kitchen table: women of color pressed for knowledge

Brilliance Remastered: For Visionary Under-represented Grad Students and Emerging Community Accountable Scholars!

2012-02-09T06:08:00.001-08:00

Calling all community accountable scholars and visionary under-represented grad students!

Hey there bright thunder!

Do you ever feel isolated and misunderstood in your department? Do you ever feel that the passions that motivated you to get your degree are contradicted more and more by the process of getting there? Do you feel like you are in limbo? That even the well-meaning advisors around you know how to help you conform to academic standards, but can't be accountable to the ways you want to TRANSFORM?

Never fear. You are not alone. As Audre Lorde famously said to an academic conference filled with feminist scholars: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." But less people remember that immediately afterwards she reminded us that "This fact is only threatening to those who still define the master's house as their only source of support."

Brilliance Remastered is about going beyond our critique of the master's tools in order to cultivate the already existing tangible forms of support that can free us up to do the brilliant work we were born to do inside the academy and beyond it.

I had the miraculous experience of a wildly successful and enjoyable experience in graduate school. I wrote, published, traveled, presented, finished in a very timely manner and was even offered some exciting and attractive tenure track jobs. At the same time built an ecology of community institutions and autonomous community accountable intellectual projects that allowed me to freely choose to do my passionate work in the ways that would best serve my community and my vision for a transformed planet beyond the scarcity model of academic self-marketing.

I found that the key to a miraculous experience of community accountable scholarship was

constantly being in touch with the deeper purpose of my intellectual work
remaining connected and accountable to the communities that I love

Brilliance Remastered is my contribution to shifting the paradigm of what we do as community accountable scholars. It is my intention that your experience of graduate school is not full of paranoia, proving yourself, being misunderstood and overlooked, but rather of radiant and inspiring opportunities to bring your best intellectual resources to the issues and communities you care about. I also intend that when you finish graduate school you are not grabbing for crumbs based on what academic institution wants to hire and tokenize and overwork an under-represented person with your specialties, but rather that you will be able to choose to continue your passionate inquiry on your own terms in ways that prioritize and support strategies of power for the communities you love.

Brilliance Remastered is a wellspring for remembering that as Audre Lorde said, the master's house is not our only form of support. As community, we are our primary and most valuable sources of support. Browse our webinars, one-on-one coaching offerings, blog and podcasts for resources to affirm your vision and support your growth whether you are deciding whether to go to graduate school, struggling to finish or start your thesis or dissertation, needing tools to rearticulate your purpose or to build a community of support. I know that working with you, bright thunder aka brilliant visionaries who are ready to transform the world, will have an impact on the meaning of scholarship and the usefulness of intellectuals for generations to come.

Let's get started!

With love,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, PhD

LoveOverflow: Support Unstoppable Mother/Daughter Relationships!

2012-02-08T03:23:00.000-08:00

"When you first realize your blood has come, smile an honest smile, for you are about to have an intense union with your magic." -from Marvelous Menstruating Moments (as told by Indigo to her dolls...) in Ntozake Shange's Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo

On March 3rd 2012 my mother and I (also known as the Thicker Than Whatever Unstoppable Mother/Daughter Team) will be be co-facilitating a special love-filled workshop for kids who might be about to menstruate or who have started recently and for their mamas/main supporters called Love Overflow: Marvelous Menstruating Moment. This will be a daylong intergenerational workshop at the new Eternal Summer space (aka the Greenhouse...where we grow!) with play, affirmation, storysharing and special spaces just for mamas and just for young folks to process their relationship to the physical, spiritual and social transformations going on at the ever-exciting time of puberty.

My mom is traveling from Atlanta in Durham to be my partner in this endeavor and we are so excited! We wanted to invite our entire community to support this project!!!!

We especially invite those of you (of any gender or identification) who have ever had an experience menstruating to add to our wisdom overflow by sharing a piece of wisdom you learned from your own experience menstruating as a note with your paypal donation below. Or just email your wisdom to me at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com!

Love,
Lex (and Pauline)

2012-01-29T05:16:00.000-08:00

Venerating Dr. Nina Simone: Conjure Woman, Soul Woman
by: Ebony Noelle Golden,
Co-Founder/ Co-Curator of Women on Wednesday Art and Culture Project

Women on Wednesday Arts and Culture Project honors the incomparable Dr. Nina Simone as the ancestral mother for WoW2012: The Naked Edition. WoWs organizers honor Nina Simone because of her unabashed boldness and fearless dedication to truth-telling, liberation and creative excellence. Join us in celebrating the brilliance of Nina Simone this month and every month.

Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina February 21, 1933 and transitioned April 21, 2003. Her life, legacy, music, fashion and pursuit of liberation serve as guide for how black girls, women and the rest of the world can live their NAKED TRUTHS.

I was first introduced to Nina Simone in college. Every summer I taught dance and worked as a choreographer for the Young Performers Program at the Ensemble Theatre in Houston, TX. My first summer, I choreographed Lorraine Hansberry’s play “To Be Young Gifted and Black.” While researching the piece, I found Simone and remember listening to the song a few hundred times. I remember thinking that she didn’t necessarily have a melodic voice, but instead a committed voice. A voice that made to sit up and pay attention. A voice that demanded every listener recognize the wealth that is the black youth, black talent and just blackness overall. From then, I was hooked. Using her work in my scholarly, artistic and amorous adventures.

Years later, I remember playing a game of chest with a lover, who didn’t dig her sound. Her voiced opened me to a greater capacity of strategic maneuvering. I remember my lover asking about her, where she came from, why did I like her. I remember being bothered by his lack of love and admiration for Simone. In the months following that game of chest, I continued to play Simone’s music. Eventually, he learned to love her, and couldn’t remember the time when he didn’t appreciate her voice.

In a time where the cult of black respectability forced women and men to bend to white culture and standards, she was a member of a crew politically active, cultural warriors who visioned and worked for a world where creative innovation and liberation conspired to blaze a trail of possibility, beauty and freedom for communities, artists organizers and educators the world-over.

Simone’s iconic sound, political action and musical innovation resisted tradition, form and boundaries. Songs like “Mississippi Goddam” and “Four Women” season the soundtrack of liberation movements for global human rights. Always the conjure woman; Simone was able to move the crowd with the greatest of ease, radicalize a soul with a moan or a hollar, change the temperature of a room with a stoke of the piano and delve into the heart of all that is beautiful and troubling about the world with her soothing or harsh tones. She was one bad mama-jama.

This contemporary moment finds Nina Simone just as relevant. Simone serves as the muse for many Hip-hop artists, theatre-makers, dancers, choreographers and visual artists around the globe. Several of the Women on Wednesday Art and Culture Project participants are currently or have in the past created work that honors her life and legacy.

I wrote the poem below a few years ago. It is included in a poetry collection I am building and obsessed with called “again, the watercarriers.” The collection, includes a section dedicated to the diverse manifestations of the conjure woman archetype. That section includes a suite of poems dedicated to the one and only Nina Simone.

conjure woman, soul woman
for nina

nina
they say you stole shadows
you cast babyspirits out in nocturnal limboyou make them wander

in search of womb
in search of milk
in search of the space between heaven and hell
where each step is a breathsqueeze

they say you keep a sachet of boneshavings crescent city spit
and motherlanddust under your slip
that you blew
the brows clean off a man's forehead
for cutting his eyes at you

they say you could have been a street preacher
but you couldn't keep your legs closed
or pray just to our lord jesus

i know a woman who carries your face
and she aint nothing but sanctified
and she speak sweet like i hear you speak
and her fingers too are wands that stir heaven

and she holds night in her skinsings it to her children when dawn breaks

nina
they really don't know how you got the blood and the lightening in your tone
don't know how you swung back this lifetime without wings
know how you birthed us with out light so

they call you witch when obeah be your name
call you mystery when you are everywhere like dew
magician when magician you are
they call you alien when you are mamathey call you alien cause you tune our hearts
your name be obeah

you bend time
siphon your way through space
i hear you do it

stretch through speakers at me
stretch through speakers at me
just when i get tired of shouting freedom
writing freedom birthing freedom

stretch through speakers at me--your groove
a feathered redemption

About the Author
Hailing from Houston, TX, Ebony Noelle Golden is a cultural worker, artist and creative director of Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative, LLC and artistic director of Body Ecology Performance Ensemble. Ebony's current bodies of work include: "RingShout for Reproductive Justice" and "again, the watercarriers." She also writes about jazz, culture and liberation for Okayplayer’s The Revivalist Magazine. www.bettysdaughterarts.com.

About WoW
Motto: Engage, Create, Empower
Mission: WoW is dedicated to celebrating the creativity, empowerment, holistic health, and civic engagement of black girls and women.

