MAY 2015
To My Readers: I sincerely hope this magazine finds its way into the hands of the carefree black girls of the world. I know that the mainstream media only treats us as an after thought, but I want you to know that you are valuable and worthy of seeing yourselves portrayed positively in the media. It took me a long time to realize that I held toxic ideas about black womanhood because I was never shown that the things that made me who I am, big lips, wide nose, curly hair, and dark skin, were positive and beautiful things. I want this magazine to allow you to be beautiful, intelligent, and complex. Please let your light to shine, so that others may see it and find strength. -Emanii J. Owens
I write for those who do not speak
For those who do not have a voice
Because they were so terrified
Because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves
We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t. - Audre Loudre
it is
psychologists
I have prided myself
If loneliness were a grape the wine would be vintage If it were a wood the furniture would be mahogany But since it is life it is Cotton Candy on a rainy day The sweet soft essence of possibility Never quite maturing
They have asked the psychiatrists social workers What this decade will be known for There is no doubt loneliness
It seems no matter how I try I become more difficult to hold I am not an easy woman to want
Is it that my nails keep breaking Or maybe the corn on my second little piggy Things keep popping out on my face or of my life
I’m fading away Into the gray of my mornings Or the blues of every night
Don’t look now
politicians and
COTTON CANDY ON A R
as sweet as you are in my corner just a little bit longer don’t change baby baby don’t change
I share with the painters the desire To put a three-dimensional picture On a one-dimensional surface
I strangle my words as easily as I do my tears I stifle my screams as frequently as I flash my smile it means nothing I am cotton candy on a rainy day the unrealized dream of an idea unborn
Everything some say will change I need a change of pace face attitude and life Though I long for my loneliness I know I need something Or someone. Or…..
Or perhaps But whatever you do Something needs to change
We are consumed by people who sing the same old song STAY:
Mostly these are seen as food labels
We all line up at some midway point To thread our way through the boredom and futility Looking for the blue ribbon and gold medal
On being in that great tradition albeit circus That the show must go on Though in my community the vernacular is One Monkey Don’t Stop the Show
RAINY DAY
THE BIBLE FOR BLACK GIRLS
T LC Chelsea N. Claverie’s The Bible for Black Girls meets 90’s girl group TLC to serve you with black girl empowerment with healthy dose of attitude and realness. Chelsea’s honest and insightful words have been uplifting young black girls for years and we’re so glad we can now find All her words of wisdom in one place.
*takes a sip out of my water bottle* i often worry that i will never have sex comfortably with a boy. like all the sexual encounters i have had with niggas have been really unsatisfying and awkward because niggas don’t believe in foreplay or making a bitch feel good anymore. they just care about they nut. i want a nigga to take his time with me and slowly undress me and stare at my body for like 5 hours before he even touches it and then touch it for like 13 hours and write poetry about how good my titties look and how soft my ass is and then eat my pussy for like 8 hours then suck on each titty for like 4 hours each and then kiss me for like 2 hours and then he can finally stick his dick in. it’s very outrageous to me that niggas will expect a suck up but aren’t willing to eat it? like who the fuck do u think u are? like if i’m not dripping like a river then don’t even fucking bother. put ya dick away boy. lol.
Note to self: keep people around u that help u grow. That aren’t scared to correct u when ur in the wrong. Keep people around u that won’t dismiss ur feelings or make u feel like what ur going thru is small compared to what they are going thru. Keep people around u that u are able to be transparent with. Keep people around u that love every part of u. Keep people around u that simply love being in ur presence and are not around u because of what u can do for them. Keep people around u that truly listen to u and aren’t just waiting for their turn to talk. Keep people around u that want to see u grow and progress. Keep people around u that are genuinely happy when they see u grow. No jealously. No secret agendas. No lies. Note to self: ur beautiful, smart, and incredible! And u will go so far! Don’t let the devil tell u that u don’t deserve good things! He’s a liar and a hater!!!!!!
