Saturday March 22nd-Black Girls Are From the Future x Oakland: 6pm- 9pm @BettiOno Gallery: $10

MYMC_MARCH 22nd FLYER_Book Covers_Final_Friday 3.28

Saturday March 22nd, at Betti Ono Gallery in Oakland California, I will be doing an Oakland book launch. Tix are $10 on Eventbrite and you can get them @ the door as well.

As you know I have been writing about Oakland, for a VERY, VERY, VERY long time, so it is really surreal to go home to the place that made me and say “Look ma we did it,” literally and figuratively.

Honestly I am happy to go home too to pay homage to the Oakland Public Library, specifically the ones in West Oakland and Martin Luther King on East 14th (yeah, I know it’s International Blvd now, but when I was a kid it was E14th, so there) and see about getting the book into their library system. The West Oakland Library was so extensive in terms of their fiction and nonfiction by, for and  about Black Women and Women of Color.

Peep game. In the 90’s the dope game was eating Oakland from the inside out, so there are two places that I didn’t have to plead with my mother to let me go to; the grocery store and the library. Hence my Love affair with the MLK library on 66th Ave.

I feel safe in libraries.

For me it is really important for little bears to have access to books the way I did. AND BGFTF is now on the Kindle, so folks can download them and get it cracking, “We Are Living in Your Internet” ~Ms. Erykah Badu. By May of this year, I’ll have broader distribution so that I can get in libraries. (Let’s not even GET into the indie publishing politics around getting into the Library of Congress, book stores, and libraries. I will save that for another day.)

I can’t help but thinking all the times I was a little bear walking up and down telegraph avenue, buying cd’s and tapes at Rasputins, now I am selling books on the internet. What!?!?!?

Oakland Haunts Me.

Oakland Made me.

Here are 5 Things You Can Do Before the Event

5 Things you can do before

LINKS

1. Video

2. Newsletter

3. Audio Book Chapter “Oakland Haunts Me, Why I Will Not Be Going to See Fruitvale Station”

4. Facebook

5. Digital Story

Here are some of the topics we will discuss.

MEME_Questions Discussed

Please leave a comment below, ESPECIALLY if you were one of the people who encouraged me back in the day. I have something I’d like to send you.

Reading anything good lately?

What do you see on the horizon for Black women’s stories in 2014?

Oh and if you bought a book and have something nice to say, please leave couple of sentences on AMAZON. Ya’ll have my page looking thirsty, and I KNOW I’ve sold some books in from August to September. I know you are busy, so a few sentences are fine. Do it on the bus/train on the way home. I’ll hug you for it.

Is 2014, #BlackgirlTime, as I say?

What do you do to relax before a big day, I am kinda pressed, and all I want are tacos, #snowedin. #notacoyet.

 

Peace to the Person in Ashburn,Virginia Who is Digging Through My Archives.

I see you.

#Blackgirlsarerfomthefuture and in the Matrix.

Free

Heart is broken. But I am free. And perhaps, most importantly, I have been transformed.

I am stubborn and typically only listen once I hit a bottom, I also listen if two different people tell me the same thing, I listen to the person I am dating, I listen to people who are more spiritually evolved than I am.

What I have learned is that I have an intimacy ceiling, that I keep most people at arms length and that if I want to grow, I need to figure out how to deal with at shit. stat.

The good and the bad news is that I will be going to see Erykah next week, to perform Mama’s Gun. What the fuck was I thinking?

Anyhoo.

A LOT of work on the back end here, than you all for supporting me.

The Black Girls Are from the Future Manifesto is coming…right now it is titled “The Historical Origins of Black Girls Are from The Future: BGFTF is a Fancy Way of Saying Fuck You..I’m From the Future”…..or “Black Girls are from the Future: An Oppositional Consciousness Rooted in the Day to Day Lives of Working Class Black Girls”<<< Or maybe these are subheadings FOR the essay. #WorkinProgress.

I am on deck to do some collaborative work  on why I think, as a Black Feminist, that Aaron Swartz is important, in spirit and in action to me and my work and to a lot of the digital Black feminist work.

