Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Janelle Monae is Elle's October Muse of the Moment.

 
 

Sent to you by Quirky Black via Google Reader:

 
 

via c h a s e o l o g y . c o m [ ..b00m.. ] by chaaaase. for CHASEOLOGY.COM on 9/29/09

Photobucket

Three Cheers 4 Janelle.
Hip-hip! Hooray!

[source.]

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Sunday, September 27, 2009

To Be Free and QBG!

Greetings Loved Ones!
It's freedom time! Right now! What does it mean to you to be free?

The sistas in the Combahee River Collective said OUR freedom was crucial because:
“If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”

Huge words! So how do we do freedom? Join the discussion here: http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com/forum/topics/combahee-survival-to-be-free
and let us know what you think freedom means.

Maybe freedom is the ability to walk home with peace of mind. Check out QBG Nuala Cabral's inspiring video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Qpi-fW6jA

Maybe freedom is our own QBG created music? Check out QBG Corrine Stevie's new free EP The Other Sistah here: http://www.zshare.net/download/656113166f6c1774/

and maybe freedom is old...like pathways we make to find each other across generations. Learn about the deep love between Fannie Lou Hamer and June Jordan at the upcoming Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Session in honor of freedom fighter Fannie Lou's B-day: (more details here)
http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com/events/eternal-summer-of-the-black-3

Freely loving each of you!
always,
QBG Lex

Visit Quirky Black Girls at: http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com

NYC QBG's Come Through

Hey loved ones,
Just wanted to invite you to the panel I am speaking on at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies this coming Thursday. It would be really great to see you. And while the description they have below of our panel makes us all sound really smart and somewhat inaccessible...you should know that what I am really talking about it the hilarious and powerful poetics of angry letters by June Jordan to the editors of publications she wrote for.
Should be a good time!
Would love to see you there!
love always,
Alexis

Thursday, October 1
Rare Form: Crafting Queerness in Contemporary Literature

LGBTQ Panel Discussion

This panel explores contemporary queer literature and culture with an emphasis on form. Situating North American literary and theoretical texts in a diasporic frame, the panelists will analyze forms of literary expression through the generic lenses of language, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and race and will also consider richer and stranger forms of difference. One of the central questions raised and discussed will be: How do representations of difference impose formal restrictions upon or create new formal possibilities for a text? Taking up contemporary work on futurity, the body, motherhood, sovereignty, and visibility and voice, these presenters ask what difference it might make for contemporary queer studies to make questions of form and craft central.

Panelists: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ph.D. candidate, English, Africana Studies and Women's Studies, Duke University; Sarah Dowling, Ph.D. candidate, English, University of Pennsylvania; Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D. candidate, English, University of Pennsylvania

Moderator: Jennifer Williams, Assistant Professor of English, Michigan State University

Graduate Center
Room 9207
7-9 PM

Friday, September 18, 2009

For Caster Semenya

This is an outpouring of love for Caster Semenya. Wrong is not her name. What is wrong is the way she has been treated in global media. As three queer women, we have struggled with our own relationship to the feminine as it has been constructed in mainstream society. As a black woman set adrift in a sea of whiteness, it was hard to see myself as beautiful. My curves and skin color made me unattractive in my world. As a white, feminine woman who is also intersex, I have struggled hard to come to peace with my body. Doctors and the world around me have told me I am defective or have denied my existence entirely. As a disabled Korean adoptee, I grew up as an outsider, rarely seeing people who moved like me or reflected me in my community or in the media. I was constantly told that my body was something that needed to be "fixed;" that it was "wrong;" and that it, that I, was "undesirable." We engage with each other as comrades, three queer women uniquely shaped by our lived identities and experiences. We were the odd ones out, queered by our bodies, but later we claimed our queerness with fierce intention and pride. Now we choose our difference, embrace what sets us a part from a constrictive mainstream. It is for these reasons that we feel a deep kinship with Caster Semneya. Her story unfolded internationally without her consent and knowledge. We write to right wrongs done to someone whose only crime was daring to be all that she is.

More Here

Thursday, September 17, 2009

F*ck Taylor Swift





yeah I said it, admittedly in the somewhat safety of my apartment and through my computer. But my friend and hater supreme says go hard or go home (note: I am writing this from home but this is like a metaphor or something) so I figured I'd say something inflammatory. I digress...

So Ye was rude. And?

Are we surprised? doesn't he do this all the time? and at the VMA's in particular?

Many of the black folk I know hadn't even heard of Taylor "I just sing country music" Swift before this. If your music makes you popular enough to win and is played in the regular rotation doesn't that make it...

