I suppose you could call me a bad Catholic, I was not in church on Wednesday and I did not post about sacrifice and honor either. When I was an undergrad, I attended a largely secular small college in which my social group would have like publicly shunned and privately rejected the best parts of me if I’d walked around with ash on my head, and I don’t doubt a few campus dwellers would have licked my head in unabashed irreverence rocking the pieces of me I cannot articulate in ways that would still be shaken today. So I fell out of practice but hopefully not out of G-d’s hands, not completely. And as I read others reflections on the day, I feel this slow ache for the faith of a mustard seed. Perhaps, unlike most of my readers here, it is b/c I know what it is like to walk in faith, not that judgmental-colonializing-inquisition-torturing-self-flagellation-slavery-justifying-gay-bashing-child-molesting-neo-colonial-send-your-check-in-now religiousity that is masquerading as faith, but the real thing, the loving-stewardship-parts-in-one-body-community-liberation-solidarity-social-justice-simple-way kind of real thing, and what it is like to walk without it.
So forgive me for getting all G-d glorious on you folks this last day of Black Herstory Month, but whether you believe in a Christian G-d or not, I want to encourage you to go read the post about Womanism and Lent by Melissa Harris Lacewell over at Kitchen Table Blog and think about how you can create, sustain, and believe in a world that honors black women and refutes the layers of violence against them.
These women refused to uncritically embrace the notion of sacrifice. Instead they forced us to ask what would happen if we imagine that God and our communities are deeply, unalterably invested in the existence, survival, and thriving of black women. Would a God, a church, a home, or a community that was committed to our survival, our joy, and our redemption be so willing to use and abuse our bodies, our talents, our hearts, and our gifts while offering so little in return?
Today’s Friday Black woman director is a little on the fluffy side, but in that great fun fluffy way.
Angela Robinson
(Getty image)
Unlike the other directors I have highlighted here, Angela Robinson is bringing a black lesbian sensibility to to the action/adventure genre. She has offered campy goodness and thoughtful insight to vampires, ganstas, spies, and even the L Word. Her work also expands the focus into a multicultural cast that is some times effective and sometimes recreates the same old stereotypes that most black women directors are trying to dismantle. It is a hard line to walk between artist and cultural figure and Robinson’s unabashed commitment to keeping her tongue firmly in her cheek defies such distractions while sometimes failing to deconstruct dominant paradigms as a result.
Her first film was the short Chickula, a clear nod to the first widely released black vampire film series Blackula, which yes I loved. Its run time was only 4 minutes and yet it managed to offer up a unique melding of Buffy and Blackula that should be recognizable to fans and media critics alike.
Robinson is most known for writing and directing the short film D.E.B.S that was later picked up and expanded to a feature length film of the same name. The original short, included only one woman of color and featured Tammie Lynn Micheals in her first really recognized role since Popular. The original plot was a basic spoof of the hyper-heteronormative-humor of the Barrymore revamped Charlie’s Angels franchise. Though only 11 minutes, it set the independent and queer film circuits a buzz.
As a feature length film, D.E.B.S. became far more multicultural, including a core cast made up of an African American, Asian American, two European Americans, and the Latina villain, Jordana Brewster, that set both straight and lesbian audiences to drooling. (For those who do not know, Brewster is half Panamanian and half Brazilian.) The movie, like the short, centers around young girl spies (think She Spies 10-15 years younger) who are out to stop an arch thief, Lucy Diamond, played by Brewster. Underneath this plot however is the budding love affair between Diamond and the best D.E.B. agent, Amy. As they spirit off together in a secret hideout that rivals any bat cave, the rest of the team works first to save the world and then to save their friend. The dialogue is almost always funny and sharp, though it has its trite moments, and the camp is almost always spot on.
The only negative in this campy farce is that the black character is cast as the stereotypical angry black b-ch and I do expect more from a black female writer and director. Interestingly, the role was played by an actress featured in last week’s black women directors post: Meagan Good. (All though Meagan Good is listed as having originated the role on wikipedia, her part was originally played by a much lighter biracial actress named Shanti Lowery.)
Many complained that the feature length film was not as edgy as the 11 minute short. The addition of a prominent competing heterosexual relationship storyline and other characters made some in the queer community lament the supposed loss of rapid fire dialogue and the narrowed focus of the original. Others speculated that the problem was simply the loss of snarky Tammy Lynn and a supposedly more commercially viable cast in general.
Sadly, straight audiences also seemed to miss the point, complaining, as Ebert did on one broadcast, that “If there weren’t lesbians in this would I even care?” Rather than looking at what Robinson was trying to accomplish, which was both to queer the genre and to ultimately offer us something that questions the roles and images we were being sold as post-feminist empowerment, most straight reviewers wrote it off as a “lesbian gimmick.” This showed their ignorance of the director’s filmography and the origin of the film both of which required some commitment to knowing queer media.
Comments like Eberts, who also recently got in trouble for a similarly dismissive review of Tru Loved, also begs the question: if there weren’t scantily clad straight girls in the Barrymore version of Charlie’s Angels would anyone have cared?
Asking that question, seriously, in turn forces us to look more deeply than many post-feminists did at the supposed empowerment Barrymore’s films were offering us through shots of Diaz’s butt, and upskirt or down shirt looks at Lucy Lu And Barrymore herself. While the franchise can be applauded for bringing back Demi Moore as a sexy villain in an industry that continues to discard actresses over 25, with rare exception, or relegate them to unsexy and unappealing parts, Demi Moore was little more than a bikini wearing Bond Girl with attitude while Jordan Brewster, much younger to be sure, offered a Get Smart (the tv show) like villain that was both camp and complex (as complex as cheesy camp can be anyway). Ultimately, D.E.B.S offered a more insightful discussion of sexuality, both straight and gay, the meaning of good and evil, and the choices we make as women, friends, and lovers. And it wrapped it up in the same eye candy camp that made similar heterosexual movies and tv shows hits with a consciousness about what it was doing that those shows often lacked.
Since D.E.B.S, Robinson became one of the writers and directors for the L Word. She helped pen and/or direct 9 episodes of the show from 2004 until now. This includes three episodes for this seasons “Litmus Test” – which tested Helena’s love interest to see if she was still shady – and “LMAO” when the gang discovers that Jennie and Shane have hooked up. Like her film offerings, her stint on the L Word has emphasized humor and pop culture.
Robinson also wrote and directed an independent off shoot of the L Word for their Our Chart site called Girl Trash.
