Illustrations by Krissy Pelley

Oh, camp: that elusive other-world of lampoon and exaggerated meta-theatricality. Where RuPaul, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, and Toto kick back and roast the world. Since the dawn of time, camp has been considered the Land of the Gays^TM, replete with over-the-top style, drag, and parody. Don’t worry, friends—camp is in on the joke.

Despite its distinctly anti-academic stance, camp has garnered a massive following in the academy. In 1964, Susan Sontag published her foundational “Notes on Camp,” in which she analyzed camp’s meta and postmodern elements: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks.…To perceive camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role.” According to the Gospel of Sontag, although camp was “serious” and earnestly invested in its own theatricality, camp was not political, it was just a style. Prior to “Notes on Camp,” most academics had dismissed camp as low-brow. Sontag elevated camp as a topic worthy of academic study.

Since Sontag, over one thousand critical texts have analyzed camp, with very little agreement. Moe Meyer and Chuck Kleinhans envision camp as a political and disruptive medium. Meyer argues that camp functions politically through parody—an extended, playful imitation of pop culture with a twist. Parody becomes a way for marginalized groups to subvert tropes of the dominant discourses that actively exclude and oppress them. Additionally, Kleinhans describes how camp’s “ethos of shocking mainstream middle-class values” disturbs and unsettles the normative social order. According to these theorists, camp embodies queer theory’s disruptive politics while also creating a free space for liberating expression beyond the mainstream’s constricting binds.

There’s just one problem: camp theorists have consistently failed to address race. In recent decades, queer theory’s single-identity focus has drawn notice from a number of LGBTQ+ theorists of color. As Isling Mack-Nataf put it, “When I hear the word queer I think of white, gay men.” Camp theory similarly seems limited in its white, gay scope. But camp has never been an exclusively white affair.

There is a burgeoning canon of dramatic works that use camp provocatively and politically to interrogate both race and sexuality. These works—including Robert O’Hara’s Insurrection: Holding History (1999) and Bootycandy (2014), Ione Lloyd’s Dirty Little Black Girls (2009), and the Pomo Afro Homos’ Fierce Love (1991) and Dark Fruit (1991)—occupy a unique site in camp, which I describe as black queer camp. Straddling queer theory and black studies, black queer camp fundamentally represents an insurrection against not just homophobic discourses but also anti-black racist discourses. Simultaneously, it is involved in a project of racial and sexual uplift by re-centering and rendering visible the bodies and narratives of marginalized black queer subjects.

Black queer camp has a bag of tricks it uses to resist intersectional oppression. For example, it often parodies mainstream pop culture such as Gone with the Wind, Roots and other films or TV shows that either misrepresent or fail to represent black and/or queer realities. Comedic parody offers a strategy for reconciling conflicting emotions and complicated subject matter. In addition, black queer camp often reclaims black vernacular and queer-specific sexual lingo, rather than using the master’s language. Reacting against structural oppression and marginalization, black queer camp places black queer lives front and center.

These strategies are at play in Robert O’Hara’s Insurrection: Holding History, a wildly irreverent, revisionist history of the Nat Turner rebellion, the largest slave uprising in American history. O’Hara’s version of the events is an episodic, time-bending, campy fantasia, a counter-narrative against the mainstream white master-narratives about slavery and Nat Turner’s rebellion that have emerged. The main character, Ron, a lonely, black gay grad student struggling to write a thesis about Nat Turner, goes back in time via flying bed to experience the insurrection first-hand. O’Hara incorporates a homoerotic love story, puns, reclaimed queer and black vernacular, campy references to pop culture, and even musical numbers about slavery.

When Ron lands at the 1830s Virginia slave plantation, the scene curiously resembles Dorothy’s landing scene in The Wizard of Oz: Ron’s bed lands on a despised slave owner (read: Wicked Witch of the East) in a new world far from Ron’s home. The slaves even sing a “FULL-THROTTLE, NO-HOLDS-BARRED, 11:00, BROADWAY, SHOWSTOPPING, BRING DOWN THE HOUSE, PRODUCTION NUMBER, Chains and all” (yes, all-caps) celebrating the death of their master, which parodies the munchkins’ song “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.” The unexpected juxtaposition of musical comedy and slavery, evident in the jarring tones of the lines “he raped my sista just fo’ fun” and “he’s dead./not catatonic or merely sleepin’/if ya take one sniff ya com’ back weepin’”—is unnerving and seems to distance the audience from the emotional weight of slavery.

While this campy presentation may seem mocking, it is political and serious. The clash of Broadway and slavery enables us to bear witness to the emotionally and morally weighted issue of slavery. Moreover, the camp gesture of parodying The Wizard of Oz draws parallels between the slave insurrection and the violent struggle for LGBTQ rights. The Wizard of Oz, after all, holds an honored place over the rainbow in gay iconography. In fact, several gay scholars have noted that Judy Garland’s death coincided with the start of the Stonewall Riots, gay history’s most famous insurrection. This signification creates a new intersectional perspective on marginalization at play in Nat Turner’s revolt.

W.E.B. DuBois famously called the slave spiritual “the articulate message of the slave to the world … longing toward a truer world.” In light of the celebrated black tradition of spiritual and protest songs as both resistance and community building, the collision courses of musical theatre and slave plantations seems less out of place. The slaves’ singing is a powerful and political vocalization of discontent with existing social structures and the dream of a better world. Read through the lens of black queer camp, it is clear that the slaves’ production number is intended not just to “BRING DOWN THE HOUSE,” but also to disrupt and dismantle a hegemonic, monolithic representation of plantation life—to bring down the master’s house.

                Illustration by Sophia Terazawa

A cuckoo coo-coos while flying. Nearby, a congregation of red-throated flycatchers quarrel for space among the bougainvillea vines. I imagine them clustered in a circle around two smaller birds, their chirps bursting from the bush as tiny, hostile chants, “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Taller apartment buildings hover around the open sunny terrace of my flat, and I wonder if my neighbors see me giggling like a fool down here.

“Hello!” My landlord’s son, Aditya Das, stands on the second-floor balcony of the house attached to my flat. He shouts my name with a grin.

“Kemon achen?” I respond in Bengali and wave back.

“I’m well!” He responds in English. “Listen, my cousin and I have planned a day trip to Taki.”

Aditya continues to describe this place at the border of West Bengal and Bangladesh. It also happens to be his mother’s ancestral land, and of course, he would be delighted if I could tag along.

The next morning, I wake to the sound of drizzle. Grey-necked house crows circle above, leaving pock marks in the sky. They dive from telephone wires to mango trees, forecasting a downpour with a somber kaaa-kaaa through the sleepy neighborhood called Jubilee Park.

The nervous white egret—in residence at Tollygunge Club, otherwise known as Tolly and “the only Country Club of its kind in India”—skims around a lawn dodging golf balls.

By 06:15 I am dressed and wide-eyed in the middle of morning rush hour. Aditya sits shotgun in our rented car. There is a leak on his side.

By 06:30 we stop at the flat of his cousin, Joyoti-di. She is my mother’s age and a scientist.

By 07:00 Aditya says something about the leak, but of course, there is nothing we can really do about it now that we are on our way.

It continues to rain near Science City. Here are no more birds but machines and a sense of commercial time wrestling with nature. Everyone is watching everyone, waiting for someone, anyone to move in the din of traffic, yet a single hawker is the only sign of humanity that does not sit behind glass. He darts between the rounded hood of a yellow cab ambassador and an auto rickshaw. He wears a fixed smile for his face and the tired knees of a man who seems to have spent his whole life jumping at the screech of tires.

The March shower begins to fall in thick staccato rhythm, as Aditya exclaims, “My God.”

I watch him scramble to plug the leak. In the end, he exhales a kind of sigh that echoes, like brass in a concert hall, like mourning.

We are often unable to agree on the merits (or evils) of commerce and country clubs, and being that he is the middle-aged, middle class son of my Tolly-frequenting landlord, I most certainly never confront him about the meaning of rain in the car.

But again I am mute because like Aditya, I am a visitor from the United States with privileges of my own, and perhaps we have more in common as Asian Americans struggling for a place to call home, split with oceans in between and all its oppressions, contradictions, joyful and unforgiving climates at once. It is precisely this feeling of inarticulate self-awareness that I spend most of my year in Kolkata listening.

First, I listen to the birds, then to rain and the bowels of partition, and finally, the pulse of Bengali hearts that once upon a time bled open in the streets for the decolonization efforts of my mother’s people. Amar nam, tomar nam Vietnam! I also listen to the poetry of Tagore stuck like a magpie-robin in one’s throat, our shared displacement and struggles for autonomy.

Khánh Ly, the diva of Saigon, was my mother’s idol who sang for the dignity of Vietnam. Later in life, her voice would become bold and gravelly. For some reason, her music is all I can think about on the car ride to Taki until Aditya suddenly turns around.

“Here,” he explains with his palms and fingers flowing into a gesture of hands clasped in prayer, “is a confluence of three rivers.” Of the most notable of the three, the Ichamati, it is said that one can almost touch the vegetation of India’s neighbor Bangladesh on the opposite shore. “But we will just have to see when we get there,” states Aditya with a grin.

Meanwhile, we zoom through the dying storm, swerving puddles and blurred shadows. I squint to see out the window. Palm trees look like tongues, lapping at the sky’s tears. There are images of men along the highway. An angry body of water. Child sipping from a coconut. It moves so quickly, this scenery, and I find myself at once spinning, spinning through my own mother’s country.

            “The road from Ho Chi Minh City to the sea conjures a similar feeling of grief,” I wish to say, but I do not say. Instead I sneak glances toward Joyoti-di with the occasional question—“What is your work? How much do you know about your family’s ancestral land in Taki?”

Her hair is smoothed into a single black braid. In the seat between us is her camera bag. For all three of us, this is the first trip to the Indian border, where there is a river-side village that was once called Home to somebody’s Ma, a long, long time ago.

Mother Land beckons

three hours away, where ghosts listen

among half-eaten temples.

Sometime between 11:00 and 12:00, we arrive at the banks of the Ichamati River, its ever-flowing boundary flanked by the occasional patrolman, a waving child, a wading fisherman. Scattered throughout the near horizon, brick kilns stick up like thumbtacks in the cloudless sky. I think I hear birds, too.

This is a guest post from the blog brainfarts, which features pop culture, feminism and cats.

Spoiler warning: Braindead, Carrie, The Fifth Child, Frankenstein, Grace, The Innocents, The Orphanage, Prometheus, Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby, Splice, We Need To Talk About Kevin

Content warning: childbirth, rape, incest, gore

Introduction

I’ve always found pregnancy scary—in fact, “unintended pregnancy” is my most frequent nightmare theme. Therefore, it is not surprising that I find horror films featuring pregnancy, motherhood, and evil babies especially terrifying. Naturally, my fascination is more often shared by women than men; I remember wincing alone all the way through the Prometheus Caesarian scene the way my male friends squirmed through Teeth.

From 70s classics like The Exorcist, Alien, and Carrie to recent films such as We Need To Talk About Kevin, The Orphanage, and Grace, motherhood runs like a rich vein through the horror canon. Many of these films are written or directed by women (which is uncommon, especially in horror) and many of them have been controversial and divisive. As I explore this fascinating and unnerving sub-genre, I will be asking from a feminist perspective why motherhood provides such a fertile ground for horror fiction, and why it resonates so powerfully with (in particular female) audiences. Every monster has a mother, but is there a monster in every mother?

Mother or host, foetus or parasite?

In a parent-child relationship, we usually assume the parent to be powerful and the child vulnerable—a power dynamic that can be inverted in pregnancy. Pregnancy (especially when abortion is not available) carries a fundamental degree of helplessness, for you must submit wholly to an unknown and uncontrollable being that lives not only inside you, but also lives off you. In The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing’s short novel about a happy family destroyed by the arrival of the strange fifth child Ben, the mother Harriet is tortured by the foetus from the beginning of the pregnancy: “Sometimes she believed hooves were cutting her tender inside flesh, sometimes claws.” Before long she begins to think of Ben as “the enemy,” and thus begins their lifelong adversarial relationship.