In honoring the voices of women and girls of the African Diaspora, “Women on Wednesdays: Art and Culture Series” privileges our ancestors and their labor, affirming our collective truth – we do not walk alone, and we could not create transformative and innovative art without the journeys of those who came before us. Thus, WoW creates a space for our ancestors’ at every “Women on Wednesdays” event, encouraging participating artists and audience members to share this sacred space.

This series’ success is notable, because it provided women of color professional and emerging artists with an opportunity to share their work, engaging audience members in talk-backs after each performance. Such opportunities are crucial for women of color and our community. Though many social and political advances have been made, cultural art-making by women and girls of the African Diaspora still lacks the support often granted to others. “Women on Wednesdays: Art and Culture Series” celebrates our labor and creativity, putting women of color at the center of cultural exchange while simultaneously creating a welcome space for audiences which may not have known of this work without such a platform for expression.

To find out more about Women on Wednesday Art and Culture Project visit our Facebook Group or wowproject.yolasite.com.

Real Reading Rainbow: Queer Black Intergenerational BookLUST! Kwanzaa edition!

2011-12-26T09:05:00.001-08:00

Lex's favorite books challenge and qualify Kwanzaa.

2011-11-18T09:04:00.001-08:00

https://www.facebook.com/events/264913493551887/

Greetings,

Tomorrow is the day for Body Ecology's 2nd RingShout for Reproductive Justice! Dress warmly, fill your thermos and prepare yourselves for what will be a gripping and enlightening public art performance.

What is a RingShout? A ringshout is a method for praise and worship. In the ring shout people sing, dance, testify. Body Ecology recognizes the technology of the circle has made black women and black communities un-breakable. It is our circle that keeps us focused on the whole, the light in our community, the hopefulness that we can collectively vision.

Body Ecology affirms that this campaign, this ring shout this circle of energy and creativity is our best asset for addressing justice and reproductive health.Our RingShout is a performance of healing, truth-telling, humor and recovery. We do this through the performance of original poetry, narrative, choreography. Expect to be moved! Each ringshout ends with a community cipher/ story circle so bring a dance, a poem a testimony about health, legacy, reproductive justice or creativity! Join us!

In solidarity,
Ebony Golden
Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative
www.bettysdaughterarts.com

whirlwind for the warrior healers

2011-11-17T11:10:00.001-08:00

to the warrior healers organizing trust

notes from post-tornado Durham

with Audre Lorde in transition

after Gwendolyn Brooks

“You have enabled yourself to prove of incalculable aid to many, many women—not just today’s women, but women down the ages...I am have been and always will be proud of you.”

Gwendolyn Brooks to Audre Lorde

“This is the urgency: Live!

and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.”

-Gwendolyn Brooks “Second Sermon on the Warpland”

brook open stream woke

this is how we conduct our blooming

brash and gentle at kitchen tables

falling apart

on living room floors

noise and whip and head turned around

did you just say…

something scattered here

(our several dreams)

played into particles

stepped and stepped over it

trip and trip over

trip over

over

done

something flew apart

arrival is in the instant of yes

glitter your hands with the grace of grief

knot your hair with knowing

never meant to hold money

never meant to braid it into noose

never knew another way was

blooming

ii.

warrior healer be we

who know

how to go there

and when

warrior healer be we

who wont be who we are

until we are

warrior healer be

we who don’t know what

to say

until we say

who speak

when voice shake

better be

say this

warrior healer be

yes

just be

warrior healer be

iii.

salvation salvaged

medication defined

stylized splendor

for Bessie and we

iv.

warrior poet be watching

smiling sometime

laughing

warrior mother poet be

looking down

picking up

wind

love,

lex

"I Know What That Is": Coming Out as Undocumented

2011-11-14T12:51:00.001-08:00

Amnesty International Conference: Come Out, Rise Up and Join the Movement
Lunch Plenary on Coming Out in the South as Queer and Undocumented

Dedicated to Ms. Vera Martin

To get to Ms. Vera we faced our greatest fear. We drove through Arizona. Scarier even than the Mississippi police who separated us for questioning when we told them we were driving across the country interviewing visionary Black LGBTQ feminist elders, was that drive through Arizona in the middle of the night. The closest my partner Julia and I, raised in North Carolina and Georgia, have ever come to the segregation stories we've heard all our lives about travellers scared to stop for gas, to pee, to talk to a stranger, especially after sundown. When we finally did stop, because hail and fog and the presence of elk made it impossible to keep driving through Tonto national park, we put signs on every side of our purple and turquoise RV explaining that we didn't want to stop and we weren't trying to tresspass, but we just couldn't keep going.
We knew where we were: Arizona in the era of the state bill that is a hate bill, where it is illegal to be a person of color, standing still, on land, asking for help. That night was the closest we have come to the stories that make our parents and grandparents shake at the words "police," "highway," "bathroom," "night." The reason my mother tracks our queer black deviant adventurous behinds on Google latitude every step of the way. Probably the reason that Ms. Vera, living in Apache Junction Arizona in a retirement RV park full of white lesbians doesn't get many visitors and in fact laughed out loud at the concept of us, two queer black young people willing to drive through Arizona just to see her, to sit and talk with her in person.
For us, the scary thing about Arizona was that we knew that conservative copy-cat laws would pop up in our region, taking us back to the good old days that give our relatives nightmares, that still turn my father into a completely different person if he gets pulled over by a white Georgia cop. Our folks that know that no amount of hard-boiled eggs and fried chicken packed lunches can save us from that knowledge in the pit of your stomach that for us there is no such thing as home that cannot be taken away, that for us, for generations it has been about trying to move through undetected our queer selves our colored selves in a land where it is illegal to be us and to be loved and to be here all the way, where anyone might notice us and be transformed.
That cop that stopped our purple and turquoise love-mobile in Mississippi was flabbergasted. Queer, feminist, black and intergenerational? What do you mean your "elders"? He squinted. And then he called for back-up.

To love who we love, to claim who and were we come from is dangerous and possibly contagious. We are counting on the contagion of queer Black intergenerational love which is why we would go through Mississippi and Arizona and hail and hell to get to Ms. Vera. Who knew better than anyone why we cannot allow the laws that would pre-emptively and comprehensively invalidate our families. Including anti-immigration laws and includes narrow marriage amendments and includes anti-choice legislation and suggestions to legally say there is no such thing as rape. Ms. Vera knows best of all why we cannot believe for one second the lies those laws would tell about us and must in every moment recognize those attacks as the desperation they are against our brilliance, our unstoppable power against how radiant we are that we inspire even those who try so hard to hate us. We are love and we know it and we are contagious.
And so it makes complete sense that when Ms. Vera told us about her trip to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change conference, the first thing she spoke of was her love for the young undocumented activists speaking out. "Because I know what that is," she said. Ms. Vera was born in Louisiana in 1924. "I know what that is," she said. Where there is no law that will protect you, only laws to hurt you. Where there are people who can see that you are human and don't want to know it, so they try to make you illegal. "I know what that is," Ms. Vera said. "And I love those young people because they're not gonna take it."

Lex on Black Issues Forum! Watch the Full Episode here!

2011-11-13T06:51:00.000-08:00

Watch Empowering Force of Feminist Teaching on PBS. See more from BLACK ISSUES FORUM.

2011-11-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

RingShout for Reproductive Justice Continues Nov. 19th!

Body Ecology continues its RingShout for Reproductive Justice Campaign with a second public performance and street story circle. Check back soon for more information about the performance and how you can get involved!

Lauded as the "father of gynecology", Dr. James Marion Sims brutally experimented on enslaved African women in Birmingham, Alabama. There just so happens to be a monument built in his honor on 5th Avenue. Body Ecology wants this memorial removed!

We are calling on the power of the women who suffered at the hands of this "doctor" as we offer our second installment of RingShout for Reproductive Justice. We are calling on the power of the women are experiencing joy, trauma, revelation, doubt, and a myriad of emotions and feelings that relate to our reproductive health and choices.

What is a RingShout?

A ringshout is a method for praise and worship. In the ring shout people sing, dance, testify. Usually the songs are lead but there is time for each person to speak or sing. You may be more familiar with recent configurations of the ringshout including the cipher or even the "sista circle" or sacred circles for women. The idea is that the circle is sacred and when those join in the circle they harness an energy and power to manifest what they choose. Also, there are theatre makers who are using the ring shout in traditional theatre settings for similar purposes.

Body Ecology recognizes the technology of the circle has made black women and black communities un-breakable. It is our circle that keeps us focused on the whole, the light in our community, the hopefulness that we can collectively vision. Body Ecology affirms that this campaign, this ring shout this circle of energy and creativity is our best asset for addressing justice and reproductive health.

Our RingShout is a performance of healing, truth-telling, humor and recovery. We do this through the performance of original poetry, narrative, choreography. Expect to be moved!