The series offered an edgy side of Robinson’s camera work, using tight cuts and odd angles, as well as playing with light and dark (black and white, use of red film, etc.). It also continues her committed foray into established genres that often lack queer subjectivity, this time looking at gangs and inner city poverty. While the series is not as polished as Set it Off, it does feature Rose Rollins in a role that seems made for her mix of hard and sexy. All though it should be noted that Rollins’ part is also easily received as stereotypical despite the fact it is comedic. It also shifts the focus to an almost all white cast in a genre that has often been centered around supposed black or brown pathology. In so doing it might encourage some to think beyond racialization to the questions of poverty and the deliberate making of an underclass. Given the current economic crisis that is certainly something to think about.
At the same time, it does represent a far less diverse cast than her previous efforts, despite the occasional inclusion of Margaret Cho, Jordana Brewster, and Rollins. (Her commercial debut as the director of the remake of Herbie the Love Bug may have had more diversity.) Unfortunately, when the our chart website was shutdown, oops I mean “merged with showtimes regular station site,” Girl Trash was not transferred. However, you can watch the first 8 episodes (run time about 3 minutes each) on youtube.
Her upcoming project returns her to the large screen. She is slated to direct a film she co-wrote with Alexander Kodracke tentatively entitled Jenbot. The current plot revolves around a queered Bionic Woman, hence the fembot reference in the title. In this version, the titular character Jen has been targeted by the government to be turned into a cyborg for their own purposes. The film is likely to parody and/or expand the themes of both the 70s tv show and the failed update from last year. Given her other work, I don’t doubt it will be much more recognizable to those of us who were fans of the original.
Police are finally calling the excavation site in the SW Mesa of Albuquerque NM the burial ground of a serial killer.
Two weeks ago, hikers discovered a human bone while passing the newly dug up ground on a routine hike. The ground was being prepped for a new housing development, otherwise the bodies may never have been found.
(Sex Workers hide their faces knowing male desires = women’s shame and criminalization.
Image unattributed)
After determining that the bones were in fact female human remains, police and local forensic anthropologists began to examine the area. As the days stretched into weeks, the body count grew. Still police were reluctant to call the burial ground the work of a serial killer, even after they found 6 different sets of remains. They claimed the only woman identified, Victoria Chavez, could have been killed by her boyfriend for all they knew. At the same time, speculation grew that all of the women were likely sex workers, including Chavez. The implication: their lives were worthless anyway.
Today, the story finally changed. A second woman, pregnant Gena Valdez, was identified among the growing number of remains. She too was homeless, had a drug history, and had engaged in prostitution. The similarities between the women and the graves could not longer be denied. Police admitted the graves were the work of a serial killer targeting sex workers. They also admitted that both Valdez and Chavez had been missing since 2004 and 2005 respectively and were on a list of 18 women who had gone missing around the same time period. One of their new suspects had pictures of several of the women on that list in his trailer when he died of natural causes earlier this year.
12 women’s bodies have been found in total. All buried in the same area. All of them were naked and had no identifying documents. The worst part, is that the women were also all buried in shallow graves. Valdez’s grave was less than 18 inches down according to an ABC broadcast. Had the police taken the growing list of missing women more seriously when it was happening, they might have found this grave site before so many women died. Instead, no one considered the reports might be related nor did they search the South West Mesa or other rural areas for remains b/c all of the missing women had histories that included drugs and sex work and some of them were homeless. If the suspect with the photos is found guilty, this too begs the question as to why he was not considered earlier. People had to have seen him with the women and a search of his trailer could have uncovered the photos of the missing women. Instead, the women on the margins were left to fend for themselves, unaware they were targets, while this man lived out his life.
What makes a life worth less than any other? For women, it begins with gender, but almost always ends with things like sex work or homelessness. The same dismissals go on around the world as if women give up the right to life when they become physically and economically expoitable by a system that ultimately serves the sexual desires and capitalist fantasies of men. There is no similar devaluation for men who frequent sex workers, if they are killed, police look for the killers and they lock them up. How many more crosses have to be stuck in the road in Juarez, Guatemala, New Mexico, and around the world?
Police and forensic anthropologists are still excavating the site. There will be no way of knowing how long the serial killer was active until all of the bodies are found.
While African American women quiltmakers made quilts for functional purposes, many also made story quilts or quilt art. The latter functioned to write African American lives back into the narrative of this nation even at a time when the quilt makers may have been largely illiterate, as in the case of late 1800s quilter Harriet Powers. The tradition of quilting was also past from grandmothers, to mothers, to female children, ensuring a continuation of women’s narratives and skills. In so doing, quiltmakers ensured that black female subjectivity remains present in the historical record; recent interest in women’s textiles has helped to reveal our stories in the cloth.
One of the earliest documented African American quilt maker was Harriet Powers. Powers exhibited her quilts at local fairs and considered them to be art. Her subject matter was the Bible and reflected the first form of English literacy amongst African American slaves. Powers could not read nor write, but like other slaves, she was taught the stories of the Bible. In order to pass this information on and honor her new found faith, she quilted them. She continued to do so after emancipation, managing to keep the quilts off the market while other black quilters used their skills to keep their families afloat.
Jennie Smith, a white school teacher and artist, saw the quilts at a fair and after Powers refused to sell them to her, she tracked down where Powers lived. For the next 5 years she would hound Powers to sell. Harriet Powers refused at the fair and during these visits for reasons that have escaped historical record. It was not until Powers and her husband fell on hard times that she consented to sell to Smith. But for all of her prior efforts, Smith decided she was unwilling to pay Powers’ price. Knowing Powers was desperate, Smith wrote of feeling both justified and deeply satisfied by offering only 1/2 of what Powers asked.
It was clear from Smith’s diary that Powers had not wanted to sell the quilt as she returned repeatedly to visit it. She also made sure to explain each panel to Smith in detail before finally relinquishing the quilt for half the sum she wanted/needed. As a result of this exchange, the two women were linked together for a period of time and the quilt survived long enough to be archived by the Smithsonian. Powers quilts were popular enough that the faculty wives at Atlanta University commissioned her to do a quilt in 1896, so despite the Smithsonian’s assertion that the coercive relationship between Smith and Powers was necessary for preservation, that may not have necessarily been the case.
(Harriet Powers’ quilt 1886)
The story behind some of the panels in Harriet Powers’ quilt, reflect the particular preoccupations and history of African Americans while still telling a Bible Story. The quilt above is about Jacob’s Ladder. According to Powers, the images depict slaves empathy for Jacob b/c he is one of them and their own desire for freedom (Lyons 1993).
