Last night some of gathered to immerse ourselves in a Black feminist ethic of care as exemplified in the letters between Toni Cade Bambara and her fellow Black feminist writers. We wrote thousands of letters among us.  We wrote list about poems and poems about lists.  We called on the living, the lived before and the not yet living.  We learned from letters from and to Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, June Jordan, Alice Walker, Cheryl Clarke, Cheryll Greene, Nikky Finney, Gloria Joseph and more. We contextualized our mutual-aid in this moment in the interdependence of the Black feminist writers of the late 20th century with gratitude and love. Our offering is this group poem that we created together.  We recommend reading it out loud if possible.

We love you,

Take good care.

P.S.  If you want to be on the list to find out about upcoming online events you can join here.

Take Good Care

by the participants in the Take Good Care of Your Blessings Workshop on Toni Cade Bambara Eve

“Take good care of your energies.”

-Toni Cade Bambara

take good care of your tenderheart

take good care of your healing bodymind

take good care of your rhythms

take good care of your inner child

take good care of your center

take good care of your words

take good care of your spirit

take good care of your feet

take good care of your magic

take good care of your rest

take good care of your mind

take good care of your mentors

take good care of your intuition

take good care of your wisdom

take good care of your self

take good care of our togetherness

take good care of your spine

take good care of your song

take good care of your prayers

take good care of your people

take good care of the future

take good care of the past

take good care of your ancestors

take good care of your heart

take good care of your favorite elder activists

take good care of your joy

take good care of the young elders in your life

take good care of your breath

take good care of your tears

take good care of your sacred connections

take good care of your womb

take good care of your lungs

take good care of your dreams

take good care of your friendships

take good care of fear, your doubt

take good care of the ones we feel inclined to push away

take good care of your shadow selves

take good care of your light

take good care of your pleasure

take good care of your laughter

take good care of your gifts

take good care of your skin, it is your largest organ

take good care of your refuge

take good care of your shoulders, pay attention to them

take good care of your giggles

take good care of your curiosity

take good care of strangers

take good care of those without wifi. reach beyond the internet connection and gind the rainbow connection

take good care of your altar

take good care of your pets

take good care of the seeds sprouting in the dark soil within your being

take good care of the body and the planet that are both at once your home

take good care of children.

take good care of their minds, their hearts, their brilliance

take good care of your neighbor

take good care of your block

take good care of the people

take good care of your Black(ness)

take good care of your queerness and quietness and shyness

take good care of your children, whether embodied or not

take good care of sacredness

take good care of your spine that might hurt from years of contorting our humanity into something too small for us

take good care of your Mother

take good care of the earth

take good care of your courage

take good care of Alexis!

take good care of your fire, your water, and your breath

take good care of your dreams

take good care of your prayers, spirits are listening

take good care of your truth

take good care of your voice no matter how loud or quiet it may be

take good care of your soft parts and your breath

take good care of your eyes after staring at the screen

take good care of the tiny muscles around your mouth, notice when they are tired and let them soften

take good care of the places you just left, someone is coming behind you

take good care of the new world being born

take good care.

Exhale. Collage by Alexis Pauline Gumbs for Toni Cade Bambara based on a photograph by Susan Ross. 

for Toni Cade Bambara and Clyde Gumbs

1.

eat salt
not that ocean drowning
snack to stop thinking about dying
unintentional salt

eat salt
on purpose

salt conductor of dreams
ancestor crystal portal
blood water preservation

clean it out
with your eyes

2.

deep sight
practice living in the dark
and seeing what
the light don’t want
you to see

go on a mission
to rescue
the part of the universe
that will always be you
black
and unknowable

3.

be well
want to be
well deep enough to drink from
be
bell ringing soul alarms
be buried mineral breakthrough
solid
fluid
charmed

4.

