Yesterday I spoke on the phone with my mentor Jacqui Alexander and while we mostly spoke about M Archive: After the End of the World she also gave me an assignment to share my thoughts and any favorite reviews about Black Panther which premiered nationwide last night. And then last night I watched the film with an intergenerational loud diasporic crew of Black folks. I am interested in this major scale of rebranded Blackness and how it has and will continue to influence intergenerational iconography and ideas about Africa, Blackness, technology, resources and the dark.
Last month, during the Daughter Dreams intensive we worked with Audre Lorde’s poem “Blackstudies” as an intergenerational, image-rich text about imagining blackness consciously and through our nightmares and dreams. Our intensive was also intergenerational and included at least one of Audre Lorde’s former students, part of the group of students she worries about at the end of the poem (“what shall they carve for weapons/what shall they grow for food.”) And of course the poem is concerned with all of us, the generations impacted by the existence of waves of Black cultural revolution and Black Studies (under all it’s subsequent names). In Lorde’s poem she connects this intergenerational concern with her personal healing from the way her mother taught her internalized racism and punished her for being the darkest daughter in a light-skinned Afro-Caribbean family. By accessing her dreams, her prayers and her lack of access to prayer, Lorde reminds us how deep the work of naming and un-naming goes.
During our intensive the participants went just as deep, bravely and sincerely plumbing the depths of the connections between our internalized oppression, our closest relationships and our most cherished and feared dreams. Gratitude to the Lorde who gave us names for so many things. Gratitude to the generations that have named and reclaimed darkness, Blackness and the night. Here are some of our names for darkness.
Some of Our Names for Darkness
by the participants in the Daughter Dreams Intensive
“and when my mother punished me
by sending me to be without my prayers
i had no names for darkness.”
Audre Lorde, “Blackstudies”
love.
peace.
where you are where I can always reach you.
home.
knowing what I know I know.
my words make darkness for me to live inside.
love.
dark matter.
velvet.
illusion-
the rest of the Light I haven’t learned yet.
the rest of the Light I haven’t learned to see yet.
shapeshifter.
black honey.
energy to revitalize.
repair.
Owl.
friend.
pathway to the barn.
basement.
grandmas root cellar
spaces of food and fear
trunks filled with aunties journals and secret relationships
I read them all
freedom under darkness
who feels brave to walk? to fly?
Coyote.
Owl.
night creatures.
my cat wants to go out under darkness.
the night I was followed home.
everyone is asleep but I am still woke.
I am running.
I am hiding.
I am hungry.
I am angry once I am safe.
my rage is born of darkness.
it goes dark.
dreams come.
I love my dreams.
I wear them all ways.
always.
P.S. There are 4 more spots in this month’s intensive M/otherlands: Audre Lorde and Daughtering in Diaspora. Click the link for information and to sign up.
This intensive is part of the M is for M/othering Ourselves Webinar Series, leading up to the release of M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs on March 9th 2018. This webinar series offers a deep dive into the key concepts of Audre Lorde’s work as a queer regenerative resource.