(Harriet Powers quilt commissioned by faculty wives 1896)
According to Powers, a panel she did for her other preserved quilt (see bottom row center) is about “Bess the pig” who escapes Georgia and runs 500 miles to Virginia (ibid). Powers was born in Georgia in 1837 and West Virginia became a free state in 1863. Thus both quilts are about African American yearning for freedom, critique slavery, and active support of escape rather than the passive acceptance many thought was shared by house slave; all of this critical engagement was presented present to her audience in plain sight of plantation owners.
Martha Ann Ricks (1817- ?)
Martha Ann Ricks was one of Powers’ contemporaries and also a world famous quilter. Ricks was born into slavery in 1827 in Tennessee. At 13, she and her family were returned to Africa by the Tennessee Colonization Society who felt free blacks should not be allowed to remain in N. America. (Her father had bought their freedom a few years prior through a 12 year ministry raising funds, extolling the need for abolition, and spreading the gospel.) During the next several years, Ricks would perfect her quilting under her mother and grandmother’s tutelage and be inspired by Queen Victoria’s fight to keep Liberians and other Africans from being captured and re/sold into slavery. As a result, Ricks determined to make a quilt for the Queen.
Ricks story is a powerful one for women precisely because it highlights the strength and community of women in quilting. Ricks work became famous in England, the U.S. and Liberia through participation in local and national contests with other African American born textile makers all of whom eventually learned of Ricks’ desire to meet the Queen. Amidst the ridicule of her community and her husband, she managed to save the few coins she could spare to save for the trip and waited with the strength of a woman who would not be moved.
Her story reached the ears of Miss Jane Roberts, the Liberian President’s widow, who came to see the quilt. As a result, Roberts not only helped her raise the funds but also sent a letter to the Liberian Ambassador to England on Ricks’ behalf. He in turn, wrote the Queen.
At the age of 76, Ricks traveled to England. In 1892, by invitation of the Queen, Martha Ann Ricks presented Queen Victoria with the Coffee Tree Quilt at Windsor Castle. The quilt had 300 leaves, most with plump red berries appliqued on a white background; the entire quilt was bordered by an alternating leaf and berry border. The Coffee Tree quilt design honored African American life in Liberia where the tree grew in abundance and represented economic security for many settlers, including Ricks. It also reflected what Fry (1990) calls a particular African American innovation in quilting, which often included the incorporation of natural elements and variations of leaf patterns not seen prior.
Not only did this nature quilt tell the basic story of economic survival of the Liberian colony through the coffee tree, the presentation of the quilt to the Queen sparked international interest in the lives and textile work of African American and African women. Powers visit occurred just one year prior to that of Ida B. Wells and in the midst of an influx of black female intellectuals from N. America discussing the rights and needs of black people and women. There is not enough historical record to know what kind of influence Ricks’ presence might have had on these discussion but given her father’s own struggle to free his family from slavery, Ricks’ long life in Liberia where the Queen had actively committed troops to protect black people from re-enslavement, and the inspiration for Ricks’ visit being her own admiration for the Queen’s anti-slavery stance, there had to be some discussion of the importance of black freedom, black women’s roles and needs, etc. that resonated with the anti-lynching campaigns and feminist discussions going on with Wells, Carson, and other black feminists and the feminist and social justice societies that invited them to England to speak.
Regardless of the overall content of their discussion, Queen Victoria was so impressed with the quilt and Ricks that she sent Ricks home with both gifts and a royal escort. One can only imagine that among these gifts was a sample of the Queen’s own textile work since what ultimately brought them together was both the love of independent women and the urge to express oneself through textile.
Despite the visit being reported widely in British papers and the display of the quilt by Queen Victoria at the World’s Columbian Expo in Chicago in 1893, one of the largest fairs of its type, Ricks story and work were not entered into the history books until African American quilter Kyra E. Hicks wrote Black Threads with African American historian Cuesta Benberry, and the children’s book Martha Ann’s Quilt for Queen Victoria, based on archival data and oral history with Ricks surviving family members. Part of the problem, is illustrated in the caption from the World Columbian Expo placed infront of Ricks’ quilt which reads “uncivilized Africans exhibits.” (see image to the right). Again, because people of African descent were believed to be uncivilized and uncivilizable, their art and textile work would not have been considered worthy of archiving. Remember that this exhibit, and others like it, were part of the “race science” narrative I outlined in my post about the NY Post cartoon.
Similar connections between modern black female quilters and our earliest remembered black female quilters occured with tributes to Harriet Powers as well. Her quilt and portrait were redone as a single quilt honoring her by African American female quilters Marelene Obryant-Seabrook, who uses the second quilt from above, and Peggie L. Hartwell, who uses the first one.
Tribute Quilts
Infact, tribute quilts became one of the ways that modern quilts help keep alive the herstory of African American women artists, quilters, poets, and thinkers. More to come
Fry. Stitched from the Soul. NY: Dutton Studio Books, 1990.
Lyons. Stitching Stars. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Images
Looms of Melrose Plantation. unattributed
Harriet Powers. photographer unattributed.
“Jacobs Ladder: Applique Story Quilt” Harriet Powers. 1886
unnamed applique story quilt for faculty wives at Atlanta University. Harriet Powers. 1896
Martha Ann Rick. portrait unattributed.
Coffee Tree Quilt. Martha Ann Ricks. 1892. (Image from Kilburn sterereview Image taken at the World’s Columbian Expo in Chicago in 1893 on display at the NH Public Library.)
While working on the never end quilt post, I went to link to a feminist bookstore for you to get one of the books cited . . . As part of my policy of supporting actual feminist publishers and feminist bookstores, I try to pick a different bookstore each time in order to highlight all the places you can go to get your books either in your community, while traveling, or online. I hope that it helps peak your interest in avoiding corporate booksellers and in supporting feminist publishers, bookstore owners, and thinkers. And I also, selfishly, hope that it will counterbalance the fact that there is no feminist bookstore anywhere near pov u where I teach and that the collective effort to resurrect one left with a racially charged conflict between feminists in our community . . . grr . . .
Unfortunately, the bookstore I chose today: Word is Out, located in Boulder CO went out of business after 14 years of supporting the feminist and queer communities. They are currently in the process of digitizing stock list so that patrons can by the last of their inventory. As always I am saddened by the loss of one more free thinkers refuge in our rapidly widget like world.
I’m not sure when they closed, it was some time late last year, so if you want to send them belated thanks for the work they did or just a note of solidarity for feminist enterprise, you can contact them here.
