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Appreciation for Martha Southgate

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This one is for Jonzey and all the Black girls in the world who live to tell stories.

I reread Martha Southgate’s Third Girl From the Left this week and I was moved by the fact that I read this book in 2005 when it came out, but I think that the fact that I am five years older, have lost and gained loves, lost and gained apartments, broken hearts and got my heart broken, lost and gained careers. I just look at the book, the importance of the narrative differently now.

The book is about a Black woman from Oklahoma who moves to LA in the 70’s with dreams of making it big in Hollywood. What follows is a story about Black women’s dreams, Black women desiring and loving Black women, constructions of family outside of the nuclear, and what happens to your dreams when they don’t turn out the ways you expect them to.

Real Talk.

Here? are of couple of excerpts that jumped off? of the page:

Tamara Muses on the Politics of Getting her Film Made and her Film School Boyfriend

They made up. They didn’t have time to keep fighting anyway. That as the other thing between them; the money and the time. They never talked about it. He was able to get enough money from his parents to hire a professional cinematographer. And she couldn’t. She didn’t have anyone to shoot for her. She had grabbed every grant possible, begged for every loan imaginable. Nothing had come through.? She could not afford a crew. They were talking about it again on this night. Colin knew she was upset, even though her eyes were resolutely dry…..

Tamara Meets her Grandmother at Nearly 28 Years Old

“Well, I never. A black girl making movies. I never thought I’d see such a thing. I love the pictures. Your mama ever tell you that? We used to go every Saturday, rain or shine, no matter wht. We saw everything. You ask her.”? She stopped again briefly. “Whenever we wasn’t fightng, we was at the pictures. We saw everything. Ask her about Carmen Jones.” ….”I don’t know why you’d want to make a movie about an old woman like me. But you sure can….”

Honestly, we need to pool the money together to make this book into movie.
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Cast who we want or who Martha Southgate wants, and screen it in our living rooms, lounges, screening rooms.

Ms.? Southgate has given us a gift in this book. Rather than gripe and moan about new ways in which Nina Simone is being disrespected or Tyler Perry’s latest iteration of normalizing violence against us, only when we control how our stories are told will we be allowed to be human in our art.

Speaking of Black peoples stories, my homie James just cut a trailer for his new film, The Bicycle. Check it out here.

Have you read Martha Southgate’s work?

What are you reading now?

Crowdsourcing Black Women’s Stories?

#ummp. #ummhmm.

What Should I Write About?

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I have a bit more time on my hands, so I wanted to reach out and ask

you all what you want me to write about.

Here are some of the ideas that I have:

1. Quick Post on Joan Morgan and David Ikard’s interview in the academic journal, Beats, Words and Life. They talk about rap music, the erotic and sex.

2. The history of Hip Hop Blogs post. I interviewed 10 HH bloggers in 2008, and I waited to do the post until I was writing under my own name. #Ummhmm. Its dated but still relevant, in that we get a since of how much the game has evolved from 2005-2008 then 2008-2010.

3. A post on Dating a Giver. I have stumbled across someone who is a giver and a sharer. Part of me was shook by it, part of me enjoyed it. I want to write about that tension.

4. Post on how a Hip Hop Blog showed me that most top 40 Rap music, hates Black women.? in 2009 really don’t give a fuck about Black women, and in many ways Black men as well. How I had been holding on, but I needed to accept that one to the face.
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5. Post on Ice Cubs Death Certificate and Chris Hedges Empire of Illiteracy. The two, in my mind, complement each other.

6. The Crack Project proposal. I wrote a proposal for class on examining the social impact of crack on East Oakland using oral histories and homicide and labor statistics. I wanted to post a version of it here.

Any other ideas?

Let me know.

Ya’ll still down for the book club?

I know I was talking about it way back in 2008.

Oh, and I hope to have an update for 100 Visionaries in a month.? Soon come.

The Crack Project: On Philippe Bourgois

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If you know me, you know that I am fascinated with crack, the dominant discourse around it and the lack critical discourse around it, as it pertains to Black + Latino inner city neighborhoods. And how it affects men, women and children differently.