*takes a sip of green tea* dealing with niggas can be so exhausting fr. like no one wants to take a bitch out anymore or buy a bitch something. niggas stay wanting to fuck and ‘chill’ and i’m so over that? like? bitch i understand not having money and shit because fuck i’m a college student i be broke sometimes too but got damn. niggas don’t want to pay for nothing but want u to do all types of shit for them and idgi? like? all these niggas are so lame. they don’t want a relationship with u but they will foam at the mouth at the idea of fucking u. they don’t want u but they stay asking “who u on the phone with?” and other types of possessive ass bullshit questions. OF COURSE I’M TALKING TO OTHA NIGGAS. LIKE DUH. they don’t want u but they don’t want another nigga to have u. and all of this nonsense is so wild to me. niggas are so selfish and childish. like grow up and stop playing around all the damn time. let a bitch know whether u tryna get serious or not. i sometimes worry that i’ll never come across a nigga that wants to claim me in a genuine way. that doesn’t just wanna fuck and have a casual situation going on. but whateva. at the end of the day i still have me. *washes out my mug* *puts mug in the dish washer*
NAKEYA Brown
Hair Stories
Untold
“Each photograph I compose is a reflection of my African American female identity positioned within hair politics, hair rituals, and black culture. The scope of my work reconstructs racialized beauty standards and defines the bountiful actualities of African American women. I am inspired by personal girlhood memories and experiences of adulthood— most of which are situated at the center of each photographic piece.
I employ my own body or the bodies of others to stage striking and analytical representations of women of color. Paired with formal qualities such as balance, color, and simplicity I design each portrait and still life into a harmonious rendering of black femininity. I source previously owned objects associated with home life, such as vinyl records, house plants, and dinner utensils, along with beautification devices, such as the hot comb, shower cap, and hair dryer to create comely spaces of black womanhood.�
CARRIE MAE Weems
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NJIDEKA AKUNYILI Crosby
NIKITA Gale
M
y work is a series of interventions that highlight and question the ways in which ideologies of history and of capitalism are consumed by individuals. I am interested in humanizing the roles of consumer and producer within these systems. My work is heuristic, interdisciplinary, and research-based. My practice incorporates elements from my own lived experience with elements culled from varied sources: reality television, queer hip hop, the work of Wittgenstein, hooks, Foucault and Debord, film (especially ‘anti-narrative’ films), and themes surrounding black/queer subjectivity. By citing ‘non-art’ elements, I use citation as a means of reinforcing the significance of the source material. My work typically takes the form of installation, photography or textbased painting. I am interested in how desire, identity and memory are mediated through language and image. There is an inherent instability and, ultimately, failure of such modes of mediation that my work investigates by questioning the ways in which we are essentially consuming images and materials intended to represent a past reality when we “consume history.” These instances of instability arise out of the distance between reality and the images and language which we use to convey reality and occur at such a frequency that they have entered the realm of the quotidian. They are accepted and normalized within the experience of culture. I find this situation problematic since images and language, which can never fully represent reality, are used to inform and influence real actions. The latest conceptual developments of my practice involve imagining the body as a site capable of both production and consumption of identity and considers how identity is constructed in the absence of a physical body and how this condition is expressed in everything from music to landscape
to architecture to sculpture. Through my academic training in archaeology and anthropology and through my professional training in advertising, I have cultivated a practice that explores the relationship between material culture, identity, and language, specifically how identity is mediated through material, sound, desire and language. Representations mediated through image and language compress fully formed people into pictures and texts; it is these abstractions of representation that inform the perceptions of individuals consuming these representations. I am interested in exploring the condition of simultaneous experiences of presence and invisibility experienced by socially marginalized bodies that commonly encounter representations of their lived experience as spectacle.
