this is how i know

that skin is thin and bright and precious

that song can be broke

love slice the veins

that beauty is a call

and we are all responsible

-excerpt from Almost Bop for Whitney Houston by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Falling in love is so bittersweet.  The life and death of Whitney Houston offer an emotional, spiritual and political challenge to black feminism.    How do we balance the brilliance of her voice and offer up optimism for her spirit transition while also taking seriously the issues of addiction, relationship violence and the exploitation of black women that continue to harm our communities?   How do we feel about R. Kelly having space at the altar at her funeral?  Is her long time aide and companion Robyn being written out of the story in a way that hides the complexity and depth of black women’s love?

There are many conversations to have and a lot of healing still to do.  The upcoming Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Podcast Every Heart Beat seeks to honor the complexity of a black feminist relationship to Whitney Houston’s life, brilliance and struggles.

Please send your:

• written letters/poems and statements for Whitney
• recorded messages of healing for all of us who face addiction, interpersonal violence and exploitation  (send recordings as mp3 files if possible)
• and song requeststo brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com by Feb. 27th at 5pm to be included in the podcast.

With love,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Remastered Tools 101 is an opportunity to examine our relationship to knowledge and our theories of change as they relate to the work we do as scholars and the work we empower with our scholarship. We will investigate how dependence on systems that are NOT community accountable are cultivated even in the most seemingly radical fields and support each other in creating visions for our own community accountability.

Remastered Tools will run on Wednesday evenings March 7-28

Required Reading: Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House

The Remastered Tools 101 Webinar includes:

• a workbook based on Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools
• 4 live webinar discussion sessions facilitated by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and attended by aligned visionary underrepresented scholars
• inclusion in an ongoing networking google-group for webinar graduates
• group theme songs to rock to while you smash the system

Rate: $25-50 per participant per session ($100-200 for the whole course) or FREE for one-on-one coaching clients.

To apply for the Remastered Tools 101 Webinar email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your responses to the following questions:

Contact information: (phone, email)

Who are you and what are you up to?

Why do you want to take this webinar?

Calling all community accountable scholars and visionary under-represented grad students!

Hey there bright thunder!

Do you ever feel isolated and misunderstood in your department? Do you ever feel that the passions that motivated you to get your degree are contradicted more and more by the process of getting there?  Do you feel like you are in limbo?  That even the well-meaning advisors around you know how to help you conform to academic standards, but can’t be accountable to the ways you want to TRANSFORM?

Never fear.  You are not alone.   As Audre Lorde famously said to an academic conference filled with feminist scholars: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”   But less people remember that immediately afterwards she reminded us that “This fact is only threatening to those who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”

Brilliance Remastered is about going beyond our critique of the master’s tools in order to cultivate the already existing tangible forms of support that can free us up to do the brilliant work we were born to do inside the academy and beyond it.

I had the miraculous experience of a wildly successful and enjoyable experience in graduate school.  I wrote, published, traveled, presented, finished in a very timely manner and was even offered some exciting and attractive tenure track jobs.  At the same time built an ecology of community institutions and autonomous community accountable intellectual projects that allowed me to freely choose to do my passionate work in the ways that would best serve my community and my vision for a transformed planet beyond the scarcity model of academic self-marketing.

I found that the key to a miraculous experience of community accountable scholarship was

• constantly being in touch with the deeper purpose of my intellectual work
• remaining connected and accountable to the communities that I love

Brilliance Remastered is my contribution to shifting the paradigm of what we do as community accountable scholars.   It is my intention that your experience of graduate school is not full of paranoia, proving yourself, being misunderstood and overlooked, but rather of radiant and inspiring opportunities to bring your best intellectual resources to the issues and communities you care about.   I also intend that when you finish graduate school you are not grabbing for crumbs based on what academic institution wants to hire and tokenize and overwork an under-represented person with your specialties, but rather that you will be able to choose to continue your passionate inquiry on your own terms in ways that prioritize and support strategies of power for the communities you love.

Brilliance Remastered is a wellspring for remembering that as Audre Lorde said, the master’s house is not our only form of support.  As community, we are our primary and most valuable sources of support.    Browse our webinars, one-on-one coaching offerings, blog and podcasts for resources to affirm your vision and support your growth whether you are deciding whether to go to graduate school, struggling to finish or start your thesis or dissertation, needing tools to rearticulate your purpose or to build a community of support.    I know that working with you, bright thunder aka brilliant visionaries who are ready to transform the world, will have an impact on the meaning of scholarship and the usefulness of intellectuals for generations to come.