I plan on doing a post on my crack project proposal, but I just wanted to excerpt In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio by Phillip Bourgois real quick. My two favorite quotes from the introduction are:

This book is not about crack, or drugs, per se. Substance abuse in the inner city is merely a symptom – a vivid symbol – of a deeper dynamics of social marginalization and alienation. Of course on an immediately visible personal level, addiction and substance abuse are among the most immediate, brutal facts shaping dily life on the street. Most importantly, hoever, the two dozen street dealers and their families that I befreidned were not interested in talkign primary about drugs. On the contrary, they wanted me to learn all abou ttheir aily strugges for subsisstence and dignity at the poverty line.

The other quote is,
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The anguish of growing up poor in the richest city in the world is compounded by the cultural assault barrio youths often face when they venture out of their neighborhood. This has spawned what I call “inner-city street culture” : a complex and conflictual web of beliefs, symbols, modes of interactions, values, and ideologies that have emerged in opposition to exclusion from mainstream society.

I love this idea of a culture developing in opposition to being excluded from mainstream society. It totally avoids treating Black and Latino’s from the hood like pathological deviants.

#ummhmm.

Thoughts?

The Connection Between Protecting and Dominating Women

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Within the comments section of my post “Black Women x The Streets x Harassment” , which Latoya has up on Racialicious, Gregory Butler explained the connection between being protected and being dominated in a straight forward and profound way. He writes,

It took me years to reach the point where I could defy the social pressure to ?Be a Real Man? ? and it was not an easy process to learn how to treat women like human beings rather than objects.

That?s a sad commentary on how masculinity and manhood are defined in our society ? but yet and still that is very very real.

And for the men of our race, devalued as we are in all other areas of life, it?s easy to cling to being a ?Real Man? and all the abusive sexist bullshit that goes along with that.

Incidentally, that whole ?protecting? women by walking on the outside when you walk down the street, holding doors ect is part of that same sexist idea about ?being a Real Man? ? so I wouldn?t be so quick to embrace that form of patriarchal masculinity either.

Just read the discussion thread on this article http://bit.ly/9g2Y00 and you?ll see men defending that man walks on the outside custom basically because that position makes it easier for them to fight other men

Of course, when guys fight over a woman, it?s really not about ?protecting? her at all ? it?s about a man asserting and defending his property rights over that woman when those property rights are being infringed on by another man

Again, I apologize for misunderstanding your post ? but I stand by my opposition to chivalry, which is NOT the opposite of sexism, but merely a more polite form.

This hit home.

I once had an ex who said that if a dude said something to me on the street that he wouldn’t fight him.

I thought this was absurd.

I also come from a place where people get socked or even shot at for stepping on the wrong persons sneakers or giving the wrong person a mean mug or looking at the wrong persons lady friend.

Violence was always ready to pop off in East Oakland, California.

Lets hear this again,

when guys fight over a woman, it?s really not about ?protecting? her at all ? it?s about a man asserting and defending his property rights over that woman when those property rights are being infringed on by another man her at all”

This issue of ownership is what my ex was talking about at the time.

The basic assumption that he was challenging was that I was not a piece of property to be defended or fought over. This seemed like it made sense on one level, but on another level it was absurd, because it went against much of which I was socialized to accept.

However knowing what I know now, in 2010 about the legal history of women White women and Black women as property in this US society? (I just completed a class on Race and Conquest in Colonial America), I KNOW that there is connection between ideologically women being seen as property and women being legally treated as property,? which is rooted in English Common Law doctrine La Feme Covurt.

According to Wikipedia the? La Feme Covurt doctrine says that,

…husband and wife were one person as far as the law was concerned, and that person was the husband. A married woman could not own property, sign legal documents or enter into a contract, obtain an education against her husband’s wishes, or keep a salary for herself. If a wife was permitted to work, under the laws of coverture she was required to relinquish her wages to her husband. In certain cases, a woman did not have individual legal liability for her misdeeds, since it was legally assumed that she was acting under the orders of her husband, and generally a husband and wife were not allowed to testify either for or against each other.

Keeping the legal history in mind I am going to back to the streets and patriarchy.

