is afraid of the Big Black Femme? Bell hooks, Beyonce and Femmephobia

 I’ve loved bell hooks for many of her insights. There are few men in my life who I have not prescribed her book We Real Cool. I’ve treated All About Love as a Bible, folding pages that moved me and highlighting sentences that I thought I should hold on to. When hooks gave us the phrase “whiteness fatigue” in Killing Rage, I thought to myself, “here is a woman who truly understands me and my particular condition, being Black and woman, ” As I’ve watched more of her talks and read her shorter works, the feeling of being understood by bell hooks has died. Her recent essay “Moving Beyond Pain” about Beyoncé’s Lemonade peaks my frustration with hooks in a way that might keep me from appreciating any work from her in the future. What’s most disturbing about hooks’ latest essay is it's bare revelation of an undercurrent in all of her work: hooks does not respect Black femmes, especially not Black femme women, no matter what we do or create. Growing up the daughter of a very dark Black woman with a nose the world often told me was too broad, the emphasis has always been for me to be smart. It was already decided that I was not going to be anyone's version of pretty, so I shouldn't waste time with my looks. Still, I was always feminine and chastised for it. I was told it was frivolous. Later it was third wave and Black feminism would affirm who I was, challenging the idea that any preoccupation of women was inherently less serious and for the attention of men. In contrast, hooks talks openly about her own experiences growing up and being told to try harder to be feminine, pretty. It’s become clear that this, coupled with societal pressure for women to be a European standard of “beautiful”,has convinced hooks that Black femininity is always the result of conforming. During “Are you still a Slave?” and again on stage with Laverne Cox, she insisted that those of us who are Black and feminine are conforming to patriarchy, implied we are bowing to our history of sexual exploitation. But if we are looking at Black womanhood from the perspective of slavery, as hooks so often does, then every moment a Black woman spends adorning herself, expressing her femininity for herself is revolutionary. It was a luxury never extended to us but one that we take for ourselves. Spanning hooks’ long academic career, there are irrefutable signs that bell hooks takes particular issue Black femininity, meaning none of this is new. But it is why, when I read “Moving Beyond Pain” it was clear to me that it is more about hooks’ personal discomfort with Black femininity than with the art she says she is critiquing. Hooks, tears apart Lemonade using the guise of feminism, holding Beyonce to a near-impossible standard, demanding from her which she, and society at large, asks of no one else except for Black women. She dismisses Lemonade as anything more than “money-making at it's best” because in a 1 hour visual album Beyonce was unable to destroy structures hooks hasn’t in her decades long career. Which White singer gets this? Which Black male rapper? When have we seen the work of Taylor Swift (a crowned feminist darling) criticized for it’s greater contributions to revolution? When was the last time we had a public intellectual lambaste Kendrick Lamar for not deconstructing sexism in his videos? hooks’ distaste for Beyonce is no secret to anyone, but this article veered from disliking Beyonce to a particular femmephobia. hooks participates in the white cishetereopatriarchy that she claims to critique when she raises the bar for Black women and Black women alone. hooks has no problem getting paid to lift up the elementary feminism of white capitalists like her “feminist girl crush” Emma Watson, recently named in the Panama papers. Hooks mimics the White cishetereopatriarchy she so carefully names when she raises the bar for Black women alone, when her feminist analysis boils down to “I can’t take her seriously, she’s got on all that make-up!” hooks’ analysis of Beyoncé mimics society at large by reducing Black feminine woman as disingenuous, unserious, a sexual commodity. Embracing my femininity and my sexuality has been my personal revolution. The time I spend doing my nails, getting my eyebrows waxed, these rituals- a singular declaration that the time I spend on me is not a waste. What hooks would call my “utterly aestheticized” presentation is for me. I was feminine when I was strapping women down and I am feminine standing next to my partner now. These are the moments I delight in this skin my grandmother lamented over as too dark. I fluff my hair White people often deem too big, I dress my body and it’s curves in loving adoration despite its very existence being deemed vulgar. This too is feminist. 

