3 years ago women of color came together and transformed terror on Halloween, declaring October 31st Be Bold Be Red Day, a day for women of color and allies to speak out against violence against women.  And 30 years ago women of color came together to respond to violence in the same critical and poetic spirit.

Towards the world the we all deserve, fully transformed from the misogyny and internalized racism we face in popular music to the frightening expendability of the lives and bodies of women of color this podcast places the brave voices of women telling the truth about gendered violence over the remixed sounds of Miles Davis.  This year we take every sound back, starting with our own voices and the background that seeks to silence them.

Listen with your community, your class, your friends, your study group, your church, your crew, pass the link on or listen by yourself and see, hear and wear red.

listen here

or download here: http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/real-be-bold-be-red-podcast.mp3

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Presents:

pauli murray as “the imp!”

This November, in honor of the 99th birthday of Durham’s own Black Feminist, Civil Rights Lawyer, Radical Preacher Pauli Murray Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist, Southerners on New Ground and the Pauli Murray Project present:

Gendered Im(p)ossibility: A Conversation Through Photographs

Drawing on a number of photographs of Pauli Murray from the Schelsinger Library and featuring audio from an interview with Pauli Murray, this promises to be a rich conversation.

Please join us on Monday November 2nd

at 6pm

at Lex’s Inspiration Station

and please bring a dish to share!

See you there!

love,

Lex

Because it takes a whole month to prepare for the day of the dead.  Because some of us have to create eclectic Sunday morning rituals to hear our own truth.  Because I want you to have this for when you need it.  This podcast is based on letters from my black feminist ancestors. For more about the “In Your Hands” project check out www.motherourselves.wordpress.com.

I hope this piece grounds you and reminds you where you are from.  You can save it for Sunday or you can listen right now.

Much love,

Lex

in your hands podcast

p.s.

You can also see video of the In Your Hands Project at Beloved the Mangos with Chili Day of the Dead celebration on November 7th in the San Francisco Bay Area and participate in an installation at the conference of Ford Fellows in Newport Beach California this coming weekend!

Schools in! And your summer-lovin, nerdy quirky space for creation is exited to check out your new And you keep on keep on falling in love with the world we are making together!  I know you are so ready to see what BrokenBeautiful Press is up to in this amazing season of transformation!

MobileHome Money!:  Buy Lex and Julia this MobileHome for our traveling queer black intergenerational community documentation and education project!  Read all about it and contribute via paypal if you can here!  Also, all proceeds from the DVD and Lex’s speaking circuit will go towards the sustainable media making love bug extreme!

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind EVERYWHERE!!!: Spreading the gospel of black feminist possibility and legacy by every means necessary, the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind project has a multi-media life of it’s own!  In addition to the in-person study group (see more details below) Eternal Summer stays portable and interactive with the new

Eternal Summer PODCAST Series with amazing music, poetry and information!  Scroll down or click here to download or listen to 1979 and Meditations on the Rainbow. I just recently got word that sistas in Kenya are using the podcasts for discussion sessions.  You should too!

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist MIND TV!!!!  If you have the great sense to live in Durham, North Carolina you can get black feminist goodness right in your living room on Channel 18 Monday nights at 9pm!

AND the videos!

Eternal Summer DVD of black feminist educational videos (available on a sliding scale fee for use in your community or classroom.)  Paypal a donation between $11-25 to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for your copy.  shipping included!)

AND the Black Feminist Poet/Speaker/Workshop Leader for hire!

This year Lex is using her best developed and most cherished skill-the art of the life-changing workshop-to raise funds to support her decision to spend the next year doing the MobileHomeComing an immersive intergenerational community documentation and education project based on her lust for back queer community!  (It’s weird that somehow I have to be consistent with a choice to talk about myself in the third person here, but I want to interject in the first person to say that your support means everything to me and it is evidence of the fact that it is possible to be a community supported, community accountable scholar in the 21st Century. More details here!

Queer Renaissance Film Screening/B-day Bash Fundraiser: BrokenBeautiful Press is partnering with Queer Renaissance to create the party of the fall!  On Saturday September 19th in Atlanta, GA we’ll be screening Julia Wallace’s film “Until” two Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind videos, a fashion line, music dancing, ties and more beautiful madness.  For more details look at the event page here!  The event is a fundraiser for intergenerational technology classes that Julia will be conducting in under-served communities in Atlanta.

Love Harder: Women of Color Working it Out

This is a reading group specifically designed for women of color in different communities to respond to the complicated matrix of oppressions that face us by loving each other even harder, with more intention, focus and specificity.  We will be reading, gathering locally and posting our insights at www.loveharder.wordpress.com every season.  Fall 2009 we are reading Andrea Smith’s essay about the three pillars of white supremacy.  Comment on the blog or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com if you want to participate!

