Writings by Audre Lorde, including "Man-Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist Response" and "A Litany For Survival". Also, a new book of Lorde's writings, I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde !!

image of book cover is from here

Revised on the 26th , 29th, and 30th of August 2012, and December 2, 2015.

I just found a website that has a photocopy of Audre Lorde's classic essay from Sister Outsider, titled: "Man-Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist Response". If you haven't yet, I encourage you to read it and to read the whole book along with it. Here is the URL and link to that one chapter: http://www.scribd.com/doc/103750751/Audre-Lorde-Man-Child.

I have been saddened to see how many younger people online believe that radical feminist = white woman. I know that many, but not all, of the people publicly naming themselves radical feminist or the more contemporary and racially narrow term, rad fem, are white women. I've written about how I don't equate the terms: radical feminist and rad fem. I've hopefully respectfully challenged the white supremacy of white-majority and white-led organising by people who identify as rad fem *here* in an earlier post.

Of course most of the whites who organise politically are not feminists. They are anti-feminists, racists, and misogynists, protecting white male power at all costs. But unlike anti-feminists and other misogynists, rad fems and I share a lot in common: our critique of pornography and prostitution as male-protected and mass produced forms of men raping and enslaving women and girls; a serious analysis of human sexuality as it is constructed and acted out in heterosexist and male supremacist contexts; and a de-marginalising of male supremacy and patriarchy when analysing and challenging increasingly globalised systems of oppressive, terroristic, and deadly power.

In fact, many of the people who claim to be the definitive example of "human" are white men. And we certainly know that even though white men write most Western history books--that have systematically left out or distorted the accomplishments, the history, of white women, women of color, and men of color--that surely doesn't mean only white men are human. Nor is it the case that only white women are radical feminists, lesbian or not. Many of my role models growing up through my early adulthood were Black and Brown radical lesbian feminists.

My focus, here at this blog, on women of color is seen by some whites and many men as divisive. Some view this centralising of women of color at a pro-feminist website as one way to focus on the differences between women rather than the similarities. I hardly see how focusing on women of color is divisive. Nor do I see it as divisive to point out where white supremacy lives and breathes. Whites want to keep white power all to ourselves thereby dividing humanity into raced "haves" and "have nots". Exposing and challenging white supremacy is an effort to end divisions of social power among humans; its aim is to equalise the control of and the access to resources among humans, including intellectual resources.

Another way to approach the issue would be to ask: Is focusing primarily or entirely only on the written and other activist work of whites divisive? Because that's what most whites do, often thinking they are representing "all men" or "all women" or "all queer people" when doing so. So it comes across to me as problematic when a white person, in my case a white male, who doesn't wish to marginalise women of color is seen as promoting divisions among women. Why isn't this blog seen as unifying women by focusing on the work of women of color? And, if whites wish to deal with our white supremacy in public ways, how does identifying where it lives further divide humanity?

I'd argue that routinely and systematically ignoring, tokenising, or marginalising the activist work of women of color is divisive. It maintains white supremacy and male supremacy. So too does using terms like "radical" by whites who don't include "white" when naming ourselves. The name of this blog certainly participates in that pattern. It would visibilise (and challenge) whiteness more if I termed it "A Radical White Profeminist". It would also serve to make it visible as a particular and non-universal political condition.

I now consider any white person refusing or neglecting to name our structural location by race when we describe our political position, as supporting and reinforcing white supremacy. Were I to start my blog now, I'd name it with "white" being in the title.

I have grown up hearing Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith be regularly identified by whites as Radical Black Feminists or Black Lesbian Feminists. Mary Daly and Sheila Jeffreys have only ever been identified by whites as "Radical Feminists" or "Lesbian Feminists". I hope it's clear how that way of naming white people reinforces whiteness as somehow not worth mentioning. But the "worth", or value, of not mentioning it is the white power that is so well-protected in the practice of whites not naming ourselves with that term. This is a crucial, and often enough unconscious, practice of protecting the very brutal power underlying and enforcing unnamed whiteness. The brutality is aimed squarely at people of color, with especially horrific forms leveled against women of color.

Conscious or not, it is an undenibly political decision to not mention our whiteness as a structural place of power in a white male supremacist system. (This is not, as some have indicated, primarily an issue of naming one's "identity"; this writing isn't advocating what is sometimes termed "identity politics".) If it is not deemed collectively necessary for whites who name ourselves as "radical" to also name and own our own whiteness as a political reality, how do we practice being responsible and accountable to those we structurally oppress by race?

It's not a radical practice for white folks to "disappear" our whiteness in our writings and other work, in my opinion which has been informed by dozens of radical activists of color, most of them feminist. It's not even liberal. It's politically conservative; it has many of the same effects as mainstream neo-Conservative and more publicly marginalised White Nationalist agendas.

White males making our race invisible but our gender visible serves white and male supremacy because the two systems, particularly in the West, are inextricably linked and are mutually reinforcing. Both work together to oppress and destroy women of color. Put another way: let's consider white radical Andrea Dworkin's definition of "feminist" which has been summarised as follows: if it hurts women, feminists are against it. Surely white supremacy as well as male supremacy hurts women (of color). So to ignore race in one's feminist and pro-feminist work is to participate in the deeply racist practice of pretending women of color are not "women"--unless they, too, are somehow presented as unraced. Ironically, whites are very reluctant to do that. Only whiteness is to be systematically ignored-while-protected.

The same is true for men of color who name their race as a structural position of marginalisation and oppression but not their gender as a structural position of power over all women. Men of color not identifying their gender as a structural source of oppressive power serves not only male supremacy, but also white supremacy. Because protecting any male power, as such, bolsters white men's power as men, but particularly as white men.

As I see it and hear about it from radical and feminist women of color, those two systems of power--male and white supremacy--together with capitalism, are the main dividers of humans into--according to power elites--those who are meant to survive and those who are not.

This matter is addressed in those terms in at least two pieces of writing by Audre Lorde. One is in a speech in the book Sister Outsider titled "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action". This is also contained in another book discussed below. Another discussion of this theme is in a poem titled "A Litany for Survival", which may be read in full, along with several other of Lorde's poems, here.

Finally, I offer a link to a relatively new book (2009 hardcover, 2011 paperback), of Audre Lorde's work. The book is titled: "I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde", edited by Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall.

 I have had the pleasure of hearing Johnnetta Cole speak, many years ago. Calling the three editors only "editors" would not be to understand their role in the creation of this book. Rudolph Byrd offers a significant introduction of the works contained in the volume. Johnnetta Cole offers a chapter in the section of the book called "Reflections", which also contain chapters by Alice Walker, bell hooks, and Gloria I. Joseph. Beverly Guy-Sheftall closes the book with her epilogue.

Alice Walker discusses the life and legacy of Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

I never got to meet or speak with Adrienne Rich. Or Alice Walker for that matter. But there's still time with Alice. What I remember most about Adrienne was her willingness to struggle with whiteness and the unearned power that defines and sustains it, and her lesbian-feminist brilliance in analysing heterosexuality as a socially and politically compulsory condition for women, not a natural one.

Below is the video featuring Alice Walker. Below that is a transcript of the conversation.



To link to any of this, please click here: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/30/adrienne_rich_1929_2012_alice_walker

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012): Alice Walker & Frances Goldin on the Life of the Legendary Poet

by via Democracy Now!, Wikipedia & Flickr
Friday Mar 30th, 2012 11:57 AM

Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse.