Below is the official White House photo of the Obama dog, named Bo. Supposedly, he was given to the Obamas by the Kennedys after he did not work out at another family. Whether this story is true or meant to stop the misguided and shocking harassment of the dog breeder who raised the dog, as happened with the breeder who gave VP Biden his dog, or it is an actual “rescue,” we will probably never know. The Obamas will however be making a sizable donation to a local Humane Society since their daughters’ allergies prevented them from getting a dog there.
AP Photo/The White House, Pete Souza
As you can see, the dog they were given is a black version of the breed as opposed to the brown one I chose for the original post. He also has at least two white paws to go along with the traditional white tummy patch. (I chose the brown ones because the black ones are standard and I hadn’t ever seen a brown one before. chalk it up to my never ending need to go against the grain.)
End Update.
Ok, yeah, this post is shamelessly trivial in the face of economic crises, global inequality, and all of the social justice causes that occupy this blog. Still, how can you not look at this photo and no why I had to tell you? Can’t a girl have a little fluff moment?!? Geez!!!
This is a Portuguese water dog and according to People and CNN, one like this will be living in the White House very soon.
We at la casa, have a 7 dog brood of rescued doggies, so yes, no matter how silly it is, we did pay attention when this was announced. You can read more in this month’s edition of People Magazine. Then rush to the Humane society and rescue a dog yourself b/c the Obama girls’ allergy issues meant they could not.
Warning all images MUST be cited to use, citations are listed at bottom of post under “citations” (YOU MUST USE QUILTERS NAME AND TITLE OF THE PIECE IF YOU REPRINT; PLEASE DO SO EVEN IF THE COPYRIGHT HAS EXPIRED ON SOME PIECES AS I HAVE DONE HERE.)
Ode to My Grandmother
Today’s black herstory month post is an ode to my grandmother, who lovingly made quilts her entire life. Her quilts followed a tradition of rag quilting she learned in the waning days of slavery and they adorn each of our beds with the love of a powerful matriarch who taught us all to value education and ourselves. (Did I mention that all of my Aunts are teachers, all of my cousins PhDs? and yes, with one exception, our generation and theirs are all women, so it is also a legacy of matriarchs and matriarchy.)
When my grandfather died due to hospital negligence, my grandmother began a quilt for all of her children and all of her grandchildren. To each of us she bequeathed a final story before letting go of this world to join my grandfather in the next. Mine hangs above my bed as a powerful symbol that grandma is still watching over me.
I have always wanted to be a better quilter to honor her artistry. My mother avoids needle and thread as toil, her memories are of big hands pushing needle through fabric to give to someone else, to keep the farm afloat. But I keep saying, lets quilt together. Let’s quilt something beautiful for grandma. My little sister smacks her gum and says “We don’t sew;” it’s the northerner in her or perhaps the 100% American, I don’t really know.
So today I quilt this post in honor of my grandmother and the amazing gift she gave us all:
Origins?
While quilting in Africa was largely done by men, quilting in N. America was done almost exclusively by women. As slaves, African American women were charged with sewing, mending, and other textile work as part of household chores. They also often pieced scraps and rags given to them or discarded by plantation owners into blankets to sleep on or to cover their families in the winter months. (Scrap quilting was done during slavery but became essential afterward and could be done with all sorts of discarded fabrics not just bits of cloth)
Some have argued that black women’s quilts followed a traditional European pattern and therefore the origins of quilting are in the West. Due to the nature of the intersection of women’s and colonial histories, ie what documents were kept as “worthy” and what was discarded, the reality is far more complicated.
black women’s quilts were seldom considered historically significant and so there are not enough early quilts to generalize about the content, pattern, or origin of African American quilts
while saved quilts do follow mainstream trends they also contain symbols found in African textiles; the shifting meaning of these symbols to fit a N. American context do not necessarily negate shared origin or hybridity
some black and white women quilted together during slavery potentially leading to syncretic patterns and innovations
African textiles were traded throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and the American South along with slaves (Wahlman 1993), thus textile influence from Africa could have impacted both European-American and African-American forms prior to research on quilts
b/c many slaves were only given scraps and sacks to sleep on, some quilting forms could have originated in the colonies as part of the emerging African American culture; one such form is the pine cone quilt universally credited to African American quilters according to quilt historian Cuesta Benberry
Originary tales flatten out a much more complex story of black women’s relationships to quilting as well as the relationship between black and white women quilters. They further posit a linear narrative that masks the circularity and communalism of the craft as well as the trials of putting together any clear history of women’s textile work in the U.S. prior to the early 1900s.
Symbolism
African symbols in African-American quilts continue to this day. In Africa, large patterns on a quilt were used to distinguish one’s own kin group from another at long distances; today, not only do African American quilters continue the use of large patterns but also African textiles and beadwork to establish a cultural link back to African roots. Breaks in the pattern were essential as they both confused evil spirits thought to travel in linear directions and marked significant shifts in the quilt wearer’s life or the life of his/her family. Lifecycles were also marked by the diamond shape the points of which represented: birth, life, death, and rebirth. As well will see in the “Teaching & Remembering” section of the post, these symbols not only reoccur throughout African American quilting but are important symbols in lynching quilts. The use of multiple patterns in a single quilt were also significant as the number of patterns indicated ones status; the more patterns on the quilt, the more status one had in African society.
As you can see, local quilt collectors have noted certain regular forms in both “utilitarian” and “ornamental” quilts from the African American community. As the video illustrates, innovation in pattern versus repetition seem to be key for African American quilters in general (repeated pattern is also present). Some of the unique use of emergent pattern will be discussed when looking at the work of quilters from the 1930s in the second half of this post. Seeing the images juxtaposed first with textiles made by Africans and then painting made by European artists illustrates the melding of forms I mention above, since both textile makers and painters were men, it also points to the gender difference in attention to artistic forms since both African textiles and paintings have generally received more attention than quilting until the current period. Many of the European artists chosen to compare to quilts may have originally been influenced by African sculptures and hieroglyphs, once again illustrating the circular motion of artistic innovation further emphasizing the connections between race and gender, originary tales, and mainstream art history. (Obviously, both regular and art historians are doing much more innovative work now then the developmental narratives that always begin in the west and then turn to the civilizing of the rest, however basic origin myths continue to permeate our understanding of art, as form, craft, and process.)
