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‘Indigo Was the Folks’: AfterSchool Brilliance
“There wasn’t enough for Indigo in the world she’d been born to, so she made up what she needed. What she thought the black people needed.
Access to the moon.
The power to heal.
Daily visits with the spirits.”
-Ntozake Shange on little sister Indigo in her first novel Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo
We are in my car with the top down dodging the falling leaves when Assata drops knowledge on the subject of grades, a new clarity gained during this first term of 6th grade: “Grades are bullying the alphabet.” The girls find out that their hands can bend in ways they never knew. They read outloud parts of the books they are reading. They punch each other very lightly at the sight of a volkswagen bug. And this is just the car ride.
The Indigo Afterschool Program was an idea that 11 year old Alex Lockhart shared with her mother, using the words: “I want to go to an afterschool program at Alexis’s house.” Inspired by Ntozake Shange’s character “Indigo” from her first novel Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, the Indigo Afterschool TeaParty is a place to share dreams, make art, blow bubbles and investigate Indigo’s practices of healing, self-love, dream interpretation, doll-making, compassion and full self-expression! Girls from 3 Durham middle schools participate!
We check in over tea and snacks letting a deep breath out at the end of our check-ins by blowing a real or imaginary bubble. We make dolls that listen, healing remedies for emotional emergencies, books for our dreams, collages for our visions, love notes for each other in the name of Indigo who used all these things to create the world she needed when she was right in the arena of the menstrual transformation.
It is an honor to participate in the building of community and sisterhood among these brilliant young women, and as the Crunk Feminist Collective reminded us with their development of a women’s studies 101 workshop for high school students (http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/feminism-101-or-why-womens-studies-cant-wait-a-workshop-for-girls/)
the intentional support and nourishment of the love, transformation and brilliance that is already living and growing and possible in young people can never start to early.
Indigo Afterschool uses the model of Indigo…just one of many audacious, inventive, complex, community accountable and wise young Black characters created by Black feminist writers to give young folks a chance to love each other and explore their own magical skills, a space to critique the norms they are noticing at school, and a validation of the practices of breathing, creating and listening.
As people around the country reclaim space in their communities to activate their visions I am proud that the space that these 11 year olds (who have just proposed an expansion of the program to bi-weekly sessions) have decided to takeover my living room with their dreams.
(Here is what Alex left on the chalkboard)
Indigo Style Remedies:
Yesterday we read some of Indigo’s remedies that she creates after difficult experience and share with her community of dolls so that her growth can also benefit them. Oh Indigo!!!
Rock in the manner of a quiet sea. Hum softly from your heart. Repeat the victim’s name with love. Offer a brew of red sunflower to cleanse the victims blood and spirit. Fasting & silence for a time refurbish the victim’s awareness of her capacity to nourish & heal herself.
The Indigo After School crew also wrote their own remedies yesterday (they also wrote a healing recipe for popcorn, getting past writers block and “boredness”).
Here is some of their advice…that I recommend keeping on hand or enacting right now for your own healing:
Emergency Care for the “the funk”
by Bailey
(i.e. like on Glee, when they were in a funk because they were afraid their singing group wasn’t good enough)
Surround oneself with loved ones, then go on top of a tall object and scream to hearts content all of ones deepest feelings. If this does not work, go in private room and listen to songs that mention only of happy things, then write down all of ones problems and think of a way to turn them around.
Emergency for Sadness
by Assata
1. go to the bathroom and turn on hot water. let it steam.
2. get your favorite incense and burn it
3. get a robe and put it on
4. put the incense in the bathroom
5. put a stool in the bathroom
6. write all the things you are sad about on a piece of paper
7. write on the steamed mirror all the things that are peaceful
8. sit in the bathroom and be peaceful with the steaming and the incense
Forged by Fire (for hard experiences that change you forever):
by Alex
Bathe in a tub of warm water without bubbles. Slowly lie down and let all the bad energy out. When you get out, don’t dry off, instead go to a silent room and let the peaceful air dry you off. Next rub your skin with soothing lavender oil. Now go outside and let the sun wrap its loving rays around you.