In 1997, Adrienne Rich famously declined to accept the National Medal of Arts in a protest against the Clinton administration, writing that art "means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage."

Rich died on March 27, 2012, at the age of 82 in her Santa Cruz, California home.

640_audre-lorde-meridel-l...original image ( 1280x960)

PHOTO: Audre Lorde, Meridel Lesueur, Adrienne Rich 1980 by K. Kendall
"They led a writing workshop together in Austin, Texas. I was in it, and they let me take this picture of them."

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012): Alice Walker & Frances Goldin on the Life of the Legendary Poet & Activist

by Democracy Now! — March 30, 2012

The legendary poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich, who died on Tuesday at the age of 82, was one of the most celebrated poets of the last half-century and a lifelong advocate for women, gay and lesbian rights, peace and racial justice. Rich drew widespread acclaim for her many volumes of poetry and prose, which brought the oppression of women and lesbians into the public spotlight. She was a key figure in the women’s movement and an uncompromising critic of the powerful. In 1997, Rich famously declined to accept the National Medal of Arts in a protest against the Clinton administration, writing that art "means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage." We remember Rich’s life with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and Rich’s literary agent Frances Goldin.

Guests:

Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, poet and activist. When Adrienne Rich was awarded the 1973 National Book Award, she refused to accept the award alone. She appeared onstage with poets Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, and the three accepted the award on behalf of all women.

Frances Goldin, Adrienne Rich’s longtime literary agent and friend.

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help Democracy Now! provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on the TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

Transcript:

JUAN GONZALEZ: The legendary poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich died on Tuesday at the age of 82. Rich was one of the most celebrated poets of the last half-century and a lifelong advocate for women, gay and lesbian rights, peace and racial justice. Rich drew widespread acclaim for her many volumes of poetry and prose, which brought the oppression of women and lesbians into the public spotlight. She was a key figure in the women’s movement and an uncompromising critic of the powerful. Rich won numerous awards and honors, including the National Book Award for the 1973 collection Diving into the Wreck. Refusing to accept the award alone, she appeared onstage with poets Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, and the three accepted the award on behalf of all women.
AMY GOODMAN: In 1997, Adrienne Rich famously declined to accept the National Medal of Arts in a protest against the Clinton administration, writing that art, quote, "means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage."
In a moment, we’ll be joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and Rich’s literary agent Frances Goldin. But first we’re going to go to Adrienne Rich herself, reading her poem "What Kind of Times Are These."

ADRIENNE RICH: There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Adrienne Rich reading her poetry. She died on Tuesday at the age of 82. Alice Walker, as well as Frances Goldin, her literary agent, are here to talk about her life.
Alice Walker, your thoughts about Adrienne?
ALICE WALKER: Well, it was very interesting. She and I saw each other infrequently and almost always by accident, so it was quite magical. We would be sometimes in an elevator together, and she would have come from one part of the country and me from somewhere else, and there we’d be. Or we’d show up at a movie, and there she’d be, and there I’d be. She was very close to a friend of mine, June Jordan, and so I got to know more about her through June, and also, of course, through her poetry, which was very meaningful to me. And my sense of her, the thing that I most loved, was her integrity. She lived exactly what she said. And this was so rare and so beautiful. And we will miss her.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the National Book Award in 1973 that she won for Diving into the Wreck that she insisted that you, Alice, and Audre Lorde accept the award with her on stage? Talk about that moment. Where were you?
ALICE WALKER: I was in Mississippi. I was, you know, fighting the good fight down there. But anyway, what happened was that we were all three nominated for this award. And we understood that we were living under apartheid and segregation and, you know, all of that, and that under such a system, which favored white people, she would get the award. We knew that. And so, we decided, before anybody—anything was announced, that we would not accept being ranked, and we would not accept the racism implicit in an award that would go to someone—you know, she was a great poet, but it would go to her also because she was a white person. And to her immense credit, she had no desire to be honored as we would be dishonored. And so, we got together. Audre called me in Mississippi, and we chatted about it, and Adrienne. And so, we decided that we could only accept an award so suspicious if we accepted it in the name of all women and indicate by that action that we understood that women were not honored in the arts and elsewhere.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Frances, you represented her for many years. Talk to us about how you first came to know her and what kind of person she was, and especially this issue of her stances on principle and social justice.
FRANCES GOLDIN: I met her at a dinner. The gay and lesbian rights groups had a dinner the night before, every year, when the publishing world came together in various countries—cities in the country. And I was sitting next to her and met her for the first time at that dinner. And we bonded, because we had similar politics, and we had wanted to meet each other for some time. And when the meeting was over, I said to her, "Can I hug you?" And she said, "It would be a pleasure." And we hugged. And then I said, "Well, if we can hug, can I kiss you?" And she said, "I would love to." And we left, and that happened.
And then I really campaigned for a couple of years to be able to represent her. And I remember taking a camera on a city bus, because they had on the billboards of the buses the poet of the month. And once, it was Adrienne. And so, I took a picture of that and sent it to her and said, "Millions of people in New York know about you because you were on the bus this morning." And, you know, I just courted her with anything I could think of.
And then, one day, she called and said, "I need some help. My publisher, Norton, has two offers from England, and I don’t know which one to take." So I said, "Well, just sit there, and don’t go away from your phone." And I called my British agent, because I certainly didn’t know which was the better of the two. And he called her, and she explained it, and he told her which was the best publisher for her. And she called back and said, "He was so wonderful, and he didn’t take any money, and he wouldn’t charge me." And I said, "Well, of course not. It was just a favor." And she said, "Well, then, can you represent the book?" And I said, "How can I? You signed a contract. And if I called with a question about it, they would hang up on me, because I didn’t agent this book." And she said, "Well, can you do my next one?" And I said, "Does night follow day?" And we became agent and author. And it’s been 25 years.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to that moment in 1997 when Adrienne Rich refused the National Medal for the Arts to protest the growing concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. Adrienne Rich informed the Clinton administration of her decision in a July 3rd letter to Jane Alexander, the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts at the time, which administers the awards. Adrienne Rich appeared on Democracy Now! soon afterwards, and she read her letter.

ADRIENNE RICH: "Dear Jane Alexander,

“I just spoke with a young man from your office, who informed me that I had been chosen to be one of twelve recipients of the National Medal for the Arts at a ceremony at the White House in the fall. I told him at once that I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration. I want to clarify to you what I meant by my refusal.

“Anyone familiar with my work from the early Sixties on knows that I believe in art’s social presence—as breaker of official silences, as voice for those whose voices are disregarded, and as a human birthright. In my lifetime I have seen the space for the arts opened by movements for social justice, the power of art to break despair. Over the past two decades I have witnessed the increasingly brutal impact of racial and economic injustice in our country.

“There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know that art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage. The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate. A President cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored. I know you have been engaged in a serious and disheartening struggle to save government funding for the arts, against those whose fear and suspicion of art is nakedly repressive. In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist. I could not participate in a ritual which would feel so hypocritical to me.