There has been much controversy over whether or not quilts symbols were used along the Underground Railroad. There are two major proponents of the theory, Gladys-Marie Fry’s book Stitched from the Soul and Tobin and Dobard’s Hidden in Plain View. Fry’s book argued that the color black meant refuge, triangles indicated prayer, etc. but offers no substantial citations for her deductions. Tobin’s book is based on the report of an African American quilter who remembered a history of using quilt patterns as a way to escape slavery; according to some, the quiltmaker was hounded by Tobin for “meaning in her quilts” and by others that her “quilt code” was given freely. This matters b/c it goes to the credibility of the account and the role of informant as possible trickster; unfortunately, Tobin’s source died before the book went to print. The patterns in question, some of which are pictured in the GLAAQN quilt to the rt, include “Bear’s Paw” to follow animal tracks north through the Appalachians, “Flying Geese” as other escapees, “Drunkard’s Path” is the erratic route, and other patterns meaning wheels, cabins, crossroads, etc. There were also symbols in the stitching and tying of quilts. There were no actual quilts made just the memorization of pre-existing quilt patterns as a remembered road map to freedom. Tobin and Dobard’s argue that this symbolic language would be in keeping with other maps to freedom like “negro” spirituals. Despite criticism from quilt historians about the utter lack of textile evidence for such a story, Tobin and Dobard remind that slaves did not make, carry, or look for quilts but rather memorized quilt patterns.
The dispute seems to stem largely from a lack of evidence in the textiles themselves, pattern dating that precludes certain pattern use, and leaps of logic that do not leave room for existing ambiguities in the known record. (see link for a list of historian and quilter criticisms of the quilt code here – scroll past the yellow block text to the actual documented piece) Others have argued that the confusion comes from popular names for patterns like the “under ground railroad pattern” pictured in the bottom left corner of the image to the right. Names related to slavery and freedom cropped up in antebellum and may have fused with oral histories of escape to create a “quilt code” after the fact. There are also stories of Tubman giving a quilt to an abolitionist, tho no mention of a quilt code. Also fictional accounts of the quilt code were published in both children’s and young adult literature, and some historians have argued that people wanting to make money manipulated the fiction(s) to turn them into fact.
What is important for this post is that regardless of whether these symbols were actually used in the railroad, they have become a part of modern symbolic language among some African American quilters. In the modern version, these elements are used to tell the story of escape to freedom, in quilts honoring Tubman, or as border art in quilts connecting our past to our present. In this way, they serve a new purpose that can be deconstructed through the quilt code but do not necessarily have to reflect an actual historical reality or worse “exotica” for capitalist gain. Instead they can be seen as reterritorialization from a largely white imaginary of black quilting forms into one of African American storytelling, like the Penny Sisto quilt to the right that frames Tubman with the supposed symbol for safe house. As elements of modern herstory technique they remain significant and need to be recognizable to those analyzing quilt content.
Homosocial
Women quilters used the symbols above as well as an innovations in the form developed in the colonies, to mark down the history of their families and their struggles. They were the first African American historians and their stories were invaluable at a time in which slaves were denied literacy and colonials did not care to mark their lives except in terms of ledgers and occasional notes. Despite the fact that the WPA Slave Narratives included references to the importance of quilts (for income) and later collection as art by primarily white female collectors/educators, it was most often slave ledgers and white slave and plantation owners letters and diaries that early historians went to when writing our lives back into the historical record.
Women also used quilts to protect their families and their homes. Often words or symbols for protection were woven into quilts, particularly those that hung over doors or were meant to cover children.
Both before and after slavery, quilting provided African American women with homosocial bonds. As one of the modern quilters from the Pacific Northwest African American Quilters organization argues, quilting bees allowed African American women with limited funds an opportunity to come together and socialize after church or in the evenings with very little economic investment. Elaborate or ornate quilts, like those we will see in the next section are not cheap to make, however, both more simple quilts and quilts made from shared supplies can continue to be a less costly endeavor. It is also true that quilting bees have always proliferated in working class and subsistence level communities among both white and black women.
The same interviewee argued that quilting also helped secure bonds between black women in the same community through “sister quilts.” Sister quilts were done by the quilting bee to mark key rites of passage, 50th birthdays, graduations, births of children, etc., and were presented to the group member only when completed. The key elements of these quilts were a combination of personal aesthetics of the recipient and memorialized oral history of her life and/or connecting her life to larger African and African American themes. Though these quilts may have different names in other parts of the country, they are common. In my own life, my grandmother made “sister quilts” for the women in our community and in our family and when my closest friend had her first child, the first thing I thought to do was ensure she had a quilt whose symbols reflected our shared African and African American pasts as well as hopes for the baby’s future. The quilt maker who helped me put it together was absolutely familiar with the form, though she had not made one for a newborn before.
The tradition of quilting was passed on along gendered lines as well. Women learned quilting from each other including white women teaching black women during slavery, black women teaching white women especially in antebellum, and especially women passing the knowledge down from generation to generation. Most modern quilters site their mothers or grandmothers work as an inspiration for becoming quilters.
Women were also an essential part of the early preservation of black women’s quilt. Museum credit white women for collecting black women’s quilts. Their diaries show a keen sense of racial difference and entitlement in procuring quilts in many of these cases that cannot be ignored; however, the recognition that these quilts were art and should be preserved ensured that we have some early quilts in the historical record. Nuns, such as the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first African American women’s Catholic Order, also kept collections of quilts from their girls school dating back to 1829. It is equally clear that the tradition of quilting and gifting quilts to one’s relatives helped preserve them as well, but given the caution with which African Americans viewed certain collectors, this treasure trove of early quilting has remained largely within families and outside of the historical record. Local museums are trying to change this by highlighting women’s textil worker from their area, where they maybe more trust and more accountability. The Old State House in Arkansas for instance has been able to collect both family and indivdidual quilts from the 1930s-1950s that might not otherwise be available. Whether pursuing quilts and quiltmaking from a place of bigoted admiration or one of actual intra or interracial sisterhood, the tradition of quilting expanded through these interactions and provided for the ongoing connections between women of all colors who quilt to this day.
As with African American quilters, white female quilters often used the form to tell stories about their lives that they could not or did not feel they had access to elsewhere. And the form became essential particularly to poor, rural, and southern white women who not only recorded their histories but also used quilting to comment on gender based violence. While many quilting bees are race specific, African American women and white women also continue to quilt together, trade forms and innovations, and offer open courses in local communities.
The First Quilters
This post continues to grow every time I sit down to write it, so I am going to cut it off here and do a second post highlighting quilters in the following order:
first known quilters
quilters of the 1930s-50s
modern day quilters and quilters guilds
Both of these posts are based on a quick survey of the literature not expertise. I welcome any corrections, alternative arguments, etc. As always, shared knowledge is the best kind.