When the foetus is malignant, a relationship that should be nurturing can easily turn parasitic. In Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary suffers severe abdominal pains throughout her early pregnancy, only for the pains to abruptly stop just as she is about to visit a doctor to get help. Her demonic foetus holds all the power—it deliberately pushes her to her limit, but stops for self-preservation. Much of pregnancy horror relies on the fact that the host is vulnerable: She cannot harm the foetus without harming herself. Think of the tense Caesarian scene in Prometheus (spiritual sequel to the famous “chestburster” scene in Alien).

The uncomfortable passivity of pregnancy is also described in Lionel Shriver’s novel We Need To Talk About Kevin. While carrying her troublesome, and eventually murderous child Kevin, the narrator Eva feels that “I had demoted myself from driver to vehicle, from householder to house.” This helplessness extends well beyond childbirth, as motherhood requires absolute commitment to a human of unknown temperament, who, when it is placed in our arms, has no concept of morality. Eva muses how doctors can test foetuses for Down’s syndrome, but “not test for malice, for spiteful indifference, or for congenital meanness. If they could, I wonder how many fish we might throw back.” Thus the evil child trope plays on our very real fear of not knowing what kind of being we are bringing into the world.

Blood and milk

Pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood are undeniably messy and sometimes even gory, so they are ripe sources of horror. Body fluids play an essential part in the mother-child relationship, from the nutrients shared through the umbilical cord, to the blood shed during childbirth, to the breast milk fed to the infant, to the urine and excrement cleaned up by the mother. These exchanges should signify caring, but in the perverted mother-child relationship, they are tools of warfare, where the body is the battleground.

ouch.

In Grace, Madeline gives birth to a baby that attracts flies, smells strange, and rejects breast milk, instead biting her mother’s breasts to drink her blood. The all-encompassing sacrifice of motherhood is played out as the baby’s demands eventually lead Madeline to murder in order to feed her baby. The symbolic use of blood and milk is used to draw Madeline and her baby as opposites, and to illustrate the transfer of power from mother to child. Madeline the mother is vegan and drinks soy milk; Grace the baby is a cannibal. Madeline becomes anaemic; Grace is strengthened by blood. Madeline is filled with milk the baby will not drink; Grace is filled with her mother’s stolen blood.

Blood is also an important motif in Carrie, as the mother and daughter fight over menstrual blood, pig’s blood, and finally each other’s blood when they kill each other.

Lynne Ramsey’s excellent 2011 film We Need To Talk About Kevin repeatedly shows Kevin playing menacingly with his food, drawing visual parallels between jam and blood, lychees and eyeballs, eggshells and fingernails. This not only foreshadows the violence that Kevin will commit, but also transforms the sustenance supplied by his mother into a weapon. From the beginning, body fluids play a vital strategic role in Kevin’s battle with his mother. He deliberately refuses to potty train in order to force his mother to continue to clean up his excrement; it is this act of malice that finally causes Eva to throw her son, breaking his arm. This act of violence is the first successful communication between Eva and the silent sullen Kevin, who begins to use the toilet immediately after the incident.

Kevin eats a lychee.

When the maternal contract is broken and nurturing turns to warfare, the mother and the child resort to their most primitive resource—their bodies—in the fight.

I can’t see this ending badly!

Woman’s burden alone

In Prometheus, when Dr. Elizabeth Shaw realises that she has been sneakily impregnated by an alien, she rushes to the ship’s automated surgery machine and demands a Caesarian, only to find that the machine caters to male patients only.

Fuck you medpod!

This sly joke perfectly demonstrates the isolating nature of pregnancy in a world run by men that manipulates and dismisses, rather than helps, pregnant women.

Isolation is key to motherhood horror, as the other characters in the story (husbands and fathers in particular) are often absent. In The Orphanage, Laura’s husband abandons her when he can no longer deal with her superstitious beliefs regarding their son’s disappearance and the ghosts of orphans past. Only in his absence does she successfully communicate with the ghosts and find her son. In The Innocents, a lonely governess becomes convinced that the two creepy children in her care are possessed by malevolent ghosts. With no one but the children and an elderly housekeeper to temper her suspicions, her increasing paranoia ends in tragedy.

Even when the mother is not physically alone, she is psychologically isolated as she carries the burden of childrearing, which others often won’t acknowledge is a burden at all. In The Fifth Child, Harriet searches in vain for anyone—her husband, her family, a doctor—to recognise the monstrosity of Ben and the misery of her predicament: “What she wanted, she decided, was that at last someone would use the right words, share the burden.” Instead, she constantly has what she calls “the other conversation” with adults who skirt around the issue, insisting that Ben is normal and that Harriet should try harder.

In many cultures, a mother’s love is seen as a sacred, unquestionable certainty—in fact, the idea of not loving your child is deeply taboo. In difficult mother-child relationships, this taboo provides a further isolating effect, as mothers cannot speak what they feel without risk of censure. In We Need To Talk About Kevin, Eva finds herself unmoved by Kevin’s birth, and forces herself to feign joy. When she tries to communicate her unhappiness to her husband, he shuts down the conversation, saying “Never, ever tell me that you regret our own kid.” Having so far enjoyed a marriage of openness and honesty, Eva is left feeling disconnected from her husband for the first time: “Since when was there anything that one of us was never, ever to say?”

The terror of having to raise an untameable child lies primarily in the unsolvable moral dilemma of the situation. Should the mother, convinced that all children are born good, continue to care for the child in the hope that love cures all? Or should she commit the ultimate crime of motherhood: to abandon or even kill her child? Doris Lessing sums up the dilemma at the heart of The Fifth Child:

We don’t like things that are complicated, that perhaps there isn’t a solution to. And there’s no solution to the problem of this book; there’s no right way to behave. Maybe people get upset by that. I don’t think we like dilemmas. We like to think we can solve everything, but we can’t always. – Doris Lessing

In motherhood horror, other people, especially men, turn away from the dilemma and refuse to see it, and yet still blame the mother for whichever path she chooses. In The Fifth Child, Harriet’s husband David at first dismisses her concerns about Ben’s behaviour, but once Ben’s violence can no longer be ignored, David insists that Ben must be sent away to a cold and cruel institution. When Harriet, unable to leave her child suffering, rescues Ben from the institution, David condemns Harriet for ruining the family. Caught in the double-bind between wifely loyalty and motherly duty, Harriet cannot win whatever she chooses; she is branded as “irresponsible” precisely for taking responsibility for her son.

As these women suffer alone with the impossible task of raising a monster, society treats them as criminals rather than victims.

This pattern is visible in real life too. In December 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother, then travelled to Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed twenty children and six teachers.

Depending on whom you ask, there were twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight victims in Newtown. It’s twenty-six if you count only those who were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School; twenty-seven if you include Nancy Lanza; twenty-eight if you judge Adam’s suicide a loss. There are twenty-six stars on the local firehouse roof. On the anniversary of the shootings, President Obama referred to “six dedicated school workers and twenty beautiful children” who had been killed, and the governor of Connecticut asked churches to ring their bells twenty-six times. Some churches in Newtown had previously commemorated the victims by ringing twenty-eight times, but a popular narrative had taken hold in which Nancy—a gun enthusiast who had taught Adam to shoot—was an accessory to the crime, rather than its victim. – Andrew Solomon, The New Yorker

Lanza’s mother, who lived with and cared for her difficult and troubled son, received much more criticism in the press than did Lanza’s father, who had not seen his son for two years at the time of the killings. This pattern of judgment is mirrored in We Need To Talk About Kevin, in which Eva is utterly ostracised by society following Kevin’s school massacre, even though she has lost her husband and daughter. As it is considered the mother’s job to socialise the child, we assume that any savagery exhibited by the child must be the fault of the mother; it is taboo to wonder whether the child could be incurably vicious. Eva is treated as a criminal, but her only crime was not being a “natural” mother. Does her punishment fit the crime?

“Family values”

As explored above, in these stories the mother often finds herself chastised rather than helped by the people around her, a dynamic that occurs again and again under the euphemism of “family values.” She is repeatedly told what to do for the good of the baby, for the good of the family, and supposedly for the good of herself, all against her own better judgement. In Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary’s husband makes a secret pact with the wealthy Satanists-next-door (the Castevets), agreeing to let the Devil rape and impregnate Rosemary in return for his career advancement. (What a catch!)

Never trust a man who doesn’t like your pixiecut.

The meddling Castevets strongarm Rosemary into drinking a strange herbal drink and visiting their Satanist doctor of choice, much to Rosemary’s physical detriment as she suffers an extremely painful pregnancy.

Even without the Satanic overtones, this is a familiar real-life scenario, as pregnant women around the world commonly face abuse, manipulation, and a denial of their most basic rights, both from authorities and those closest to them. Every year, 15 million girls under the age of 18 are forced (usually by their own families) to marry, often to much older men, leading to rape, forced pregnancy, and poor health because they are physically too young for pregnancy. 2.6 billion women worldwide live in countries where marital rape is not a criminal offence. More than 25% of the world’s people live in countries where abortion is generally prohibited, and many more have no access to abortion due to cultural or religious reasons. It is well-known that pro-life advocates often use the phrase “family values” in their arguments (for example former Governor of Texas Rick Perry), but incredibly, the phrase “family values” was used by the Indian government in 2012 as a reason not to criminalise marital rape, and by the Yemeni government in 2009 as a reason not to introduce a minimum marriage age.

The real-world exploitation and trade of women, their bodies, and their babies is mirrored in motherhood horror fiction. Just as Rosemary’s husband sells his wife’s body for material gain, David the android covertly impregnates Shaw in order to find out the origin of humanity in Prometheus. In The Omen, a priest convinces a father to replace his stillborn baby with a mysterious orphan Damien, without informing his wife. (Spoiler: it doesn’t end well). In Splice, a scientist is raped and impregnated by her own experiment, and is bribed by her employers to keep the baby so that they may profit scientifically. It doesn’t matter whether it is husbands, doctors, priests, scientists, or cult leaders doing the manipulation: all are patriarchal institutions run by men that fail to help the woman in the story.

Among this onslaught of male hostility is an unusual villain in the form of the scheming older woman, such as Madeline’s controlling mother-in-law in Grace, or Mrs. Castevet in Rosemary’s Baby. These characters both manipulate a vulnerable younger woman in order to steal her baby. Mrs. Castevet’s garish clothes and heavy make-up contrast with Rosemary’s fresh-faced look and childish style, emphasising the fertility, innocence, and youth of one, and the “barren” corruption of the other. The old crone archetype is able to wield power in the patriarchy precisely because she is no longer fertile; in this context, by losing her fertility she loses the capacity to be exploited.

Rosemary and Mrs. Castevet

Even when reproductive rights are not at stake, women in motherhood horror find themselves ensnared by “family values” in more subtle ways: In We Need To Talk About Kevin, Eva’s husband insists they must move to the suburbs to fulfill his cosy fantasy of American childhood and in particular, wholesome father-son bonding: “He needs a yard… where we can toss a baseball, fill a pool.” Eva would much rather stay in the city, but she is flatly told by her husband that the family must move for his benefit, and for Kevin’s: “There are two of us, and one of you.” Just as in real life, “family values” conveniently benefit everyone except women.

Sex, sex, sex

It’s normal for parents to find it difficult to adjust to their child’s sexual development. It becomes a lot harder when your child is a demon. Sexuality adds a whole new layer of threat in the relationship between the mother and the monster-child, who often uses age-inappropriate sexuality as a shock tactic. Take for example Linda Blair’s foul-mouthed turn as the possessed child Regan in The Exorcist, or the precociously flirtatious, and maybe-possessed child Miles in The Innocents:

In We Need To Talk About Kevin, Kevin uses sex as a form of domestic terrorism against his mother. Just look at this absolutely terrifying clip, in which an ordinary awkward mother-son moment (walking in on the son masturbating) is transformed into an intensely disturbing encounter through the use of eye contact. (The gif makes it look like she comes back for more, but that’s not what happens.)