Each ringshout ends with a community cipher/ story circle so bring a dance, a poem a testimony about health, legacy, reproductive justice or creativity! Join us!

More about the RingShout for Reproductive Justice Campaign

Read More Here:
http://www.bettysdaughterarts.com/#!ringshout-for-reproductive-justice

www.bettysdaughterarts.com

Love is Lifeforce: June Jordan and the Horizon of Education

2011-10-28T06:47:00.001-07:00

Greetings loved ones! I'd love to see you at the second installment of the Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future at Stanford L. Warren Library!

Tuesday, November 1 · 6:30pm - 8:30pm

Stanford L. Warren Library

1201 Fayetteville Street

Durham, NC

In this the second part in the "Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future" this lecture draws on author June Jordan's essay “The Creative Spirit in Children’s Literature” which explains that “love is lifeforce” and describes the intergenerational work of nurturing the spirits of children as the most sacred work that adults can do. In a time when the education budgets for Durham schools are under attack and the Wake County schools are actively resegregating, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs will present a multi-faceted vision for educational justice in our times.

2011-10-21T21:56:00.000-07:00

BDACs current campaign is called the RingShout for Reproductive Justice!

Join us for our 2nd RingShout November 19!

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=264913493551887

What is a RingShout?

A ringshout is a method for praise and worship. In the ring shout people sing, dance, testify. Usually the songs are lead but there is time for each person to speak or sing. You may be more familiar with recent configurations of the ringshout including the cipher or even the "sista circle" or sacred circles for women. The idea is that the circle is sacred and when those join in the circle they harness an energy and power to manifest what they choose. Also, there are theatre makers who are using the ring shout in traditional theatre settings for similar purposes.

Body Ecology recognizes the technology of the circle has made black women and black communities un-breakable. It is our circle that keeps us focused on the whole, the light in our community, the hopefulness that we can collectively vision. Body Ecology affirms that this campaign, this ring shout this circle of energy and creativity is our best asset for addressing justice and reproductive health.

Our RingShout is a performance of healing, truth-telling, humor and recovery. We do this through the performance of original poetry, narrative, choreography. Expect to be moved!

Each ringshout ends with a community cipher/ story circle so bring a dance, a poem a testimony about health, legacy, reproductive justice or creativity! Join us!

Sowing Parables: Octavia Butler, Resource Justice and a Shift in Values

2011-10-12T05:37:00.000-07:00

Tuesday October 18th

6:30-8:30pm
Stanford L. Warren Library
1201 Fayetteville Street

Durham, North Carolina 27707
The first in the "The Survival Series" Black Feminism for the Future" this lecture draws on the relevance of black feminist Science Fiction writer Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Talents" to offer an urgent and empowering perspective on our present-day resource crises. Black Feminist scholar Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs will provide context and a framework for a visionary approach to everyday life in the context of shifting planet followed by a Q & A and talk back with organizers and experts from the food justice movement.

2011-10-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

This Body Ecology: Creativity & Transformation Residency will be looking at the connection between spiritual practice and creative performance. Expect to deepen conversations around ritual, Shange, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez and others. Expect to be asked to "perform something that pushes you to a new awareness of yourself and your creative potential". Join us!

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=197374113662828

Join Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative in our inaugral cultural arts direct action campaign!!! We begin tomorrow!

2011-09-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

Body Ecology: Creativity and Transformation Residency

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Public Performing Arts and Activism Workshops for South Bronx Community
Contact: Ebony Noelle Golden
Email: ebonygolden@bettysdaughterarts.com

www.bettysdaughterarts.com

South Bronx, New York --6 pm on September 28, Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative in collaboration with Casa Atabex Ache will launch the Body Ecology: Creativity and Transformation

residency for women and trans folks of color . The residency will address reproductive rights, environmental justice and spiritual activism over a period of a month. The residency will

feature public performance opportunities, creative dialogue, dance, writing and theatre workshops at Casa Atabex Ache. Participants will also have the opportunity to participate in two

public performances: one at Casa Atabex Ache and the other at the Harriet Tubman Memorial statue in Harlem. The performances will feature the original work of participants who will be

exploring the role of creative arts in working for individual transformation and community action.

The workshops will take place 6-8 p.m. at Casa Atabex Ache located at 471 East 140th Street Bronx, NY 10454. Participants have the option of paying between 20 and 40 dollars each

session, although no one will be turned away due to lack of funds.

Dates & Topics Include:

September

Reproductive Justice Cultural Arts Direct Action Campaign Debuts

28: Body Ecology Residency Begins @ Casa Atabex Ache. Register Here. Reproductive Justice!

October

1: Ringshout for Reproductive Justice 3 pm @ the Harriet Tubman Memorial Plaza 122nd and St. Nick.

3: Performance/Workshop: Ritual Theatre & Choreopoem Aesthetics @ Medgar Evers College

5: Environmental Justice Workshop

12: Spiritual Activism Workshop

19: Solo and Collaborative Performance Workshop

22: Body Ecology at The Black Girl Project Symposium

26: Final Benefit Performance in Support of Casa Atabex Ache and Project Zanzibar

The residency is a part of Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative's inaugural cultural arts direct action campaign season dedicated to using arts to address issues of reproductive justice within

the African Diaspora community. Ebony Golden, Creative Director of Betty's Daughter said, “This cultural arts direct action campaign has been a dream for several years. I am excited to

use the arts to vision a world I want to live in with the rest of the ensemble and community. We are not fighting against anything, we are honoring our autonomy over all that we choose to

create-artistically, politically, spiritually, economically, educationally...” The goals of the campaign are to raise awareness, increase creative action, facilitate dialogue and support local

organizing efforts.

The campaign will take the ensemble to Boston, Washington, DC, and Baltimore. Local allies include Casa Atabex Ache, Ocean Ana Rising, Brecht Forum, and WOW Cafe Theatre.

Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, LLC is a cultural arts direct action group that inspires, enlivens, and incites justice and transformation of individuals and communities through

creativity, cultural arts and radical expressiveness.

Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative envisions and works for a world where cultural and artistic practice envelops and sustains wellness and justice movements for individuals and

communities.

2011-07-12T21:34:00.001-07:00

Project Zanzibar:: Cultural Arts Residency

BDAC needs your help to get to Zanzibar!!! Each dollar is an investment!

Donate here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projectzanzibar

Our Story
In August of 2010, Ebony Golden was introduced to Bi Aida and Mbaruk (Directors of Creative Solutions) by Tufara Muhammad at the Highlander Research and Education Center. During Cultural Workers' Weekend, Bi Aida and Ebony talked about the possibility of community cultural arts residency at their Creative Solutions school in Zanzibar. By the end of the weekend, Ebony was sure that this collaboration would be an awesome opportunity to learn and share art in community, while beginning an intentional and sustainable relationship with an international collaborator. This weekend, Project Zanzibar:: Cultural Arts Residency was born.

Utilizing art and creativity, Project Zanzibar:: Cultural Arts Residency seeks to amplify the voices and creativity of young adults and women at Creative Solutions Resource Systems school located in Mangapwani, Zanzibar.

The residency is a collaborative effort between Creative Solutions and Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, based in New York, NY.

Goals and Outcomes
1. 3 Yoga Workshops
2. 2 Dance/Movement Workshops
3. 2 Writing Workshops
4. 1 Story Circle
5. 2 Theatre/Performance Workshops
6. 1 Visual Arts Workshops
7. 1 Community Performances

More About The Collaborators
Creative Solutions Resource Systems is a non profit community learning center, located in the village of Mangapwani, approximately 27 kilometers from Zanzibar town and one kilometer from the beach. We are a grass roots organization providing access to education through both traditional and modern systems. CSRS strives to unleash the creative energy within each individual through participatory workshops, classes and demonstrations. CSRS is committed to the philosophy of creating solutions through self-help.

Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, LLC is a cultural arts direct action group that inspires, enlivens, and incites justice and transformation of individuals and communities through creativity, healing arts practices and radical expressiveness. Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative envisions a world where cultural and artistic practice envelops and sustains wellness and justice movements for individuals and communities. Betty's Daughter Arts collaborative provides workshops, residencies, performances and consulting services to communities working for justice and transformation.

Check out BDAC at work--http://youtu.be/j5evUICB7as and http://vimeo.com/17252820

The Impact

Participant Impact
Transformation: Creativity heals, transforms, liberates and enlivens individuals and communities. This experience will provide participants with tools they can use in their everyday lives to reflect, rejoice and renew through writing, performance, movement and meditation.

Community Sustainability: Creativity is integral to building and sustaining community. The residency will provide participants with tools to investigate art and creativity as a practice for solving issues impacting local communities. Through creative visioning, action and reflection participants will experience movement from issue to resolution while at the same time building a tool kit to continue the forward movement for community sustainability and growth.