Let’s get started!

With love,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, PhD

“When you first realize your blood has come, smile an honest smile, for you are about to have an intense union with your magic.” -from Marvelous Menstruating Moments (as told by Indigo to her dolls…) in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo

On March 3rd 2012 my mother and I (also known as the Thicker Than Whatever Unstoppable Mother/Daughter Team) will be be co-facilitating a special love-filled workshop for kids who might be about to menstruate or who have started recently and for their mamas/main supporters called Love Overflow: Marvelous Menstruating Moment.  This will be a daylong intergenerational workshop at the new Eternal Summer space (aka the Greenhouse…where we grow!) with play, affirmation, storysharing and special spaces just for mamas and just for young folks to process their relationship to the physical, spiritual and social transformations going on at the ever-exciting time of puberty.

My mom is traveling from Atlanta in Durham to be my partner in this endeavor and we are so excited! We wanted to invite ourentire community to support this project right here:

http://widget.chipin.com/widget/id/ec4fd46978f5651a

We especially invite those of you (of any gender or identification) who have ever had an experience menstruating to add to our wisdom overflow by sharing a piece of wisdom you learned from your own experience menstruating as a note with your paypal donation below. Or just email your wisdom to me at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com!

Love,
Lex (and Pauline)

Access to the moon.
The power to heal.
Daily visits with the spirits.”

-Ntozake Shange on little sister Indigo in her first novel Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo

We are in my car with the top down dodging the falling leaves when Assata drops knowledge on the subject of grades, a new clarity gained during this first term of 6th grade: “Grades are bullying the alphabet.” They decide they are double jointed and find out that their hands can bend in ways they never knew. They read outloud parts of the books they are reading. They punch each other very lightly at the sight of a volkswagen bug. And this is just the car ride.

The Indigo Afterschool Program was an idea that 11 year old Alex Lockhart shared with her mother, using the words: “I want to go to an afterschool program at Alexis’s house.” Inspired by Ntozake Shange’s character “Indigo” from her first novel Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, the Indigo Afterschool TeaParty is a place to share dreams, make art, blow bubbles and investigate Indigo’s practices of healing, self-love, dream interpretation, doll-making, compassion and full self-expression!  Mini-geniuses from 3 Durham middle schools participate!

We check in over tea and snacks letting a deep breath out at the end of our check-ins by blowing a real or imaginary bubble. We make dolls that listen, healing remedies for emotional emergencies, books for our dreams, collages for our visions, love notes for each other in the name of Indigo who used all these things to create the world she needed when she was right in the arena of the menstrual transformation.

It is an honor to participate in the building of community and sisterhood among these brilliant young folks, and as the Crunk Feminist Collective reminded us with their development of a women’s studies 101 workshop for high school students (http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/feminism-101-or-why-womens-studies-cant-wait-a-workshop-for-girls/)
the intentional support and nourishment of the love, transformation and brilliance that is already living and growing and possible in young people can never start too early.

Indigo Afterschool uses the model of Indigo…just one of many audacious, inventive, complex, community accountable and wise young Black characters created by Black feminist writers to give young folks a chance to love each other and explore their own magical skills, a space to critique the norms they are noticing at school, and a validation of the practices of breathing, creating and listening.

As people around the country reclaim space in their communities to activate their visions I am proud that the space that these 11 year olds (who have just proposed an expansion of the program to bi-weekly sessions) have decided to takeover my living room with their dreams.

(Here is what Alex left on the chalkboard)

Indigo Style Remedies:

Yesterday we read some of Indigo’s remedies that she creates after difficult experience and share with her community of dolls so that her growth can also benefit them.  Oh Indigo!!!

Rock in the manner of a quiet sea. Hum softly from your heart. Repeat the victim’s name with love. Offer a brew of red sunflower to cleanse the victims blood and spirit. Fasting & silence for a time refurbish the victim’s awareness of her capacity to nourish & heal herself.

The Indigo After School crew also wrote their own remedies yesterday (they also wrote a healing recipe for popcorn, getting past writers block and “boredness”).