——
images
Keith Mallett. Tree of Life. (His work is breathtaking)
“Quilting from Bits of Cotton.” date of photo unknown. Queensboro, North Carolina.
Gee’s Bend quilting bee. Birmingham, Alabama, 2005
B Pietilla. “Color Him Father.”
Jane and Rebecca Bond Kentuky 1828. Jane (African American) and Rebecca (White) quilted together making over 20 quilts for their children and as gifts to their communities.
So on my way home from class I regularly pass a Barnes and Noble. I usually stop in to get a cup of coffee, randomly walk by the shelves, and maybe decide if I have the energy to drive the .5 million miles to the nearest independent or feminist bookstore on the weekend to see what they have to offer. (weekends are not free time when you are an academic. no time really is unless you take it and even then it is not free.)
Today, I walked in and was bombarded with displays for Irish authors.
Me: umm, is it still February?
my gf: [seeing through me] what is it?
Me: I love my people and all, but isn’t February black history month? Did February get shorter or something? Can it get any shorter?
hir: [impatient] ok, which people are we talking about? [I laugh as she makes me think of class] what happened? Me: and isn’t St. Patrick’s Day only one day long, hence the word “day”?
hir: You’re in Barnes and Noble again aren’t you?
Me: and isn’t March Women’s History Month?
hir: walk out of Barnes and Noble now. Go directly to the house where coffee is waiting for you. Do not stop by the mini-Starbucks. Do not participate in corporate coffee. Do not allow corporate bookstore to collect $100 from you on your way out.
Me: I love you [closing the phone]
Sooooo . . . has this happened to you or is it just that I live in a free thinkers dead zone in which women and people of color don’t apparently deserve a month to themselves, even if you can profit off it, even in a recession?
Today, one of my students busted out with “when is bi-racial history month?!” A hush fell over the room, as this is a university full of people whose 1/2 white come octoroon-ness is masked in the myth of white or darkened out by a drop. This is uncomfortable territory I see, as I look around the room with my teacherly smile. Then I say “What makes you think it isn’t happening now?” As I spin toward the board as I am prone to do when I drop these bombs in a dust filled sky, gasps and laughter fill the room. But when I spin around again, I see my student, biting her thin lips and twisting her curly hair, and I say “I’m waiting?” Then she let’s spill the story that most of the girls in my class were hoping would never tear through the classroom and disrupt their already shaky ground, disintegrate the last few things they know they can keep to themselves in this WS classroom that was supposed to be about coloring and hating their ex-boyfriends and talking about girls affluent enough for rooms of their own but turned out to be this political hotbed in which everything, EVERY-THING was up for grabs, for question, for deconstruction to reconstruct something they did not wholly recognize and gets some of them hit at home for bringing it up, oh yes, did I mention that at least once a semester someone comes in with a bruise for finding their voice, their choice, themselves in my classroom, and I wonder to myself, maybe I should just dust off a corsette but not a whip and put Stacy Ann Chinn back on youtube . . . And as her story of mixing and erasure, inbetweenity and loss, unfold not as a personal drama, a psychological disorder we can solve with sponsored talks on the Tragic Mulatto, but a story that is in fact a metahistory shared by all of us, one of my other students, bold in her recognition says “Yeah. Why isn’t there a bi-racial history month?” and another says “B/c I don’t want to celebrate your people raping mine” and still another says “My dad is not a rapist” and I watch them, with curiosity of a girl whose feet are firmly in this middle place between passage and love, and as I wait, they begin to weave this chorus of feminist voices we have read in this class, and that the ducklings have read in my other classes, and suddenly I see these little Andrea Smiths and Audre Lordes, Cherrie Moragas and Helen Zias, exploding to life. And as they look up for approval, I say “hmm, I might have to put that on the test.”
So this poem is for my little song birds, while I have featured biracial women as part of Black Herstory Month already, I did not mark them. We are all black. But as they proved today, there is something to say about the discussion of what black, brown, white, etc. actually mean not as a reach toward whiteness but as a step toward the complexity that WS should always challenge us to see. (Stick with it, b/c even tho it seems to trot out the same old stereotypes of white hair=good black hair=bad, she’s going somewhere and she is taking everyone through an uncomfortable route of race history to get there.)
Bi-Racial Hair
by
Zora Howard
I have bi-racial hair
Pantene Pro-V waves on the top
Easy to style, comb, rock-
Until-I encounter my naps,
I’m not talking about those-cute detangle with the spray naps.
I’m talking about those, slave naps, like,
No comb, brush, or man can handle the kind of naps I got- like,
No way you are touching my hair-naps like
Back 10 feet up, or we can dance naps
Those naps like-
DAMN!
I have bi-racial hair,
Those smooth and silk rafts hanging all through my mane,
Until you get to the back, and encounter the jungle, in which you can find Tarzan and Jane.
In the front you forget and relax in the pleasure,
Until you get to the back and remember pain
Baby hair slicked back with that good 4 dollar pomade,
That goes with roots and tangles,
Soaked with that same olive oil; mixed with that spaghetti sauce momade.
I have bi-racial hair,
Combs run freely through my fine breezy, just to the part, the most you can make,
Until it gets to the back and
Breaks.
I have bi-racial hair
Like-
The only thing my mother could put it in was 2 big braids,
And sometimes that was to much,
So she left half undone.
I was in the mirror, I was in the mirror,
Convincing my self I looked just like a dark-skinned Alicia Keys
I have bi-racial hair,
because I have bi-racial blood.
I’m not talking about that-cute they met then fell in love, blood
I’m talking about that- slaved raped six times by the master,
Birthing 6 mixed babies, later hung blood
I’m talking about that cross burning in the mud, blood
And you call me a mud blood,
Slit my rist,
my blood does not excrete in black and white.
I drean in verse and in red
Like what drained from Emmit Tills’ lips when he was killed for breaking down color lines
Bi-racial who surcomes to the abuse from her peers in her middle school,
Those whose who constantly called me an Oreo
Well she’s not white, its more like Reese’s cookie, mixed breed or a mullato
That’s what it is a reverse mulatto
I AM NOT A FUCKING COOKIE OR A BITCH!
My roots are deep too
my bi-racial roots are not blind
or more than cotton soft
cause my blood were in the sun, picking cotton too
a thousand times discrated for my race
a thousand time discrated from my history y’all never get
let textbooks be your truth
and sprinkle the ashes of your history into streams
i dream for a time and place where
maybe y’all all accept me
maybe we need to wake up again and remember a morning of you
like something new
baby I’ll be green cause my people drove there
you people drove me there
with my tender heart
tender head
and my bi-racial hair
Zora Howard is a middle schooler with a powerful poet’s voice. Her subject matter counts as black women’s herstory and besides, you know how I love including up and coming feminists in all of my lists. I’m looking forward to seeing who she becomes. You can watch her perform the poem here.