Literacy: Creativity is directly linked to achievement in literacy and basic skills. Because arts practice supports the overall critical thinking skills of students, it is extremely important to find new and innovative approaches to getting students writing and thinking outside of books. Creativity helps students conceptualize and envision experiences that extend comprehension of texts and problem solving skills. The activities used in this residency will be useful to students as they work to achieve their educational goals.

Organizational Impact
Creative Solutions is looking for ways to offer its students quality cultural arts programming. These costs, of course, are steep for a community school. Through our collaboration, Creative Solutions will have a month-long residency that it can use as a template for building and sustaining cultural arts programs throughout the year. Because BDAC is looking to its supporters to help fund this residency, Creative Solutions will not have to worry about payment for the services and use those funds to sustain other educational projects.

The Bottom Line
1. If this project does not happen, Creative Solutions quite possibly will not have intensive cultural arts programming for the month.
2. Participants will not have access to a transformative arts experience.
3. BDAC will not be able to begin its international arts initiative.

What We Need
BDAC Needs 2500.00 for the residency. Here is how it will be spent.

1500-flight
200-medication
700-Food and Lodging
100-Flip Cam

What You Get
Mention in Newsletter
Mention on website
DVD of Residency
Residency Chapbook
A gift from Zanzibar
A post card from Zanzibar

Other Ways You Can Help
Tweet about the residency using the #ProjectZanzibar hashtag
Mention the residency and our campaign on your Facebook wall or status update
Come to the going away party in Brooklyn July 16th.
Donate books, media or school supplies to Creative Solutions
Donate yoga mats
Donate DVDs
Donate art supplies
Donate frequent flyer miles
Get your social club to donate
Purchase mailing of materials
Come up with another way to help and let BDAC know!

Rainbow Reclamations Durham (Red) "Keep Your Sorry" Break Up Poetics

2011-07-05T08:53:00.001-07:00

Sunday July 24th 2011

5pm-8pm

Inspiration Station, Durham NC (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for directions)

Dedicated to the broken ground of your healing heart! This session for women of color and and feminists of color who do not conform to the gender binary is about lifting up break-up poetics as necessary and transformative clarity that can help us to create the lives, loves, and spaces we deserve! If you have ever been through a break-up, need to transition a relationship or are in the midst of a relationship transition right n...ow come to this event!

These monthly discussion/rituals are love in practice towards creating a spiritually …aligned, intimately interconnected, queer affirming and self loving community of women of color and genderqueer people of color ready to support each other in transforming the world.

This month’s activity is specifically about visible solidarity as and with sex workers of color. We will be having a ritual and making a banner of belief to place at the site of the Duke Lacrosse House.

*****Please wear RED and bring some food to share if you can. *******

Childcare will be provided!

.com to find out how to host your own event and send folks in North Carolina to us!!! If you are an ally spread the word and please send this to people who need this space!!!!

Announcing Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators August 8-12 in Durham, NC!

2011-06-23T06:06:00.001-07:00

Juneteenth Freedom Academy Summer Intensive for Educators:

Rituals for Transformative Presence

August 8-12, 2011

Durham, NC

because you were that genius kid in the back of the room looking out the window. because you were that young Malcolm X that the teacher wasn't ready for. because you were that Charlotte Hawkins Brown making your own school in yards and parlors. because you have always known that where ever you are learning is possible. because you don't remember much of 10th grade biology except that the teacher seemed to really listen to really make it accessible even when you didn't care. because there was something that happened in the classroom that made you want to come back and fix it, come back and honor it, come back and create a classroom of your own. because you are here for the kids, not for the standards and obviously not for the money. because you remember every day that people's movement in the US and in the world have been led by students. because you know that the place where nerds meet gang members is the place where the Black Panther Party was born, and that meeting could be reconvened in any classroom any day now. because it's still about that moment when you learn something new and the students realize that they are teachers already, and leaders and a force in the universe that cannot be stopped.

Because your presence is a catalyst, because your students are a prophecy. Because June Jordan said it best... "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

The Premise:

Every social justice artist and genius and their brilliant mama is publishing a curriculum, hoping to reach the students you work with, without ever seeing their faces. And sometimes the content is brilliant. But most educational institutions, including public schools, after school programs, independent schools, community colleges and four-year colleges and graduate programs already have their own mandatory or chosen content. So...

This course acknowledges what has the most influence on students while they are in the classroom, the people who are there, the educators and each other and the energy we are all empowered to bring into the space.

This course offers:

*Silence (templates for self-generated, updateable affirmations and reminders designed to get you ready to be powerfully present and spiritually grounded before you enter the classroom)

*Sound (ways to fine tune and amplify your level of listening and responding to/being present for your particular students)

*Space (a process for designing guidelines and rituals that allow students to be present to EACH OTHER and the wisdom that surrounds them)

*Support (co-mentoring relationships and networking with other transformative teachers)

The Paradigm:

Juneteenth Freedom Academy is created in honor of the black feminist educator, poet, parent and political activist June Jordan. We invoke her work as part of our task in continuing to spread the scattered message that slavery is over, in particular to those systems that continue to sell life and kill dreams. We believe that teaching in oppressed communities with accountability to oppressed people can be a subversive act that is ultimately accountable to freedom, not the reproduction of conformity as usual across generations. June Jordan taught in public libraries and schools, in independent underfunded Saturday supplemental programs, in state university classrooms, at Yale, in prisons, in community centers, in children's books, in lectures and in living rooms. The Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators draws on Alexis's privileged access to June Jordan's archival materials to use her syllabi, unpublished essays, course readers and student publications as resources for freedom in our lifetimes.

My brilliant and beloved co-conspirator and teaching partner Gardy Perard speaks with the clarity and precision of a mathematician. He says that the primary question for educators is how to bring freedom, possibility, power and connection into every teaching context. Together with Nia Wilson, Nikki Brown, Heather Lee and Zachari Curtis as co-facilitators of the Choosing Sides Program, a SpiritHouse program based in an alternative school in Durham serving students who were long-term suspended or expelled from Durham Public Schools, often for activities related to their involvement in street organizations, we created a student centered atmosphere of transformation and learning based on our internalized memory that the place where academics meet criminalized street organizers is a place of unstoppable power, is the generative collaboration that made the Black Panther one of the fiercest, most effective and most revolutionary organizations we know about.

Our accountability to the particularity and genius of the students that we worked with over the years pushed us to create practices to honor the truth that transformative education is not about transforming students. It is about being present for their inherent brilliance and assisting them in transforming their and our relationships to oppressive institutions. This is sacred work. Because most of our teaching takes place in places impacted by oppressive systems, and because we and any student we might encounter are impacted by oppressive institutions the work of creating liberatory space takes rituals and practices before, during and after the classroom encounter that generate the transformative energy of staying present to each other's brilliance no matter what.

Supportive Course Components:

*weeklong summer institute in Durham, NC to work with templates, practices and to engage readings from June Jordan, the Black Panther Party, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs! (August 15-19)

*full color PDF workbook with posters, pocket reminders and accessories

*first month back interactive and motivating conference calls (August 25-September 25)

*video seminar to share with colleages

*quarterly optional online-enabled participant hosted gatherings

*the presence podcast and reminder PSA's from Alexis

Sign Up:

1. email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com BY JULY 20th with your intention to participate and responses to these 3 questions

a. what is the community of students you are accountable to/working with

b. what do you hope to gain from this course

c. what is every possible way to contact you :)

d. how you will support the course

2. Support the course!!!

Support the Course!!!

Your presence is priceless. No one will be turned away from the course for financial reasons. HOWEVER support for the course is crucial. Here are suggested ways to support your participation and to keep transformative autonomous spaces like this thriving:

*Please ask your school, organization, institution, employer, community to support your participation in this priceless experience. The institutional sponsor rate is sliding scale $200-500 depending on your assessment of what your institution can afford.

*Another option is to support the course individually in relatively affordable installments. Become a sustainer of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind at a level you feel comfortable with:

*Mobilize your community! Take the opportunity to share the awesome thing you are doing with your mentors, friends, loved ones and allies and allow them to donate in your name. Send them this button and remind them to put your name in "notes" so that I can tell you to thank them!

*And offer a trade! Want to bring other resources to the event? (Food, materials, healing practices, resources I haven't imagined?) Make a proposal.

See you there!!!!!

Love,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Indigo Days Podcast: Sacred Black Feminist Blues

2011-06-18T03:16:00.001-07:00

Greetings loved ones,

Indigo Days a transformative gathering of warrior healers came to close this past Thursday. But the impact of warrior healers is ETERNAL so of course the impact of Indigo...Ntozake Shange's visionary creation and of the work of black warrior healers does not end. For all of you who attended Indigo Days and blessed the space with your transformative love, and all those who wished they could have been there in body as well as spirit and all those who supported with food, transportation, space, donations and materials this brilliant podcast...created by the resident blues scholars and DJ of the Quirky Black Girls Movement is for YOU!!!!