The Summer Recap:

How amazing was our Summer!!??? Check it out!

Black Feminism Lives…ALL SUMMER LONG!

Combahee Lives!: All summer long the Combahee Survival initiative has been sparking conversation on the Quirky Black Girls discussion forums and the Combahee Survival Blog invoking the brave brilliance of the 1977 Black Lesbian Feminist Socialist Combahee River Collective with contribution and statements from contemporary movement genuises! And it don’t stop! Join Quirky Black Girls or email brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com if you want to get weekly discussion prompts!

Eternal Summer Study Groups:  This summer Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist mind grew wide and deep.  With intimate session on Lex’s porch in Durham we discussed the poetry of Audre Lorde and Nikky Finney and we kicked of the Eternal Summer Warrior film series with a documentary about Ida B. Wells (which we screened in honor of her birthday!)

Sistas in D.C., Ethiopia, Chicago, etc, have been doing local Eternal Summer sessions.  Stay posted at www.blackfeministmind.wordpress.com to see what’s happening near you…or better yet…gather with folks in your own community and read along!

In MAY Lex spoke at the Caribbean Studies Association meeting in Kingston Jamaica and Lex and Julia of the BrokenBeautiful Press/Queer Renaissance MobileHomecoming Collabo attended the inaugural visioning session of the Caribbean Region component of the International Research Network, a clearing house for LGBTQQI activists, artists, scholars and community organizations in the Caribbean!

In JUNE the hotness of the annual Gemini Jam (replete with Gemini juice and love message posters and the sweet sounds of DJ Superfree) popped off in Atlanta.

And THEN Lex went to the AMAZING Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University in Virginia and had the honor of celebrating Lucille Clifton’s birthday and her amazing body of poetry with some amazing poets and teachers (including Nikky Finney and Akasha Hull!  AND in a very BrokenBeautiful way…her chosen family and community paid for her to go!  Here is a link to the thank you video!

In JULY BrokenBeautiful Press was all over the Allied Media Conference in Detroit!

Shawty got Skills2Share was a space created by our beloved Cyberquilting Crew that encouraged Women of Color to learn skills from each other, from digital social networking, to  quilting to video livestreaming to urban foraging.

The Cyberquilting/SPEAK/INCITE: Radical Women of Color Media Strategy Session was the jumpoff of a year of collaborativeworld changing initiatives (like the above mentioned LOVE HARDER) about to pop off in your local and cyber community!

See more pics from the AMC (taken by Moya Bailey)  here!

In AUGUST the education working group of Bull City (Durham) Affiliate of Southerners on New Ground and the Queer Collective took an idea from Lex’s kitchen table to the streets and created a grassroots guerilla film festival focusing on Queer People of Color in just over a week!  Imagine Born in Flames, Paris is Burning and Flag Wars projected large as life on a wall in downtown Durham y’all!  The fest also featured Lex’s short video “So You Know” about black queer publishing!

And just now over Labor Day Weekend was the delicious delectable Queerky Black Girls Cookout in the middle of the Black Pride Exuberance!

in short…BEST SUMMER EVER!!!!!

also feel free to share amazing videos and pictures from your transformative summer.  Email links and pics to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com and we’ll post them here!

Happy to be falling in love with you all over again!

love,

lex

Filled with great music…rare and priceless poetry from Sapphire all presented in that quirky, interactive, meditative, writing workshop-esque Eternal Summer style!

(this is Sapphire…but this time it’s actually Lex reading Sapphire’s juicy poetic set)

This podcast is dedicated to all of us, but especially to Tyli’a Nana Boo Mack, a black transwoman made early ancestor in a brutal act of violence in Washington DC.

Get your pen and your paintbrush and listen here:

download or listen in quicktime here:

Eternal Summer Podcast Two!!!!

(If you listen to the end you’ll hear Lex singing the blues!)

*Sapphire is not a particularly PG poet so this podcast is for grown folks and the folks they can be accountable for sharing it with.

Check out our FIRST EVER PODCAST as part of the BrokenBeautiful Press educational campaign “Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.“  Black Feminism LIVES by every means necessary.

What does it take to survive a year like 1979?

This first podcast is about the year 1979 and how the world, and black feminism began and ended in some crucial ways that year. With the election of Ronald Reagan, the Boston Murders, the Atlanta Child Murders and the Greensboro Massacre all attacking the the lives, minds and spirits of black women 1979 was a crucial year.  This podcast focuses on how Audre Lorde, Alexis DeVeaux, June Jordan and Barbara Smith reach(ed) across time and space to transform the meaning of survival.  (And there is some good period appropriate and anachronistic music too!)

download here:
http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/1979.mp3

Please leave comments here!

p.s.  Sorry about the moments of outburst distortion.  A sista is clearly super exuberantly excited about black feminism and promises to stay a little further away from the mic on podcast number two!