Amazing! Priceless and here is how you can support this space!
1. Of course donating to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind one time
or becoming a monthly sustainer helps infinitely to sustain this free program for superhero youth.
2. This community of readers is the best thing ever. Want to send as a winter break gift 1 or 3 copies of your favorite young adult book from when you were around 11? The Indigo afterschoolers are self-identified “cool nerds” and will need a lot of reading material when school lets out next month to keep their brains engaged! Email alexispauline@gmail.com for the address.
3. Or contribute to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Library that surrounds and uplifts the participants and their parents and grandparents and younger siblings and friends by donating a book from the Eternal Summer amazon wishlist!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/9JXRNX84Z3R9
Keeping it quirky, eternal and off the hook!
Love,
lex
Video: Empowering Force of Feminist Teaching | Watch Black Issues Forum Online | UNC-TV Video
Often praised for their strength, many black women nonetheless suffer lives of victimization and oppression. Author and black feminist activist Dr. Alexis P. Gumbs uses black feminist thought in her intergenerational self-empowerment workshops. Hear her strategy. Watch online: Empowering Force of Feminist Teaching from Black Issues Forum. On demand, streaming video from UNC-TV
Video: Empowering Force of Feminist Teaching | Watch Black Issues Forum Online | UNC-TV Video
Often praised for their strength, many black women nonetheless suffer lives of victimization and oppression. Author and black feminist activist Dr. Alexis P. Gumbs uses black feminist thought in her intergenerational self-empowerment workshops. Hear her strategy. Watch online: Empowering Force of Feminist Teaching from Black Issues Forum. On demand, streaming video from UNC-TV
Love is Lifeforce: June Jordan and the Horizon of Education 11/1/11 at 6:30pm
Greetings loved ones! I’d love to see you at the second installment of the Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future at Stanford L. Warren Library!
In this the second part in the “Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future” this lecture draws on author June Jordan’s essay “The Creative Spirit in Children’s Literature” which explains that “love is lifeforce” and describes the intergenerational work of nurturing the spirits of children as the most sacred work that adults can do. In a time when the education budgets for Durham schools are under attack and the Wake County schools are actively resegregating, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs will present a multi-faceted vision for educational justice in our times.
Sowing Parables: Octavia Butler, Resource Justice and a Shift in Values
Tuesday October 18th
6:30-8:30pm
Stanford L. Warren Library
1201 Fayetteville Street
Durham, North Carolina 27707
The first in the “The Survival Series” Black Feminism for the Future” this lecture draws on the relevance of black feminist Science Fiction writer Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” and “Parable of the Talents” to offer an urgent and empowering perspective on our present-day resource crises. Black Feminist scholar Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs will provide context and a framework for a visionary approach to everyday life in the context of shifting planet followed by a Q & A and talk back with organizers and experts from the food justice movement.
4/10 Library Day #1: Eternal Summer Lending and Reference Library Grand Opening!
At long last the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Lending and Reference Library is open, mostly cataloged and ready for circulation! Come and celebrate! Check out a book! Scan a digital copy of a rare article. Make an appointment to read in the reading room. Get a spring spirit cleaning reading prescription from sista-docta Lex!
For a preview of the available books look here: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BlackFeministMind
Join us at the Inspiration Station (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for details)
1pm-6pm Sunday April 10th 2011
Yay!
There will be cake!
And if you live far away email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com about how you can donate a book OR click here to donate through paypal:
Or push the button to sign up to be a monthly sustainer (the big blue number is how much you’ll be donating each month automatically)!
Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Lending Library! Coming Soon!
Greetings loved ones!!!!