Enjoy!!!!

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/bbs-podcast.mp3]

Direct Link: http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/bbs-podcast.mp3

P.S. If you'd like to be part of the Indigo Days Conversation...post your brilliance here:

http://blueblackblessing.tumblr.com/submit

If you'd like to support the ongoing sacred work of eternal summer of the black feminist mind (including the Indigo Night School coming this Fall!!!) donate one time here:

or on a monthly basis at a rate that makes sense to you!

This Sunday! Green For Sechita: Sex Work and Solidarity (Rainbow Reclamations Durham Continues)

2011-06-18T02:26:00.001-07:00

GREEN: For Sechita. Sex Work and Solidarity

Sunday, June 19 · 5:00pm - 8:00pm

at the Inspiration Station (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for details)

These monthly discussion/rituals are love in practice towards creating a spiritually ...aligned, intimately interconnected, queer affirming and self loving community of women of color and genderqueer people of color ready to support each other in transforming the world.

This month's activity is specifically about visible solidarity as and with sex workers of color. We will be having a ritual and making a banner of belief to place at the site of the Duke Lacrosse House.

*****Please wear GREEN and bring some food to share if you can and some objects to embed in our beautiful banner!!!*******

Childcare will be provided!

If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere near Durham…COME! If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere in the world email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to find out how to host your own event and send folks in North Carolina to us!!! If you are an ally spread the word and please send this to people who need this space!!!!

Gentle: Cultivating Self-Love Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer Continues TODAY (6/16 at 6pm)

2011-06-16T06:28:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 16 · 6:00pm - 8:00pm

The Eleanor at Rigsbee

204 Rigsbee Ave. #201

Durham, North Carolina

The Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer continues with brilliance from Clifton and you about cultivating self-love as a revolutionary resource! Feel free to bring food to share!

Tomorrow! Indigo Days Begins!!!!!

2011-06-08T04:17:00.001-07:00

Black warrior healers unite and be reborn! The world will never be the same.

Non-financial and financial contributions welcome!

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Thursday June 9th

10am BREAKFAST (the Eleanor at Rigsbee)

10:30-1pm The P-Word and Other Fragile Promises: Movement and Poetics with Aya Hope (the Eleanor at Risgbee)

1pm LUNCH

3-5pm Open Healing Sessions and Stations (Eleanor at Rigsbee)

5:30pm DINNER

6pm Bright: On Clarity and Power Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survivor Writing Workshop (the Eleanor at Rigsbee)

(more info about the ShapeShifter Survivor series here: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/survival-school/)

******************************

Friday June 10th

BREAKFAST

8am Waking Up-Cultivating breath, awareness, and embodiment -Yoga with Michelle Johnson (Inspiration Station)

10am Assata graduates from Elementary School!!! (Chorus of praise at E.K. Powe Elementary School Graduation)

LUNCH (discussion topic: rituals and rites of passage)

1pm -3pm Energy Healing Workshop with CC (Inspiration Station)

3pm Journal Making with designer Mariel Eaves (the Eleanor at Rigsbee)

5pm-7pm graduation celebration for our young Indigos Assata and Naeemah!!!!!

DINNER

8pm The Power of Saying No!: A Playlist and Dance Party of Release: Afterparty curated by Moya Bailey (location TBA)

**************************************

Saturday June 11th

BREAKFAST (discussion topic: birth and rebirth: beyond control)

10am Black Women Birthing Resistance Workshop on Indigo and Cotton Root Contraceptive Legacies with Tamika Middleton (Inspiration Station)

LUNCH (discussion topic: fight and flight: re-envisioning survival)

1pm "Embodying Sanctuary: Creating, Holding and Facilitating Sacred Space" with L'erin Asantewa

3pm Wata' Rituals Body Ecology Performance and Workshop (Grace Garden at Durham Central Park)

DINNER (discussion topic: Do You Really Want to Be Well?)

7pm Afro-Surrealist Dark Delicious Divinatory Writing Workshop with Almah Lavon Rice

9pm Optional field trip to Greensboro for Laila Nur's EP release party!!!

***************************************

Sunday June 12th

BREAKFAST (discussion prompt: audre lorde and dream journals)

10: 30 am Activate Your Dreams: Creative Movement/Dance Session with Binahkaye Joy aka Joyism! (Inspiration Station)

12pm -I Know I’ve Been Changed: Queer Black Sunday School with Julia Wallace (Inspiration Station)

BRUNCH

2pm Blues Porch Concert with Laila Nur and Kim Arrington (Inspiration Station)

DINNER (Sunday Dinner...Lex's B-day community potluck!) (Inspiration Station)

7pm Blues Bible Study: Sacred and Secular Healing Podcast with Leah Burke (Inspiration Station)

*****************************************

Monday June 13th

10 am Yoga with Michele Berger

BRUNCH

1pm “Feeling-up Your Emotional Body”- Learning the Sounds and Organs of Emotion with Valencia Wombone

4pm Marvelous Menstruating Moments Workshop with Mya Hunter-SpiritHouse Youth Coordinator (for kids and young people getting ready to menstruate) (Inspiration Station)

DINNER at the Summit Farm!!!!

6pm Collaging as a Healing Practice with Rashida James-Saadiya (location TBA)

*********************************************

Tuesday June 14th

LUNCH

River Walk at Eno River Park

DINNER
5-8pm Lavender Legacies Workshop: Remembering Herbal Remedies (with Kifu Faruq and Afiya Carter)

************************************************

Wednesday June 15th

LUNCH

(full moon) 1pm Butterflies and Bliss with Racheal Derello (North Carolina Museum of Life and Science)

6pm Natural Hair Playdate with Chanel Laguna (Lex's Awesome New Neighbor!!!!) (at the Inspiration Station)

DINNER in Hillsborough and Indigo Seed Starting!

**************************************************

Thursday June 16th

BREAKFAST

LUNCH

Trip to North Carolina Botanical Gardens (Wild Spiked Indigo is their wildflower of the year!!!!)

DINNER

6pm Gentle: On Cultivating Self Love: Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survivor Session

This Thursday 6/2 at 6pm Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer Begins!!!!

2011-05-31T10:31:00.001-07:00

Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School Summer Session 2011!!!!

Thursdays in June

6pm at 204 Rigsbee Ave. #201 in Durham, NC

In honor of the great poet Lucille Clifton, who was also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, a mother, an artist and self-identified Amazon warrior through her poetry, the Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School is especially designed for families that are committed to ending childhood sexual abuse and all forms of gendered violence. Informed by Generation 5 and the regional plan of the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative, the ShapeShifter Survival School is part of a holistic process of ending child sexual abuse by creating healing community.

Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer

2011

F0r 5 Thursdays in Lucille Clifton's birth month of June we will gather as survivors of child sexual and physical abuse and sexual violence and parents and caretakers committed to ending cycles of abuse in our families and communities to do writing activities based on Lucille Clifton's poetry and the ShapeShifter Survivor Rebirth Broadcast video series. (See videos here: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/category/shapeshifting/). Participants in the series will also receive digital mixes of the music we work with to create a sacred space of memory. We can use the digital music mixes at home to activate memories of safety from the group writing space.

Rebirth Summer Thursdays:

Thursday. June 2

Unapologetic: Reclaiming Our Memories and Voices

Thursday, June 9

Bright: On Clarity and Power

Thursday, June 16

Gentle: On Cultivating Self-Love

Thursday, June 23

Futuristic: Towards the World that We Deserve

Thursday, June 30th

Planetary: The Depth and Urgency of Our Healing

Happy Birthday Sakia Gunn!: A Podcast Celebration

2011-05-26T03:20:00.001-07:00

Start your day celebrating the unstoppable, unkillable, unforgetable power of BLACK QUEER YOUTH! Today would be Sakia Gunn's 23rd Birthday and SO in a special Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind/SpiritHouse collaboration and as part of our ongoing leadership development project 18 year old visionary Matthias Pressley and yours truly (Sista Docta Lex) collaborated to create this podcast celebrating the life and legacy of Sakia Gunn. We love you forever Sakia!!!

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sakia-gunn-birthday-podcast-1.mp3]

Direct link: http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sakia-gunn-birthday-podcast-1.mp3

Want to see a whole album of pictures of us making the podcast and exuberantly celebrating Sakia?

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.894854362522.2423816.103868&l=a798c6bb5a

Want to donate to the ongoing leadership building collaboration between Eternal Summer and SpiritHouse?

