I have read this book too many times to count. I’ve read every book #PearlCleage has ever written at least 3 times. Y’all, I don’t be speaking in metaphors or similes. Even my poetry is literal. If I say “the sky was green” - Im not tryna tell you money was falling from the sky (although it is 👅) on MAMAS, the sky was literally green. 🤷🏾♀️ But Pearl writes for the Garveyite in me. Her ideas of community and our responsibility to each other is so similar to my own that it’s a wonder. She writes the stories my soul must have. 🙏🏾 But also, I’ve been talking more about #WomenWhoRunWithTheWoleves (a sacred text) and as I’m simultaneously reading #BabylonSisters again, I’m making all kinds of connections to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ work and the work of black women’s fiction. The characters Zora wrote. The characters Toni wrote. The characters Pearl writes. #itMe || I have been calling myself a “Pearl Cleage character” for the last 15 years. These women are the women Estes is writing about. This woman exists in her freedom and audacity because her soul knows she MUST exist or she won’t survive this life. Pearl Cleage characters are this woman. They want deep love, the ability to be safe (so get. Carve out spaces where they will absolutely be safe), they so the work their souls MUST have (they are #womanists) and all they wanna do is be free. <- Even when their work is resistance work, it’s dreamed up with the intention to be able to be, raise, live in community with, and love free women. 🙌🏾 Again... it’s me! || All of these stories and these books and this art and this dreaming has brought me to the place of sharing the #DreamYourselfFree workshop. I want black women to be able to all be the Pearl Cleage characters we were born to be. A few more days of this early bird pricing exists. Learn more at bit.ly/BGMDreamFree #thefreepeopleproject #blackgirlmixtape *** You can donate to a scholarship for a #blackWoman to have access to this work by giving at PayPal.me/BlackGirlMixtape 💙 (at Harlem) https://www.instagram.com/p/BySZFCrl-Ey/?igshid=1he4abagpzplj