 As a woman who makes her living dissecting the particular cruelty of devaluing Black women and the many ways it happens, bell hooks disappoints profoundly when she herself devalues a Black woman and her art baselessly. It is hard for me to read hook’s essay as any sort of feminism and if I were to follow her example, I’d dismiss everything she’s written and declare her feminism untrustworthy. After all, a woman who internalizes the misogynistic disregard for femininity can’t possibly “call for an end to patriarchal domination.” When bell hooks can’t see the harm she inflicts when she couches femmephobia in feminist critique, can her “feminist vision” be trusted? The answer seems closest to no. Still it is patriarchy that teaches us Black women are disposable, especially when there is no more labor you can suck from them. I’ll continue to love hooks for the many things she’s given to me- the perfect rebuttal to The Feminine Mystique to her loving assessment of Black manhood- but her femmephobia will not be one of them.

[fireinfreetown]

Good morning #tenessee #vscocam

[fireinfreetown]

The fact is, Rihanna doesn’t get dubbed as a feminist icon for the very same reasons her white peers do: the black female body is deemed as overtly sexual. So much so Miley Cyrus can derive a sexual identity just by associating with Blackness and Lily Allen can make a critique of hyper sexuality on our backs. Rihanna being Black and female must work from proving she isn’t just a sex object. Miley gets to be naked and feminist because it is presumed that she is “innocent” and that enjoying sex—for White women like her—isn’t the norm, but a revolutionary act. This was the justification for the rape of Black women, the very reason Saartjie’s genitals were carved from her body, to prove our inherently sexual nature and to prove the White woman’s asexual (and therefore, pure) one.

Since the "How Rihanna's dress is bad for women" thinkpieces are coming, this seems relevant, Why We Can't Have Black Feminist Pop Icons. Again. 

/

I wrote that piece several months ago...and we're still having this discussion.

[fireinfreetown]

Becoming a "Black" girl in America is an interesting thing. Coming from a Black country, into an all Black neighborhood to transition into a "integrated" neighborhood created a dual sight for me. I saw myself as I was...and then how others saw me, smaller, duller, less than. I was about 12 at this time and it hurt and confused me more than words could ever convey. I had a Black teacher that made us read and memorize parts of Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman. It was the first thing I'd ever read by a Black woman. First thing I'd read that addressed what it was like being a Black woman/girl in America. I felt power rise up in. I felt affirmed and seen. I decided to read all I could by her. I memorized the entire poem when we only had a few lines to memorize each.

I just never thought Maya Angelou would pass...not in my lifetime. She just became a fact for me, bigger than age, permanent. I saw bits of myself in her writing and her honesty made these pieces less shameful. This morning when I learned of her passing, I started crying. How could someone who gave me all that be mortal? How could she not defeat death?

I asked Black women on Twitter if they remembered what it was like reading Phenomenal Woman for the first time, these are just a few of the responses. This is what Maya Angelou gave us, with just one poem.

She will never fade.

[fireinfreetown]

Wondering, wandering

Confession? 

I am too high right now. I don't smoke and so I'm wondering how I get this way, too high, thinking too much, wandering. I'm not the sort of person to engage in barely, newly legal activity, not the sort of person who even knows were to buy it, how to roll it. I'm...reserved if you're being kind, repressed if you're being honest and prissy if you're being cruel. I battle with myself and what I've been taught is ok, appropriate, good, commendable.

And so now I'm wondering about the girl who got me high. Brilliant woman, brilliant scholar- upbringing says good, appropriate. Inner me says good, commendable. But she smokes...Me, high, sanctimonious hypocrite.

Everything is stronger for me high. I stayed in the shower, wondering until I shriveled up again and again because the sensation felt that much better, that much stronger than I've ever known. The sun feels amazing, warmer but not burning. The towel feels amazing, soft so soft and the floor...why is it so perfectly cold, so deliciously textured? It hurts, it feels so good.  I am content. 

But everything is stronger so I hear that inner track louder, always playing. 

Herherherherherher. Herherherheherheher. Her. Her.

Confession?

Two feelings live inside me constantly now. A feeling for the present and a feeling for the past and an imaginary future. I'm always something...and sad.

Confessing this feels like losing some war. I want to be as angry and dismissive as she is, uncaring as everyone tells me I should be...but I'm not. 