Anyhoo, Taylor has millions of dollars; Ye has millions of dollars. Who cares that she didn't get to deliver her speech at the VMA's?! Its not like she was being heckled while trying to give an important address to the nation, or something. Squabbles between millionaires do not amount to human rights violations. Well, at least not in this instance.

And can I just go there and say she didn't deserve to win? Her video has been done before both as a video and in film. Why the props? But I guess since homely tweens run the world (or at least the VMA world) the outcast getting the jock is a more appealing treatment than a bob fosse meets j-setting choreo hybrid that supports an anthom for single ladies (notice both have something borrowed but B's the one with something new).

And here we are discussing tweet spikes and off the record comments instead of health care. Folks are comparing the President to Hitler and saying he's gonna bring about white slavery and he can't even call a spade a racist! He's not even able to acknowledge the virulent racism in this country and folks are more upset about Swift's treatment at the VMA's than they are about their own health. We'd rather hear him chastise another black man about taking a mic out of little white girl's hand. He gave it back!

And if people say "classy" one more time I'm gonna scream. If you use the word "classy" or "class" chances are you have none. But at the risk of invalidating my own claim, let me give a short list of things that are not classy:

1. Acting en(whi)titled when Beyonce's is gracious enough to call you out on stage so you can give your whack ass speech (which you got through most of) again. So unnecessary I guess B scored some good public relations points with that but I don't appreciate her joining the ranks of Ving Rhames and black women who step aside for the sake of a white girl's feelings.
2. Not letting Swift finish after being interrupted and cutting to commercial (that was your bad MTV, not Ye)
3. Talking about this bullsh*t on CNN when you should be talking about real events that are happening to people who don't go to award shows.

This was not animal cruelty; this was not the worst thing that ever happened. If it was planned, Kanye you really took one for the team for telling the truth.

All this over some white girl not being able to finish her speech for a damn moon man statue? Rhianna gets beat the f*ck up and there's a wave of fan support for Chris Brown. A black woman is physically attacked and no one f*cking helps her?! Taylor's whiteness to Ye's blackness is the reason we are even having this discussion. Disrespect of and actual violence towards black women doesn't warrant the same public outcry. I'm sorry Taylor but I really don't care. It's like she's the cheerleader in her own video. Wait a second...

And apparently white men's disrespect of white women doesn't warrant comment either if he's from across the pond. Host Russel Brand's cruel joke about putting his hat on Lady Gaga's "hermaphrodite" genitals wasn't just in poor taste; it was despicable and yet no public flagellation for him. Who says hermaphrodite in 2009?! He talked about raping having sex with half the women at the VMA's. He definitely proved his own point, that a British accent absolves all sins, not that I didn't love his jab at the Jonas Brothers and the US health care system. Blatant sexism, innuendo and dehumanization in the name of comedy illicit no reaction but taking a mic out of the hand of a little white girl, that's a problem.



Shouts to @fecundmellow, @superfree, and @misslocs on twitter for helping me think through this.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

QBG <3 QBG: The Revolutionary Act of the Moment

Hey QBGs!
Amazing black gay ancestor Joseph Beam said "black men loving black men is the revolutionary act of the eighties." We who are taught not to love each other change everything when we do it anyway!

Here is Lex telling that to the young black women at Bennett College about loving each other last week: http://www.livestream.com/bennettcollege/ondemand/pla_977c767e-908c-4219-8963-63b539738cb2?initthumburl=http://mogulus-user-files.s3.amazonaws.com/chbennettcollege/2009/09/10/caddfffa-a707-46db-bd55-b2d85bc64471_1430.jpg&playeraspectwidth=4&playeraspectheight=3
(full text here: http://thatlittleblackbook.blogspot.com/2009/09/eye-to-eye-poetic-exercise.html)

And this Friday in Atlanta at the Habit Forming Love Reception: http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com/events/habit-forming-love-a-video
you can see videos that Lex made in honor of QBG's Moya and Julia, plus some videos for her mom and about Atlanta-based community organizations.

(Which is a lead up to the Queer Renaissance Film Screening and just announced after party this Saturday! http://web.me.com/wallace.young/bday/Home.html)

In the spirit of black panther party leader Fred Hampton's chant: I AM a Revolutionary! And the fact that black panther party leader Angela Davis is on her way to Durham right now... (NC QBG's come to the reception at 121 Hunt St. tonight at 7 if you can!)...and the Combahee River Collective's assertion that:

“We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action.”

let's talk about why we are revolutionary. WHAT MAKES YOU REVOLUTIONARY? Discuss here!:

http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com/forum/topics/combahee-survival-our-leap

And as always have a very revolutionary week!
love always,
QBG Lex

Visit Quirky Black Girls at: http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com

Monday, September 14, 2009

You Gon' Be All Right: On Maia Campbell and (More on) Tyler Perry























Campbell, center, with the cast of In the House


Last week, I didn't take the opportunity to blog about Maia Campbell, something that I had fully intended to do.  Instead, my only significant output was a blog about Tyler Perry taking over command of the for colored girls film.  I worry that not allowing myself time to post my thoughts about Campbell was an implicit, unspoken participation in the suppression and dismissal of her situation, her struggles.  I want to correct that.  Further, I want to make a connection to both events, which is something I haven't seen folks do, but I find especially necessary at this juncture. 