WHAT DO HARDCORE, FERGUSON, AND THE “ANGRY BLACK WOMAN” TROPE ALL HAVE IN COMMON? By Kayla Phillips “To be black and conscious in America, is to be in a constant state of rage.” - James Baldwin A few nights ago, Darren Wilson, the cop who murdered Michael Brown in August, wasn’t indicted to face trial on what he had done. I watched CNN with a heavy heart, crying off and on at the verdict that told us where we stand in America, that told us we can be murdered, and that they don’t honestly care to bring justice to us; that everything they’ve sugarcoated for us throughout our early school years wasn’t a distant memory, and is continuing right in front of our eyes. I’ve watched it time and time again, but it’s indescribable; beyond a feeling, to say the least. I went on social media and read debates between friends and family, and saw Black folk pouring their souls out desperately trying to burn into everyone’s brains that Black lives do matter. Of course I noticed most of my white peers in the hardcore/ metal community talking about it, too, expressing their abhorrence for an unjust system. Soon, what appeared to be genuine concern for what’s heavily affecting the Black community turned into “No, all lives
matter,” with rants about how this isn’t really a race issue at all, posts from my white friends about how they’re happy to be apart of this “New Civil Rights Movement,” bands seizing the moment to capitalize on our deep seated hurt with merch, and more allies telling Black people how they should feel. The people I thought were aware—who typically talked a big game—were attempting to tell us that this doesn’t matter at all, or to strip the color out of this to fit their personal agendas, as if they couldn’t stand by us in our struggle without connecting it to themselves first. I felt increasingly frustrated with how my allies were speaking over and for the Black community with certainty, and then later stating, “I admit I’m fairly ignorant on the matter.” It was wild to see people you’ve been in contact with for years expressing the opinion that your life is valued at less than theirs, and attempting to make your voice small, as if you experiences were invalid. I questioned how they were ever in support of my own explicitly anti-bigotry band . I cringed at how many of the hardcore kids that are indefinitely pissed off at something couldn’t understand—regardless of who they believed was in the right in this particular case—that we’re angry because another
name is added to this incredibly long list of Black men, women and trans women that are killed by cops and vigilantes. I’ve talked with too many of my peers that aren’t educated on these issues, but think that it’s acceptable to write power violence songs about them because the imagery is cool. Maybe they’ve never noticed that we’re actually still being lynched and dragged from the bumpers of trucks, or set on fire by our neighbors, MAYBE THEY’VE NEVER or that police NOTICED THAT WE’RE officers are actual ACTUALLY STILL members of BEING LYNCHED AND the KKK and there isn’t DRAGGED FROM THE anything BUMPERS OF TRUCKS being done about it. They loved chanting, “We are Mike Brown” at the protest, inciting violence and standing in the front, but they love knowing they won’t be the ones called animals more. It’s no secret that when it comes to extreme genres of music, they all have one similarity to their formulas: rage. Whether that anger is directed towards the government, social injustice, death, religion, or the heartless ex-partner they wrote an entire twelve track hardcore album about, these are accepted as normal topics. Everyone is right along with you, angry enough to listen and support your every move. It’s wonderful...except when you’re a Black woman who fronts one of these rage-fueled, aggressive bands. You know, people joke all the time about the Angry Black Woman, but fail to realize why we’re angry, and what or who we’re actually angry at. Instead, everyone rolls with the stereotype that they’ve been fed and applies it anytime a Black woman dares to express herself. I couldn’t tell you how many times white punks and metal nerds have said, “Kayla from Bleed the Pigs is too aggressive and angry. Why is she so tense all the time?”
Think about it. My anger as a Black woman fronting an aggressive, politically charged hardcore/ metal band with DIY punk ethics is somehow too much for them. White punks screaming about the same politics, the same fuckedup shit, and even about racial issues and injustices they don’t even particularly face, are wholeheartedly accepted, never questioned, never told to tone down, and never told to relax. No matter how justified I am, or how down for the cause they are, they’re put off by my very valid rage. Why is that? What is it about a Black girl doing the same shit white men do that makes them feel like it’s too much? How am I the only one being labeled too aggressive in a genre that is all about aggression? There have been countless instances throughout my years where I awkwardly smiled off a racist joke or rolled my eyes and chuckled at the dude who promoted my band as “sexy black chick-fronted.” I’ve become desensitized to the most hateful and dangerous comments one could think of. I’ve watched our teachers, the authorities, and my peers completely shit on Black people publicly. I’ve had dozens and dozens of women of color tell me they stopped going to shows all together out of fear. Maybe, if my allies are truly listening, they’re having a little epiphany right now.”Oh shit, that’s why Kayla didn’t want to hang out at this super white spot. She didn’t feel like being the token for the night. She’s not given the same leeway to be as reckless as we are. I get it!” Maybe they’re even cognizant enough to question why they tokenize me in the first place (I can dream, can’t I?). Unfortunately, many still don’t get it. They won’t believe my stories of police harassment until they’re there to witness it, or until another white person can confirm it actually happened. They’ll side with a cop.