I'm sad about what we never became, sad about we maybe never were, sad about the past that her words now tear down. I was always a mistake, sometimes. Other times I was a lesson she had to learn. 

Me.

The woman who loves her still.  So I revel in the feel of the shower, in the feel of drying off,  feeling content...and sad, far too high. 

Wondering and wandering around. 

Wondering about the girl whose bed I'm typing in and the girl texting me too much and the girl I made cry because I said I wouldn't stop seeing any of them. Wandering from one name to the next, one feeling to the next. 

Everything feels so much stronger now. 

Wondering and wandering. Feeling far too much, far too content, far too sad. 

Wandering

[fireinfreetown]

I never thought I’d be the girlfriend who called about tweets. Yet there I was, sitting in front of my computer completely horrified and desperately searching for my phone. He wouldn’t have said that…he didn’t type that…not the guy who knew about my past. Not him. But there it was. The tweet that sent my entire timeline in a tizzy and he’d written it: "The women who say they want to be equal to men would call the cops on a man for hitting them like his equal.” It was just Twitter, he claimed when I asked about it. It’s fun to get people riled up, see what they say. It’s reductio ad absurdum- reduction to the absurd. “What was you original point then?” I asked, still doubtful. He stumbled then. Women wanting equality and chivalry? What about men? And... it’s just Twitter! It got people talking, he’d gotten 900 retweets. Dialogue is important…? Even if it’s just Twitter. “And I can’t believe you called me over some tweets,” he finished. I hesitated. I’d first come to Twitter about three years ago to vent, to be honest about myself and to say the things I’d felt too restricted by the closet I still inhabited, to say out loud. It was where I found the words for the parts of myself I was still discovering or had been made ashamed of: pansexual, feminist, switch. I’d even found community on Twitter…but I hadn’t really met anyone offline. Unsure of the space and how the interactions could translate offline, I let my then boyfriend sway me. I dropped it. A few months later, I discovered exactly why I shouldn’t have. His need for attention, positive or negative, didn’t exist only on Twitter. His penchant for saying absurd, hurtful things didn’t only manifest online. The worst part about dating is peeling back the veneer, meeting the real person and not just their representative. It’s rarely ever good-- the nice guy turns out to be an entitled jerk and the “good” girl turns out to be just good at keeping secrets. Whenever it happens-- on the first date or eight months later-- the big reveal rarely matches our expectations or desires. It’s the part that has worn me down, kept me from answering any messages on OkCupid in a timely fashion, or following up with my friend about someone they just KNOW I’d love. About the only place I really follow up with people I’m nursing an interest in anymore is Twitter. Yes. Twitter. The site of choice for people to organize revolutions, flash mobs, protests, online watching parties-yes, that Twitter. Twitter’s potential supersedes the narrow ways we think of it, this also holds true when it comes to dating

My latest piece on Twitter and dating, published on Blogher. Read the whole thing here: http://www.blogher.com/twitter-dating-site

[ethiopienne]

When coming out puts us at an economic disadvantage and in danger, it isn’t our responsibility alone to challenge society. It is the responsibility for cis- and heterosexual people to step up. We call coming out ‘bravery’ with little analysis or discussion of exactly why that is, and in doing so we create a cultural expectation that puts so many people in dangerous, harmful situations. So often those of us who are out and safe, forget the dangers others face. We villianize and further ostracize those who are closeted as though it isn’t a painful decision made with intimate knowledge of one’s own circumstances. So this is a call to arms. For out LGBTQ members and allies, celebrating our ‘coming out’ isn’t enough. Your congratulations for ‘living my life bravely’ didn’t help me pack my bags when I had to leave my parent’s home. It hasn’t housed me when I faced homelessness for loving and losing that love. We need more. We need you to challenge the structures that make living our authentic lives an act of bravery. Show up. Show up for more than marriage equality. Use your voice to be heard in spaces we cannot be. Call out your pastors. Challenge traditions. Do more than celebrate our coming outs and remarking on the tragedy of our deaths. There are moments in between. There is homelessness. There are laws that give businesses the right to deny us service. It isn’t just about us being cowards. It’s about us knowing we still aren’t safe. Before asking us to be brave, allies should require that bravery of themselves. And LGBTQ people need to demand it of them. To my allies: challenge your thought process, challenge your family members, consider your own privilege. Do the work. Show up. Show up before funerals, before we’re out on the street.