Donate one time:

Or sustain:

2011-05-18T11:45:00.001-07:00

Register for the 5th In The People's Hands Arts and Activism Project workshop, in Durham NC.! Free.

4th Annual In the People's Hands Arts and Activism Project Presents...
The LIBERATION INTENSIVE

Location: TBA
Cost: FREE
Contact: Ebony Noelle Golden-ebonygolden@bettysdaughterarts.com,
Nia Wilson-spirithousenc@gmail.com
tel: 919.283.9032

www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com

Registration: email or text- ebonygolden@bettysdaughterarts.com or 919.283.9032.

Join SpiritHouse, Alternate Roots and Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative for the 4th In The People's Hands Arts and Activism Intensive. This year we are focus is LIBERATION. The weekend we will offer creative performance, spoken word, writing and community action workshops for the community.

Agenda

Thursday June 30th 430 pm
Meet and Greet and Opening Session
530 Introductions and Ice Breaker
600 Opening Session
Why Liberation? Why Now: A Creative Imperative
In this session, Ebony Noelle Golden will lead an interactive session with participants exploring creative approaches to liberation, RSC's principles of community engagement while framing the scope and range of the weekend intensive.

Friday July 1st 430 pm
430- Light Dinner/Snacks
5 pm- Session 1
630-645 Break
645 pm - Session 2
815- Wrap Up

Saturday July 2
10 am- Performance/Manuscript One-on-Ones with Visiting Artists (20 minute sessions)
11 am - Light Brunch
1130- Session 3
1pm- Break
115- Session 4
245- Break
330
Cultural Arts Direct Action: The Creative and the Strategic Road Map
In this session, Ebony Noelle Golden will lead participants in a process of mapping out the next steps for using art and culture for change. Participants should come prepared to talk about a tangible shift they want to see in their communities and how they want to use art and culture to do that work.

530 Break

7 pm Community Performances

Blue: 'Once I Was Pregnant': Stories of Abortion, Miscarriage and Rebirth

2011-05-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

Sunday, May 22nd

5pm at the Inspiration Station

(email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com)

These monthly discussion/rituals are love in practice towards creating a spiritually aligned, intimately interconnected, queer affirming and self loving community of women of color and genderqueer people of color ready to support each other in transforming the world.

This discussion is particularly about healing and rebirth with a special focus on experiences of pregnancy, abortion and miscarriage.

*****Please wear BLUE and bring some food to share if you can!
Childcare will be provided by SpiritHouse Youth co-directors Mya and Heather *******

May 15: Everyday Brilliance: Resilience Practices from Black Lesbian Elders

2011-04-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

brought to you by the MobileHomecoming Project (mobilehomecoming.org)

amplifying generations of black feminist LGBTQ brilliance!

2pm-6pm Sunday, May 15 2011

Stone House

6602 Nicks Rd.

Mebane, NC

Join us for a day of immersive wisdom where black lesbian elders in North Carolina share the practices that have kept them awake and amazing for decades in an interactive, intergenerational, skillshare and dialogue!!!

Invited featured speakers include:
Dr. Anjail Ahmad
Ed Swan
C. C. Wiggins
Janice Vaughn
Carolyn Grey
Harriet Alston

Bring a dish to share and be prepared to be inspired everyday from now on!

email mobilehomecoming@gmail.com for more info!

Indigo Days: June 9-15th, Durham, NC

2011-04-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

Indigo Days is a resource for black warrior healers remembering ourselves and reclaiming our traditions of magic, love and transformation. Inspired by the black girl healer folklorist, revolutionary character Indigo in Ntozake Shange's 1982 novel Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, Indigo Days is a context for every day as sacred space for the sacred task of healing our planetary selves and deepening the meaning of life.

Get everyday wisdom here: blueblackblessing.tumblr.com

or submit your own wisdom at blueblackblessing.tumblr.com/submit

Indigo Days (June 9-15, 2011) will be a week of celebration, learning and healing specifically centered on the power of black women and black genderqueer people to be healers, spiritual leaders and transformative warriors in our communities and on the planet. For more info on the event visit indigodays.wordpress.com

The week will include:

A Blues Porch Concert

Workshops on black healing traditions

Herb Walks

Blues Woman Bible Study (blues as sacred texts in the tradition of black feminist healing)

Sharing family remedies and herbal wisdom

A Blue Lights in the Basement House Party

Film Screenings

The gathering is FREE and all participants will be provided with food and housing for the week. Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for more details, and to confirm your participation.

To donate food, various materials, time, money or other resources check the contribution page: http://indigodays.wordpress.com/contribute/ or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or donate via paypal here:

Educational Materials:

Art Supplies of All Kinds

small notebooks/journals

photocopies

Transportation:

borrowable cars

driving help

Housing:

Couch, futon or guest room space for out of town participants

Airmattresses

Sleeping bags

Food:

Gift cards to Whole Foods, Kroger, Food Lion or Harris Teeter

Healthy vegetarian-friendly and protein-rich dishes

Assorted Items:

Stones

rosewater

birtwort leaves

magnolia incense

lady's fern

candles

flowers from your garden

mint

honey

roses

damiana leaves

cubeb berries

cloth

rasberry tea

cinnamon

vanilla

laurel leaves

wild hyssop

white water lilies

red sunflower

strawberries

mandrake berries

squaw weed

ginger/wild ginger

clay

chammomile

angelica

lemon tea

silk

ribbons

caraway seeds

bowls

linen

Dedicated: Request Line of the Black Feminist Future!!!!

2011-04-18T05:17:00.001-07:00

Greetings loved ones!

Because black feminist bass is the unstoppable heartbeat of the universe transforming. Because I revise every song I hear to praise your name. Because a movement is only a movement if it moves...I am excited to announce that my inner internet DJ (Sista-Docta Lex on the ones and zeroes!!) is finally launching a project to amplify black feminist healing and love all over your airwaves!!!!!

Yay!!!! Welcome to Dedicated: The Request Line of the Black Feminist Future! Here is how it works:

ask:

Ask for some advice about love, life, the practical or impractical pursuit of black feminism, foolishness at work, self-care, dilemmas or anything that might be on your mind. Typing a rant about a situation in need of healing in your life followed by the words "help a sista out" counts as reaching out for help and support.

You can reach out to me at

blackfeminismlives.tumblr.com/ask

or formspring.me/blackfeminism

Whether you leave your name or reach out anonymously you will get a song dedication towards your healing, affirmation and transformation of whatever situation inspired you to reach out with much much love from me!

listen:

You can listen to songs dedicated to you and everyone else at

blip.fm/blackfeministbass

or see the links at blackfeminismlives.tumblr.com

@alexispauline on twitter

I will also periodically be making podcasts with song dedications that fall into themes. You can subscribe to BrokenBeautiful Press for free on itunes to make sure that you get the newest podcasts when they come out. (Just search BrokenBeautiful Press in the itunes store)

collaborate:

You can also dedicate a song or affirmation to someone you want to affirm or to an ancestor you want to honor! Just go to the "ask" site above and type in your dedication and the name and artist of the song you want to dedicate and I'll amplify it on out.

We will also be having planetary release parties when the themed podcasts come out where people can share digitized mp3 mixed tapes with their own take on the theme of the podcast. Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com if you'd like to host release parties in your town!!

And if you are creating awesome black feminist music that affirms us all email me at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to send me links to your music so I can put it out too!

Yay!!!! And as always if this inspires you and you are able....donate!

love always,

Sista Docta Lex about to bring Black Feminist Flava to ya Ear!!!! :)

Announcing Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School Summer Session 2011

2011-04-17T09:36:00.001-07:00

Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer

2011

Rebirth Summer Thursdays:

Thursday. June 2

Unapologetic: Reclaiming Our Memories and Voices

Thursday, June 9

Bright: On Clarity and Power

Thursday, June 16

Gentle: On Cultivating Self-Love

Thursday, June 23

Futuristic: Towards the World that We Deserve

Thursday, June 30th

Planetary: The Depth and Urgency of Our Healing

Our intention is that after this summer month of Rebirth the Shapeshifter Survivor writing group will continue on a monthly basis hosted by participants as an ongoing source of support and healing drawing on work by Lucille Clifton and other writers.

For more information or to add your name to the reminder list email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

to donate click here:

Spring Reading Recommendations from Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Library!

2011-04-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

Hey family! Stop by tomorrow (Sunday 4/10) between 1pm-6pm to pick up these books and more...or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to pick up any of these books on an afternoon next week!

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind

Lending and Reference Library

Spring Reading Recommendations!

Spring into Action!

*Sisters in the Struggle : African-American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement

*Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days

* June Jordan’s Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union

*This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (several copies available!)