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

What We Got: Falling in Love with Ourselves For Real

Today I want to give gratitude for the process of loving ourselves the way we are (not as who we wish we were).Some might say that quirky black girls know how to work with what we got, make realness fly, create everyday from bright scraps of faith.

The Combahee River Collective had something to say about faith in the face of dispossession:

“We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change the condition of all Black women.”- Combahee River Collective Statement 1977

Let's talk about it. What makes us feel that urge to keep going? What allows us to do it? Discuss it here at the forum:
http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com/forum/topics/combahee-survival-1

And speaking of WORKING with what we got..Beautiful Too are the Soles of my People! Once again Moya and Lex bring you the sneaker photo essay. Y'all if just the sneakers are this fly can we really get the abundance of fabulousness and vibrant brilliance that we are walking around with. I LOVE MY PEOPLE!
Check out the photos and comment here: http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com/photo/album/show?id=2189298%3AAlbum%3A25496

And since what we've got is each other check out the back to beautiful update from Lex's love project...BrokenBeautiful Press: http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/back-to-beautiful-the-fall-update-and-summer-recap/

AND do what it takes to be at the party of the season...the Queer Renaissance BASH on September 19th in ATL!!! Details here: http://web.me.com/wallace.young/bday/Home.html

Keep rockin it. Keep keep rockin it...with your bright shiny soul.

all love,
QBG Lex

Visit Quirky Black Girls at: http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Interns Wanted!!! A Wonda-ful Opportunity!

Interns Wanted!!! A Wonda-ful Opportunity!


Greetings Friends! Once again, the Wondaland Arts Society, home of Janelle Monáe and Deep Cotton, wants you! We're looking for college students and recent graduates to intern with us. We are seeking applicants who specialize/are interested in business and artist management, accounting, audio engineering, computer programming/coding, marketing, art/graphic design, or journalism and would like to sharpen their craft via hands-on experience working with an up-and-coming record label.

It is preferable that applicants:

Reside in the Atlanta area.
Have a reliable form of transportation
Have a laptop, mobile device with internet, and/or reliable access to a computer with internet
Specialize in/be focused on a particular area of expertise
Be able to dedicate at least 10 to 15 hrs a week to the internship
***Experience with social networking (ie. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace) is not required but a definite plus!

If you think that you or someone you know would be interested in this opportunity, Please submit your resume and a short essay (no more than 2 paragraphs) on who you are, what you do, and why you would be a good addition to the W.A.S. team. Please send all submissions to: interns@wondalandarts.com. PLEASE do not reply to or inquire via Janelle Monáe's facebook page. The deadline for submission is September 30, 2009. We look forward to hearing from you.


Thanks a trillion,

The Wondaland Arts Society

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Summer Don't Stop

So it is officially September. School supplies and new crushes are in order. But in the mind of at least one crazy QBG (me) summer shall never end! Feel free to partake in the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind (www.blackfeministmind.wordpress.com) and especially check out piping hot new interactive music-filled poetic podcast based on Sapphires Meditations on the rainbow streaming and downloadable here: http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/files/2009/09/rainbow-podcast.mp3

And since we know you want to heat it up with your fabulous self...please do be at the two hottest events of the fall.

1. Gonna say it one more time...the Queerky Black Girl CookOut on Sunday Sept 6th at Piedmont Park in ATL GA!
http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com/events/2nd-annual-black-pride-cook

AND

Don't miss the Queer Renaissance Launch, UNTIL (sexy serious black woman centered short film) screening, Multi-Media Workshop supporting SUPERBASH in honor of QBG Julia Wallace's thirstiest 30th Birthday!!!!

Learn more here: http://web.me.com/wallace.young/bday/Home.html

And just like the summer isn't stopping yet, neither is the black feminist heritage fueled critique. Last week so many of you jumped into the conversation about whether and why you are a black feminist....this week let's talk about privilege:

“The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess any one of these types of privilege have.” Combahee River Collective Statement 1977

What privileges do you have? What privileges are you being denied?
Let's talk about it!!!!
http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com/forum/topics/combahee-survival-more

love
QBG Lex

Visit Quirky Black Girls at: http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com