"Sincerely,
Adrienne Rich"

AMY GOODMAN: Adrienne Rich, reading on Democracy Now! the letter she wrote to the actress Jane Alexander, who was then the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, rejecting the 1997 medal, the 1997 National Medal for the Arts. Alice Walker, your final thoughts on Adrienne Rich?
ALICE WALKER: I think that that letter demonstrates that integrity that she had that I so admired. And I think her legacy for all of us is to continue to believe in the power of art, especially in the power of poetry, and to keep moving and not to be dissuaded, not to be discouraged, but to take heart from a woman who lived for 82 years giving her very best, growing out of every shell that society attempted to force her into to become this really amazing figure of inspiration and hope and love.
AMY GOODMAN: Alice Walker, we want to thank you for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and activist. Frances Goldin, Adrienne Rich’s agent and friend. And we will post you reading, Frances, Adrienne’s letter to you on our website at democracynow.org.

Preview of The Edge of Each Others Battles: The Vision of Audre Lorde, and the Trailer to A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde

Yeah, I can't wait. I have seen and enjoyed this documentary about Audre's life and work. But I'm eager for the next. Here's the trailer to the first:

Introducing Lenelle Moïse who is a Haitian-born, U.S.-raised Madivinez Poet (anglo translation: lesbian)

"Pray" © 2010 by Lenelle Moïse

This post comes to you a few days before the one-year anniversary of the atrocity, not the natural disaster, that was the earthquake (and its aftermath, on-going through today) 25km west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. We must remember the conditions that made this earthquake so lethal to humans was entirely man-made--White Man-made, in fact. I want to introduce my blog's readers to this person, if you don't already know about her and her many contributions to the creative/performance arts and to LGBTSTIA community (the letters I'm now using: lesbian, gay, bisexual, Two-Spirit, transgender, transsexual, intersex, intergender, asexual, gay).

All that follows, including the video above, is from gsfla. (The video is also on YouTube.) Please click on the title below to link back to the source website.

Q&A with Haitian-born lesbian poet Lenelle Moïse, who'll hold workshops with Miami LGBTQ youth

Haitian-born lesbian poet Lenelle Moïse will be in Miami next week for a series of youth workshops sponsored by Tigertail Productions, part of its continuing SpeakOut project for LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Questioning) youth.

Here's a Q&A I did this week with Moïse:

1. Where were you born and raised? I was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

2. Have you always identified as a lesbian? I’ve always identified as a poet―as someone who engages words to communicate impulses, ideas and affinities. “Lesbian” communicates my impulse to love women, the idea that my love is legitimate, and my affinity with Adrienne Rich, Pat Parker, Audre Lorde and the many lesbian poets who came before and breathe beside me. I’ve reclaimed and prefer the Haitian-Kreyol word “madivinez” because it comes from where I come from and because the word “divine” sits, undeniably, at its core. 

3. Did this create personal conflict or conflict with your family and friends? If so, how did you and they deal with it? The last time I visited my grandparents, they had my junior prom picture on prominent display in their bedroom! In it, I’m wearing a white dress and my date is a nice, upper middle-class boy. That image was the highest aspiration someone else had for my life. During my twenties, I often felt that I was being prayed against and ignored. But, recently, after years of performing my autobiographical solo show "Womb-Words, Thirsting," my parents and siblings finally came to see it. They laughed, cried and applauded. My father told me he was proud of me. My mother lead a standing ovation. We struggle but there’s hope. In the meantime, I surround myself with supportive friends and allies. 

4. What advice do you give to young people – particularly young Haitian Americans – who are coming out? We have to love ourselves enough to get free. As far as I’m concerned, stubborn self-love is a cultural legacy. Back in 1804, our Haitian ancestors defeated their French slave captors. It was the only successful slave revolt ever recorded in history. I owe it to my ancestors to break free from oppression or bigotry in any form. I wrote an essay with more advice called “Letter to a Haitian Daughter.” 

5. When did you first become interested in poetry? I was five years old. My uncle was a poet―clever, rhyming and riveting. He performed during church services. He was the first person to ask me to write and recite a poem. I haven’t stopped since. 

6. At what point did you realize that you could become a professional performer? Did your family encourage or discourage you? I’m so grateful for my arts education! I went through wonderful theatre departments in high school, Ithaca College and Smith College. My instructors have always been active theatre professionals. They never spared me a challenge. Their example encouraged me to spread my wings, full time. 

7. What advice do you have for young people who want to become professional performers? Study. See as many live performances as you possibly can. Read and reread performance texts. Risk open mic nights. Find mentors and colleagues. Take workshops. Rehearse independently and often. Invest your years and your tears. 

8. What are the professional highs and lows you’ve experienced? I’ve performed Off-Broadway, at the United Nations and at theatres and colleges across the USA. But what I chase is the elated exhale I experience after I solve the puzzle of a new song or play or poem. That “eureka” moment is what keeps me writing in the face of racism, sexism and heteronormativity. That eureka moment rocks.

Here's a news release with all details about Moise's visit:

Featuring Tigertail SpeakOut Workshops & Slam for Gay Youth

(MIAMI, FL – December 8, 2010) Tigertail Productions continues its SpeakOut project for LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Questioning) teens with a weeklong residency with nationally recognized, Northampton, MA Poet Laureate, writer and spoken word artist Lenelle Moïse. School and community workshops, a panel discussion, a poetry slam for LGBTQ youth, and a reading for a general audience, take place. All events are free. For more information and a full schedule visit www.tigertail.org or call Tigertail at 305 324 4337. 

Haitian-American powerhouse Lenelle Moïse is an award-winning poet, playwright, essayist, composer and nationally touring performance artist. She creates intimate, fiery, politicized, texts about the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, spirituality, culture and resistance. Her hip-hop bred, jazz-infused delivery is at once conversational and polished. Fueled by the motto “Words rouse worlds,” she regularly presents interactive performances and workshops that empower diverse groups of people to creatively speak up and act for social change. Equipped with an MFA from Smith College, Moïse has been a guest artist at the United Nations, the Culture Project, the Louisiana Superdome, the Omega Institute and dozens of theatres, colleges and conferences across the United States and Canada. Her critically acclaimed Off-Broadway play Expatriate inspired her upcoming second CD The Expatriate Amplification Project. 

During her residency, Lenelle Moïse will lead workshops for students at Miami-Dade public high schools, hosted by individual Gay Straight Alliances/ Safe Schools South Florida and other groups. The public high schools involved include North Miami Senior, Dr. Michael M. Krop and North Miami Beach Senior. Other workshops will take place at the Miami Arts Charter school and Pridelines. SpeakOut workshops train LGBTQ youth in writing and speaking skills within a medium that blends poetry, theater and hip hop culture and also provides opportunities for LGBTQ teens to perform their work.  

The youth component of the residency culminates in a SpeakOut Open Mic and Slam for GLBT teens, hosted by Lenelle Moïse at the Miami Beach Regional Library, 227 22nd Street, Miami Beach, on Thursday, January 13. This is an opportunity for teens to read and perform their poetry. There is no charge to attend but each participant must be under 21-years old and material must be gay friendly. No reservations are needed. Those interested in the Open Mic and Slam register at the event between 5:00 and 5:30pm at the Miami Beach Regional Library. For more information on all youth events visit Tigertail on the web atwww.tigertail.org or call 305 324 4337. 

Finally, Lenelle will read and perform her writings and poetry on Friday, January 14 at 8:00 pm, at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables. This event is free and open to the general public. 