There is a Black Girls Are From the Future short video Doc in the works.

Black Girls Are From the Future: Essays on Race, Gender and Pop Culture will be complete and for sale this summer.

Oh, and Black Girls are from the Future has been trademarked. #sayword. #Word.

However, in the midst of all of this, all of this gina, is that I have do deal with this ability to connect, to no sort people in inside and outside, rigidly because I don’t trust them. I cannot, write, blog, cook, eat, burbon, think, theorize swim my way through this. I simply have to address this shit. And I resent it. I resent having to do it. But I also know that I have been given a unique opportunity. Why is this a unique opportunity? Because, most people wrap folks in their own misery for years, rather then go deep into themselves and do that archival work. To find out the historical origins if your own/my own rage buttons.

How can you love another human being if you don’t understand that your first need is to trust. THE FIRST GINA. I haven’t been betrayed or anything like that. Quite the opposite. I simply have a hard time trusting. Now, some people ain’t shit, and you can’t trust them as far as you throw them, but some people CAN be trusted, and that is some shit that I have a hard time with. The rigid groups I put people into are no longer serving me, and I know I need to change.

I am also really clear on how much my work is worth, down to the cent, and I am moving about in the world with a very clear understanding of that.

I will not turn myself into an object. I will do my damnedest to do the work.

When I say everything for Oakland, I mean that shit. Doing that interior work will evolve me, when I evolve and can do the artistic work for myself and for Black girls in Oakland that I know I was put here to do. When I do that work, the connection, I believe, the ability to connect will become easier.

Thank you for the support.

You will be able to buy a BGFTF Bag and pre order the book here next week. Here is the BFGFT Facebook group, like if you wish 🙂

 

New Model Minority: The Book Survey….Questions for Those Who Filled it Out in 2011:)

So. About 30 of you filled out the survey which is wonderful, but I don’t know who you are. Let’s remedy this.

Send me an e-mail to m.dotwrites dot gmail or you can fill out the Nmm labs form here to receive updates.

Thank you again for filling it out. When I have thought of giving up, I have kept you all in the back of my mind. There is really nothing like knowing that people actually give a shit about the words you write!!!

Oh, and if you are a new reader, and would like to tell me the topics you are most interested in me writing about in my book projects you can fill out the survey here as well.

I appreciate ya’ll and it is nice to have some traction moving into 2013 even though my wrist is hella stiff. Stiff but working. < New tag line. o.O

Oh, and here is a post from Black Girl Everything on “Scandal.” Check it out “Thinking About Black Women’s Sexuality on the Show “Scandal”: The Liv and Fitz Affair.”

~R

Big Announcement: New Blogs – Race in DC.com and BlackGirlEverything.com

As many of you know I fractured my wrist in a car accident earlier this year. In the above photo I am at breakfast, having been out of the hospital for about a week. The wrist fracture sucked not only because my wrist was broken, but because it set me back in terms of my projects.

Well, I am happy to announce that I have completed two of the projects that I have been working on, the blogs BlackGirlEverything.com and RaceinDC.com.

I created Black Girl Everything, because I wanted to see a space online for Black girls that looked good and had good content. I created RaceinDC because many of the spaces online that discuss race in the city leave me wanting.  I also think that there are not enough conversations that are archived publicly about race and the city. If we can’t name the issue we can’t change the issue, and so I see RaceinDC as a space for social change.

Lastly, I am self publishing two books next year. The first one will be The Miseducation of All City: Essays on Race, East Oakland and Prep School.  If you want to receive updates on my new projects, sign up to receive the NMM Labs updates newsletter. Needless to say, I am excited. Here is a preview of the book cover.



I am also putting together a set of essays of a book about Black women in popular culture. I haven’t decided on a title yet, but I will share that once it becomes available.

So thank you for your kind words and for telling me “I will not pay for blog  posts but I will buy whatever you sell.” I listened and I am producing and selling my work.

Let me know what you think about the blogs. I told myself that I would launch on 12.12.12 and I kept my word. Keeping my word to myself feels awesome.

You working on anything creative? Let me know. #blackgirlsarefromthefuture.

~Allcity