The mother’s fear of sexual violence from her offspring is not without basis; in many cases she has already suffered sexual violence—which the demon child implicitly threatens to repeat. Several of the baby-monsters in motherhood horror are conceived by rape: The devil rapes Rosemary to produce Rosemary’s baby, Margaret’s husband rapes her to produce Carrie, and in Prometheus Shaw’s alien offspring rapes the Engineer to produce the original alien in the Alien franchise.

Adding to the terror of the monster’s sexuality is the fear that it may breed and produce more monsters, creating a never-ending cycle of sexual violence. Doctor Frankenstein refuses to fulfil the Creature’s demand for a wife, for fear that they will reproduce. This decision leads to a much worse outcome: The Creature kills (and in some versions, rapes) Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth. In Splice, the experimental human-animal hybrid Dren transforms from a relatively gentle female to a violent male that rapes and impregnates its creator, resulting in a new hybrid. The Alien franchise is full of violent reproduction, as the primary breeding method of the titular alien is forced impregnation that destroys the host.

Dren takes on a male form.

The alien emerges from the Engineer.

The cyclic nature of abuse can be more complex. It is a well-known tragedy that abused children are more likely to become abusive parents. In Carrie, the religious fanatic Margaret shames her daughter Carrie for her first period, believing all female sexuality is sinful. Margaret’s misogynistic abuse of Carrie is a direct result of the patriarchal abuse she herself received, both from extremist Christians and from her own husband.

Margaret shames Carrie for her first period.

It goes without saying that the terror of sexual violence tends to strike female viewers more strongly, but the victims in motherhood horror fiction are not always female—for example, several men (including the male-looking Engineer) fall victim to the alien’s reproductive game in the Alien franchise. In fact, the motherhood horror genre can easily be expanded to the broader genre of what-have-I-created-horror, which includes stories with male creators such as Frankenstein and Little Shop Of Horrors (a dark comedy-musical about a man who eventually turns to murder to satisfy his carnivorous pet plant and achieve fame. Spoiler: it doesn’t end well). What is notable is that male creators such as Doctor Frankenstein tend to be driven by their egos, whereas female creators are more often driven by the love-hate relationship with their offspring.

They start off cute…

…but it quickly gets out of hand.

Interestingly, while same-sex pairs (mothers and daughters, fathers and sons) are more often nemeses, different-sex pairs (mothers and sons, fathers and daughters) are more often of the icky semi-incestuous, or tragic attachment-gone-too-far type. In particular, the unhealthy relationship between an emotionally stunted manchild and his domineering elderly mother is a frequent source of both horror and comedy. This is best shown in one of my all-time favourite films: Braindead, Peter Jackson’s 1992 zombie comedy about a young man so devoted to his controlling mother that he tries to look after her even after she becomes a zombie. (The film also holds the record for most fake blood used in one production!) In a disgusting and hilarious finale, Lionel’s mother turns into a giant naked female grotesque (complete with string of pearls) that literally swallows him back into her womb. Lionel defies his mother for the first time in his life, bursting out of her abdomen, to be symbolically and very literally reborn.

All the effects in Braindead are non-CGI. This actually happened!

As if the incestuous overtones were not enough, many of these stories (such as Frankenstein, Splice and We Need To Talk About Kevin) also involve Oedipal-type plots in which the child-monster kills the spouse of its creator. By effectively replacing the spouse, the monster becomes ever-more miserably entwined with the creator.

Mummy monster?

To all the mothers of demon children who are reading this: I get it. It’s hard to raise little Devil Junior. But have you considered that perhaps you are the monster?

There’s a lot of ambiguity in motherhood horror. The question of whether the child is abnormal or the woman is crazy hangs over many of these stories. In The Orphanage and The Innocents, the ambiguity is supernatural—we are unsure whether the ghosts are in the woman’s imagination. In We Need To Talk About Kevin, the ambiguity is psychological—we are unsure whether Kevin’s behaviour is ordinary childish naughtiness or true malignance (until it is far too late).

It’s interesting to note how this ambiguity is interpreted by different viewers. I came away from We Need To Talk About Kevin believing Kevin was innately evil; shortly after, I was incredulous to hear a male critic say that Kevin’s sociopathy was primarily due to his mother’s coldness. The debate draws on weighty and unresolvable questions such as nature vs nurture, original sin, and whether all children are born innocent.

Whether it’s purely monstrous mothers such as Vera in Braindead and Margaret in Carrie, or essentially good women who end up doing terrible things such as Madeline in Grace and Harriet in The Fifth Child, there is a suggestion throughout the genre that motherhood turns even ordinary women into monsters. The causes of this monstrosity are varied. Some, such as Madeline in Grace, commit their crimes in a desperate attempt to provide for their offspring. Others, such as Eva in We Need To Talk About Kevin and Harriet in The Fifth Child, are pushed by the oppressive demands of motherhood until they lash out. Others, such as Miss Giddens in The Innocents and Laura in The Orphanage, are driven mad by the mental stultification of spending too much time alone with children. Others have an unhealthily possessive and controlling relationship with their children, such as Mrs. Bates in Psycho and Vera in Braindead. Some mothers seem to be trying to live vicariously through their children, such as Mother Gothel in Tangled and Erica in Black Swan. Notably, all these monster-mothers have their roots in the everyday, commonplace difficulties of motherhood.

The dual monstrosity of both mother and child is reciprocal: through the maternal bond, the monstrosity of one rubs off on the other. For example, Mrs. Bates in Psycho is literally a monster of her son’s making, as their identities have become fused.

eek! eek! eek! eek!

Even as enemies, the strength of the maternal bond ensures that mothers and children cannot disentangle. Rosemary decides not to kill her demonic baby, Eva sticks by Kevin even after his terrible crime, and Harriet finds herself unable to abandon her fifth child. As a result, these mothers are morally implicated; they become accessories to their children’s monstrosity.

This love/hate relationship makes mothers and children excellent nemeses. Like all the best enemies—The Doctor and The Master, Sherlock and Moriarty, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vadar—mothers and children are each other’s only worthy adversaries, and yet can’t quite bring themselves to destroy each other. Antagonistic mother-child pairs are even known to stick up for each other at odd moments: Kevin covers for his mother when she breaks his arm in anger; in Prometheus Shaw’s alien offspring saves her from the Engineer; it is possible that Carrie may have killed her mother’s rapist telekinetically from the womb. Whether it’s because of familial loyalty, respect for the creator, protection of the created, or just a dose of “we’re not so different you and I,” mothers and children are destined to engage in an endless battle. When these battles do end, they often result in mutual annihilation; for example Carrie kills her mother in self-defence, only to self-destruct out of grief and rage.

Motherhood horror, even when depicting the supernatural or fantastical, resonates with women because of the very real anxieties and oppression that they face in everyday childrearing. The very qualities that can make motherhood a singularly wonderful experience—such as the chance to nurture, the creation of life, and the strength of the maternal bond—are perverted into tools of horror. We worry that we have the capacity to produce something evil, and by extension, whether there is something evil in ourselves, whether in our wombs or our minds.

So, the top ten tips for raising your demon baby!

1. Don’t expect any help.

2. Expect it to get messy.

3. Your kid’s always going to be hungry.

4. And it might want some weird food.

5. Your child might have some alarming abilities.

6. Don’t let your child have any weapons.

7. Or a tricycle for that matter.

8. You can never quite kill them.

9. You might just be a monster too.

10. You are not going to age well.

All images are the property of their original owners.

On Wednesday, December 9th Brown University’s administration hosted a Faculty Forum to discuss the Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). You can read the plan here, however, we recommend that you also read the list of demands composed by a coalition of graduate students, this critique of the DIAP, and the alternative 5% plan drafted by twelve professors, and the demands of the 1968 Black Student Walkout which have yet to be met by any University administration.

The Faculty Forum began with several white men introducing each other. Provost Richard Locke, the third white man to speak, gave a lengthy summary of “key parts of the plan.” Incorporating playful language throughout, Locke managed to seem both ‘over it’ and invested in “change”. Below we offer you a paraphrased and annotated play by play of the Faculty Forum.

Locke began by detailing “Stronger Financial Aid and Mentoring Support” in the form of supported living and learning environment, expanding resources for centers that support students from “diverse communities,” and expanding mentoring programs. Locke seemed particularly excited about developing professional and educational opportunities for all, as well as developing and running workshops on diversity for faculty and students. Following this point Locke countered himself by admitting that no actual plans have been made towards institutionalizing diversity training for faculty. Locke stated that there are conversations going on and plans need to be “figured out.” He, then, immediately referenced Tricia Rose without any real acknowledgement of her important work. Note: This is more labor going towards a Black woman on this campus doing the job of the administration. Locke concluded this section of the presentation with emphatic remarks of “We are Working on It!”

Note: This increased “diversity” includes, diversity of religion and diversity of intellectual thought, according to Locke. At this point in the forum he has yet to mention any concrete dates, times, or financial allowances for these diversity trainings and workshops.

Locke then spoke of “Investing in People” (which made us think of this institutions steadfast investment in white people). Locke seemed impassioned as he described the failings of past diversity plans and reified his faith in changing hiring practices by declaring “let’s actually do it!” Later, he continuing by claiming “Brown wants to be a diversity leader.”

Note: 20 minutes into his remarks, Locke has yet to utter the word “race”.

Launching into his “Accountability” segment, Locke repeats a question he has surely heard many times, especially from what he calls skeptical groups of students, “Why should we believe you?” His response is to refocus the “locus of energy” into departments and centers and to work towards what makes sense for them. Obviously Locke has selective memory when it comes to historically white departments, i.e. every department except for Africana studies and Ethnic studies. These other departments have repeatedly shirked responsibilities to diversify. Note: several representatives from these departments would later comment at the meeting blaming a “pipeline problem” and placing impetus for change on emerging scholars of color, instead of reckoning with the entrenched white supremacy within their curricula. Locke goes on to describe the highly bureaucratic process that he believes would ensure the greater faculty diversity: plans will be reviewed by a number of people, reports will be written annually, a oversight committee will be created, money disappears into the cracks of the institution.

During the “Accountability” segment Locke seemed to lose his polished rhetoric to deplore the “confrontational style” of some student activists. Locke implied the activists hurt his feelings, by lamenting that some student activists were “less polite than I would have preferred.” He, then, legitimized his white tears by speaking of the five student “activists” who came to apologize to him personally for the behavior of their peers after the reclamation in University Hall.

Note: the use of “activist” (enclosed in quotations) is meant to be read as “sellouts”.

Locke seemed to have discovered the power of listening in the past month. He said it was the student’s stories that inspired him to actually care, and spoke to the ways in which students’ narrative were “not just an intellectual argument but an emotional appeal.” (Note: this is coming to consciousness is emblematic of a whitefeminist ™ framework) Locke mentioned the “anxiety and tension” caused the recent wave of activism on college campuses across the nation. And reassured the audience that “We are working on it!”

Locke emphasizes that everyone should “stay calm,” because “most people are really happy here.”

Sherine Hamdy, associate professor of Anthropology, opens the discussion by slaying, and called for Brown to take a public stand against current events, specifically Trump’s violent rhetoric.

Locke: What can we do? Note: Not Professor Hamdy’s job to have the solution.

Hamdy: Brown can have a response to national media discourse that incites violence, I mean Trump is saying he wants to kill all muslims!