“Lenelle Moïse is an informed, versatile, and articulate voice that needs to be heard by South Florida audiences, both in the schools and in the community,” said Mary Luft, Tigertail Executive Director.  “Our Tigertail SpeakOut project, which has presented such artists as Emanuel Xavier, Scott Turner Schofield, Regie Cabico and Staceyann Chin, continues this season to bring quality LGBTQ programming to Miami.”  

SpeakOut grows out of Tigertail Productions’ existing and highly successful Tigertail WordSpeak teen spoken word project, which brings poets and performers to Miami each year to lead workshops for teens. Tigertail also sponsors and coaches a WordSpeak team of Miami teens who attend the national Brave New Voices spoken word youth slam and festival in the summer. Tigertail produces a book and a CD of the teen poems. Gay teens from the SpeakOut project have the opportunity to participate in the main WordSpeak program adding their unique voices to Miami’s youth culture.  

Tigertail Productions, founded in Miami in 1979, is Florida's pioneer of innovative cultural work, and produces a full season of contemporary performance, along with projects in the literary and visual arts. Tigertail’s 2010-2011 events began October 14 with a book launch of Tigertail, A South Florida Poetry Annual: Selected Collective, then continued November 13, 2010, 8:30pm with a concert by the Benjamin Herman Quartet at the Byron Carlyle on Miami Beach. December 28 is a book launch of the teen spoken word book WordSpeak, January 28 & 29, 2011, Jess Curtis/Gravity Dance, a mixed-ability group from Berlin and San Francisco performs at Inkub8, as part of danceAble and FDA WinterFest, February 11 & 12 at the Colony Theatre the illustrious Japanese dance duo, Eiko & Koma perform, March 11, again at the Colony Theatre, the legendary blues artist Henry Gray & The Cats, April 16 the virtuoso guitarist Bill Frisell performs music from his latest CD at the Colony; and spoken word and literary arts events take place throughout the year, including, Sunni Patterson with WordSpeak the end of March/April and the Tigertail fundraiser, May 14. For more information about Tigertail and full season details visit them on the web at www.tigertail.org or call 305 324 4337. 

The SpeakOut program and Lenelle Moïse residency is made possible in part by a grant from the GLBT Community Projects Fund at Dade Community Foundation, Greater Miami’s permanent endowment made possible by generous donors since 1967, ES Moore Family Foundation, Miami Dade Public Library, Miami Dade Public Schools, Miami River Inn, Books & Books, Safe Schools of South Florida. Tigertail is a NPN Partner of the National Performance Network (NPNN). This project is made possible in part by support form the NPN Performance Residency Program. Major contributors to the National Performance Network include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), the MetLife Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. For more information visit www.npnweb.org. 

Tigertail's 2010/2011 Season is made possible by community partners and supporters including the Albion Hotel; Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation; Barefoot Wine & Bubbly; Albion Hotel; Biscayne Times; Books & Books; Bresaro Suites at the Mantell Plaza; Cafeina; The Children's Trust; City of Coral Gables Cultural Arts Program; City of Miami Beach Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council; Consulate General of the Netherlands; Dade Community Foundation; E.S. Moore Family Foundation; Florida Dance Association; Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Arts Council; Florida Literary Center; Galeria del Sol; The Galler Group; Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau; MiamiArtzine.com; Miami Salon Group; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; Miami-Dade County Public Library; Miami-Dade County Public Schools; Miami River Inn; National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, additional funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Ford Foundation and MetLife Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; National Performance Network with major funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), Altria, MetLife Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation; The New Hotel; Pridelines; Publix Super Markets Charities; Rain Organics; Safe Schools South Florida; Rain Vodka Organics; The Law Office of Linda M. Smith; South Arts; Vortex Communications; WDNA & WLRN FM and many individual supporters.

Lenelle Moïse SpeakOut Schedule in Miami

Monday, January 10
9:15-10:15am, Performance and Workshop with GLBT support groups at North Miami Beach Senior High School
Tuesday, January 11
2:30-3:30pm, Workshop with GLBT support groups at North Miami Senior
7:00-8:30pm,Panel Discussion, Little Haiti Cultural Center,212 NE 59th Terrace, Miami, Gender, Race, and Class: Art and Social Activism, with Rosie Gordon-Wallace, Octavio Campos, Edouard Duval Carrié and Lenelle Moïse.
Wednesday, January 12
2:30-3:30pm, Performance and Workshop with GLBT support groups at Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School
6:00-8:00pm Workshop for LGBTQ teens from Pridelines Youth Services.
Thursday, January 13
5:30 pm, SpeakOut Open Mic and Slam for GLBT youth hosted by Regie Cabico at the Miami Beach Regional Library, 227 22nd Street, Miami Beach. Each participant (21 and under please) gets a chance to arouse, provoke and inspire with spoken word poetry! Material needs to be gay friendly. Free and open to all teens with no reservations needed. Sign up at the event.
Friday, January 14
8:00 pm, Reading and performance at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables. Free and open to all. 
For more information contact Tigertail at 305 324 4337 or visit their website at www.tigertail.org. There is no charge for SpeakOut programs.
Tigertail Productions   842 NW Ninth Court   Miami, Florida 33136   305 324 4337   www.tigertail.org

Read more: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2011/01/qa-with-haitian-born-lesbian-poet-lenelle-mose-wholl-hold-workshops-with-miami-lgbtq-youth.html#ixzz1ANPLqghr

Some Essential Reading: Works by Audre Lorde

image of book cover of The Cancer Journals is from here

I found this on About.com and thought I'd post it here for y'all. (Click on the title to link back.) I have to say that The Cancer Journals is rarely mentioned as essential feminist reading, but, for me, it surely is. Along with her poems and essays and speeches, The Cancer Journals offers critical understanding of the experience of battling life-threatening illness and Audre uniquely notes how race, sexuality, gender, and other dimensions of political being are forged and enforced by CRAP to try and ensure no Black women survive. 

 

Her discussions of surgery and prosthetic devices were and are tremendously important to me, and her courage to speak out about these issues, at a time when no one was, is astounding. And, sadly, we live in a time when no one is speaking out about this matter of wearing prosthetic breast-forms, which are never, ever women's breasts: the presence of implants, reconstructed breasts, and inserts into the bra do not "make someone a woman". She also notes the chilling realities of how environmental terrorism, along with white and male supremacy, is part of women's lives. Chemicals manufactured to make us sick are not part of a sustainable society. 

 

I honor Audre Lorde's courage to time and again face her own vulnerabilities which were never only her own, and were also very much her own.

Essential Feminist Books By Audre Lorde

The Warrior Poet Also Wrote Warrior Prose

By Linda Napikoski , About.com Contributing Writer

See More About:

• feminists
• american women writers
• african american women
• american women poets

Audre Lorde was a poet who contributed greatly to feminist theory. She called herself a "Black lesbian feminist warrior poet." As a feminist poet, a lesbian mother, an artist, and a child of West Indian immigrants, she rejected descriptions that limited her or other women to only one category. Books by Audre Lorde include not just feminist poetry, but also memoir, essay and personal mythology.