Here is some of their advice…that I recommend keeping on hand or enacting right now for your own healing:

Emergency Care for the “the funk”
by Bailey
(i.e. like on Glee, when they were in a funk because they were afraid their singing group wasn’t good enough)

Surround oneself with loved ones, then go on top of a tall object and scream to hearts content all of ones deepest feelings. If this does not work, go in private room and listen to songs that mention only of happy things, then write down all of ones problems and think of a way to turn them around.

Emergency for Sadness
by Assata

1. go to the bathroom and turn on hot water. let it steam.
2. get your favorite incense and burn it
3. get a robe and put it on
4. put the incense in the bathroom
5. put a stool in the bathroom
6. write all the things you are sad about on a piece of paper
7. write on the steamed mirror all the things that are peaceful
8. sit in the bathroom and be peaceful with the steaming and the incense

Forged by Fire (for hard experiences that change you forever):
by Alex

Bathe in a tub of warm water without bubbles. Slowly lie down and let all the bad energy out. When you get out, don’t dry off, instead go to a silent room and let the peaceful air dry you off. Next rub your skin with soothing lavender oil. Now go outside and let the sun wrap its loving rays around you.

Amazing! Priceless and here is how you can support this space!

1.  Of course donating to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind one time

or becoming a monthly sustainer helps infinitely to sustain this free program for superhero youth.

2. This community of readers  is the best thing ever.  Want to send as a winter break gift 1 or 3 copies of your favorite young adult book from when you were around 11?  The Indigo afterschoolers are self-identified “cool nerds” and will need a lot of reading material when school lets out next month to keep their brains engaged!  Email alexispauline@gmail.com for the address.

3.  Or contribute to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Library that surrounds and uplifts the participants and their parents and grandparents and younger siblings and friends by donating a book from the Eternal Summer amazon wishlist!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/9JXRNX84Z3R9

Keeping it quirky, eternal and off the hook!
Love,
lex

In this the second part in the “Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future” this lecture draws on author June Jordan’s essay “The Creative Spirit in Children’s Literature” which explains that “love is lifeforce” and describes the intergenerational work of nurturing the spirits of children as the most sacred work that adults can do. In a time when the education budgets for Durham schools are under attack and the Wake County schools are actively resegregating, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs will present a multi-faceted vision for educational justice in our times.

Tuesday October 18th

6:30-8:30pm

Stanford L. Warren Library

1201 Fayetteville Street
Durham, North Carolina 27707

The first in the “The Survival Series” Black Feminism for the Future” this lecture draws on the relevance of black feminist Science Fiction writer Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” and “Parable of the Talents” to offer an urgent and empowering perspective on our present-day resource crises. Black Feminist scholar Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs will provide context and a framework for a visionary approach to everyday life in the context of shifting planet followed by a Q & A and talk back with organizers and experts from the food justice movement.

5pm-8pm

Sunday August 28th

Inspiration Station, Durham NC (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for directions)

Dedicated to your sacred sassy self! This session for women of color and and feminists of color who do not conform to the gender binary to talk about sex, survival, revenge and healing on our own terms. We deserve a space free from the policing and criminalizing norms about our sexuality as people of color and as gender transforming revolutions.

This will be a space where through the journey of Ntozake Shange’s Lady in Orange,… we can explore how we feel about the intergenerational criminalizing of our bodies. About the shade thrown inside and outside of our families about feminized folks who refused to play the game by patriarchy’s rules, the reclamation of the word “slut,” the shaming work of books like Steve Harvey’s “Act Like a Lady Think Like a Man” and the over-riding truth that wrong is not our name. We are so bad its good.

By popular demand and with infinite love WE CONTINUE a seven month process called Rainbowed Reclamation, a colorful women of color juicy poetry and food-filled space of sacred discussions that reclaim our bodies, collectivize our spiritual energy and the brilliant choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

Please wear orange and bring food if you can!

Children are welcome will be provided…please let us know in advance if you can if you are bringing a young revolutionary who may not be quite young or old enough to wander through our conversation about sex and coming(!) of age.

These monthly discussion/rituals are love in practice towards creating a spiritually …aligned, intimately interconnected, queer affirming and self loving community of women of color and genderqueer people of color ready to support each other in transforming the world.

Childcare will be provided!

If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere near Durham…COME! If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere in the world email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to find out how to host your own event and send folks in North Carolina to us!!! If you are an ally spread the word and please send this to people who need this space!!!!