While I am inspired by all of the black women directors who manage to get their films to the screen, Kasi Lemmons holds an important place in my intellectual heart b/c her films have not only moved me to think but also have had a profound effect on black feminist educators, students, and my mom. There is something about her cinematic vision that draws me to her films and keeps them with me long after I’ve watched them. Of all the Directors I will highlight this month, Kasi Lemmons is the only one whose entire directorial offerings I own and whose work I watch and teach regularly.
Lemmons began her career as an actress in tv like Spencer for Hire and The Cosby Show and films like School Daze and Candyman but soon felt the urge to have her own powerful vision reach the screen. While her first film Eve’s Bayou veers slightly from the traditional contributions to history I’ve been marking in black women’s films, her latest film Talk to Me falls within this pattern. I would also argue that Eve’s Bayou is a non-traditional intervention into feminist herstory in the sense of creating a lineage of black women’s knowledge, citing alternative spiritualities as space of knowledge, and addressing issues often not discussed in either community. In so doing, she points the way to doing a historiography of black feminism in a period with very little record and tho “folk” has always been popular in anthropology, Lemmons insistence on linking folk and theory is not.
While she says she never has a “message” in her films, they always seem packed with them to me.
Her first film Fall from Grace was a documentary short about women and homelessness filmed in 1994. It reflected her original training in documentary filmmaking and her desire to highlight the voices of women seldom given other venues. However she quickly transitioned into making feature length fictional films where her creativity as both a director and writer shined.
Though Lemmons is never one to take herself too seriously, she did describe the process of becoming a feature film director in terms of its important to both gender and race in Hollywood:
Acting is like my first love but I have a lot more to offer as a director. I also feel that it is rarer—and I guess that this is where it does matter to me that I am a black woman. I feel like we need our black women directors. We need women directors! (Lemmons Movie Maker 10/15/07)
Eve’s Bayou (1997), Lemmons’ feature length directorial debut, was a powerful meditation on abuse, coming of age, and women’s knowledge. It is considered to be her feminist debut because of not only the centering of women in the story but also the discussion of “women’s issues” like infidelity and child sexual abuse. It revolves around the most prominent black family in Louisiana, the Batiste, the relationship that young Eve and Cisely have with their father, and a female centered social world that includes their mother, aunt, father’s lovers, and Obeah women.
As the film begins, Eve tells us that the story is about memory and murder both of which will shop up again in Lemmons second film as well. Instead of giving us a static mystery wrapped in Hollywood-sanitized vodoun, Lemmons creates an atmospheric film meant to mirror the hazy recollections of a pre-adolescent girl. At times the film is filled with music and the crush of bodies mirroring the energy of a party through a child’s eyes, the vantage point always at her eye level rather than that of an adults. At others, it simply unfolds with the sweetness of remembered days of youth or sliced through with the intensity of remembered characters that are not quite real – the mother whose to blame, the sister who is a know-it-all, and the dad who is larger than life. Lemmons is at her best when she lays out the internal on the screen; she hits every emotional mark perfectly.
Lemmons developed the concept and wrote the screen play over a period of several years. In a sad, but typical turn, she had to fight to be the Director, auditioning with others the studio had in mind. The film was praised as the return of the gothic to modern cinema because of its atmospheric tale riddled with magical realism and vodoun.
We say we want something different from our cinema … I’m not saying ‘Eve’s Bayou’ is the answer, you know, because some people will like it and some people won’t. But I think it is one of the answers. … I wanted to create a piece that was visual and lyrical with characters speaking in the rhythms that I remember from my childhood … (Kasi Lemmons to Los Angeles Times, 11/6/97)
It was also widely praised by black feminists and WS professors who quickly adopted it into their classrooms. It won several awards including a Spirit Award, several NAACP awards for director and cast, and in 2008 Time Magazine named it 1 of the top 25 films in black cinema. It also launched the career of Jurnee Smollet who would go on to appear in such films as Selma Lord Selma, Ruby’s Bucket of Blood, and the Great Debaters. (you can watch this amazing film on youtube if you have not seen it yet. start here.)
Women of the Bayou
At the center of this film is a series of strong black women and young girls trying to come into their own. Eve’s mother Roz Batiste’s refined black middle class facade masks her own keen understanding of the things going on around her. And as she struggles to maintain a lifestyle that is supposed to keep both her and her girls safe from the threats of poverty and abuse, both racialized through the lens of the South, we see how the realization that those external factors already being visited upon her family from within weighs on her. Roz is a woman who let love sweep her off her feet and let pride and position keep her there long after reality sunk in. And Louis Batiste knows it.
Mozelle, Eve’s fiery aunt, is far less refined, choosing instead to be raw, sensual, and ultimately real. As a psychic and possible vodoun priestess, who cannot tell her own future, she offers a picture of black womanhood that is both tragically flawed and deeply promising. Though she loves deeply her love is the kind that smothers but her power, a curse in her own life, is a helpmate to so many in the town. Eve gravitates to her precisely because of her air of freedom missing from Roz.
Both visually and in character trait, the Batiste girls mirror the early generation. Cisely is dark, stern, prim and propper, an almost perfect mirror to her mother. And while she is constantly schooling Eve and their little brother, and trying to appear the lady, she is as conflicted as Eve underneath. She wants to be a woman like her mother, who holds everything together and ensures their economic and social safety, while at the same time experiencing the unease of someone who recognizes the flaw in her mother’s facade. Cisely believes if she is “just good enough” she can save them, but she knows that means believing her mother’s “just good enough” game was not good enough. And like a child, she decides she will have to replace her mother to keep the family together rather than admit the lie she has been raised to mimic will save no woman.
Eve is far more drawn to Mozelle. Her wild child, flirtatious, free-spirit could easily be poured into the heart of her Aunt and vice versa. And as she rejects the facade of her mother and her sister, she still clings to the idea of being “daddy’s baby girl.” As everything crumbles around her, Eve looks out at her world, wondering what women to be and her answers are at the crux of the film.
Ultimately, Lemmons gives us a powerful meditation on the choices girls make to become women and that women make to protect their hearts, their families, or themselves. Both text and image weave a world that is true to the internal workings of memory, the Southern gothic world in which these characters create, and the critical subjects that the film tackles.