Audre Lorde's writings offer stories of life experience and her vision of black feminist consciousness. The "warrior poet," as she described herself, offered both warrior poetry and warrior prose.A Few Essential Audre Lorde Books

• Cables to Rage (1970)
  Audre Lorde's second published volume of poetry was Cables to Rage. The poems in Cables to Rage explore themes of love, relationships, childbirth and raising children. The poem "Martha," which appears in Cables to Rage, is often called Audre Lorde's first overtly lesbian poem.

• From a Land Where Other People Live (1973)
  Audre Lorde's third volume of poetry, From a Land Where Other People Live, explores the complexities of identity while also developing the theme of injustice. During the 1960s and 1970s, in both poetry and life, Audre Lorde fought against using one-word labels to dismiss or marginalize those who are labeled. From a Land Where Other People Live was nominated for a National Book Award.

• Coal (1976)
  Coal reached a larger audience and continued Audre Lorde's exploration of multiple layers of identity. The poem "Coal" begins "I/is the total black, being spoken/from the earth's inside." The substance of coal is a metaphor for her own essence, a blackness from inside of the earth that provides essential fuel and becomes a diamond.y

• The Cancer Journals (1980)
  The Cancer Journals chronicles Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer. The book is a collection of her writings, part essay and part memoir. Audre Lorde began writing journal entries six months after her mastectomy. She asks in The Cancer Journals where she can find a model or guide to help her understand how to deal with cancer. She also questions Western medicine and asserts that women should control their own health and healing.

• Zami A New Spelling of My Name (1982)
  Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is Audre Lorde's "biomythography." She weaves poetry, stories and real-life recollections of her coming of age in New York City. She also recalls early experiences with poetry and the political women's scene. The book meanders through school, work, love and family with equally vivid memories of childhood classrooms, a factory job or the 1950s lesbian bars in New York.>

• Sister Outsider (1984)
  Sister Outsider is another collection of Audre Lorde's writings, essays and speeches. Feminism, racism, emotion, sexism within the black community, racism within the feminist community - all of these ideas and more were examined in Audre Lorde's life and writing. In Sister Outsider, she continues to grapple with erotic power, personal power and wholeness. Significant essays in Sister Outsider include:
  
  • "The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power"
  • "Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving"
  • "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism"
  • "An Open Letter to Mary Daly," written in 1979

On Social Transformation, Religion, Sex, and the Unradical Values of Contemporary White Queerness

[image is from here]

Above is a graphic that states precisely my experience of most of what is 

being called "radical" action in white queer and non-queer circles. 

All that follows is a challenge to the
radicalism that appears to me to be 

"for display purposes only".

A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL
by Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive
- The Black Unicorn

I address what follows primarily and directly to my white class-privileged gay brothers who seem most confused about all of this, or, rather, most willfully ignorant and self-servingly oblivious. And I know we've got one foot and a few toes of the other foot in the door to total dominance, privilege, and entitlement. Why, if we could only get married... bingo! Yeah, well, most female human beings--heterosexual or not--would not get and stay married without it being socially compulsory, legally enforced, and misogynistically oppressive and subordinating. (If marriage were not so oppressive to women, patriarchal societies wouldn't promote it so much.) Please consider that when you promote an agenda that bolsters an institution that is, still, currently, deeply classist and racist, especially for poor and immigrant women, and very dangerous for many other women and girls.

The white liberal, libertarian, humanist, and Leftist gay, bi, and straight men have been passionately fond of promoting the idea that any sexual expression is good, as long as it is for white men and leads white men to orgasm. If others are pleased, fine. If not, fine. Many of these philosophies are practiced by human beings who promote certain values which they state are socially "good", such as "respect", "liberty", "justice",  "democracy" and "free speech".

A point which I plan to make many times over the next months is that these philosophies cannot bring us to that promised land. Speech is never free, first of all. And justice, respect, liberty, and what is "good" are all bound by the definitions, decisions, and enforcement strategies of the most privileged members of society, never the least privileged. The least privileged aren't at the table, aren't in leadership, and aren't heard from or listened to except tokenistically and condescendingly. The definition of liberal humanism, and I think it applies as well to white libertarianism, and white male supremacist Leftist movements, is "they make promises they have no intention of keeping". This isn't only due to lack of will or sustainable passion. It is because they point to an imagined utopia, or, at least, something better than what we now have, without also providing a map, a route, a means of movement from point A (hell) to point B (heaven). Or they hack away at what exists now with no understanding of who will bleed to death from that cutting away.

A Westernised, blanched Buddhist humanist might argue that point B lies inside point A--the journey is not exactly a progressive journey; it is not at all linear in time or space. Maybe it is a seed waiting to be born that has already been born and is blossoming. Maybe it is a layer, a dimension, of reality hidden from us by the illusions, delusions, and distractions of the industrial material world--if only we'd wake up and remember: there it is, waiting to embrace us, to become us, to transform us; we are already transformed we just don't know it.

The white Conservative Christian view is far more pessimistic and bleak. It requires our physical death before heaven can be known. This philosophy--oh, sorry, I mean "The One and Only Truth"--dovetails nicely--or is it evilly?--with capitalism, which will destroy everything, leading us all somewhere, not into Life as we know it. While it may be true that if we all were to die we all would not suffer in ways we now do, it is a callous, heartless, and utterly soulless religion indeed that tells us to wait, wait, wait, for your suffering to end, rather than providing us a means of lessening it here and now while alive. The white-shirted missionaries who visit my door want to tell me their rather obnoxious, racist, anti-Semitic, and otherwise bogus version of Jesus is the answer to that suffering, but with few exceptions, no Christians I know suffer less than anyone else, unless they are privileged in various ways, by race, class, gender, and sexuality, for example. They may pray more, and in prayer there may be some spiritual power. But for white young men in white shirts to go door to door preaching His Word, means they don't experientially know the hellish forms of oppression most of humanity endures because they preach the way they do. They don't quite get that they are the materially, not spiritually rich, and what they are selling isn't spiritual liberation but cultural and physical genocide. Again, the Christians don't really care: because it's all about what happens AFTER you die.

Most of humanity, as Lorde notes, "were never meant to survive". And the Christian white male sky-god that white pro-corporate clones seem endlessly interested in telling me about has no plans of making this reality be different on Earth any time soon. Only partly because He doesn't exist and He can't do anything about it. Also, to the extent a non-theistic or polytheistic G-d does exist, it clearly doesn't intervene and make capitalism humane, racism disappear, and male supremacy evaporate. Surely such a G-d has had time to try out more solutions to the problems that plague us than Billionaire Prick Tony Hayward has tried to get that damn oil to stop leaking into the sea, washing up onto the land, poisoning everything it touches. The god that is talked about so much to me by those "good-hearted" Christians, might want to look around and come to this conclusion: maybe your god is into BDSM, and derives pleasure from human bondage and pain. That's a conclusion that is difficult not to arrive at if you're paying attention to who is suffering, and why, and where.

I live in multiple worlds simultaneously, in part because I work primarily with people who don't live anywhere near me. And I live in a U.S. society thoroughly dominated by a particularly virulent form  heterosexism that is fused or conjoined to capitalism, white supremacy, and male supremacy in utterly despicable and dehumanising ways. No facet or sector of public and private life is untouched, unscathed, and I experience a white queer community here in this country that promotes itself as radical, never really defining what "radical" means, NEVER being at all accountable to those whose lives, whose living, in and of itself, is a radically amazing accomplishment because death was the only promise made to them upon their entry into this world.