Reading in the Park

*Sacred Cows...and Other Edibles by Nikki Giovanni

*Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros

*The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson

*Miss Muriel and Other Stories by Ann Petry

*Dreaming in Cuban : a novel Christina Garcia (she went to Barnard…like me, my sister, Zora Neale Hurston, June Jordan and Ntozake Shange!)

*The used world : a novel by Haven Kimmel (she's from Durham)

*Some things I never thought I'd do by Pearl Cleage

*Not without laughter by Langston Hughes

Twisted (like a Spring)

*Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience by Jill Nelson

*Sally Hemmings. a Novel by Barbara Chase-Riboud

*Passing by Nella Larsen

*Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor

*Venus by Suzan Lori-Parks

*Soul on ice by Eldridge Cleaver

Books That Help Us Grow!

*The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker

*Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall

*Sisters of the yam : black women and self-recovery by bell hooks

*Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise by Michelle Cliff

Especially for Youth

*Words By Heart by Ouida Sebestyen

*Let the Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred Taylor (one of June Jordan’s favorites!)

*Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Puffin Modern Classics) by Mildred Taylor

*Crick Crack, Monkey by Merle Hodge

*What Your Mama Never Told You: True Stories About Sex and Love (featuring a piece by our very own Shirlette Ammons!!!)

Lavender: "Love Between Us": Beyond Competition and Scarcity (Rainbow Reclamations #2)

2011-03-31T11:26:00.001-07:00

By popular demand and with infinite love WE CONTINUE a seven month process called Rainbowed Reclamation, a colorful women of color juicy poetry and food-filled space of sacred discussions that reclaim our bodies, collectivize our spiritual energy and the brilliant choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

These monthly discussion/rituals are love in practice towards creating a spiritually aligned, intimately interconnected, queer affirming and self loving community of women of color and genderqueer people of color ready to support each other in transforming the world.

Take a deep lavender infused breath and....
If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere near Durham...COME! If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere in the world email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to find out how to host your own event. If you are an ally spread the word!!!!

Sunday April, 17th

5pm-8pm

La Casita De Amor (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for directions)

*****Please wear LAVENDER and bring some food to share if you can!
Childcare will be provided and I hear there will be delicious lavender infused cookies by Kukia in the place!!!! *******

Here is the schedule for the rest of the series (FYI):

In Blue : "Once I Was Pregnant" :Circles of Rebirth: Sharing and holding stories of abortion, miscarriage and healing (Sunday May 22nd, 5pm---special Indigo Days session)
In Green: For Sechita: Sex Work and Solidarity (Sunday June 19th, 5pm preferably outdoors!)
In Yellow: Graduation Nite: A Sex Positive Queer Inclusive Intergenerational Conversation about SEX (full of juicy and complicated stories about "the first time") (Sunday July, 25th, 5pm)
In Red: "Keep Your Sorry": Break-Up Poetics: On letting go, rituals of release and positive relationship transitions (Sunday August 28th, 5pm)
In Orange:(Sunday Sept 18th, 5pm) Butterflies and Bad Girl Legacies: Sex, Survival, Revenge and Healing

4/10 Library Day #1: Eternal Summer Lending and Reference Library Grand Opening

2011-03-30T03:49:00.001-07:00

At long last the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Lending and Reference Library is open, mostly cataloged and ready for circulation! Come and celebrate! Check out a book! Scan a digital copy of a rare article. Make an appointment to read in the reading room. Get a spring spirit cleaning reading prescription from sista-docta Lex!

For a preview of the available books look here: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BlackFeministMind

Join us at the Inspiration Station (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for details)

1pm-6pm Sunday April 10th 2011

Yay!
There will be cake!

And if you live far away email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com about how you can donate a book OR click here to donate through paypal:

Or push the button to sign up to be a monthly sustainer (the big blue number is how much you'll be donating each month automatically)!

Rainbow Reclamations Session #1: A Laying on of Hands: Rooted Reclamation and Ancestor Grounding

2011-03-11T06:57:00.001-08:00

Sunday, March 20th 5pm at the Inspiration Station

(email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for the address!)

By popular demand and with infinite love I am planning a seven month process starting this March called Rainbowed Reclamation, a colorful women of color juicy poetry and food-filled space of sacred discussions that reclaim our bodies, collectivize our spiritual energy and brilliant choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere near Durham...COME! If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere in the world email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to find out how to host your own event. If you are an ally spread the word!!!!
*****Please wear brown and bring some food to share if you can!
Childcare will be provided. *******

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_4RA3-ymU8&feature=player_embedded]

Here is the schedule for the rest of the series (FYI):

In Brown: A Laying on of Hands: Rooted Reclamation and Ancestor Grounding (Sunday March 20th, 5pm)
In Lavender: Love Between Us: Competition and Scarcity Among Women of Color (Sunday April 17th, 5pm)
In Blue : "Once I Was Pregnant" :Circles of Rebirth: Sharing and holding stories of abortion, miscarriage and healing (Sunday May 22nd, 5pm)
In Green: For Sechita: Sex Work and Solidarity (Sunday June 19th, 5pm preferably outdoors!)
In Yellow: Graduation Nite: A Sex Positive Queer Inclusive Intergenerational Conversation about SEX (full of juicy and complicated stories about "the first time") (Sunday July, 25th, 5pm)
In Red: "Keep Your Sorry": Break-Up Poetics: On letting go, rituals of release and positive relationship transitions (Sunday August 28th, 5pm)
In Orange:(Sunday Sept 18th, 5pm) Butterflies and Bad Girl Legacies: Sex, Survival, Revenge and Healing

Mississippi "Odd" Damn: Intergenerational Black Feminism is Unbelievable

2011-02-16T06:07:00.000-08:00

: Black women on the move have always been queer to the intersecting systems of oppression that rely on us staying in our interchangeable and demeaning place.

“It just sounds really odd. You know?”

This is what a white male police officer said to me several times after he separated my partner and I for questioning and we both explained to him that we were driving through Mississippi as part of our cross country journey interviewing black LGBT feminist elders.

And outside the matrix of uniforms, skin, privilege and visible weapons, ghosts and the bloody history of the state (in the specific sense and the general sense) his disbelief would be at worst a strange look to brush off and at best a conversation to have about intergenerational black feminist love in action. But in this case the fact that the officer could not believe our truth and was much more likely to believe that we were troublesome black teenagers joyriding across state lines in a stolen RV, could have been the difference between us driving through Mississippi and being locked up, or worse. We are inside a matrix where to be black and feminist, to be black and driven by love, where to be black queer women on the move together is unbelievable from the perspective of the state. And we still live in a time when to be black, queer, brilliant, feminist, driven, to be incredible, unbelievable, stunning, to be exactly who we are, is a threat to the state and a risk to our lives.

: Officer writing a "courtesy warning" to us for being "odd" in Mississippi.

The Story:

While driving on 1-20 in Mississippi a police officer from the interstate crime division pulled us over, citing a traffic concern: our following distance. Once we were pulled over, he asked us who owned the RV and what we were doing. We explained that we bought the RV, which is in my name, together with the support our community in order to travel the country interviewing our elders. The officer then asked my partner to leave the RV and called for back up. He questioned us separately. He asked us several times where we were going, how we got the money to be able to travel, how did we find these so-called elders, why would we want to visit them, was this for school, where did we live, how were we going to get back home, how did we get connected to these so-called black feminists, how did we know there were black feminists in the southern and western states we were planning to travel, and who are we to each other.

To see the whole article and join the conversation visit:

http://www.thefeministwire.com/2011/02/16/mississippi-odd-damn-black-feminism-is-unbelievable/

or http://www.mobilehomecoming.org/?p=919

2011-02-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

Women on Wednesdays Teach-in & Healing Cipher

This year, WoW organizers are pleased to offer a day-long teach-in to deepen our exploration of our motto "Engage. Create. Empower". Save your spot by RSVP with an email to ebonygolden@bettysdaughterarts.com.

Agenda

10 am- Welcome and Honoring Toni Cade Bambara
1015 am-Yoga and Mindfulness w/ Dehejia Maat

1115 am- Workshop Selections (Descriptions below)

A-Define Your Personal Shine w/ BurnBright Lifeworks, Inc.
B-Finding Voice through Identity w/ Carmen Mojica
C-Lyrical Meditations: Using Freestyle to Free the Spirit with Toni Blackman

1215 pm- Lunch

1 pm-Safe Spaces w/ Ocean Ana Rising

3 pm-Break

315- Prepare Community Sharing from Workshops
330 pm-Community Sharing from Workshops
430 pm-Next Steps Continuing the Sisterhood
5 pm-Closing Activity

Workshop Descriptions

Yoga and Mindfulness with Dehejia Maat

All-Group Session 1 hr.

As a poet and writer I've come to a place where I can't write anymore, because the exterenal world impacts my internal. Yoga for Poets and Writers is a workshop that I've created to remove blockages thru meditation and yoga. Our focus: clearing the noise and drawing form the pool of inspiration.

