Who to Turn to This Black History Month
Among the tasks of an editor is bouncing back when unexpected problems arise. I had the intention of publishing a guest editorial for our Black History Month issue, but unfortunately – as is often, understandably, the case – those plans fell through. I did not want my own voice highlighted as the first you will read in this issue, but when you have a deadline, what is ideal is often not feasible.
So, instead of sharing writing with you about what a white woman thinks about Black History Month, I will instead highlight some of my favorite Black writers in the earnest hope that you will read their work, in February and beyond.
To start with work I have already referenced as loving, Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic” (which I evoked in my editorial “The Power of the Erotic”) and bell hooks’ “All About Love” (which I raved over in my tribute to hooks two years ago) are among what I deem necessary reading for everyone, especially women. Both highlight the crucial, political nature of softness, sensuality, and genuine love from a Black queer female lens, and both completely changed me for the better after reading.
If you read “Uses of the Erotic” and find yourself loving it, then pick up Adrienne Marie Brown’s anthology “Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good,” in which Lorde’s essay is featured and expanded upon through Brown’s own essays, interviews, and writing from other women of color. The collection explores the role radical pleasure plays in political activism, collective action, and freedom, from topics of sex work and relationships to climate change and drug legalization. The first section is titled “Who Taught You to Feel Good?” and my answer would be Brown, with this book.
To continue down the path of political strategy from Black women, “We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice” is another crucial piece of literature from Mariame Kaba. Again, it is a collection of essays and interviews, this time philosophically and practically exploring prison abolition. I came across this collection after reading “Rethinking Accountability in the Age of Abolition,” an interview between Kaba and Josie Duffy Rice in the now-defunct Bitch magazine, in which Kaba and Rice discussed the nuanced and difficult topic of how sexual violence could be prevented without prisons. It was a revolutionary conversation, and that power permeates the book. It was timely with its release in 2021, and its timeliness remains now, amid the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta.
If you’re looking for phenomenal Black fiction, Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is a classic for a reason, a horrifying and surreal interpretation of the dehumanization of anti-Blackness. Find more contemporary Black horror with Jordan Peele’s brandnew anthology “Out There Screaming,” a collection of nineteen Black authors’ personal “oubliettes… place[s] where you were stripped of all agency and left alone with your struggle. Where you could see life going on around you, but you were essentially a bystander – forgotten,” in Peele’s words. If horror isn’t your thing, Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty” is one of my favorite novels, period. It is a perfectly constructed story of clashing political ideals and the intersections of age, race, and beauty.
If listening to words is more of your thing, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my friend and Georgia Voice contributor Divine Ikpe, who produces and writes music and performs around Atlanta under the stage name Divi.jpg. Her songs are both haunting and dance-inducing, covering topics from dating and relationships to the often-harsh realities of living in Atlanta.