We are in the final stages of opening something called the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Reference and Lending Library in my community (out of my living room) so that people can have access to great books that can inspire and empower them to think about race and gender and sexuality and politics and everything that they may want to think about more. I’m particularly collecting books that are not in the local libraries and I’ll be having library days starting in March in addition to the events I have here at the Inspiration Station when folks can look at the reference books, scan themselves copies of articles and chapters and borrow the lending collection to take home!
I’m really excited about it. Since this summer when I started the process over 700 books have been donated!
You can see the books that I have entered so far (about half) here: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BlackFeministMind
You can see the books that we are still “wishing for” on this amazon wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/9JXRNX84Z3R9/ref=cm_wl_act_vv?_encoding=UTF8&visitor-view=1&reveal=
Hooray! Maybe you’d like to donate some books that you already have? Email me at brokenbeautifulpress at gmail dot com. OR maybe you’d like to start your own lending and reference library in your community? OR if you live in Durham…maybe you’d like me to show you how you can catalog the books that you can share!
Much much love and booklust to everybody!!!
Lex
Bootcamp Podcast: The Sound of Mothering Ourselves
Loved ones!!!! For those of you who didn’t get to participate in the MotherOurselves Bootcamp in Durham NC this January here is a podcast featuring the insights of the participants and some beautiful music!!! Playlist below.
direct link: http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/bootcamp-podcast-1.mp3
Also know that for the next week…if you become an Eternal Summerian (monthly sustainer of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind) your first gifts will be a mixtape of the meditations of release we did during the bootcamp and the motherourselves manual so that you can bring this work into your life and your community!!!
We can make something out of anything.
Insight from Mariel Eaves and
The Revenge of Ricky Williams “Sweet Wolf Shirt”
We recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.
“Dear Mom” by Adele Nieves and
Climbing Poetree “I Wonder”
We establish authority over our own definitions.
Affirmations from Miya Binta
Doria Roberts “Dying Man’s Wish”
We claim power over who we choose to be, knowing that such power is relative within the realities of our lives.
Estas Mujeres: Covenant by Fabiola Sandoval
Amel Larrieux “All I Got”
We provide an attentive concern and expectation of growth, which is the beginning of that acceptance we came to expect only from our mothers.
“When I Crave Mama” by Fabiola Sandoval
Me’shell Ndegeocello “Solomon”
We affirm our own worth by committing ourselves to our own survival in our selves and in the selves of other black women.
“I Am My Mother’s Daughter” by Rashida James-Saadiya
Lauryn Hill “If They Only Knew”
We refuse to settle for anything less than a rigorous pursuit of the possible in ourselves, at the same time making a distinction between what is possible, and what the outside world drives us to do in order to prove that we are human.
“Mother Ourselves” by Julia R. Wallace (JDub)
Santigold “Unstoppable”
We recognize our successes and are tender with ourselves even when we fail.
“My Mother Ourselves Covenant” by Dara Montaque
Res “Bittersweet”
We learn to love what we have given birth to by giving definition to, to be both kind and demanding in the teeth of failure as well as in the face of success without misnaming either.
“Letter of Release to the Next Generation” by Miya Binta
Erykah Badu “My Life”
We lay to rest what is weak, timid and damaged without despisal and we protect and support what is useful for survival. We explore the difference together.
“Mother as Savior” by Miya Binta
Georgia Ann Muldrow “Runway”
We stand toe-to-toe inside rigorous loving and speak what has always seemed like the impossible to each other.
Truth Booth Conversation between Miya Binta and Manju Rajendran
Tata Vega, “Miss Celie’s Blues”
As we speak the truth to each other it become unavoidable to ourselves.
ESG “Keep on Moving”
Infinite love,
Lex
atlantic is a sea of bones: lucille clifton rebirth broadcast #12
What legacies haunt the places that you live and pass through? What are the voices of forgotten, erased and violated ancestors teaching you today?
To learn more about the Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School visit: www.blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/survival-school
To view earlier rebirth broadcasts see:
www.blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/category/shapeshifting