Lesli-Ann Lewis, "This Is Coming Out" (via ethiopienne)

To log onto tumblr and see my latest article reblogged by someone I absolutely adore...with over 250 notes...well...this is just dope. 

Thank you @ethiopiennesays for the signal boost! 

[fireinfreetown]

Black Girl Season: Worthy of My own praise

There is a half joke, half empowerment movement on  the part of Twitter I inhabit called "black girl time/season" 

It's Black women circling around, supporting and amplifying the works, art, success and accomplishments of other Black women. Because if we don't do it for each other, we all know, it won't get done. It's a beautiful thing to see and be a part of. 

I, myself, go out of my own way to make sure my sisters know they and everything they do is valuable, necessary and important. 

But it just hit me recently, I don't do the same for myself. 

Not too long ago, I saw some words on Instagram that caused a tiny tweak of pride. "Create the things you wish existed." it commanded in blurry, over-filtered font. 'I've done that, ' I thought. I created a post around it showcasing the jewelry and cards I've made simply because I wished they existed. The moment of pride passed and I went about my day... Later, I saw the post had over 200+ notes. One stuck out, "I can't wait for this to be me."

Somewhere in the world there was a record scratch. 

Someone wanted to be me, to do something I've done and thought nothing of. For as long as I have been cognizant of my own existence, I've been aware of my many flaws and failings.  Last year I was a part of organizing CT's largest immigration rally. I looked some of my lawmakers in the eye and "came out" as an unrecognized American, a term I made up and prefer to "illegal". I told them to do better, to make way for me and my potential to the sound of applause and cheers of over 5,000 people.  I was immensely proud of myself and despite being afraid for me, many of the people in my life were as well. Not even a day later, I let my accomplishments be eclipsed by a small mistake, a C- on a test. I returned to my usual state of criticizing myself and worrying about my future. 

But that one little comment made me really look at myself.  "I can't wait for that to be me."

I shouldn't need to see my work through another's eyes to see it praise worthy but that's what it took. I realize I need to celebrate myself. I've done some amazing things.

When my parents' savings plan fell through, I helped put myself through school, no financial aid. It is a momentous feat that I'm still working on. I broke ground at my school, helping revise my department's Eurocentric class requirements. I won awards for my event planning and kept my grades up, all while working full time.

When I couldn't find jewelry I wanted, I made it and built a business. When I couldn't find the cards I wanted to send, I made those too and started yet another business.

I wanted to be published, so I did that. 

Every challenge put before me I conquered. And while I haven't done everything I want to, I'm worthy of my own praise. 

Women, we find it so much easier to build others up than we do to celebrate ourselves. Black women are especially guilty. We're taught from birth to care for the family and the collective. To do so humbly and quietly, expect no praise and give ourselves none. 

But we are a part of that collective. We deserve our own care and praise.  On Twitter, some of us have declared this year the beginning of Black girl season, a time of celebration for our special kind of magic. It’s the year I start unabashedly celebrating myself, too.

Every time we walk in the room, it's Black girl time. We're worthy of raising our own voices to sing our own praises.

[fireinfreetown]

Beyonce

Beyonce will take you through all 5 stages of grief and out to the other side.

[fireinfreetown]

Is this YOUR personal story?

That is the point of the blog

[fireinfreetown]

#write2014: Notes to women who just need closure

Notes to women who just need closure

Put down why. Put down how.

These questions are lies, lies waiting to happen and lies about closure. You don’t need to know how they could have done it. And you don’t even want to know how. Do you really want to know about the yawning empty space where  love and consideration should have been? Do you want to know what selfish beast huddles behind eyes that you thought you were seeing a soul through?

You don’t. You want a retraction. An apology. These questions are pleas.

Please. Undo the thing you shouldn’t have done. Please.  Please, make the burden of your actions less heavy on me.