Safe Spaces for Trauma to Triumph with Ocean Ana Rising

All-Group Session 2 hrs.

The Safe Spaces Workshop is designed to provide women survivors of violence with tools of creative expression to help them transform trauma into healing and liberation. Through this workshop, participants are encouraged to express their own sacred, magical selves, using cultural art techniques that can be revisited long after participation in the workshop. For this Safe Spaces residency, workshop participants will re-discover body awareness on their own terms through guided creative movement, body painting, & writing techniques. We will begin with free writing exercises using prompts that inspire participants to explore the initial and personal trauma. This writing will lead to creative movement techniques, focusing on breathing, flexibility, and rhythmic dance, utilizing an African dance fusion technique. The creative movement will gently guide participants through the memory of the initial wound/scar/trauma addressed through the writing exercise, toward a transformative process of re-memory through which the body experiences full expression and triumph. Participants do not need any formal dance training to participate in this workshop. Following the first portion of the creative movement aspect of the workshop, workshop participants will further celebrate their bodies, self expression, and beauty through a body painting session, high-lighting spaces on the body with visual symbols, designs and colors that reclaim and reinforce personal ideas of affirmation. After body painting, participants will return to creative writing, emphasizing transformation and triumph.

Define Your Personal Shine with BurnBright Lifeworks, Inc.
1 hour

Artist Track:
The overall objective of this workshop is is to equip artists with a deeper level understanding of how they may use branding as a personal & professional tool for their artistic endeavors (networking, seminars, collaborations, exhibit, etc.)

BREAKDOWN

This workshop will take place as a free-form dynamic discussion/presentation followed by a break out Q & A where participants may pose questions.

Glow Assessment (What's working for/against me?) With their lives moving at a lightening pace, many artists rarely get an opportunity to see themselves clearly. This section will focus on teaching participants to do a 360 degree analysis of their current situation.

Selecting Your Candle (Formulating their goals) Selecting your candle will help artists prioritize their goals and by doing so, develop their OWN standards for success.

Burning Bright (Branding Statement) The purpose of this section is for participants to walk away with their own personal Branding statement. Please not that this statement is quite different than an Artist's Statement. Participants will be coached to create a Branding Statement that will speak more to how they want to be SEEN as opposed to what their artistic vision is.

Voice and Individuality with Carmen Mojica
1 hr

Lyrical Meditations: Using Freestyle to Free the Spirit with Toni Blackman

1 hr.

Toni Blackman will lead a session using the spoken word to heighten creativity, inspire self-expression, and improve one's ability to go with the flow. Toni's participant centered wkshp provides a transformative experience that empowers those present to exist beyond their comfort zones. She facilitates the process of "getting open", guiding the energy so that both artist and non-artist benefit from the exercises. Be a part of the cipher.

2011-02-08T18:58:00.000-08:00

Join Us as WE Celebrate Girls and Women of the African Diaspora!!!

Lending and Reference Library! Coming Soon!!!!

2011-02-06T05:47:00.001-08:00

Greetings loved ones!!!!

We are in the final stages of opening something called the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Reference and Lending Library in my community (out of my living room) so that people can have access to great books that can inspire and empower them to think about race and gender and sexuality and politics and everything that they may want to think about more. I'm particularly collecting books that are not in the local libraries and I'll be having library days starting in March in addition to the events I have here at the Inspiration Station when folks can look at the reference books, scan themselves copies of articles and chapters and borrow the lending collection to take home!

I'm really excited about it. Since this summer when I started the process over 700 books have been donated!

You can see the books that I have entered so far (about half) here: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BlackFeministMind

You can see the books that we are still "wishing for" on this amazon wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/9JXRNX84Z3R9/ref=cm_wl_act_vv?_encoding=UTF8&visitor-view=1&reveal=

Hooray! Maybe you'd like to donate some books that you already have? Email me at brokenbeautifulpress at gmail dot com. OR maybe you'd like to start your own lending and reference library in your community? OR if you live in Durham...maybe you'd like me to show you how you can catalog the books that you can share! Get in touch!

Much much love and booklust to everybody!!!

Lex

Bootcamp Podcast: The Sound of Mothering Ourselves

2011-02-01T09:04:00.001-08:00

Loved ones!!!! For those of you who didn't get to participate in the MotherOurselves Bootcamp in Durham NC this January here is a podcast featuring the insights of the participants and some beautiful music!!! Playlist below.

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/bootcamp-podcast-1.mp3]

direct link: http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/bootcamp-podcast-1.mp3

Also know that for the next week...if you become an Eternal Summerian (monthly sustainer of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind) your first gifts will be a mixtape of the meditations of release we did during the bootcamp and the motherourselves manual so that you can bring this work into your life and your community!!!

We can make something out of anything.

Insight from Mariel Eaves and

The Revenge of Ricky Williams "Sweet Wolf Shirt"

We recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.

"Dear Mom" by Adele Nieves and

Climbing Poetree "I Wonder"

We establish authority over our own definitions.

Affirmations from Miya Binta

Doria Roberts "Dying Man's Wish"

We claim power over who we choose to be, knowing that such power is relative within the realities of our lives.

Estas Mujeres: Covenant by Fabiola Sandoval

Amel Larrieux "All I Got"

We provide an attentive concern and expectation of growth, which is the beginning of that acceptance we came to expect only from our mothers.

"When I Crave Mama" by Fabiola Sandoval

Me'shell Ndegeocello "Solomon"

We affirm our own worth by committing ourselves to our own survival in our selves and in the selves of other black women.

"I Am My Mother's Daughter" by Rashida James-Saadiya

Lauryn Hill "If They Only Knew"

We refuse to settle for anything less than a rigorous pursuit of the possible in ourselves, at the same time making a distinction between what is possible, and what the outside world drives us to do in order to prove that we are human.

"Mother Ourselves" by Julia R. Wallace (JDub)

Santigold "Unstoppable"

We recognize our successes and are tender with ourselves even when we fail.

"My Mother Ourselves Covenant" by Dara Montaque

Res "Bittersweet"

We learn to love what we have given birth to by giving definition to, to be both kind and demanding in the teeth of failure as well as in the face of success without misnaming either.

"Letter of Release to the Next Generation" by Miya Binta

Erykah Badu "My Life"

We lay to rest what is weak, timid and damaged without despisal and we protect and support what is useful for survival. We explore the difference together.

"Mother as Savior" by Miya Binta

Georgia Ann Muldrow "Runway"

We stand toe-to-toe inside rigorous loving and speak what has always seemed like the impossible to each other.

Truth Booth Conversation between Miya Binta and Manju Rajendran

Tata Vega, "Miss Celie's Blues"

As we speak the truth to each other it become unavoidable to ourselves.

ESG "Keep on Moving"

Infinite love,

Lex

MotherOurselves Materials! Gifts for Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Monthly Sustainers!!!!

2011-01-25T10:29:00.000-08:00

Happy January beloved and far-flung supporters of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind!!!!!!

Since it is a beautiful new year...we have a beautiful new gift for our beloved Eternal Summerian monthly sustainers! All existing Eternal Summerians and all NEW monthly sustainers who sign up before the end of the month will receive their very own digital copies of crucial priceless curriculum materials from the MotherOurselves Bootcamp:

*The MotherOurselves Manual (including the mother ourselves manifesta, playlist, activity station descriptions and a 5 cycle meditation of release including direct quotes from across Lorde's body of work...especially Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger.

*The MotherOurselves Meditation/Dance Party Mixtape: guide yourself or your group through the cycles of meditation and release with music, poetry and the mesmerizing sound of my voice :)

AND Eternal Summerians who sign up at levels of $20 or more will receive hardcopies of both the Manual and the Mixtape (well CD actually) and a one of a kind collage in the mail!!!

Hooray!!!!! Sign up today or on payday! Thank you for making another year of ETERNAL inspiration possible!!!!

Love,

Lex

nomad lullaby for kai

2011-01-23T07:02:00.001-08:00

1/23

may your birth be easy

as one two three wants to be

(free)

may you have exactly the hot drink and black skirt you want

wherever you happen to be

may your bright black brain be ever enough

light to paint by

may markerstained hands map you

back to drawing board belief

may the flavor of sunset stay singing

in your ear as praise

may you keep dreaming

next millennia dreams

set in the place you were two days ago

may your circles whirlwind you up to hope

may you see yourself in our bravest most beautiful faces

may our hearts beat and victorious dance your echo name

deep footprints bootsunk

heeled

may we know where you have walked by our reshaped pulse

and may you always know you are right

here

MotheringOurselves (Manifest!)

2011-01-15T17:21:00.001-08:00

(distilled from Audre Lorde's Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger)