“Stories centered around Black Women occupy an oppressive gaze that silences her voice. In these stories, the performance of her voice is used to the benefit of the protagonist and written in an “othered” form that is separate from her body. With the structure of the story being centered around Black Women, the writer is positioned to inform the audience how her body should or may perform to drive the plot and assist in completing the story. This storytelling style objectifies Black Women’s lives and presents her as a spectacle in constant response to her circumstances. She Chronicles focuses on Black Women centered stories that explore her livelihood from a holistic perspective.” – Nikki Skies
Tag Archives: scholars
Alice Walker… the Scholar
I have seen Alice Walker speak twice here in Atlanta. Both times, the crowd was mostly women, predominately white women. My last observation of the energy from the admiration of her literary works came during the Q and A. I remember sitting there trying to construct a precise question on how she connects her creative process with her person as a black woman. What I realized specifically is that the majority of the questions from the black women were trying to get the same information as I was and that the white women were asking her about spirituality. I remember thinking how odd that seemed to me that both black and white women seemed uninterested in the documentary that was just viewed. We wanted more and yet, Alice Walker is for the most part a fiction writer.
Fast forward to me now back in grad school and how often she is referenced in Africana Women’s Studies, Gender Studies and Women’s Studies. It all makes sense. My question on how she connects her creativity and her womanhood is in all of her work. I know realize how intuitively and effortlessly this is done in her work. I’m not certain of this, but I don’t think as she sat and wrote prose, short stories or poems that she was thinking on how she could contribute to feminist critical theory or black feminist theory. Nor could she have known how her personal expansion of feminism into “womanism” would take on entire subjects. Or perhaps she did… after all she is also an essayists and speaker.
Article: Remembering the Life, Love and Legacy of Audre Lorde
The necessity of writers allowing their words to root and grow into essays, poems and stories is courage and a display of effortless perseverance. My new studies in Africana Women’s Studies, is adorned with critics and contributions of Audre Lorde. I was familiar with her work before I re-entered school but I didn’t understand the magnitude of her contributions because I was unaware she had created a grand portion of the language. Her love of equality and freedom for people of color, women and artists is something to be studied. Please enjoy the article below on Ms. Audre Lorde!
Remembering the Life, Love and Legacy of Audre Lorde
Some Time for Angela Davis
Angela Davis is a political activist, academic and author. She emerged as an activist in the 1960’s in northern California with the Black Panther Party. The thing that I personally admire about Angela Davis is her willingness to grow and learn. Many of her contradictions have come from her speaking on new learnings where there hasn’t been a language for Black women. Therefore I don’t view these as contradictions, she was creating a language along the way. She was shifting point of views and stand points. And she continues to do so.
I have heard her speak several times. Once she mentioned that growing up in Birgmingham, Alabama she was friends with two of the girls now infamously known as “The 4 Little Girls”. I can only imagine that her critically thinking mind began back then.
Happy Birthday Angela Davis! Thank you!
Dr. Welsing…You too shaped me
I’ll listen for you in summer seashells
Maybe the small ones with cracked corners
from adult play of wave jumping
Slide cups alongside walls anticipating your
metered tone that started slow
but always stirred brown gravy right with potatoes
or mashed breath
Just Return.
My path hasn’t fit my shoes since
You labeled my questions of “why” as
Brilliance.
Since you encouraged my genetic pool
be developed 2nd to none
My broad back makes swimming easy
it’s the walking with familiar faces with forced tongues and
foreign feelings of living that’s hard
And you promised you’d never rest until
“black children are taught to love themselves as themselves”
Well… we still dance around the pain
And sing above the screams
And get high above the clouds
And fall below the bedrock
And you left like all the rest
without a formal goodbye or wave of the scarf
while the system is still electric with
hidden hands and privileged referees
Just Return.
for one more cooking lesson and hands in the dish water
and a soothing stare to still these fears
of polishing your legacy with highly functional thinking
toothbrush details of the Isis Papers and Keys to the Colors
Dr. Welsing Mother Frances
We We We stumble with this
stutter with the thought of your walk
to have your heart weighed to a feather
cause you promised you’d never rest until
“black children are taught to love themselves as themselves”
so I suppose…as long as the system maintains
itself against the thread of our fabric
You are here
I’ll listen for you through my cups on the wall
and inside summer seashells with cracked corners.
- For Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, 1/3/16
Tune in! PoetrySpeaks today!
Tune in today at Atlantanx.IBNXRADIO.com to the show “Live Life in the Purple” from 3-5 pm est. I wrote a poem for the late educator, scholar and afrocentrist psychiatrist, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, that will air during their “Poetry Speaks” portion.
The works of Dr. Welsing were foundational to the shaping of my critical and independent thinking on living and creating as a woman of color in this country. She transitioned on January 2nd and I was moved to write, “I’ll Listen for You”. I hope you can tune in and enjoy!
Nikki Skies 