Watch, share, enjoy, repost! If you’d like to order an Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist  Mind DVD with these videos and more to use in your living room/classroom (and to support the MobileHomeComing Community Documentation and Education Project email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com!

Here is a listing of the 9 videos included on the DVD!  See a sample below!

This beautiful piece was made by Radhika Singh…who attended the Cyberquilting Workshop at the 2009 Allied Media Conference.  It is dedicated to amazing, gardener, forager, dancer, scholar, cyberquilter Zachari Curtis!

yes!

If you don’t know…now you know! BrokenBeautiful Press is proud to be part of a legacy of creative, imaginative, brave grassroots publishing projects…created by queer black feminist troublemakers…changing the meaning of life!

It’s Spring!!! That bright, sexy season when we remember the full color of the world and everything becomes possible again! So what better way to celebrate the rebirth of the planet than to break your beautiful spirit out of its shell?

BrokenBeautiful Press (www.brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com) is ready for your reawakening with exciting new projects for you to check out, participate in and support.

On the move:

a queer black mobilehomecoming

BrokenBeautiful Press is partnering with Queer Renaissance to embark on a monumental journey in celebration of the bravery and genuis of the trailblazers of the black queer/lesbian/gender-non-conforming community. Think “black lesbian Eyes on the Prize” y’all! A year from today Alexis and Julia will be getting in an environmentally sustainable RV and hitting the road to learn, document and transmit the legacies of brave black queer warriors who have been transforming the meaning of life since the 1980’s or earlier and hosting amazing intergenerational community education events all over the US. To find out more and to offer resources, advice or financial support go to: www.mobilehomecoming.wordpress.com

SPEAK!: Support Radical Mamis of Color!
BrokenBeautiful Press is proud to celebrate the birth of the most radical spoken word CD ever. Think This Bridge Called My Back in audio form! Speak Media Collective, a group of radical women of color transforming the world through new media, has launched a self-titled spoken word CD as a grassroots fundraiser to support the participation of young mothers of color in the Allied Media Conference. Help moms and kids of color travel to this national media gathering and get your mind blown at the same time. The CD includes a zine and a curriculum guide for using the CD in your community and classroom. To get your copy go to www.speakmediacollective.com

Community Education:
Combahee Survival: A Movement Revival:
In 1977 a crew of radical black socialist lesbian feminists wrote a document that changed the landscape of social justice forever. More than 30 years later young black feminists are tracking the survival of the analysis of interlocking oppressions and holistic transformation that the members of the Combahee River Collective stood for in the progressive community at large. The Combahee Survival Project is a dispersed community education project that shines light on and nurtures the seeds of a radical intersectional approach all over our social justice movement. Go to www.combaheesurvival.wordpress.com to see poetic activities that draw on the words of the original statement, examples from community organizers who are still wrestling with the issues the collective raised and worksheets to use in your community, and look out for the Survival/Revival activity of the week brought to you by BrokenBeautiful Press all summer long!

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind
In Durham, North Carolina (aka vanguard city, center of the universe) a growing, diverse and beautiful group of folks have gathered in the name of black feminism. With delicious potlucks to discuss key essays by black feminists, fieldtrips to hear black feminist poetry, and more we are acting on our faith that the radical work of visionaries like Claudia Jones, Angela Davis, June Jordan can inform and transform our city and our lives. And like-minded devotees in Chicago, DC and other cities have joined in. Follow along, find out about upcoming events and download free reading material at www.blackfeministmind.wordpress.com

Interact!!!!!

Habit Forming Love: The Video Project:
They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, so your girl Alexis decided to cultivate the habit of loving herself and her people (you!) fully, bravely, loudly and proudly. What better habit could there be? Experimenting with (and teaching herself) the art of internet video production and sharing she created videos of love for self, love in community and growing love for her sweetheart. Now it’s your turn! Go to www.habitforminglove.wordpress.com
to browse Lex’s videos and make your own!

In Your Hands: Letters from Ancestors
Alexis started the year with a life-changing, spirit-humbling process of receiving letters from black feminist ancestors who gave loving advice, welcome reminders and sometimes difficult challenges and lessons. Read letters from Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, Lydia May Gumbs (lex’s grandma), Toni Cade Bambara and more at www.motherourselves.wordpress.com and add your own letters about your communication with your chosen and familial ancestors.

It’s Spring! Anything is possible, even you and the life-changing love that makes your spirit tingle and grow.

Stay fly!
love always,
BrokenBeautiful Press
brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com