On Cavemen and Queers
Her second film, Caveman’s Valentine (2001) continued Lemmons fascinating vision of the internal as a space of knowing. Through the eyes of schizophrenic Romulous Ledbetter, the film unveils the murder of young Scotty Gates possibly by important artist David Leppenraub. Lemmons meticulously recreates the world of Ledbetter’s mind for the audience from the very first frame of the film. His internal world is a mix of concert halls remembered from his pre-onset days as a prodigy, hauntings from his wife, and the marching tumultousness of amazingly choreographed black angels. The latter are at times beautiful and others violently threaten to capsize Ledbetter’s tenuous grasp on sanity. The action of the film is also seen through Ledbetter’s eyes, making images on the screen washout in super bright white, flash into black and white, or fixate on certain colors (the color green) or images (Angels). In so doing, Lemmons hopes to recreate both the internal and external world of schizophrenia so that the viewers are experiencing the murder mystery in the same vein as the hero. Her film also shows a particular queer aesthetic that enhances a tale that could easily degenerate into “queer perversion” in less skilled hands. Thus she highlights strong bodies, angelic faces, and the repetition of Leppenraub’s angel art.
Lemmons unique vision combines with an attention to the details of the novel upon which the film is based in order to give equal and respectful time to her subjects. As the “detective” in the film, Ledbetter often takes center stage but his dilemmas only form part of the story. Ledbetter yearns for his daughter’s forgiveness and his ex-wife’s love but he is also unapologetic about who he is or the ability with which he grapples. His is not what disability theory calls a “super crip,” suddenly cured to solve the murder or magically clairvoyent; instead, Ledbetter is always teetering on the brink of rage or extreme clarity. And while he tries to hold on just long enough to solve the murder only he and Scotty’s boyfriend believe happened, he often loses his grip.
Though the film revolves around a pathological artist who tortures his young gay subjects “in the name of art” it never pathologizes queerness. Lemmons parallels Ledbetter’s mental ability with Leppenraub’s artistic drive in order to locate the disconnect not in desire for the flesh but desire for vision. His queer misogyny and sadism is juxtaposed against the loving relationship of Scotty and Joey. The impetus for Ledbetter’s quest is a pained and passionate visit from Joey, Scotty’s lover. Joey saves Scotty from complete insanity after his abuse at the hands of Leppenraub. When Scotty dies, Joey is destroyed. Lemmons described wanting to get someone who could look like “they needed both a hug and a fix” (director’s comments on DVD); in so doing, she lets one scene, one tear, and a series of close ups, show the audience the incredible marginalization and humanity of gay homeless youth.
Lemmons also makes wealth into a character of its own, embodied by the Leppenraubs, the man in the tower, and Bob. All of these characters represent the hypocrisy of wealth: the artists whose visions are more important than humanity, the mythic oppressor who crushes Romolous for daring to be brilliant and challenged, and the doo-gooder who thinks he can give a homeless man a shower and a suit and he will instantly return to middle class respectability. Like the questions about the price of bourgeois accoutremont in Eve’s Bayou, Caveman’s Valentine illustrates what happens when power meets privilege, and then dials it up one more notch with prejudice.
The Original Superfly
Her last film Talk to Me (2007), is a biopic of a larger than life misogynist DJ who first helped radicalize mainstream radio and then helped heal a nation during riots that threatened to destroy it. In this film, Lemmons did her best to research both the character and the period to ensure the most accurate picture of Green and his contemporaries. While the film revolves largely around the homosocial relationship between Green and his producer, Dewey Hughes, his girlfriend Vernell Watson is a constant presence.
Like Green Watson is over the top. Her version of power is both a fierce loyalty to her man and the decision to punish his infidelity with public sex with his nearest rival. It isn’t feminism but Lemmons argues it was real.
More exciting, is how deftly Lemmons handles the political transformation of Dewey Hughes which even at his most radical is mired by bourgeois aspirations that ultimately drive a wedge between he and Green, and her recreation of the riots. As I watched the city come undone, I couldn’t breath, it felt so real. Beside me, my mother held her breath as well. Even when James Brown took the stage to calm the people down, we were hushed in the moment of history rather than our usual jovial selves who would have happily sung along or made a James Brown joke.
Lemmons said she chose to do Talk to Me because she was concerned about the political climate of the nation. She said she watched people censor themselves in fear and that Petey Green was an ideal character to remind people to never censor their political ideas. He had been a strong and honest voice when he desperately needed a job, when the nation desperately needed a hero, and even in his dying days when all his bridges were burnt. Petey Green inspired, amused, and helped changed the world just by talking truth into a microphone. Lemmons “wanted to inspire people to speak out” as well. And I think she succeeds with this film. Everyone leaving our theater was deep in discussion about the things they did not know about this moment in history and about Green’s politics as we left, my mother and I talked about it the entire long drive home.
Lemmons managed to blend humor, racial justice, sexual politics and the contradictory yearnings of black America in one film. It was a powerful piece despite its depictions of women as sex objects. And while it would be nice to see Lemmons return to the more overtly feminist visions of her first film, Petey Green was a real man, not a fictional superhero, so those depictions were necessary to accurately reflect Green’s world.
Conclusions
There is a magic to Lemmons cinematic vision that shines through in every film she makes. When you look at them together, her ability to move between different genres, the real and the imagined, the sane and the magical, is inspiring. Like other directors highlight in this Friday series, Kasi Lemmons helps to ensure that films about black people not only appeal to a wide audience but also do not consistently degenerated to the Next Friday Barbecue around the corner from Medea’s Barbershop, and for that alone, we can all be eternally grateful. If you haven’t watched her films, I suggest you go rent them. Start with Eve’s Bayou.
honor either. When I was an undergrad, I attended a largely secular small college in which my social group would have like publicly shunned and privately rejected the best parts of me if I’d walked around with ash on my head, and I don’t doubt a few campus dwellers would have licked my head in unabashed irreverence rocking the pieces of me I cannot articulate in ways that would still be shaken today. So I fell out of practice but hopefully not out of G-d’s hands, not completely. And as I read others reflections on the day, I feel this slow ache for the faith of a mustard seed. Perhaps, unlike most of my readers here, it is b/c I know what it is like to walk in faith, not that judgmental-colonializing-inquisition-torturing-self-flagellation-slavery-justifying-gay-bashing-child-molesting-neo-colonial-send-your-check-
in-now religiousity that is masquerading as faith, but the real thing, the loving-stewardship-parts-in-one-body-community-liberation-solidarity-social-justice-simple-way kind of real thing, and what it is like to walk without it.
