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I Am Reading Black Women
Unable to organize consistent thoughts, find useful words, or move to effective action, I am reading
I am ashamed. I am failing to rise to the challenges of this pivotal moment. Witnessing the urgent insistence for racial justice, I am rendered useless by paralyzing waves of rage, terror, and grief. Unable to organize consistent thoughts, find useful words, or move to effective action, I am reading Black women.
Needing tools to survive the isolation of quarantine, the horror of America’s racist violence, and the brokenness of surviving rape, I am reading Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
He assures people that he has been to the south, and seen slavery for himself; that it is a beautiful “patriciachal institution” that the slaves don’t want their freedom; that they have hallelujah meetings and other religious privileges. What does he know of the half-starved wretches toiling from dawn till dark on the plantations? of mothers shrieking for their children, torn from their arms by slave traders? of young girls dragged down into moral filth? of pools of blood around the whipping post? of hounds trained to tear human flesh?
“What I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid?” — Audre Lorde
Searching for the courage I’ve lost beneath the rubble of trauma, I am reading Audre Lorde’s essay, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.
In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid?
Grasping for lasting vision and deep strategy, I am reading Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.
In the course of these campaigns, Baker employed the whole range of protest tactics she had taught others to utilize: sending public letters of protest, leading noisy street demonstrations, confronting the mayor in front of the news media, even running for public office.