Over Memorial day weekend, I was reminded of this notion of protection
and domination isn’t clear cut.

My intuition is cold, and so I try and follow it as often as a can.

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get my favorite taco’s from the taco truck with my gentleman
friend.

I was scantily dressed. Tank top, poom poom shorts, flip flops.

It was about 90 degrees that day.

I saw a man walking towards us, kinda bent, at the spine at a 40 degree angle.? He was off his meds and on something else. Disheveled. Thin. But lightweight diesel. Kind of like a zombie with a moderate “pimp” walk.

He reminded me of that reoccurring junkie character in the Spike Lee movies.

I knew that if he was close enough to me, he would try to touch? or grab me.

I also knew that if he did that somebody was going to go to jail that day.

Within a split second, I told Pepe, “Blood move to my left side” and we switched places.

With the quickness (and I was glad b/c sometimes he can’t hear me and I would have hated to have had to repeat myself.)

I was closer the street. Pepe was between us. Pepe ain’t a little dude.

As the addict man walk by us he yelled out “Man you suppose walk on the outside her near the street.”

I was relieved.

I followed my intuition.

My rationale is that if he was willing to talk to a grown man like that then he would also be willing to try me.

I had a few questions in my head after this happened.

How was patriarchy working in this situation? Did I have to choose between the possibility of one person dominating me and being protected by another?? In some ways yes.

Do I feel like I did the right thing?? Yes. Under the circumstances.

I also think about how these issues are not clear cut.

When was the last time, maneuvering on the street that you followed or failed to follow your intuition? What happened?

What do you think of Gregory’s idea that “when guys fight over a woman, it?s really not about ?protecting? her at all ? it?s about a man asserting and defending his property rights over that woman when those property rights are being infringed on by another man”?

Any other thoughts?

Thinking about Tea Cake + Violence

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You all know that I LOVE me some Their Eyes Were Watching God.

A couple of weeks ago, Mark Anthony Neal posted a piece about Tea Cake as an Imagined Black Feminist Manhood.

I like the idea of taking Tea Cake for this purpose. However, I was insistent that Tea Cakes violence be dealt with front and center.

In particular, I took issue with the fact that Neal rephrased the beating as occasional hitting. Which was problematic.

We went back and forth over it,? and he came to see my point about the importance of violence being acknowledged and I acknowledged that Tea Cake represents a possibility, not perfection. But I been on the symbolism of Janie and Tea Cake? since January. TC and J helped me open my heart to Loving and being Loved again.

So, you know the historian in me went back and re-read the passage where Tea Cake beat Janie. I was actually light weight mortified and reaffirmed that I stuck to my guns because of the explicitness regarding his motivations and reaffirmed.? Hurston writes,
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When Mrs. Turners brother came and she brought him over to be introduced, Tea Cake had a brainstrom. Before week was over had whipped Janie. Not because her behavior justified his jealousy, but it relived that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her reassured him in possession. No brutal beating at all. He just slapped her around a bit to show he was boss. Everybody talked about it the next day in teh fields. It aroused a sort of envy in both men and women. The way he petted and pampered her as if those two or three face slaps had nearly killed her made the women see visions and the helpless way she hung on him made the men see dreams.

“Tea Cake you sho is a lucky man,” Sop-de-Bottom told him. “Uh person can see every place you hit her. Ah bet she never raised her hand tuh hit yuh back, neither. Take some uh dese ol’ rusty black women and dey would fight yuh all night long and next day. Nobody couldn’t tell you ever hit ’em. Dat’s de reasons Ah doe quit beatin’ mah woman. You can’t make no mark on ’em at all. Lawd! Wouldn’t Ah love tuh whip uh tender woman lak Janie! Ah bet she don’t even holler. She jus cries Tea Cake.

Yeah.

What was bugged out was when I re-read it, its like he beat her on general principal.? Like I’m insecure, so let me knock the shit out of you a little bit and let everybody know wassup. #ummp.

Thoughts about Tea Cake and Janie?

Remember when I went from looking for Tea Cake to becoming Janie?

Josephine recently said that she BEYOND becoming Janie, ummhmm.