But asking "how could you?" will not do it for you. Asking "why?" will not do it for you.

Put them down.

 Don't wonder how long she's hated you. What you could have done to stop it. Don't ask how long the affair has been going on, when he stopped loving you. 

Put those questions down. 

Put down your anger…and their stuff.

This isn’t to hurt them really, is it? It’s to make them sorry. To make them see your pain. But baby, they won’t. And this too is begging. Put it down. 

Put down the certainty that you can never feel that love again. Like 'how', like 'why', this feeling too is a lie.

Put down the fear you deserved it. You know you didn't.

Put them down. 

Let this go. 

Let your lover go.

[fireinfreetown]

Why doesn't anyone ever tell you how important singing at the top of your lungs is to the healing process? Because it is. 

so.

damn.

important.

[fireinfreetown]

#write2014: For Black immigrant girls who said 2014 was their year...

For Black immigrant girls who said 2014 was their year, when having resolutions wasn't enough.

- Lesli-Ann Lewis

      Like at least 500 million other people, I told myself "2014 is MY year!" And I meant it. Right before 2013 ended I got my visa and work permit so it looked like ALL MY PROBLEMS WERE SOLVED,FINALLY,JESUS. Exuberant I gathered my work permit, my visa and  driver's license manual and set about the task of getting my life together.

FINALLY, JESUS. I was going to be a real, American adult. 

And then my life exploded in my face. I've been trying to gather back up the pieces but first I had to learn to sleep without bolting awake in fear. Once I stopped being afraid, more bad news. 

I decided something had to be done. 2014 was MY year. I said it, I wrote it down on paper, gotdamn it. I just needed to make a list. Lists fix everything. There are lists that help you manage how to grieve. I needed a list and an action plan. 

This is how adults handle things. And in 2014, MY year, I was going to finally be an adult. 

My action plan lead me to the Cold Shower Challenge. On it's face it's really stupid simple: take a very cold shower every morning. But the cold shower is to prepare you to do the uncomfortable things you'd need to do. Seeing as waking up was becoming an uncomfortable thing to do, I thought this would somehow make everything else seem easier. 

The morning I climbed in the shower, I'd received more bad news. Before the cold water hit me, I was already crying. I felt nothing. Desperate to make the challenge work, I made the water even colder. I couldn't make it cold enough to hurt more than the words rolling around in my head. I washed my body feeling nothing, not even realizing I was learning something.

Getting out the shower I knew I was cold. I didn't so much feel the towel on my skin as remember there should be a sensation. I lotion-ed myself, knowing the lotion should feel wet, knowing my skin should be cold to the touch but unable to process those feelings and what was going on within me. 

The next day when I tried to stay under the freezing water for the same length of time, I simply couldn't. Present in my body, I could feel my fingers swell with frozen blood. I know it happened. Or started to happen...or something really close. I stumbled out of the shower, cursing my entire life.

At this point I'm being serious, I actually learned something from the challenge. A part of it was to see how you react to and face discomfort.

Originally, I thought I failed because I couldn't physically feel anything but that day was about how I reacted to my emotional discomfort. 

I'm uncomfortable feeling anything unpleasant. Either I make jokes about it or I start to "fix" it. It took something real to make me realize I can't do that. I can't plug along like I'm not devastated and expect at some point for my heart to catch up. 

There are things I'm going to miss because of how much I hurt but there's nothing I can do for that. I can't fast forward to the healing process, I can't run away from the pain. I have to feel this, let the discomfort and the tears and the anger and the breakdowns happen, While I'm still processing the pain, there will be no way for me to actually fully experience anything that's happening outside of me.  And I have to be ok with that. Otherwise this will be another thing, I never got over, just another thing I put away and pretended was resolved. 

I realized in that shower, how powerful my state of mind is. How powerful everything going on inside me is. The cold will not touch me, the good will not find me until I work through this. Until I build myself again. It's devastating and empowering to realize this.

I hate every moment of facing this pain. The blood-freezing, lung-squeezing, heart-stopping cold showers are easier. But this is the year I promised myself I'd start acting like an adult. 

2014 is  MY year...or something.