Honoring my Feminist Foremothers for Black History Month

In acknowledgement of Black History Month I want to take some time like to highlight some of the writings of Black women whose work has impacted my life in a profound way at a time when I really needed guidance.  I’m so thankful I was introduced to their work.

Nearly two decades ago, when my eldest was about a year old I was introduced to the concept of feminism through the words of Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique.  I, like so many housewives fifty years before me, began to see the problem that had no name.  This sent me on a journey to learn more.  I was desperate to raise my child differently than I had been and I was thirsty for anything I could get my hands on.  Without a sense of direction, I contacted a professor at a local community college in Michigan and asked if they could recommend anything to me.  She was so kind, met with me and gave me a Gender Basics textbook.  I poured through that book, and it was my first introduction to these women.  I am so grateful for their wisdom and the continual challenge in my feminist journey to consider the intersections of race, gender, socio-economic status and so much more.

bell hooks

(1952 – 2021) American author, scholar, & activist

In, Violence in Intimate Relationships: A Feminist Perspective, bell hooks spoke on the connection between childhood physical violence (including as discipline) and adult acceptance of abusive relationships.  It is such a compelling essay and gave me a lot of understanding and perspective of my own mind and struggles from the physical abuse I received as a child and also cemented my decision to not use any physical discipline with my own children.

“Children who are the victims of physical abuse…whose wounds are inflicted by a loved one, experience an extreme sense of dislocation.  The world one has most intimately known, in which one felt relatively safe and secure, has collapsed.  Another world has come into being, one filled with terrors, where it is difficult to distinguish between a safe situation and a dangerous one.”

Lucille Clifton

(1936 – 2010) American poet & writer

This poem, Homage to My Hips, is magic – I swear I saw sparkles in the air the first time I read it.  This was one of the first things I read that allowed me to understand the concept of taking up space, of not shrinking yourself down to fit where people expect you to, of the pride and power that can be found in the strength of a woman, rather than her weakness.  This poem helped me love my body and see it as my own.

Patricia Hill Collins

(b. 1948) American academic & social theorist

Collin’s work, Black Women and Motherhood, was so instrumental in helping me understand different perspectives on parenting and raising children and communities.  It gave me insight into the way African and African American mothers raise their children and build their community, and it translated that mindset into the work that African American activists were doing and how they worked in community organizations.

“Community othermothers have made important contributions in building a different type of community in often hostile political and economic surroundings.  Community othermothers’ actions demonstrate a clear rejection of separateness and individual interest as the basis of either community organization or individual self-actualization.  Instead, the connectedness with others and common interest expressed by community othermothers models a very different value system, one whereby Afro-centric feminist ethics of caring and personal accountability move communities forward.”

Audre Lorde

(1934 – 1992) American author, scholar & activist

Many of Audre Lorde’s writings made impact in my life, but I believe this was the first one and one of the most important.  In The Uses of Anger, she writes about anger as a response to racism, and the inability of white women to see and call out racism in our structural systems.   The uselessness of guilt and how it is a form of avoiding action, but how appropriate anger “is loaded with information and energy”.  This essay helped me better understand the perspective of Lorde and other Black writers and hear their righteous anger.  It also put my role as a support of other women into perspective, looking for ways to support and speak up without centering myself, and always keeping in mind that I am not free as along as any other person is not.

“What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman’s face?...if I fail to recognize them as other faces of myself, than I am contributing not only to each of their oppressions but also to my own, and the anger which stands between us then must be used for clarity and mutual empowerment, not for evasion by guilt or for further separation.  I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.  And I am not free as long as one person of color remains chained.  Nor is any one of you.”

India.Arie

(b.1975) American singer & songwriter

The words to Video, written as a poem in a textbook were my first exposure to India.Arie, and over the last two decades her music has become an important source of wisdom and healing in my life.  This song felt so free, so present.  The idea of following what feels good in your soul was a new one for me, one I’m still learning.  When I settle into it, her music is one of the few things that lets me just be present.

Sometimes I shave my legs and sometimes I don't
Sometimes I comb my hair and sometimes I won't
Depend on how the wind blows, I might even paint my toes
It really just depends on whatever feels good in my soul

I'm not the average girl from your video
And I ain't built like a supermodel
But I learned to love myself unconditionally
Because I am a queen