They’ll feel uneasy with my anger and tell me I’m probably exaggerating. Then, they’ll go give themselves an ACAB stick-andpoke, and turn up the MDC. I see them using, “Hands up, don’t shoot” as if they understand the severity of those words, as if they lived that phrase before it even was one. That’s not real solidarity to me. Solidarity isn’t white guilt and apologies for being white. No one is asking for that. Solidarity is awareness, and the ability to listen if you say you’re going to. It’s standing beside me or behind me, not in front of me. It’s the ability to look at oneself and break down internalized issues, instead of tokenizing someone. It’s realizing that not all spaces and conversations are about you personally. It’s not shocking that my place in the scene is being used by people that haven’t even listened to our music, but who just eat up the idea of how inclusive it looks to have a photo set of a black girl
screaming into the mic on their blogs. In the same way Frida Kahlo’s face is appropriated by white feminism I’VE WATCHED OUR while her words are not, TEACHERS, THE this not-so- AUTHORITIES, AND MY new wave PEERS COMPLETELY of people are latching SHIT ON BLACK onto our identities and PEOPLE PUBLICLY. experiences and whitewashing every word for easy swallowing. We’re used and ignored in the same breath. You want me to be here, but not too much. If I speak up and it’s too real, I need to give you a lollipop afterwards, or you’ll never learn, and you’ll be too scared to talk to me again. These are ways of covering up our mouths with attempts to stifle and contain our liberation. In this subculture, that
goes against what we’re here for. Our voices and existence shouldn’t be tolerated in your scene, it should be accepted. I shouldn’t have to silence myself in order to have a place here. I shouldn’t have to pretend that there are no issues. The eye-rolling irony that I’m still cast aside as the Angry Black Woman in a scene that is made up of nothing but angry, pissed off, cast aside white men who sometimes use my own struggles for their own benefit isn’t lost on me. People are wary of that which they do not know, and one of those things is an unapologetic Black girl voicing herself. So, yes, I’m angry as fuck about a lot of things. I carry it with me just to survive sometimes.
You absolutely don’t have to like the music I make, or what I sing about, but if you find yourself upset by my level of anger, and not the white guy saying something similar, I’m not going to be complacent and sugarcoat my frustration for you. It’s unfortunate that my seemingly like-minded peers can’t find it in themselves to actually look at the reasons why race continues to play a part in our daily lives due to its disproportionate presence and history, instead of trying to be louder than the ones affected by it. The underlying issue in all of this, is that no matter what subculture we Black folk find ourselves in, as Javon Johnson said, “We are treated as problems well before we’re treated as people.”
BLACK ART IS NOT A FREE FOR ALL By Nadijah Robinson Black art is not a free for all. Black art is not a free for all. Black art is not free for all. It is free for none of y’all non-Black people. It is created for Black people to get their lives, to recover their wits, to see themselves and their stories reflected, and to be healed and uplifted. Black people need this. When we come home from surviving in the world where we are made to be small and hopeless, we need our Black magic. We need it to heal us from the daily soul wounds we are exposed to—from the humiliating assumptions and character assassinations to the public executions. Black art gives us back our dignity, re-affirms our right to exist, raises a voice and words to our anger, hurt, and frustration. Black art is our only potable water, our healing balm. I know that Black creativity has saved your life many times before. I know, because I’ve seen it happen. I’ve listened as non-Black people in my communities raised on Hip Hop talked about how it was the only relatable, empowering culture they found that also educated and radicalized them as a youth. It was
formational. I’ve watched people become politicized, shaping their new political identities after bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Assata Shakur, Angela Davis and Frantz Fanon. I’ve watched as folks become activist celebrities using radical ideas from Black Power and Civil Rights movements to shape programs that do not benefit Black people. I’ve watched as people make livings and loads of social capital off of DJing Black music, dancing, walking and dressing like Black people, selling the Black WHEN WE COME HOME aesthetic FROM SURVIVING IN THE to others. WORLD WHERE WE ARE I’ve heard MADE TO BE SMALL AND that HOPELESS, WE NEED OUR friends use Nina BLACK MAGIC. Simone and Sade to sing them back from depression, Rihanna and D’Angelo to get them in the mood. So many people in my communities, lately, have been using Octavia Butler to renew their hope for radical futures. Without Black people, what would your lives be? You might be thinking, you know, it’s so much more complicated than all this, race is complex, we’re all part of the human family, etc., etc..