John Savage, An Wang Professor of Computer Science: The official note taker, takes job very seriously, uses a fancy pen and a legal pad. Note: throughout the Forum he only interrupts twice, both times to ask female professors their names and departments (Sherine Hamdy and Tricia Rose) . Savage seemed unsettled that women would speak their minds. One of the four old white men at the front of the room, he loudly proclaimed that the faculty cannot speak for the institution, and that we must uphold the “good name” of this institution (and the free exchange of ideas).

Another older white man whose name and department we did not catch seemed excited to expound on his school days during the Vietnam War and the revolutionary teach-ins he attended. (um lol ok)

Locke: *looks at Tricia Rose for help* Addresses Hamdy’s comment by saying Brown should not get into bi-partisan politics, but we should address the issues collectively. (unclear what collective he is referencing).

Joseph W. Hogan, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Professor of Biostatistics: Y’all forgot about Providence! Notes the “absence” of Providence in the Diversity Action Plan and more generally Brown’s attitude. Emphasizes that Brown has power in the city yet we are not even reaching across the street to Hope High School. Note: Brown’s Department of Public Safety routinely racially profiles and harasses Hope High School students. Note: Hogan acts as if he’s the first person to think of including the input of Providence community members; meanwhile student activists are working with community representatives in collecting feedback on the plan and drafting demands, not presuming to know what’s best for the community.

Nancy Khalek, Associate Professor of Religious Studies: “What has been exposed is that Brown, like the nation, is not value neutral.” The University does have values, we can revoke honorary degrees (*cough* Bill Cosby *cough*), and it would be irresponsible to pretend we are “clinically neutral.”

John Logan, Professor of Sociology: Seemed upset that the online feedback form was closed, viewed it as “sharply truncating the dialogue we can have with each other.” Hates seeing the administratively filtered responses to the Diversity Action Plan. Note: Although Professor Logan continued to out himself as someone who is “old-fashioned” and still believes in the Civil Rights era politics (whoops!). Intention aside, his comment did illuminate the administration’s mechanisms for breaking down faculty unity and limiting organizing possibilities.

Locke: We closed the feedback form, because people were attacking each other’s comments instead of commenting how I wanted. Now we are collecting the data and will continue to have meetings like this. Yay meetings! Note: the administration loves meetings *unless it’s with “skeptical” and “confrontational” students.*

James F. Egan, Professor of English: Professor Egan serves on the Tenure, Promotions, and Appointments Committee, so he knows how few departments reward the kind of scholarship that included the diversity Locke keeps referencing. Implies that the tenure process is fucked up.

Wendy J. Schiller, Professor of Political Science, Professor of International and Public Affairs, Chair of Political Science: Gimme a definition of diversity! *The hundreds of students who have been asking this exact question 5ever roll their eyes*

Liza Cariaga-Lo, Vice President for Academic Development, Diversity and Inclusion (the only person at the front of the room who is not a white man): We are focusing on historically domestically underrepresented groups, specifically Black, Hispanic/Latino, Native and Pacific Islanders. I embrace diversity in an intersectional framework. We must also specifically support our students from the Middle East.

David Josephson, Professor of Music: Hi! I’m racist! Was condescending and rude towards Professor Hamdy’s comment about Trump and “corrected” her to say that, in fact, Trump doesn’t want to kill all muslims, he just wants to *deport* them. Doesn’t see any reason to privilege Middle Eastern students, cited a student from rural China and another from rural Africa who also needed support and who had trouble assimilating. Didn’t seem able to grasp that people from many communities face difficulties and hardships. Note: Since when is assimilation a good thing?  HUGE FAN of free speech, felt very “bullied” by a group of faculty on campus. Cites Professor Matthew Guterl’s article “Weaponizing Free Speech” as rhetoric that shouldn’t be at this University. Note: Professor Josephson thought a woman wrote “Weaponizing Free Speech” and seemed pretty sexist tbh. He also was involved in writing the vehement defense of (racist) free expression in the Brown Daily Herald. He felt very strongly that “privilege isn’t just white” it is also tenure. And concluded his remarks by emphasizing that although people may read him as white, he identifies strongly as Canadian and Jewish as well.

Jose Itzigsohn, Professor of Sociology: “Diversity has happened where people want it to happen” nothing is standing in the way of diversity. This plan will only work if the administration makes it work by instituting clear incentives and disincentives for diversity. What (the fuck) is intellectual diversity???

Leah VanWey, Associate Professor of Sociology: Um, also data is socially constructed so…. We need to figure out what data is meaningful to us and how is the best way to use the data constructively, currently data obfuscates LGBTQ+, 1st gen, and disability identities.

Rebecca Burwell, Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences: We need space!!!

Locke: Gentrification! I love the Tri-Lab!

Ken Miller, Professor of Molecular Biology: I LOVE THE PLAN! Shockingly Professor Miller’s remarks didn’t expose his racial animus until halfway through the first sentence, when he mentioned the free exchange of ideas (David Josephson snaps appreciatively). He seemed really upset that some students don’t feel safe voicing their ideas and commends Reason@Brown. Seemed worried that a description of diversity would not include him (as white man). “Hope we don’t become an echo chamber” of non-racist rhetoric lol!

Tricia Rose: Honestly over all these people. We have a pipeline problem, but also a subfield problem, as in folx don’t understand that you can talk about race in the sciences, etc. Most departments and fields of research are too compartmentalized. We’ve constructed a narrow pipeline, by not giving students of color space to acknowledge their identities within more traditional disciplines.

FIN.

When a friend mentioned  she was going to the Millions March in New York, I knew that if I was determined to be an ally, I had to go. I made the trip with confidence. I was being the “right” kind of ally and all of my White friends who could not make it to the protest because of college exams applauded me for going.

Expressing allyship at the protest, however, was no simple matter: chanting “don’t shoot” together threw the contrasts between Black and non-Black protesters into harsh relief. To me, the words “don’t shoot” represent my opposition a moral wrong in the world around me; to the Black protestors next to me, the stakes were higher. They were chanting to have their humanity recognized by the state.

My history as a person of color is not written in Black– I am half Chinese and half Iranian, and my physical appearance has rarely elicited an offensive comment, let alone a threat to my physical safety. Moreover, my family’s socioeconomic class has afforded me many of the same privileges that my White friends had growing up – and in some cases even more. While institutions that I have been a part of notice my brown skin, they also tell me that my voice matters, that I am important, that my well-being is their concern.

The complex confrontation with my own privilege precipitated by the Millions March combined with the fact that it was the first protest I had ever been to made me acutely aware of the fact that I had no idea what I was doing—intellectually and literally. Luckily, friends and peers (Black and non-Black activists) gently corrected me and explained the etiquette of protesting through their actions so that I could protest as respectfully as I intended to. They prioritized Black empowerment with everything they did. They reminded me to fall back so that Black people were always in front of me in whatever cohort I was marching with. They never started chants, but almost always enforced Black voices with their own. They took pictures of signs that reminded protesters that “#BlackLivesMatter” is not only about Black men, but also about Black womyn, LGBTQ and gender non-conforming folks.

Pretty soon, I knew that I had caught on to at least some of the politics of protesting from the way I was reacting to what I saw around me. The White womyn marching next to me leading chants at hoarse shout was giving me a queasy feeling—especially when I noticed Black protestors chanting back in quieter voices.  She was assuming a position of power by taking the lead rather than following Black protesters, enacting yet another way that White voices speak over, and silence, Black voices in society.

Reflecting on the kinds of discomfort I felt during and after the Millions March raised questions for me that I recognized cut to the heart of allyship. What role should I take on in opposing the anti-Black police state? How does that role look literally in political spaces? And, thinking of the broader questions raised by the Millions March, what role should I adopt in to combatting the vast apparatus of American racism?

Considering these questions has required coming to terms with the fact that the way the state is organized and the paradigms that shape institutions I am part of mostly work in my favor because I am not Black. Deciding to practice allyship therefore requires– as Judnick Mayard recently said – feeling “confusion, pain, [and] disgust” over the recognition of a system that assures me that I matter by simultaneously devaluing  Black lives. It is only in the moments that I recognize, challenge and destabilize the oppressive status quo that I am being an ally.

Of course the “leader” and “ally” categories at any given #BlackLivesMatter event varies; it is not always so simple as all Black people are leaders and everyone else should stand back. In different situations, class, race, gender, sexuality, and other power dynamics influence whose voices should be privileged as the leaders and in turn who assumes the role of ally. For example, at a protest this fall in Providence, organized by End Police Brutality PVD, working-class organizers expressed frustration when Black students from Brown took the microphone to share their stories with the media. Brown students have the privilege of retreating to College Hill when they get tired of being vocal about local issues. This is not to say that there are not oppressive Department of Public Safety racial practices on Brown’s campus, but to say that Brown students were, and are, more protected from state violence than Providence community members.

Recognizing my own privileges and what they mean for my allyship was– as one of my wise friends says – not rewarding, but significant.

It has meant feeling uncomfortable with things that I never knew I was used to– e.g. the erasure of Black people from TV shows that take place in New York. It has meant recognizing white apologists among dear friends. It has meant feeling profound discomfort with the fact that when I leave a protest, I am embraced by privilege that excludes most other human beings.

Becoming an ally in #BlackLivesMatter means alternating between sometimes stepping forward, but more often sitting back as a student. In honor, of the New Year, I have made a series of resolutions that I intend to keep and that I hope will at least can spark a discussion of how to be an ally and at most model the kind of ally that supports and empowers the #BlackLivesMatter movement. For me, thinking of how to participate in this movement as a non-Black person has required constant exploration and is an ongoing process. Nevertheless, I have decided to commit to four major resolutions in allyship that I have gleaned from the news, activists, and friends. I encourage other allies (or soon-to-be allies) to do the same.

1) I will educate myself continuously about the anti-Black police state and racial oppression of Black people (including the ways they effect womyn and LGBTQ and gender non-conforming individuals) in America.

I will read the news, explore social media, and use the considerable resources afforded to me by my university to learn about racism and how it interacts with classism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression. I will focus on reading sources from Black voices and communities that experience increased risk of police violence. I will seek out the opinions of Black friends and activists around me while understanding that it is not their responsibility to educate me. I will share what I learn with my community.

2) I will be an ally to Black people first in the movement.

Allies in this movement must show solidarity by prioritizing Black empowerment above all else, including their own growth as individual activists which may mean stepping further back in society than they may be used to doing.

For example, White people have struggled in protests to let Black people be the literal voices of their own movement. A similar thing happens on the Internet, where #CrimingWhileWhite and #AllLivesMatter detract from Black people’s own stories. The debates emerging among non-Black communities of color are having a similar diluting effect—prioritizing the question of their own oppression over the story of Black oppression. As an ally to this movement, I will support Black people first and foremost.

3) I will attend protests respectfully where I am welcome.

Structural violence against Black people is a human rights issue and requires massive political action from Black and non-Black people alike. However, when I go to those protests, I will follow the lead of Black activists. Out of respect for Black people and the movement’s intentions, I will not take the lead, but rather blend into the crowd of voices behind them showing support.

 4) I will be an ally in my personal spheres.

Friends are often the greatest teachers; Black friends have been certainly my most important teachers on the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The most sure-fire way to combat racism is to start on the individual by ensuring that one’s private sphere emphasizes inclusion, compassion, and love. I commit to doing this every day.

Many thanks to Rheem Brooks, Leila Blatt, Sabrina Lee, and Jamie Marsciano for their help in writing this article.

Yesterday marked the end of our latest retrograde cycle, guiding a supposed return to normalcy whereby Mercury, the House of Communication and Travel, returned direct.

For those uninitiated into astrological readings, retrograde tells of a celestial phenomenon indicated through the illusion of Mercury’s backward movement, which intensifies the potential for mishaps, miscues, and minor injury.

Ask any personal victim of the retrograde and they’ll complain of crashed hard drives and friend fights, missing out on much-needed make-out sessions in favor of lovers’ quarrels. This particular iteration of Mercury retrograde, dovetailing with its onslaught of winter storms, mercifully left us yesterday—begging, then, the question of what it leaves in its wake, or whether it’s left us at all.