White class-privileged Radical Queers are "in" right now, in a way that radical lesbian feminists and militant anti-racists are not. Transgression is all the rage. Rage against systemic white male supremacy is not. And radical transformation of society isn't even discussed any more, except by a few individuals here and there. Has anyone ever taken a moment to note how, exactly, "radical" transgression leads to radical transformation?

Radical feminism, and especially radical lesbian feminism, is misportrayed, rather racistly, as being anti-sex. Tell me: in which work of Alice Walker, Gloria Anzaldúa, Chrystos, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, June Jordan, or Cheryl Clarke do you find anything "anti-sex"? To reduce radical feminism to what you grossly and persistently misunderstand a few white women to be saying, is to denigrate and invisibilise MOST radical feminist writings and theories, values and practices. To my white queer siblings: please get that. It's what lesbians of color have been telling us for the last forty years, and there's no excuse for not having heard it and taken it to heart, and made it a central part of our self-concept and political-spiritual-sexual practice.

I know it's not cool these days to listen to "lesbians", unless they are "queer-identified", that is. (How convenient for the racist heteropatriarchal status quo.)

I will tell you what I see in this allegedly "radical" queer community: a whole lot of white privilege, class privilege, heterosexism, and ageism. The ageism is so thick that should an elder in our community speak out against the values and practices of contemporary dominant "radical" queer community, she will be told she is being ageist, in order to silence her and shut her up and make her go back inside out of sight, and out of earshot. "Into the closet with you" is effectively what older radical lesbian feminist women are being told by young queer people. White gay men won't even give older lesbians the time of day. And younger lesbians won't get much from us either, in the way of support, work, validation, and accountability.

I know radical lesbian feminist women who have attempted--not perfectly, to speak to young people who listen--not perfectly. And the message is always the same from the younger people: we will figure this out for ourselves. This response, in and of itself, is a particularly white, Western, and class-privileged stance in relation to our elders. We think we've got all the answers. Or, at least, that any of those old answers (as if twenty-five or thirty years is a long time!) can't possibly be of use to us because we're a new generation of "radicals", who want to reclaim as much racism, misogyny, classism, and heterosexism, and ageism, as we can, and put a patina on it and call it our golden queer calf.

White queer women and men tell me often how it's okay for us to say racist things and do racist things and find racist jokes hilarious, because, after all, we're not from the dominant class: we're queer. Well, if we're white, that means we ARE from the dominant class with regard to race. And how it is that a white person can ever think we are not white, positioned always to be a white supremacist, even if poor, even if queer, even if trans, even if a woman, is a source of great rage and despair for many people, myself included.

Another utterly non-radical dimension of privileged "radical queer" life is the ways in which white folks who are into BDSM and pornography and prostitution, who are also very education- and class-privileged people, get to tout these practices, industries, and systems as "liberatory" or, even, "feminist".

Let me ask you: how do you know how people without Western, "First" World, white, male, education, and class privileges experience being a slave? Do you want to sit down with a slave and discuss with her how words have different meanings, and how traces of meaning from one experience don't necessarily carry over to another? Do you plan to discuss with enslaved women how they just don't "get it" about pain being pleasure in ways that can enrich spiritual awareness? How do you know how boys, girls, and women in the Second, Third World, and Fourth Worlds experience being pimped, procured, and trafficked, while you promote the virtues of earning good money by selling your body to gay, bi, or het men for the behaviors that are sex to men who buy sex? (Is sex that is bought the same as the sex that is shared between economic equals?) How do you know, and what are you doing to find out? By what means do you set up systems of accountability to the least privileged people who also have to reckon with things like prostitution and masters and slaves? That's what I want to know. Because if you believe promoting pornography, prostitution, and bdsm as socially good, is unproblematically beneficial, healthy, fun, and "radical", then you've no clue at all what being radical means, except in your very, very privileged misuse of the term.

What most people who are slaves experience in a master/slave "relationship" is not pleasure or joy, or freedom, or liberation. Slaves aren't transgressing, after all. 1.3 million children in India alone are preyed upon often by Western white men, and are made to be slaves to white men's wills and wants. The white men sometimes take unlawful and anti-humanitarian ownership of Fourth, Third, Second World children and women from those regions and make them sexual slaves. (Also from the misnamed First World.) Does your use of the term "slave"--for fun--have any effect on them? If you think the answer is no, I'd remind you that all things are bound up with one another: that is one radical viewpoint, anyway. And if you think things all exist separately from one another, discretely and carefully not impacting anything else, then in my view you have no business calling yourself "a radical". If you think the systems and institutions of the rich don't oppress the poor, you're wrong. They EXIST to oppress to poor so that some, the few, the mostly white, CAN BE RICH. The rich can't exist unless the majority are significantly less rich--usually meaning poor.

What is it about raced and gendered systems of hierarchical oppression that make you think it works any differently? In any social hierarchy, the privileged oppressors benefit substantively and materially at the expense of the oppressed. The privileged get entitlements and rewards and the oppressed pay for it, dearly. Do you think white men's values and practices don't impact women of color? Do you think the heterosexism, transphobia, lesbophobia, and homophobia of sexual-social dominants doesn't impact queer people? Do you think misogyny can flourish in some areas and not impact women and girls everywhere?

I know what many privileged queer folks will say. You'll tell me "What we're doing isn't the same as what the oppressors are doing, because we're "queering it up". Yes, well. About that. Drag is still racist, misogynistic, classist, and heterosexist, and that's what makes it entertaining to the bigots who enjoy it so much. Those forms of oppression are also embedded in BDSM and even if your orgasm depends on it, other people's lives are lost so you can have that orgasm. This is a "radical" collectivist view that holds "unless we are all free, none of us is free". This view holds that the actions of the most structurally powerful reverberate negatively in the lives of the least structurally powerful. This view says that everything impacts everything else, and the more privilege anyone has, the more impact their actions have and the more power their professed values carry.

The same with pornography. "Queer porn" is no different, at all, than heterosexual porn, and the proof of that is in what is produced for profit--and the fact that the people who profit most from it are--no surprise--white heterosexual men (corporate pimps to be exact). Saying that it was made by women--when the consumers are still mostly het men, or that only gay men profit from it, doesn't make it non-heterosexist and devoid of misogyny and racism. Sorry to be such a downer. And let's not forget, sex can exist without a marketplace, right? Orgasms can happen due to touch--quality and intensity of feeling and being and sharing. Sexual pleasure isn't dependent on the use of bigoted terms being called out that trigger many of us into past traumas--who may be next door or downstairs from you. And what sex is doesn't have to be "a product" that is produced and sold by a pimp-driven system so virulently hateful and degrading that the more we purchase it, the more we are all collectively degraded. Exploiting and commanding another person into submission  aren't prerequisites for sex to be sexy--or are they? Note: I didn't say you're "bad" for doing any of the above. And I didn't say "you don't have a right" to do any of the above. I also didn't say you ought to refrain from sex if it is bound up with capitalist, racist heteropatriarchy. (How can our sexuality, our beings, not be?) What I'm saying is this: please don't pretend that pro-status quo behaviors and values as "radical" when they are utterly socially and politically conservative: conserving and preserving the master's tools, which are being used against people who are slaves--not the fun kind. Don't call feminists "politically correct" if they are opposed to sexism and racism being promoted as liberatory sex, when bdsm, pornography, and prostitution are entirely pimp-supported. The promoters of these practices, along with so many others, are the ones behaving in a patriarchally politically correct manner. And feminist values aren't ruling anywhere (yet), even while too many whiny men pretend feminism has already "gone too far". Patriarchal practices are still ruling this world and I wonder why you don't feel those practices, and the men who profit from and support them, have "gone too far". Let's be honest, at least:  if you're into domination, exploitation, and degradation as "sex", it is you, in fact, who are being "politically correct".

