

10 Things to Know This Week
1. Visioning Resistance: a Black Feminist Call to Action. Last Monday, Black Women's Blueprint was honored to be in community with over 50 of our members. We began the evening with a visualization practice and went through a process of calling out the ways we have been ever-sustaining and resilient in times of trauma and highly climatic socio-political moments. We discussed embodying resistance and emboldening ourselves to step into our power as we approach 2017. This moment


Dear Black Girl....
1. You must let the pain visit.
2. You must allow it teach you
3. You must not allow it overstay.
(Three routes to healing)
- Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada Photo source: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/young-black-woman-on-wooden-boat-dock-she-looks-stock-video-footage/472903806 You are precious. They will never say this enough to you, Black girl. I say it neither to erase what’s been hard nor to ignore the reasons you don't believe you are but to give you


With Harp and Sword: Trauma, Survivorship, and Reproductive Health
“I have been in sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots, then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.” -Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road In Kenya M. Fairley’s recently published book, With Harp and Sword: A Doula’s Guide to Providing Trauma-Informed Birth Support, she answers the call to action that many women of color birth workers have been waiting for. This book is a spiritual gathering of knowledge, wisdo


Not Having It: Nate Parker and the False Choice for Black Women
As college students head back to school, the media and social media are abuzz with daily news about filmmaker Nate Parker and his college roommate Jean Celestin who were accused of raping a woman—who later committed suicide—when they were students at Pennsylvania State University. With their much anticipated Birth of a Nation film coming out in a few months, this story is both timely and critically important. Many black women, specifically survivors of sexual assault, and the


‘We are Pregnant With Freedom’
Black Feminist Reflections from Goree Island, The Reproductive Potentials of the Middle Passage Waters, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade we will wear new bones again. we will leave these rainy days, break out through another mouth into sun and honey time. -Lucille Clifton, “new bones” Introduction In Search of Our Mother’s Waters: Forced Water Crossings and Chosen Water Burials To approach the dock of Goree Island from the city of Dakar, Senegal by way of New York City (for


A Reckoning Is Still Needed: What White Feminists Are Saying About Race
#Feminism #WhiteFeminist