Black art is not free for all damaged souls. When Nina sang about strange fruit, she was talking about a lynching… of Black people. When Black rappers say Fuck the Police, they speak to a state system of lynching…Black people. Your pain and isolation, however real it may be, is not the same as being Black. Your self-adoption into hip hop and djembe drumming and spoken word, makes our art forms all about you. You, however well meaning, have stolen Black labour and invention and used it for your own purpose. It warps the medium and changes the message, the magic, the healing. From now on, consider how the cost of consuming, appropriating, regurgitating, and getting your life in multiple ways from Black art, Black culture, and Black YOUR PAIN AND peoples’ creative genius detrimentally ISOLATION, impacts our lives. HOWEVER REAL Being Black in an anti-black world IT MAY BE means experiencing daily attacks that threaten our dignity, our happiness, our freedom, and often our lives; and in order to enjoy Black culture, you’re going to have to take action to help get these back. But because Black people’s labour, language, intelligence, creativity, and survival arts have always been considered free for the taking, you probably didn’t feel ways about using it. You probably didn’t think twice. Black culture is the most pilfered, the most “borrowed,” the most thieved culture, and we’ve seen this happen time and tie again. Blues, Bluegrass, Country, Jazz, Rock, Hip Hop, RnB, and
that’s just music. Our bodies were used to develop modern medicine, non-consensually. Our inventions, our intelligence, our accomplishments were and are continually erased, taken credit for, stolen and patented. Our labour, generations of our labour, were forcibly taken; and our lives, histories, and family connections were stolen during slavery. Our dignity is continually abused in the name of securing communities, maintaining market value, beautifying neighbourhoods, etc. All of this and more has always been considered free for the taking. It continues. Have you ever given thanks for Black people? For Black art/Black creative production in all its forms, which comes from a continued experience of subjugation? You know who I’m talking to—do you consider that we face actual genocide and that your privilege relies on the denial of our humanity? Those of you who are so versed in the language of appropriation but continue to act like you don’t know any better, like you must be the exception… this is for you and your friends. Talk about it and then do something. Talk to each other because something needs to shift. What you’re doing now is not enough. Back arts is our power source, our oasis amidst the double standard of being Black. We know we must work twice as hard to get half as much; we are told this as children and we live it everyday. Even then, when we do the hard work we’ve been taught to do, we may still be killed, abducted, forced into inescapable poverty, incarcerated, and all the while blamed for every social ill and government failure imaginable.
our culture, if you use it to your own spiritual, emotional, financial, social, or political gain, then you need to also be fighting for Black people’s lives. If you watched the new Nikki Minaj video and felt a tingle, then you can go ahead and pay up. You should be showing up in solidarity with Black people in Ferguson. You should be supporting Black movements where you live. Were you really gonna just take our creativity, wear it like a second skin clashing your own, watch us slowly die and be like “shit, that really sucks?” That’s some morbid fucking politic. You need to return the favour by giving up resources and privileges that will help Black people where you are to live less precarious, less endangered, and freer lives.
Our art comes from this lived reality. Your relative privilege also rests on this reality. The stereotypes of model minority, of a born hardworker, model student, the guy who is out-of-luck but full of potential, even the exceptional success story cannot exist without the contrasting example of Black stereotypes—in all their ugliness. This shit is not free. For our art, we pay in our blood and struggle. What do you pay? If you are enjoying and consuming black culture in all of its manifestations and not giving up space and privilege, not taking lead from Black people and actively supporting our movements, not confronting racism from the individual to the systemic levels, then what you are doing is clear. You’re participating in our oppression and in anti-Black racism, while enjoying your non-black privilege. What I’m saying is this. If you consume
In addition to this, you need to talk to each other. You’re going to Afropunk as non-Black people? At the very least, you need to do this in a critical way. Talk about what it means for you to have access to this Black arts festival and to take up space there and for other Black people to not be able to. Talk about it, and then bring your Black friends with you. Organize to pay for the tickets of Black people who don’t have as much access to economic and class mobility as you do. If you just can’t pay for that extra ticket, consider giving away your ticket to a Black person with less access and just not going. I know that this implicates a great majority of you non-Black people. Before you try to tear apart my points, humble yourself and list how many ways you can see that this is true. If it’s too humiliating to you to concede a few truths to me, then list it for yourself in private.
Special Thanks to My Mentor, Friends, Family, and Supportors