And with regard to prostitution: if you think there's a neat and convenient dividing line between systems and practices that are dehumanising, degrading, and destructive such that your own grand, pleasurable, and profitable versions of prostitution are somehow distinct and uninvolved with the other not-so-glamorous everyday pimping, sexual trafficking, procuring, buying and selling human beings, and sexual slavery, I'll suggest to you that you're either not living in the parts of the world that cannot afford to make those distinctions, or you're the pimps and procurers there. In most of the world, those distinctions aren't experientially and politically meaningful--except delusionally to the abusers. If you're going to promote "the right to be a sex worker" or advocate the legalisation of prostitution, please identify the ways people without your privileges benefit from you doing so. Exactly how does your defence of systems of atrocious harm and inhumanity make life better for those without the privileges and entitlements you enjoy?

In conclusion, for now, please define your terms and spell out how radicalism works, in practice in responsible alliance with the world's most unprivileged people toward a materially-spiritually radical experience of justice and liberation. If you can't do so, please demonstrate the integrity to stop using the term so flagrantly and inaccurately.

Ain't I a Woman! A Book of Women's Poetry from Around the World

[this beautiful book's cover image is from here]

[this version of the book's cover is from here]

Ain't I a Woman! A Book of Women's Poetry from Around the World (Hardcover)

~ Illona Linthwaite (Author) 

• Publisher: Gramercy; 13th Ptg. edition (July 13, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517093650
• ISBN-13: 978-0517093658

OR

• Publisher: Lincolnwood, Ill. : Contemporary Books, 2000.
• ISBN: 0809225344

Contents

• House of Desire / Sherley Anne Williams
• Warning / Jenny Joseph
• My Country / Zindziswa Mandela
• Mamzelle / Mary Wilson
• If You Black Get Back / Cheryl Clarke
• Growing Up / U A Fanthorpe
• Witch / Jean Tepperman
• Sun Witness / Nurunnessa Choudhury
• Invitation to a Dance / Susan Wallbank
• Richard Brought His Flute / Nancy Morejon
• Lost, One Soul / Sandy McIntosh
• Other Fabrics, Other Mores! / Anna Maria Lenngren
• Nikki Rosa / Nikki Giovanni
• Cartwheels / Mary Lonnberg Smith
• Poem of Distant Childhood / Noemia da Sousa
• Blue Specks / Nurunnessa Choudhury
• Quatrains / Mahsati
• I Hate Poetry / Julia Vinograd
• I Said to Poetry / Alice Walker
• New Notebook / Maria Banus
• I Used to Think / Chirlane McCray
• Ama Credo / Margaret Reckord
• Mririda / Mririda N'ait Attik
• Sho Nuff / Nilene O A Foxworth
• African Beauty / Taiwo Olaleye-Oruene
• Almost Love / Magaly Sanchez
• To a Boy / Nancy Morejon
• Desire / Dinah Livingstone
• Every Day That I Love You / Teresita Fernandez
• To the tune 'A Floating Cloud Crosses Enchanted Mountain' / Huang Ho
• 'After he stripped off my clothes' / Villana
• Thanks / Nina Cassian
• Africa and the Caribbean / Jennifer Brown
• He May Be a Photograph of Himself / Tina Reid
• Return / Mary Dorcey
• Song (October 1969) / Kath Fraser
• On a Night of the Full Moon / Audre Lorde
• Sea Change / Mary Dorcey
• New Face / Alice Walker
• 'From her grave' / Gillian E Hanscombe
• Memorial I / Audre Lorde
• For D S / Christine Craig
• Disillusion / Maureen Burge
• Do You Fancy Me? / Dinah Butler
• Ever Notice How It Is with Women? / Margaret Randall
• Meaningful Exchange / Marge Piercy
• 'I see a man who is dull' / Anonymous
• Dry Rock Number / Tina Reid
• Some Men / Dazzly Anderson
• Good Old Body / Christine Donald
• Fat Blues / Charmaine Crowell
• 'The thin women woo each other' / Christine Donald
• Wha Fe Call I' / Valerie Bloom
• Diet / Maureen Burge
• Invitation / Grace Nichols
• Whistle, Daughter, Whistle / Anonymous
• Bride / Bella Akhmadulina
• 'Lucky bridegroom' / Sappho
• Poem for a Marriage / Christine Craig
• Auld Robin Gray / Lady Anne Lindsay
• Creation of the World / Eva Toth
• Marriage / Anna Wickham
• 'My husband is the same man' / Sila
• Marriage / Elaine Feinstein
• Nervous Prostration / Anna Wickham
• 'A free woman At last free!' / Sumangala's Mother
• 'I thought you were good' / Anonymous
• They Went Home / Maya Angelou
• 'Because we suspected' / Lady Ise
• Story of a Hotel Room / Rosemary Tonks
• For All Mary Magdalenes / Desanka Maksimovic
• In Memory, 1978 / Judith Kazantzis
• Death of a Dove / Nurunnessa Choudhury
• Ballade / Christine de Pisan
• Ballad / Gabriela Mistral
• To the tune 'The Fall of a Little Wild Goose' / Huang Ho
• Lady of Miracles / Nina Cassian
• Selected Quatrains / Mahsati
• What'll the Neighbours Say? / Sandra Kerr
• With Child / Genevieve Taggard
• Labour Pains / Yosano Akiko
• Miracle / Maureen Hawkins
• In My Name / Grace Nichols
• Woman into Man / Susan Wallbank
• My Baby Has No Name Yet / Kim Nam Jo
• For a Child Born Dead / Elizabeth Jennings
• Sleep Close to Me / Gabriela Mistral
• At the National Gallery / Judith Kazantzis
• Birthplace / Tahereh Saffarzadeh
• Mountain Girl / Rafaela Chacon Nardi
• Flower-Press / Penelope Shuttle
• From Poem to Her Daughter / Mwana Kupona Msham
• For My Daughter / Judith Kazantzis
• Sent from the Capital to Her Elder Daughter / Otomo no Sakanoe
• Daughter / Mary Dorcey
• Grande Jetee / Mary Mackey
• Mrs Johnson Objects / Clara Ann Thompson
• Her Sister / Moira O'Neill
• Mother and Child / Penelope Shuttle
• Boy and the Dream / Anna Wickham
• Sun Going Down upon Our Wrath / Denise Levertov
• Mother /k Nagase Kiyoko
• Distances / Katherine Gallagher
• Mother / Nancy Morejon
• Trying on for Size / Mary Dorcey
• Dad / Elaine Feinstein
• To My Father / Dinah Butler
• Father / Jean Kipkin
• Journey / Margaret Reckord
• One Life / Dinah Butler
• Cythera / Suniti Namjoshi
• 'Immortal Aphrodite, on your patterned throne' / Sappho
• Love Letter / Carole E Gregory
• Lilith Re-Tells Esther's Story / Michelene Wandor
• Vashti / Frances E W Harper
• From Jezebel Her Progress / Gillian E Hanscombe
• Look, Medusa! / Suniti Namjoshi
• Remember Medusa? / Eunice de Souza
• Eve Meets Medusa / Michelene Wandor
• I See Cleopatra / Nurunnessa Choudhury
• Cleopatra / Mary Mackey
• Cleopatra / Anna Akhmatova
• Chain / Christine Craig
• Anti Apart Hate Art / Michelle T Clinton
• You Will Be Hearing from Us Shortly / U A Fanthorpe
• Anti-Racist Person / Marsha Prescod
• 'Paki Go Home' / Himani Bannerji
• Hi De Buckras Hi! / Grace Nichols
• Ain't I a Woman? / Sojourner Truth
• Miss Geeta / Margaret Reckord
• I Love My Master / Nancy Morejon
• Skin-Teeth / Grace Nichols
• She's Free! / Frances E W Harper
• Woman's Issue / Margaret Atwood
• Ugly Things / Teresita Fernandez
• Ita / Yolanda Ulloa
• Epilogue I and II / Anna Akhmatova
• Survivor / Katherine Gallagher
• I Will Live and Survive / Irina Ratushinskaya
• Under Attack / Margaret Randall
• Artemis / Rita Boumi-Pappas
• Ala / Grace Nichols
• Krinio / Rita Boumi-Papps
• Be Still Heart / Nilene O A Foxworth
• Greenham Women / Wendy Poussard
• No War / Judith Kazantzis
• Day I Once Dreamed / Pat Arrowsmith
• Flesh / Deborah Levy
• Everything Is Wonderful / Jayne Cortez
• Women on the Road to Pine Gap / Wendy Poussard
• Like an Orchid in Deep Muddy Water / Nilene O A Foxworth
• I Live in Cuba / Lourdes Casal
• If You Want to Know Me / Noemia da Sousa
• White-Hot Blizzard / Irina Ratushinskaya
• To the tune 'The River Is Red' / Ch'iu Chin
• All That You Have Given Me Africa / Anoma Kanie
• Yes, I Am an African Woman / Nilene O A Foxworth
• Credo / Denise Levertov
• Praise / Dinah Livingstone
• Credo / Jean Lipkin
• Song of Hope / Daisy Yamora
• To My Unknown Friend / Irina Ratushinskaya
• Watching a Child Watching a Witch / Jenny Joseph
• Political Activist Living Alone / Pat Arrowsmith
• Now or Never / Astra
• Morning Athletes / Marge Piercy
• Poor Old Fat Woman / Christine Donald
• To the tune 'Eternal Happiness' / Li Ch'ing-Chao
• Short Biography of a Washerwoman / Yolanda Ulloa
• Old People Dozing / Denise Levertov
• After My Grandmother's Death / Michele Roberts
• Eurynome / Eleni Fourtouni
• Love / Nilene O A Foxworth
• Song of the Old Woman / Anonymous
• 'For her Birthday' / Susan Wallbank
• Folk Song / Anonymous
• Near Death / Stef Pixner
• Song of an Old Woman Abandoned by Her Tribe / Anonymous
• Life-Hook / Juana de Ibarbourou
• On Ageing / Maya Angelou
• One Flesh / Elizabeth Jennings
• Bean Eaters / Gwendolyn Brooks
• ' already old age is wrinkling my' / Sappho