see birds
love gorillas
listen to dolphins
and do not swallow
what you know

breathe it out
the top of your head

knock on your chest
until you hear it

remember how to fly

There are still a few spots left for tonight’s Take Care of Your Blessings writing workshop celebrating Toni Cade Bambara and a Black feminist ethic of care. 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/take-care-of-your-blessingstoni-cade-bambara-a-spell-for-mutual-survival-tickets-99711794662

Photo by Dagmar Schultz

On Thursday night we gathered to celebrate and honor the turning of the world.  From inside our homes shining through each other’s computer screens we honored equinox at a time when many of us are feeling the opposite equilibrium.  Calling on Audre Lorde’s poem Equinox, we remembered that we are not the first people to be concerned about multiple crisis on a planet in transformation.  In the 1960’s as she prepared to give birth for the first time, Audre Lorde was also aware of a world on fire. Just like this Spring is not the first Spring we do have the wisdom of wise ancestors to turn to in this time of adaptation.  Inspired by Lorde’s poems “Portrait,” “Coping,” New York City 1970,” and “Eulogy for Alvin Frost” we looked at what is constant for us in this time of change, what are the seeds and possibilities that we see emerging and what the intentional practices that we need to cultivate are at this time.  From salty cussing aunties, to brilliant young poets in elementary (home)school we were all in there together, remembering the creative power of our relationships and our boundaries and our ever growing decaying ecological lives.   Our offering to you is our group poem, inspired by Audre Lorde’s poetic prescription that “we must be very strong/and love each other/in order to go on living.” In our poem we understand that “very strong” isn’t about having an individually muscular body or normative immune system, it is about strengthening our practices and relationships.  The ways we love each other.  I encourage you to read this outloud or together in your household (there are some expletives) or digitally.  Scroll down to the bottom to see our online offerings for the rest of the month.

 and love each other

by the participants in “in order to go on living: equinox ceremony in the time of epidemic”

“we must be very strong

and love each other

in order to go on living.”

-Audre Lorde “Equinox”

say thank you and love each other

eat well and love each other

feel what you feel and love each other

reach out and love each other

tell truths and love each other

weep together and love each other

resist and love each other

be careful and daring and love each other

listen loud and love each other

look for signs and love each other

share dreams and love each other

share your gifts, share your light and love each other

cleanse and love each other

learn to cook and love each other

stay hydrated, smell the jasmine and love each other

laugh loudly and love each other

jump up and down and love each other

sing and love each other

say no or not right now and love each other

trust your pace and love each other

be tender with your heart and love each other

receive and love each other

cry when you need to and love each other

give yourself permission to be a salty bitch once in a while and love each other

tickle and love each other

get hype to some silly videos with your 12 year old niece and her new puppy and love each other

remember your people and love each other

be in divine digital circle and love each other

be Black and strong and beautiful and love each other

make your grandma’s sweet potato pie for a sweetie

do what brings you joy and love each other

embrace your erotic aliveness and love each other

ask your ancestors what they need and love each other

let your seeds grow slow and love each other

reach across to our future selves and love each other

listen to the questions our descendants are asking us and love each other

believe in all the worlds that are possible and love each other

wear your ancestors protection around your neck and close to your heart

and love each other

honor water, drink water, jump into the water and love each other

continue to plant the seeds and love each other

tell others about these workshops and love each other

Take a bath with salts, lavender, herbs. Whisper affirmations into the water. Remember what it’s like to be held by water, the womb, the Atlantic

and love each other.

get in costume, PLAY and love each other

watch Eve’s Bayou again and love each other

read M Archive and love each other until we get there

go to a warehouse in the suburbs with your homegirls to break a bunch of shit with a baseball bat, screaming from your guts to Cardi B, losing your breath

and laughing so hard and love each other

throw a ball in the air and shout “I’m amazing” and love each other

be true to yourself and love each other

say what you need to say and love each other

shove our vision into every crack this creates and love each other

love yourself and love each other

love yourself slow and love each other

make and create love and love each other

ask for the love(s) you want and can give and love each other

love and love each other

To be on the list to get notified about our online workshops and intensives:

http://brillianceremastered.alexispauline.com/contact/

March 24th writing workshop in honor of Toni Cade Bambara’s birthday!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/99711794662

March 25th Quarantine Poetry Reading Series: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/thequarantinereadingseries-feat-alexis-pauline-gumbs-tickets-100346533182

March 31^st M Archive Oracle Reading:

https://mailchi.mp/dc6b615f5025/marchiveoracle

Keep Breathing Reboot of the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus:

https://mailchi.mp/c4130ae92edb/keepbreathing

Mobile Homecoming Sunday Offerings via Livestream

https://www.mobilehomecoming.org/live

Edith Henry was the oldest sister.  She played the organ for the AME church.  She was daughter and wife to church founders.  Her life was a sacred work.  Edith Henry baked the best desserts, smiled while she hung the sheets on the line.  Raised her younger sister like a daughter. Gave birth to three different sons who died in childhood.  Edith Henry fed the hungry newspaper delivery boy, taught her daughters glamour and music and time.  Edith Henry died in a mental institution.  Her legacy, her healing, her freedom is mine.

Thursday and Friday March 12 +11th 2020 6pm-9pm Eastern Time

“play the songs with the blues women howling.  play the gospel of voices that crack. play the stories and clean the whole house up. scream your truth and invite me on back. let the mirrors be oceans and swim them.  let the silver be unlock and key. tell the children you love them and need them.  set me free.”

-from “Edict” in Dub: Finding Ceremony

Set Me Free: An Ancestral Accountability Intensive is a two night writing ceremony for the elevation and liberation of our ancestors and ourselves. My design of this intensive is in honor of my great grandmother Edith Henry and draws on what I have learned by cultivating an ancestral relationship with her.  Edith Henry’s life was creative, generative and divine and it was constricted and cut short by multiple institutions, including the institutions of patriarchal marriage, mental asylums, and violent homes for the disabled.  Our relationship clarifies and makes urgent my current work for Black queer liberation, disability justice, and a Black feminist recognition of the universe.

This intensive is for people who are seeking to be more specific about how they are accountable to their ancestors in their liberation work and their creative practices.  We will use reflective writing and listening to nurture our ancestral relationships and to find guidance in their genius and their grief.  This is a supportive space to deepen your ancestral work and your accountability to the world you are creating.

This is part of Brilliance Remastered‘s series of intensives on Ancestral Listening celebrating the publication of Dub: Finding Ceremony, an ancestral listening text by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Duke University Press in February 2020.)

detail from Space Station Monk-Ranger by Cauleen Smith

“boda became. old as ocean. wise as whale. black as undrowned sun.  bold as what we been through.”

-quotation from Dub: Finding Ceremony

Saturday and Sunday Feb 29 & March 1 2pm-5pm Eastern 

This is part of Brilliance Remastered‘s series of intensives on Ancestral Listening celebrating the publication of Dub: Finding Ceremony, an ancestral listening text by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Duke University Press in February 2020.)

This is part of Brilliance Remastered‘s series of intensives on Ancestral Listening leading up to the publication of Dub: Finding Ceremony, an ancestral listening text by Alexis Pauline Gumbs forthcoming from Duke University Press in February 2020. 

Friday-Sunday, November 29, 30th and December 1 2-4pm daily (Eastern Time) Online Intensive

As the days get dark and the holidays approach, those of us who have lost loved ones often feel grief reminding us, teaching us, sending us deep within.  As we confront the nationalist, colonial holiday “Thanksgiving” many of us are mourning genocide against indigenous people on this land, and grounding even more strongly in our connections to our own indigenous ancestors.  As we gather with given and chosen family, many of us need a nurturing space through which to retain our new insights while we confront old patterns.   For some of us what we have been through this year is piling up on us as we face a new decade.  This intensive is for me and for you, a place to focus and strengthen our ancestral listening.

This 3-day online intensive is a space for reflective writing, listening and discernment for people who are seeking to prioritize ancestral listening and find the insights their grief is offering. Participants will have access to advance excerpts from Dub: Finding Ceremony, but no reading is required in advance.  Participants will need to be available from 2-4 eastern on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Nov 29, Nov 30 and Dec 1) something to write with, a mirror and an open heart.

The course will be limited to 12 participants.

Tuition is sliding scale $200-350. Sign up with a non-refundable* deposit of $75 here:

(put the note “Grief and Memory” in paypal)

*If the course is full when you sign up, your deposit will be refunded. If you don’t attend the course, your deposit will be a cherished donation to the ongoing work of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.

Tuesday November 26th 7pm-9pm Eastern (Online Workshop)

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/audre-lorde-and-the-idea-of-the-community-accountable-intellectualartist-tickets-82879963201

In “Above the Wind,” one of her last public interviews, Audre Lorde explained what it meant for her to be an artist and intellectual whose poetic work was “part and parcel” of the life of her majority Black community in St. Croix.  Lorde’s theory and practice of what it means to be a community accountable artist and intellectual are the basis of Brilliance Remastered, and a model for scholars, artists and thought leaders who seek to be in ethical, sustainable relationship with the communities they love.  In this online writing workshop, Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs will lead us through a series of prompts designed to allow us to reflect on our roles in the communities that make us possible.  This session is particularly designed for those who are seeking clarity about their emerging relationships with or work outside of existing academic, arts and non-profit institutions, or who are seeking to deepen the complex work that they are already doing in community, and will include a robust Brilliance Remastered Q&A session for people designing their community accountable practice now.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/audre-lorde-and-the-idea-of-the-community-accountable-intellectualartist-tickets-82879963201

All registered participants will get access to the interview “Above the Wind” the day before the session, but there is no required reading in advance.

There are no refunds.  If you register and cannot participate, you will still recieve the article and your registration will be a cherished donation to the ongoing functioning of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.   Participants will recieve a video link to participate the day before the event.  Participants can engage via computer video, phone or computer audio, text chat or all of the above.

On the Aquarius Full Moon a group of Black women and femmes gathered to write together in memory of Toni Morrison. Guided by “A Knowing So Deep,” her 1985 letter to Black women in honor of Essence Magazine’s 15^th Anniversary Issue (edited by Cheryll Greene), we dedicated our participation to the people we love, living and ancestral and we wrote letters to ourselves, each other and our broader communities. We found that we had a lot to say to ourselves, powerful ancestral listening to do and a renewed sense community. As a closing ceremony we wrote this group poem together. I recommend reading it aloud with a hand on your heart or your belly.

Know

After “A Knowing So Deep” by Toni Morrison

by the participants in “A Knowing So Deep: A Writing Ceremony for Black Women and Femmes”

a nectar so bloody

a wound so raw

a day so dark

a fear so profound

a dream so black

a weeping so near

a crying out so necessary

a voice so daring

a voice so valuable

a letter so needed

a dream so dandelion

a truth so forgotten

a remembering so vital

a portal so open

an evolution so easy

a black woman so healed

a mouth so open

a laugh so boisterous

a noise so harmonious

a pleasure so free

a sound so shine

a freedom so defiant

a smile so treasured

a memory so sacred

a river so rich

a grace so endless

a redemption so beautiful

a womb so unburdened

a body so unbroken

a surrender so glorious

a forgiveness so tender

a gratitude so holy

a solitude so restorative

a sweat so sacred

a stillness so empowering

a bone so shared

a wisdom so within

a wisdom so expansive

a communion so vast

a pink so open

a sensing so wondrous

a pussy so willing

a joy so earned

a secret so known

a vulnerability so noble

an embrace so freeing

an idea so grand

a sisterhood so rich

a friendship so real, deep and unwavering

a shared laugh so deep and long

a laughter so divine

a child so adored

a kinship so rare

a community so whole

a lover so mine

a love so free

a lineage so strong

a gathering so on time

a moon so full

a toni so divine

a toni so beloved

a webinar so visionary

an Ancestree so strong

a future so now

a now so ours

an us so beautiful

an us so ours