Editorial Reviews

Review

Compiled with a specific purpose-to redress the omission of women's work in traditional writing collections-Ain't I A Woman! flows through the varied experiences of childhood, adolescence, love, sex, parenthood, family and work in the poetry of women from around the world. A welcome departure from the sometimes disjointed anthology, this collection is an exciting tool for discovering and celebrating women's contributions to poetry. -- From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by KS --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Spanning the centuries from Sappho's Greece to tenth-century Japan, from nineteenth-century Chile to Zindziswa Mandela's twentieth-century South Africa, the voices of these women poets express themes of love, injustice, motherhood, and loss, and the oppressions of race and sex. The sequence of the poems moves from youth to old age, and they bear witness to the triumphs as well as the pain and frustration of women in many times and in many places.

Among the many poets whose work is included are Anna Akhmatova, Maya Angelou, Judith Kazantzis, Gabriela Mistral, Marge Piercy, Irina Ratushinskaya and Alice Walker.

Illona Linthwaite began gathering this collection several years ago, initially for a theatrical performance. Here, in this unique exchange between women of many races, affirming their differences and what they have in common, are more than 150 poems which assert the black abolitionist Sojourner Truth's challenge, "Ain't I a Woman!"

In addition to the poems, there are biographies of the 91 contributors.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews   9 of 9 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Boost on Self-Esteem, June 7, 2000 By  Christine Bryant (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews This review is from: Ain't I a Woman! A Book of Women's Poetry from Around the World (Hardcover) Ain't I a Woman was not a surprise to me. It is full of beautiful works of art. This book is full of voices of many different women, with different lives, different backgrounds but from their voices you can feel their strength and each voice in that book can add to your self-esteem and make you feel stronger about yourself as a women with every poem. Although some poems are not as powerful as others, their messages are still there: "I lived, I saw, I loved, I struggled, I died, but most importantly I felt, felt what life was like and from my words you might learn how it really is to be a woman". This book should be read by anyone who has time get lost in its poetry. I personally read a piece of the book everyday at work and I am glad that I made the time. There are many different writers in this book and I recommend reading different works from those authors as well.   9 of 9 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Bold, striking, and sure to produce favorites, July 31, 1999 By A Customer This review is from: Ain't I A Woman! A Book of Women's Poetry from Around the World (Paperback) This book obtains its title from Sojourner Truth's incomparable speech in 1851, and for the most part is brilliant and moving. My main complaint is that it focuses on the physical (sex, childbirth, etc.) so much that it could be classified as erotic poetry instead of a full exploration of womanhood. However, look for amazing cultural and chronological diversity in authors, and refreshing humor in poems like "Sho nuff." The development of the book is thematic, according to stages of life by also by subject. Series show different visions of famous women such as Jezebel, Cleopatra, and Medusa, which ends with a hilarious conversation between Medusa and Eve. The poems in this collection really strike - not everyone will like everything, but I'm sure everyone will find SOMETHING in here that really gets their attention. My personal favorite is "Witch." There are dozens of poems in here, enough to make the book seem very long, but since no poem is longer than two pages, I garantee you won't get bored.   5 of 5 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Classic and modern women's poetry from around the world., May 10, 2002 By  MLPlayfair (Ravenna, OH) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    This review is from: Ain't I a Woman! A Book of Women's Poetry from Around the World (Hardcover) This is one of the best anthologies of poetry I've ever found. The purpose: Bring together words from women of all cultures, all ages, all corners of the world. Here are young women, old women, fat women, starving women, lives touched by peace, war, spiritual joy, physical abuse, passion, motherhood, loss. There are beautiful, haunting words here. There are cold, hard, brutal images here. If you're a woman who complains about feminists, please read this book and try to understand what women have had to go through so that you could be where you are today: free to complain. If only to have a copy of Sojourner Truth's immortal "Ain't I a Woman?" speech from 1852, this book would be worth the price. Read this book for the incredible messages here. You will be moved.