The mass proliferation of astrological awareness, even amongst the most hardened of feminist killjoys, can at times close off the critical outlook necessary to identify how mishaps and inconvenience come into being. Breaking your phone is inconvenient because replacing it’s expensive. Replacing it’s expensive because it’s made to be expensive, and yet profitable for a very few. Likewise, those having to choose between long commutes and lost wages reveal the effects of funds siphoned away from aging infrastructure, so that their hardships are borne from the failings of municipal administration.

Inconvenience, accidents, and their political tenors must not be divorced from their broader contexts because inconvenience is distributed unequally across the overlapping metrics of commuter time and socioeconomic standing. And as with safety, convenience is built at the cost of its opposite element. It’s no accident that freshly shoveled sidewalks are the result of labor, and inflict physical and invisible tolls. Unpredictable expenses are created to be crushing and dangerous for some more than others: annoyance for some, and displacement for others.

Where astrology finds much of its appeal is in its ability to guide us through those potential hardships that await us in our imminent futures. Conventional wisdom on the Mercury retrograde dictates that we should practice cautiousness, avoid short-term plans, and be wary of interpersonal dynamics—which, albeit sensible enough, falls short of more radical ways of looking at disruption and inconvenience. The challenge of wedding systemic critique with egocentric astrology is the challenge of looking beyond personal convenience, and advancing an almost New Age attempt to meld self-consciousness with macrocosmic states of economic and social injustice.

The retrograde survival guides populating our digital spheres tell us that, despite retrograde’s infamous difficulties, it’s also a period marked by enhanced intuition, creating opportunities to find those areas where we are stuck, and regain fresh perspective in our routine lives. One way to interpret this is from the familiar vantage point of careerism and romantic fidelity: a look outward at job opportunities, and a jealous gaze toward past or present partners. But what if we gifted new meaning to the retrograde itself, and one that would endanger rather than sustain the mythologies of autonomy and self-reliance?

Winter storms aside, the events of the last few months have shed a new light on just how bad things have been in the U.S. for its most marginal populations—casting necessary shade at our nation’s carceral politics and unjust justice system, with heightened sensibility for the everyday subjection of black and brown bodies. Where the logic of the temporary retrograde fails us is in these deep pockets of injury, and in realizing that at the intersections of low-income, trans, and POC life, the conditions of retrograde suspension can persist beyond the movement of the stars, in areas that vulnerability, financial burden, and medical hardship are weighted most.

Powering through the retrograde may prove an attractive option for some. It’s more comfortable, after all, to weather the storm in shelter, as if things could return to normalcy, if only we waited long enough. But for those suspicious of the current order of things, such a solution will never be sufficient —precisely because the logic of ‘going about one’s business’ serves the ideology of going about one’s business. Maximizing industriousness undervalues the power of disruption to dislodge us from what normalcy has come to mean.

Looking at the various snowstorms in tandem with the disruptive tactics of Black Lives Matters tells a different story of inconvenience: roadblocks made up of bodies hoping to reroute business-as-usual thinking, which would fold the practices of police brutality and mass incarceration into the politics of the everyday. If anti-black racism is what counts for normal, then it cannot be allowed to proceed unchecked. For those of us cheering the end of this retrograde cycle, anticipating the slow warm of seasonal change, we should not forget what came just before so much powdered snow had clogged up our roadways and bridges, when demonstrators poured into the streets to make up their own rising tide.

As the Mercury retrograde ends, sparing us its break-ups and breakdowns, perhaps the best advice is to embrace its cause, and not to ameliorate that feeling of discomfort with everyday events. For casting a closer look at society, just off of stars and snow drifts, reveals the deep marks of an inequity immune to Mercury’s movements. Which is not to say that we should ever be okay with being not okay, but rather, that things have never been okay, and finding serenity in such a world will ask more of us than good planning.  Coping with enduringly fucked conditions will always entail channeling some measure of righteous anger and frustration, embodying, in a way, the spirit of the Mercury retrograde, which is not to find occasion to smooth things over, but to expose and transgress this dysfunctional present for which we have few easy solutions.

*content notice: mention of sexual assault

“I was trapped. It was pitch black and there was no air. I cried for my mother but all I could hear were the cries of my colleagues. Several dead bodies were lying around me. I spent two days under the rubble craving water. I did not know when it was day or when it was night. It was all the same to me under the rubble. And they never found my mother’s body.”

Mossammat Rebecca Khatun, a survivor of the 2013 garment factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, details her anguishing terror and loss to BBC News. Accounts like hers – of losing limbs and family members in the fiery rubble of Rana Plaza factory – emblazoned front pages around the world, and elicited international compassion for the plight of the thousands of workers who were crushed and killed. In this moment of global attention, the voices of survivors illuminated an oft-forgotten human rights crisis: the exploitation of garment laborers, who toil in unsafe conditions for paltry wages to make clothes for Western shoppers.

Even after outcry following the factory’s collapse, the average Bangladeshi garment worker only makes $68 per month. To highlight a lifestyle disparity, a point of comparison: the average American household throws away 68 pounds of clothing per year. This high turnover of trends and clothes in the West perpetuates a need for laborers to relentlessly mass-manufacture billions of goods. A globalizing economy increases opportunities for fashion corporations to export work overseas, where fewer unions and labor protections exist, and political or economic instability heighten susceptibility to exploitative labor conditions. Corporations cut production costs and increase their profit margins by disregarding necessary maintenance in overseas factories and compensating laborers with meager wages. Illustrating this reliance on global supply chains, clothing giants from the US, Canada, and Europe – including J.C. Penny, Benetton, Sears, Mango, and Wal-mart – sourced clothing from the Dhaka factory. In 2011, Ron Johnson, CEO of J.C. Penny and one of the highest paid businessmen in the fashion industry, pocketed a jarring $53,281,505 – a number which looms staggeringly above the $68/month incurred by his Bangladeshi employees.

Over a year after the collapse of Rana Plaza factory, the media spotlight has shifted focus, and the victims have been consequently forgotten. The corporations responsible for the factory’s conditions promised $40 million to the families of the victims, but not even half has been paid. J.C. Penny has paid nothing. But when we look beyond the once-sensationalized cases of the 1,129 workers killed and additional 2,500 injured in Dhaka, we see the millions of other garment laborers around the world struggling unnoticed through similarly exploitative conditions, long hours, and nominal wages.

The collapse of Rana Plaza elucidates the tip of a pressing, worldwide human rights violation. Made in a Free World, a non-profit focused on eradicating human trafficking in fashion supply chains, reports that in Uzbekistan, 1.5 million people forcibly harvest cotton that constitutes the fibers of cheap clothes around the world. Of the more than 250 million children who work worldwide, many labor in garment sweatshops. Made in a Free World also asserts that child laborers harvest 40% of all gold mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – a country in which mineral extraction constitutes 90% of national revenue. Investigators have unearthed similar statistics of slave-based gold mining in Peru, one of the world’s leaders in gold production. A recent report compiled by US labor-rights organization, Verite, described children under the age of ten who work long days in exchange for a mat to sleep on and measly food. The report contends that these child laborers face high risks of mercury poisoning, the girls endure elevated rates of sexual assault, and overseers threaten workers with violence. However, as the fourth-largest producer of gold, these Peruvian slave-mined minerals adorn jewelry across the globe. In addition to hazardous workplace conditions, prolonged hours, and infinitesimal wages, garment laborers at the bottom of the supply chain rarely receive benefits; the International Labor Rights Forum indicates that sweatshop workers seldom secure compensation for sick days or work-based injuries.

Charles Kernaghan, Director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, highlights the reality of conditions in a sweatshop in northern Bengal that make sweaters for expensive European lines: “It was one of the worst factories we’ve seen. There was child labor, people were being beaten, cheated of their wages — and wages were very, very low. Male supervisors would constantly press young women to have sex with them.” Kernaghan further reports that when laborers organized to protest the conditions, police officers surrounded them, beat them, and tortured their leaders. Sweatshop owners fired anyone who picketed.

In another report, Charles Kernaghan assessed the labor conditions in the largest garment factory in Jordan, where he described management who “hired young women from Asia, stripped them of their passports, forced them to work grueling hours for awful pay under a managerial regime that subjected them to routine rape. One woman hung herself in the factory’s bathroom with her own scarf after allegedly being raped at the hands of a manager.” While reports of rapes and mysterious disappearances from the site persist, Wal-mart, the factory’s top customer, continues to purchase nearly 75% of their products. Corporations are often aware of exploitation in the lower rungs of their supply chains but unwilling to change convenient, cost-cutting practices.

We must take action to hold the corporations accountable. Slavery and exploitation permeates many American lives through our consumption of cheap, mass-manufactured, internationally produced goods. Labor organizations, anti-human trafficking agencies, and governmental departments work to dismantle corruption that allows for labor exploitation to continue, but as consumers and voters, we also hold power to fight human rights violations in the garment industry. We have the mechanisms to challenge inhumane labor practices and remove the shackles of human trafficking, but in order to elicit change, we need to incite widespread commitment to the cause. If we aspire to live in a sweatshop-free world, we must start with our everyday conversations, shopping lists, and actions. Boycott exploitative corporation when financially able, join labor movements, pressure accountability for cleaner supply chains, and vote for legislation that protects laborers. Through our collective action, we work towards positive systemic change and a freer future.

 Do you smell the spring? Yeah, me neither. W/e it’s April!

Already over it? Same.

So in honor of wanting it to be spring when it’s really not and  **~radical self-care~**  ima keep this month’s forecasts real short. Because we all know that only like 4 days this month will actually matter. The rest are gonna go by as a blur like always.

~click to see your reading~
Aquarius (January 21^st – February 18^th)
Pisces (February 19^th – March 20^th)
Aries (March 21^st – April 19^th)
Taurus (April 20^th – May 20^th)
Gemini (May 21^st – June 20^th)
Cancer (June 21^st – July 22^nd)
Leo (July 23^rd – August 22^nd)
Virgo (August 23^rd – September 22^nd)
Scorpio (October 23^rd – November 22^nd)
Libra (October 23^rd – November 22^nd)
Sagittarius (November 23^rd to December 22^nd)
Capricorn (December 23^rd – January 20^th)

Aquarius

January 21^st – February 18^th

The 4th may have meant news from a sibling or the need to sign or rethink an agreement. Eclipses can accelerate our timetables and this one may have done that for you.

Mars will be in Taurus, persuading you to work on situations at home all month.

The new moon on April 18 may bring yet another agreement or contract for pondering.

Expect fun and plenty of laughter on April 22 from Venus and Jupiter all month.

April 26-27 will be your best days of month with Venus and Uranus, the planet of surprise, flirting.

Pisces

February 19^th – March 20^th

You were doing some serious brainstorming last week. But the best ideas are yet to come!  With Mar perfectly angled against Neptune and the Sun and Neptune in harmony, the 12th and 26th have that little light bulb above your head shining bright.

The upcoming new moon will be the best of 2015 for you, Pisces. It will give you the energy to burn through projects and help you develop new skills.

Aries

March 21^st – April 19^th

Big things are popping for you this month, Aries! Love, romance, and creativity are in the stars for the first week of the month when Jupiter syncs up with the Sun. But the full moon lunar eclipse on April 4 might be a hiccup in your week. Lunar eclipses bring feels, sometimes heavy, and may initially bring shock waves to one close relationship. So expect some s^h^i^t to go down, but soon enough Jupiter will go direct and bring peace to that temporary nonsense. After the 8th, your fifth house of love and romance will take precendence in your life. Live that up. Get it on.

Some simple arithmetic for the 12th:

Mars + Neptune = $$$

The new moon signify beginning and closures. This is especially true if the new moon is in your sign. It will be in Aries on April 18  and will likely begin an entirely new chapter of your life, doubly so if your birthday falls on or near this date. O M F G. Damn. Take that for what you will.

Taurus

April 20^th – May 20^th

This past full moon lunar eclipse probs brought about sudden changes on the job in regard to a project or your dynamic with a collaborator.

Everyone’s fav planet, Venus, steps into the light on the 11th bringing you a newly found gift of gab through the first week of May.

Look forward to making strides (or at least turtle steps) re: health and well-being once the new moon of April 18 hits. Mars and Mercury are chillin with Pluto April 21-22, casting light and energy on your ninth house activities. Expect a breakthrough re: some time-sensitive project.

With Venus and Jupiter aligned, the weekend of April 25-26 might just shit some gifts on you. Yay. <3 Gifts.

Gemini

May 21^st – June 20^th

The first week of the month may have brought you a healthy helping communication and authority. Yay. And also troubles with regard to romance. Nay. But you should be over it by now.

With Venus all up in Gemini, anytime after the 11th is perfect for a new look if you were considering a little spraaaaang make-over. Do it up.

The new moon in Aries on April 18 will put some spice in your strut, heating up your social life in in the last two weeks of the month. This spellz: n e w f r i e n d s

Take advantage of the fruits of Venus, which will be in your sign starting on the 22nd: Travel.

Got things to do? Who cares. Travel.

Travel. Travel. Travel.

Cancer

June 21^st – July 22^nd

Cancer, this lunar eclipse that shat on everyone really affected your domestic matters. That’s bummer.

Pluto will retrograde from April 16 to September 24 and during that time you may change your mind about the way you would like to proceed with a partner or to plan the future with a romantic spouse. Taking a short pause for a few months may be just right to get things back on track.

The new moon in Aries on April 18 will bring great opportunity to make a bigger name for yourself in your career and in the two weeks that follow.

Got a big event ahead? Hopefully it’s scheduled for after the 22nd, when Venus and Jupiter give you the extra confidence boost to take center stage. If not……………………….¯_(ツ)_/¯

Leo

July 23^rd – August 22^nd

Your best day of the month already passed. It was the 2nd. Jupiter was in your sign, spelling luck and good fortune for you. If you don’t feel like it found you, you should reflect on that day and project luck onto everything. Because it was a lucky day. Just think in worst case scenarios and you’ll realize how good of a day it truly was.

That lunar eclipse. That full moon tho. It brought the TRUTH. Yeah.

The new moon on April 18 will bring in lots of exciting opportunities, and surround you with opportunities to link up with some very important peeps.

You will hit a creative streak on Wednesday, April 29, when the Sun and Neptune will be in sync.

Virgo

August 23^rd – September 22^nd

Jupiter has been retrograding since early December, so everyone’s luck was off this long long winter. However, it will turn direct on April 8. Virgo, you can expect extra extra energy from Jupiter re: goodness, posi vibes, and overall happiness. You may reach previously unattainable goals. And when you find yourself in need of help and support, it will find you.

Mars in Taurus, your counter pole which is great for you. You’ll be a natural leader in all things from April 11th onward.

You might just be treated to a free dinner on the 29th. Maybe even lunch too.

Overall, you shouldn’t be over April like the rest of us.

Libra

September 23^rd – October 22^nd

Some S*H*I*T probably went down over the full moon lunar eclipse last week which was in your sign. I ended up sobbing, you probs did too. We were all feeling some sort of way. But it’s chill now. That S*H*I*T was hopefully clarified. Libras bounce back fast: that’s what’s up. If not #whoops you should’ve taken advantage of that moony energy…

Jupiter will turn direct April 8 and allow your social life to sizzle from that point on. Catch that: I said sizzzzzzle. Mmmhm. Jupiter has been retrograde since early December 2014. But with the house of good fortune and posi vibes going direct, you’ll be on cloud nine making strides in friendships that may have been on the back burner for the past few months. Venus ~~our planet~~ will also be in Libra for the duration of this month. A good time to update your look. It’ll be keeping you charismatic and charming as can be from April 11 to May 7. Use to your discretion.  Venus will be feeling itself and flirting with the bringer of surprises, Uranus, so look forward to BIG news.

Scorpio

October 23^rd – November 22^nd

Time was not on your side over the full moon of the 4th. But luckily that was just one day. Especially with the new moon of the 18th bringing you mad assignments and projects, you’ll need time management more than ever.

Jupiter will go direct on April 8 = compliments. We all love compliments.

Tuesday the 21st will probably be your best day of the month. So keep hope alive! That one day is apprroaching. The rest don’t matter that much.

Sagittarius

November 23^rd to December 22^nd

Your fav day is also the 2nd. Same advice as Leo.

The new moon whirls into your love sector on April 18.

OH

baby

Capricorn 

December 23^rd – January 20^th

Mars will be in Taurus all month. Earth luvs earth luv the earth. You’ll be in a romantic headspace for the duration of the month. Take some time to daydream.

The new moon of the 18th will give you the restorative energy to make big changes with regard to your home, family life, or living situation. Add ten days to plant some seeds. Water them. Watch em grow.

An assignment that you are passionate about will bring you bountiful rewards on or around April 22.

Illustrations by Emma Lloyd

“But don’t you feel naked out there, and objectified?”
“Who are you performing for exactly?”
“These things happen in that many cities outside of the Caribbean?”
“Wait, children are in these parades too?”

I was having a little Carnival Tabernacle, and was feeling myself getting slightly annoyed by my friend’s colleague who seemed adamant about questioning me regarding all things Carnival related. My friend wanted to see photos of my costume, and other costumes from parade day, so I obliged and began scrolling through one of my online albums. That is when the comments began.

Her colleague leaned over to see the photographs and began to shake her head in what seemed like disapproval. She then followed up her actions with this line of questioning. To say the least, she was killing my vibe. Just days before, I had been on a boat ride, on the top deck, feeling the gentle sea breeze, as my nimble movements drew the attention of those on passing ships; before that — I was On Di Road, chippin down Hollywood Boulevard and wukking up behind a big truck to the blaring sounds of soca music. When Denise Belfon’s “Wining Queen” came on, I showed the tourist and onlookers who lined the world-renowned boulevard exactly why I am often referred to by that nickname. It was my 2014 theme song, and of course it still applies for 2015. The night before that, I conducted myself, with absolutely No Behavior inside of a fete. As we awaited the arrival of soca artists, the Dj played some of the biggest tunes of the year, and I found myself up on the stage, and up on some shoulders more than once. I will stop here before providing any additional and incriminating evidence, of “just how bad I does gwan”.

Anyhow, the whiny and nasally sound of this woman’s voice snapped me back into reality. There was no time to reminisce, when this woman seemed to be demanding answers to her inquisition. So, I turned to look directly at her, and she seemed so confused. It was as though she was trying to mask her curiosity with ethnocentric disgust. I suppose that she was wondering how I could be this unapologetic feminist, radio personality, and women’s rights activist that she had heard about, and still take part in something like this. I suppose that one of her comments — “you write about patriarchy, yet willingly wear those costumes”, was an attempt to get under my skin and shame me.

Unfortunately for her it didn’t work –I have never been one to feel shamed easily. If I do something, I own up to it. If I want to dance Wotless, I do just that. If others disapprove of my actions, I start humming Janet Jackson’s “What have you done for me lately?”, and assure them that I do not care. I figured out long ago that people are going to talk regardless, so life should not be lived according to what they will say. As award winning novelist, feminist, and activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once stated, “There are people who dislike you, because you don’t dislike yourself”.

In that same vein, there are people who will try to make you feel ashamed of yourself, your actions, your decisions, your past, and yes, your culture, when you do not feel the need to be ashamed. I realized that I was not obligated to answer this woman’s questions, or explain myself, but decided to do so regardless. As a woman of Caribbean descent living in the United States, this is something that I have grown accustomed to doing. Whether it is explaining geography (we are all not from Jamaica), cultural cuisine (yes, people eat oxtails and even iguanas), and responding to stereotypes (not everyone smokes ganja; besides, my father smokes enough for both of us!) So, I decided to turn to Judgmental Judy and finally respond.

“But don’t you feel naked out there, and objectified?”
No, I do not. The fact that there are hundreds of people dressed the same way may have something to do with that. There are people of every size wearing these costumes as well. Skinny, muscular, full figured, curvy…all doing so without an ounce of shame, and isn’t that a feminist act? There is no room for body shaming in Carnival. It is also the ultimate sex-positive experience. One is free to love their bodies, all while embracing, celebrating, and even flaunting their bodies if they want to. Further, no one will call you a whore or a slut for doing so. It is a time of ultimate freedom, when even the most modest person, removes her restraints, lets go, releases some stress, and just lives in the moment.

“Who are you performing for exactly?”
In short: Me, myself, and I. Sure, there may be many onlookers lining any given parade route, but most people do not look at their participation in Carnival as an opportunity to perform for others. No one is cutting them a check to make that long trek down the road, dancing behind trucks with blaring sound systems. The same goes for the women who you see gyrating their hips and pushing back dey bumpa in ah fete. To some it may look like they are putting on a show, or dancing to catch a man’s attention, when the truth is that they are simply whining. I cannot tell you how many times I have lost myself in the music, eyes closed, back dampening with sweat, with my hands in the air. At times, it actually seems like there is no one left in the room, and you truly become possessed.

“These things happen in that many cities outside of the Caribbean?”
Yes! The Caribbean has always been a site of constant migration, and these post-colonial societies have produced a massive Diaspora that has formed cultural enclaves in many cities and countries around the world. You can find masqueraders in Berlin, London, Toronto, and a many cities in the United States: New York, Philadelphia, Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Charlotte NC, Houston, Los Angeles, and the list goes on. Wherever Caribbean people go, we carry our flags and culture. Actually, when including the Carnivals that actually take place in the islands, one can attend Carnival every month of the year. There is bound to be one taking place.

“Wait, children are in these parades too?”
Yes! There are even children parades, where they wear age-appropriate costumes and are allowed to take part in the festivities. Children wait all year for Carnival just as much as adults.

The conversation pointed out a problem that many feminists from the Global South have with Western feminism, and that is that; it often continues to focus solely on the experiences of women in Western cultures; and marginalizes the viewpoints of non-white and non-Western women. This narrow focus on a singular – white- experience leads to a false sense of sisterhood, leaving differences among women to be ignored. This creates the notion that the experiences of white middle class is the norm.
It was for that reason that this woman felt she had the right to speak to me in such a condescending manner, chastise me, and question my authenticity as a feminist.

I did not feel obligated to respond to her line of questioning. However, I did so as a means to push back against and reject Western feminism’s homogenizing approach to liberation. Feminism is suppose to work to eliminate all the Isms: sexism, racism, classism, ableism, as well as ethnocentrism. My only hope is that my taking the time to explain a little more about Carnival, my decision to wear a costume, my love affair of dancing as wotless as I want to be, and not being ashamed of it, led her to reconsider her definition or views of what a feminist should look and act like. Feminists can march, protest, write, and roll it! We are multidimensional beings living in a three-dimensional world.

Lastly, I am making it a point to experience as many Carnivals as possible, so if you find yourself going to check out the festivities. Look for me, I will be Di gyal behaving di worst.

Cherise Charleswell, BA, MPH is a Bio-cultural anthropologist, self-proclaimed Womanist, author/writer, public health researcher/practitioner. She is the creator and host of Wombanist Views RADIO, a Segment Producer for Pacifica Radio’s Feminist Magazine (90.7FM KPFK), Women’s Issues Chair of The Hampton Institute, and the Chair of the National Women’s Studies Association’s Social Justice Task Force. Cherise is of Caribbean descent with heritage from numerous islands: St Thomas, St John, Tortola, Puerto Rico, St Kitts, and Anguilla. She is currently releasing Walking in The Feminine: A Stepping Into Our Shoes Anthology, and working on the book project, The Link Between Food, Health, & Culture In the African Diaspora.

Depending on your texting aesthetic, you may or may not have noticed the most recent Emoji update. For the more spartan texters, emojis are a set of ideograms accessed via a supplemental keyboard when texting on a smart phone. Though created in Japan, emojis spread to the United States in 2011 and are now available on Apple and Android devices. Today, smart phone wielders around the world send each other smiling poops and shrimp tempura to digitally communicate with a little bit more flair than alphanumerical characters allow.

Early in April, Emoji released an update that introduced more than 300 new “diversity emojis” to the emoji arsenal. Users can now choose between six skin tones when selecting a humanoid emoji. These six skin tones purportedly derive from the Fitzpatrick scale, a numerical classification schema for human skin color. In addition to offering a skin tone selector, Emoji has also endowed users with the choice of same-sex couples and families. This update may or may not have occurred as a response to an email from an MTV representative to Apple CEO Tim Cook accusing the app of racism. This email, coupled with complaints from the likes of Miley Cyrus and DoSomething.org, incited an update some laud as a progressive embracing of diversity.

We are not impressed. What’s more, we’ve seen this before. In 1992, Crayola introduced a line of “multicultural products” (a few shades of brown markers) in response to customer complaints. According to Crayola, the new hues (which were actually pre-existing hues packaged in a box labelled “multicultural”) were selected to “represent skin tones of the world.” The notion that a finite amount of hues can represent all skin tones or all people gets at the core this problematic politics of representation.

In presenting a range of skin tones to choose from, Emoji attempts to represent different racialized groups of people. Though these representations will never be the things that they are attempting to represent, they impose meaning onto these things. Think about René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, which realistically depicts a pipe and, at the bottom of the print, reads “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” or “This is not a pipe.” Magritte’s point, however trite, is that the painting itself is not a pipe but rather a representation of a pipe, and the image suggests something about the meaning or essence of a pipe. Given the objectness of a pipe, visually representing it is a rather innocuous act. By contrast, the act of representing people necessarily takes on greater gravity.

The sensitivity around representing historically marginalized groups of people stems from their political powerlessness to represent themselves. This gives the representation — in this case, the emoji — disproportionate weight. The single image/representation can come to stand in for and essentialize the entirety of a group. Alice Walker identifies this phenomenon of stereotypical representation as a form of social control she deems “prisons of image.” Stereotypical images are not errors of perception but rather products of prejudicial patterns. The static and limited manner in which Emoji has chosen to depict racial diversity posits an ahistorical representation of a particular person or group of people. The idea that six skin tones can sufficiently represent racial diversity flattens the notion of racial identity into simply a product of pigment, thus undermining the possibility for fluid, dynamic, or otherwise non-biological racial/ethnic identification.

The effort for these “racially diverse” emojis on behalf of Apple is NOT justice for historically marginalized and misrepresented peoples. The existence of a space for these multicultural emojis is never going to be enough to represent all groups; there is no finite amount of symbolic representations that can encompass all identities.

A multicultural campaign solely based on changing the skin color of emojis ignores the nuances in differing identities, not just in terms of appearance but in embodiments of identities beyond appearance. That the primary factor in Emoji’s new campaign is the option to change skin tones (and with a selection of six skin tones!) is very telling of how Apple only pays attention to certain issues of inclusivity that are addressed to them directly by their customers. The new emojis neglect the problematics of providing a range of six skin tones for each humanoid image and the option to change the family emoji to be purportedly inclusive of couples of varying sexualities (a.k.a. the inclusivity of lesbian and gay couples = comprehensive sexual inclusivity, yay!). Apple passes these new emojis as the solution to the previous problem of racial and sexual exclusivity, when they only perpetuate this exclusivity and exacerbate it under a commercial facade of social progress for its customers.

That the new default or “neutral” skin tone of the emoji is yellow reveals an entirely new problematic. The neutrality of the yellow skin tone supposedly emulates the neutrality of the original yellow smiley face, designed by freelance artist Harvey Ball in 1963 to increase the morale of employees at a Massachusetts insurance company. The original smiley face was not an attempt to represent any specific human body; the yellow tone of the image did not readily suggest the representation of a racial identity. Similarly, the yellow skin tone emoji isn’t supposed to be a skin tone at all—it is somehow supposed to exist outside of what Emoji considers a realistic range of skin tones. However, the default yellow emojis, which are entirely humanoid and juxtaposed with other racialized humanoid emojis, can’t escape the representational nature of a yellow skin tone. These yellow emojis instead evoke the stereotyped depictions of yellow-skinned people inscribed upon East Asians. Customers have gone so far as to wonder the “true race” of these default emojis and have accused Apple of yellowface. What Emoji has purported to be “neutrality” with this yellow skin tone is in fact not neutrality at all.

Moreover, the yellow hair of each default emoji suggests the purported neutrality of yellow hair. Not only is the yellow skin tone rooted in racist depictions of East Asians, the yellow color of the hair also seems to suggest the normalization and neutrality of the white body within the public discourse on image representation of bodies, further complementing customers’ complaints about yellowface.

The skin tones of these multicultural humanoid emojis puts pressure on users to choose emojis that represent them. Otherwise, others might interpret the use of an emoji that does not represent the user as appropriation or mockery. There is also an unequal burden of pressure to represent the self when it comes to the emojis that embody white people. Since the white body is prescribed as neutral and heterogenous, white people do not need to feel the obligation for images of white bodies to represent white people. One image of a white person does not represent all white people or whiteness because we accept the heterogeneity of white as dominant in our discourse of body representation.

The attempts at comprehensive representation by the new emojis also ignore the intersectionality of identities. Although the emoji that depicts a family can now be adjusted to change the gender of each member of the family between female and male, this is a crude attempt at understanding the representation of families with same-sex parents. First, none of the family members’ skin tones can be changed; they maintain the default yellow. Second, the attempt at including same-sex parents of only female and male genders erases any opportunity to be gender-inclusive of identities that do not fall into the categories of female and male. And third, Apple’s attempt to only include same-sex parents as part of their supposedly LGBTQ-inclusive Emoji campaign (or really just LGBQ) with the semblance of a progressive inclusivity for LGBTQ identities denies any opportunity to understand the variety and nuance among people of different sexualities.

Even when Apple attempts to reckon with the underrepresentation of people of color and LGBTQIA people, they still fail to understand how meanings of certain identities are inscribed by representative images of human bodies. People’s identities go beyond popular representations or understandings of them. Thus, representations that attempt to encompass all identities in a finite space is simply impossible.

The Emoji update promotes a sense of complacency with multicultural and sexual inclusivity, by suggesting that achieving it is as easy as including six skin tones and same-sex parents. Apple’s idea that this update is enough to include the identities that they neglected with the previous emojis still erases a history of misrepresentation of marginalized peoples by approximating an inclusive justice for people of color and LGBTQIA people.

Apple’s power to determine the changes to the emojis also raises questions as to who gets to represent marginalized peoples and who gets to decide when that representation is enough. When their customers asked for changes to emojis regarding racial inclusivity, Apple sought to solve this customer dissatisfaction with these six skin tones, rather than addressing the larger issues of racial representation. Under its diversity quota, Apple neglects to understand the identities that it attempts to include and the identities it excludes. The fact that six skin tones and same-sex parents are the primary points of their attention reveal their priorities to satisfy only specific concerns of their customers and capitalize on the semblance of a multicultural, sexually-inclusive campaign.

Aquarius

January 21^st – February 18^th

This month the spotlight really shines on you, dear Aquarius, so soak it up! Not only will there be two Aquarius new moons, one on the 20^th and the other on February 18^th, but Mars has been in your sign since December 4^th and will be until the 12^th. This is the assertion you need to get your point across so let your voice be heard!

This streak of independence as well as Mercury and Venus entering your sign on the 4^th will spark romance, educational and travel opportunities. Others will be drawn to you with little effort but more importantly they will trust you. You are a humanitarian at heart so use this time to convince people to hop on your bandwagon; believe that you have the ability to create positive change.

Don’t freak out too much but Mercury is retrograde from January 21^st-February 11^th in Aquarius, meaning you will be questioning your personal identity. Your behavior may send mixed signals as you will be in a deep period of self-reflection. Take this time to create a clearer vision of yourself in your mind.

End the month with a new start without excluding old faces. For the next three years you will be re-evaluating your friendships so be sure to align yourself with people who reflect your values and larger as well as personal goals.

Pisces

February 19^th – March 20^th

With so many planets in Aquarius this month you will feel a much slower stream of activity, Pisces so take the time to relax at home and enjoy. You have always been an affectionate one and now is not the time to be shy about your feelings and desire for love.

No form of communication is meaningless with Venus entering Aquarius from the 3^rd-27^th.  Think deeply into seemingly small conversations and interactions. The new moon during this time will add emphasis to spiritual understanding and consciousness. Prepare yourself for artistic discovery, whether you consider yourself an artist or not; use this flow of cosmic energy to create. Your innovation can lead to success.

Mercury’s retrograde will disturb some secrets that you hadn’t visited in a long while. During this time you will be confused, plain and simple. Your desire to communicate your ideas will be tangled with a misunderstanding of those same ideas. Remember that this will pass, as Mercury’s retrograde always does.

With Saturn in Sagittarius for the next three years you will feel more driven than ever before to pursue those career goals that you have sought after for some time. Start to think of a role model for the path that you hope to be on; you may find some stability in these new activities which will help with any hectic confusion going on.

Aries

March 21^st – April 19^th

Ambition and drive are the two key words for your month so use your horns ram and charge forward! Until January 20^th you should focus on what inspires you, what signals you want to send to others and overall put your happiness and social life in the front seat. If your family feels neglected they will let you know so don’t forget to reflect every now and then.

Begin to build your team, reach out to those in your social circle and see who wants to get involved in what it is that you may need help with. You have a strong support structure around you and even if you’ve never been one to put yourself out there this month you’ve been lent the gift of gab so seduce others with your words.

On the 20^th there is a new moon in Aquarius at the same time the sun enters that sign, making this the perfect day for you to complete any deals or reveal anything that you’ve been working on. Beware of Mercury’s retrograde starting the following day and lasting until February 11^th. Take the time to make sure everyone on your team is stepping with the same foot; people can get off track more easily than you realize.

Someone from your past may also come to surprise you during this time so don’t be alarmed. Saturn in Sagittarius for the next three years will mean more opportunities for entrepreneurial activity, travel or expanding your education; perhaps you will get all of these things in one.

Taurus

April 20^th – May 20^th

Though 2014 ended with the moon in your sign, probably creating a BANG of an ending, 2015 will be packed with even more excitement. Starting with the moon continuing to be in your sign your exciting resolutions are more probable than you may think. You crave variety and difference; if these desires are causing any tension make sure you’re not neglecting any responsibilities.

With so many planets in Aquarius you will be especially focused on your career and long term goals starting in the middle of the month. Even if you are tired continue to network and make an appearance whenever you’re asked, you never know who you might connect to!

If any dream seemed too far out of reach January 20th is the day to make even the most unlikely of things become a reality. Do not allow Mercury’s retrograde the following day to send you back to square one; instead, use it as a time to review the bigger picture and make sure everything is working together as it should. Do your career aims reflect your personal morals?

Saturn will be in Sagittarius for the next three years, emphasizing intimate relationships not only in your personal but your professional life as well. The past holds key things that you will need to learn from before you can move forward and mature. If you are running out of steam by the end don’t worry, from the 27th forward you will have the time to sit back and enjoy life.

Gemini

May 21^st – June 20^th

Feeling weighed down? It’s time to leave the excess baggage and fears in 2014 and move on to 2015 with some excitement. The moon will be in your sign at the start of the month, Gemini, so don’t worry as much about what your family or friends may think, use this energy to be that outgoing, driven person you’ve always been.

Mars entered Aquarius in December and remains there until the 12th, giving you a much needed push. Venus and Mercury will also be in Aquarius this month, meaning this is a perfect time for you to communicate your ideas and elaborate visions. You have the mic so use it!

Take risks, you never know which door has fortune lying just behind. The two new moons in Aquarius, one on the 20th and the other on February 18th, will give you two chances for diving off into uncharted waters.

In between these two rare opportunities Mercury is in retrograde from the 21st until February 11th. Though this year will be all about you living a new life, one that better reflects who you are, be careful not to hurt anyone too badly with this new and honest you. Not everyone is so accepting of the truth but don’t let this stop you from trimming those who you don’t connect with intellectually.

Cancer

June 21^st – July 22^nd

Though the month, and year for that matter, got off to a slower start take the time to rest because on January 4th there is a full moon in your sign. This is the first of two full moons in Cancer but the next one won’t be until December so soak up the spotlight. Assert yourself and your passions but most importantly stop apologizing; you should never be sorry for being yourself.

Venus is in Aquarius from the 3rd until the 27th and with Mars adding pressure in the finance realm now would be a good time to pitch new ideas and secure a sponsor who will be a valuable player in your future when it comes to funds. This can also be a time for a new spark in your love life; whatever is affected, make sure to keep in mind deeper motivations and desires.

As the month goes on and Mercury moves into Aquarius things will get easier for you in terms of communication. You tend to focus a lot on others and put their needs before your own; make sure you’re not getting cheated out of anything. When Mercury is retrograde from the 21st until February 11th, be wary that nothing, personal or professional, seems too good to be true because it often is.

Instead of brewing too long over personal or financial matters use the energy from Saturn in Sagittarius to focus on health, mental and physical. For the next three years you will have this push, use it to create new routines and regimens for staying in shape.

Leo

July 23^rd – August 22^nd

For the majority of the month, Venus in Aquarius (3rd-27th) will be keeping your interactions pleasant. Paired with Mercury, the master of communication, you’ll find your social life extremely engaging from the start of January through early March. Holla at me, synergy! With approaching Mercury retrograde (January 21-Feb 11), you’ll have the same concerns as other signs: be hyper-aware to avoid making large new purchases shipping important packages, small technological mishaps, and blurting out mixed messages. But use this time to be reflective, yada, yada. You know the retrograde speil. An ex-flame may make waves in your life right as everyone’s V-day, favorite consumerist ball approaches.  Or the collaborative synergy from Venus could bring a new someone into your life. Either way—keep yo head on straight. You got it.

Word to the wise: While your social interactions–romantic, platonic, and professional—will be on point, at times you’ll feel a deep sense of disarray and limited control over some events. Like I said, it’ll be totes chill. Just roll with it.

Virgo

August 23^rd – September 22^nd

You’ll be thinking in routines for the better part of January, Virgo with a cadre of planets piling up in Aquarius, your sixth house of wellness. SO don’t be surprised if you feel the urge to reassess and redo everything in your regular schedule—especially around the Aquarius supermoon on the 20^th. Baby, let it be your motivation.

And be sure to make your list (and check it twice) and get the details of your life in order before Mercury, your ruling planet hops back into retrograde. Because Mercury is your planet, you’re always at risk of feeling the effects of retrogrades more intensely than other signs. But really, if we learned anything in the hype of the last retrograde: keep calm, retrograde is chill! Let it be your friend. Take the salty with the sweet and the sour and a side of fries on the side, superfly. Tbh. Like for real though.

Stay busy during the last two weeks of the month, it’s good for your soul like chicken noodle soup (with a soda on the side). But allow yourself plenty of flexibility with completing new projects. It’ll be especially important to get down with some checklists. Romance may slide into the background with you taking on so many self-improvement projects, but that’s totally chill. Stay chillin, you’ll stay fly, and be back out mingling soon enough. We all need breaks sometimes, so try masturbation maybe (OR DON’T if it’s not your thing). These projects will have you kicking it with a special someone soon enough.

Libra

September 23^rd – October 22^nd

It’s cuffing season Libra—you know what that means! Shack up, shack up, shack up!

Winter 2015 was made for you with several planets, including your ruler Venus and your action-oriented Mars, in Aquarius (your house of joie de vivre, romance and self-expression)! Mars will provide an extra boost of confidence! Also Venus and Mars are mad compatible, so the stars are for real aligning. The whole month will be shining with love and fun, rather you’re single or attached. January is #doubleflames for the scales.

Retrograde will have you longing for those care-free days, but be careful not to shun your responsibilities. Instead be up on simple daily or weekly self-care routines to balance work and play. And when you don’t get what you want, be hyper-conscious to keep your thoughts positive. Don’t let the retrograde bring you down, baby cause you’re a star. Shine bright like a ethically-sourced diamond.

Scorpio

October 23^rd – November 22^nd

In the words of Azealia (kinda), you’ll “be lookin very [sentimental] and reflective,” Scorpio with several celestial bodies congregating in Aquarius, your fourth house of family and home. Work to rekindle possibly fizzled connections with loved ones and old pals from the 3rd through the 27th. You might hear from someone unexpected, but at just the right time. Mercury will also retrograde in Aquarius, your domestic sector. So believe it or not, get wild! BUY SOMETHINGS FOR THE CRIB. YES, buy something swanky this retrograde. For real. Get that apartment game on fleek. Hell, you could even move during this retrograde if you’ve been thinking about it. This retrograde will mostly affect your communication game. Just as you’re rekindling past relationships, tensions could flare in your closest friendships or with roommates. But it’ll be chill. It will blow over. Eventually. Maybe. Most likely. Don’t sweat.

Meanwhile, Mars is gonna be at work in the background for you—getting everything set up for a fantastic March. It might seem far away now, but when it’s here you’ll be a happy camper.

Sagittarius

November 23^rd to December 22^nd

Sagittarius, take space, make space. Spread your words and ideas. You’ll be a charistamtic orating machine this month. Use the period from the 3^rd through the end of retrograde (2/11) to promote yourself. Be all about it. Others will listen and believe. Your twitter game will be on point. And you’ll be unstoppable on or around the supermoon of the 20^th.

You’ll be slaying the twittersphere; however, watch out cause your email game is going to get raggedy af with this retrograde. But hey a wise woman from Boston, once told me: “I’m 24. I don’t want to check my email after 5 PM.” Try taking Kate’s advice. Get offline and do something nice for yourself—like going for a walk or reading a book. With Saturn in your first house of self and identity, you’ll use this first retrograde of 2015 to ring in a three-year phase of deep self-evaluation and evolution.

And one last note: watch out for water damage. Yeah, idk either, but it’s in the stars.

Capricorn 

December 23^rd – January 20^th

“Money, money, money,” is your motto this month Capricorn with all several planets all up in your financial house of Aquarius. If you put your mind to it, you’ll come up with lots of creative, alternative funding streams. Energy from the supermoon on the 20th will also help—so that’s what’s up. And the seecon Aquarius full moon in Feburaury will have you yelling “ching-a-ling-cha-ching” for sure. I know, everybody’s saying don’t buy anything during retrograde. But boo, you do you. Get yourself something cute, you deserve it. #selfcare needs to be trending for you this month.

For the next three year period, your ruler Saturn has you in de-clutter mode mega-overtime. Take a look at some relationships that may be on tenuous ground, rather it be with a person, place or thing. And if that [insert noun here] ain’t down with you, then take a deep breath. Count to ten. And say “I don’t fuck with you.” Wondering what exactly “ain’t down with you” means? A good place to start is thinking about your interactions with this [insert noun here]. Do you feel revitalized and appreciated or drained and used after? If it’s the latter, then you need to say #byefelicia.

And spend some time outside. I know its cold, but with enough layers you’ll really enjoy it.

GIF Art by María Fernanda Hernandez

***

We were socialized from an early age to name blackness. To taunt it, to call it names. My friends and I compared skin colors as we played the “who’s blacker?” game.

“You’re blacker than me, Perla!”

“Haitiana, you lose!”

My parents groomed an identity that privileged straight hair and lighter skin, while compromising my kinks and self-esteem.

“I need 25 dollars to straighten Perla’s greña. It looks messy. She needs to look good for picture day.”

My inherited black skin and kinky hair were my parents’ greatest shame and the butt of my friends’ jokes.

***

La Raza Dominicana, a term that refers to Dominican people and culture as a collective, is actually used to highlight the Dominican Republic’s pluralities. The term celebrates all of the racial, ethnic, and cultural origins that have positively influenced expressions of Dominicanidad. Like Cuba and Brazil, the Dominican Republic has an extensive history of racial mixing between Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, and European colonizers. Yet under Spanish rule, colonizer violence and disease diminished the Indigenous population from 400,000 to 60,000 people by 1508, leaving a population of mostly miscegenated people (Howard, 31). As such, the DR has a population of primarily black people. According to current statistics, the Dominican Republic has an afro-descendant population of nearly 8 million people, the fifth largest black population outside of Africa.

While the colors and aesthetics of Dominican people are endless, it is important to keep in mind that white supremacy still operates insidiously in miscegenated societies. Dictator Rafael Trujillo rose to power in 1931 with a “re-Domincanization” nationalist agenda. Trujillo’s regime bolstered the myth that Haitian immigration into the Dominican Republic was ruining Dominican identity and territory. Trujillismo redefined Dominican identity to fall in line with Hispanidad — what it meant to be of pure and superior, Catholic, white, Spanish blood (Howard, 31). They banned and demonized all expressions of Africanity, like the practice of Santeria, and deemed them anti-Dominican and subversive to the regime. The peak of Trujillo’s aversion to blackness surfaced during the Parsley Massacre in 1937. In nearly five days alone, the regime murdered roughly 30,000 Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans. In fact, Trujillo encouraged white European immigration (Howard, 31). During the 1930’s, Trujillo offered the province of Sosúa as a safe haven for 100,000 Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime. By providing them with land and resources, Jewish refugees were able to self-entrepreneur companies that still have lasting legacies of wealth today. This decision might have been influenced by Trujillo’s desire to have Western nations overlook his brutal massacre at home. Haiti, under Trujillo’s regime, was constructed as the antithesis to all things Dominican. In opposition to a neighbor that suffered from blackness and poverty, savagery and voodoo, the DR under Trujillo was a country thriving at preserving whiteness while ostensibly promoting civility and modernity (Howard, 31). By instilling fear in the population and killing non-supporters, Trujillo maintained power while gaining the loyalty, respect, and trust of the people. Consequently, his beliefs gained frightening legitimacy.

This historical chain of events constructed Dominicanidad in direct opposition to Haitianism. Dominican hostility toward Haiti has been sewn into the fabric of Dominican identity. Very early in my life I was taught how to express Dominican nationalism before I learned what it meant to be black or mixed-race. My expressions of Dominican nationalism were uninformed and racist. I was socialized to think of Haitians as lesser people. I was taught to laugh at Haitians and separate myself from them. When I defended what I knew about the Dominican Republic, I spoke of beauty, wealth, and culture. When I referred to Haiti, I spoke of dirt, demise, overwhelming blackness, and mystification. In my emigrated circles of Dominicans, we made sure to express these sentiments of nationalism to protect ourselves from our fears.

We feared our own marginalization. We absolved ourselves from our oppression by internalizing and regurgitating notions of superiority and privilege. In condemning a humanity, identity and history that so deeply influenced ours, we perpetuated the historical belief that Haitian blackness threatened Dominican identity.

These expressions of Dominican nationalism are implicit anti-black sentiments. At the height of the Dominican-Haitian deportation crisis two summers ago, my circles demonized and blamed Haitians for “infiltrating our lands” and asserted that “enough was enough.” “This isn’t racism; we are reclaiming what is ours!” The hegemonies and racial tensions of the mainland still hold true in Dominican transnational communities. Represented especially by the infamous kink-destructive “Dominican blowout,” white (read: colonized) is the preferred aesthetic. Adding to this, the plethora of skin categorizations used to describe blackness–indio, moreno, trigueño–is indicative of an unspoken code to avoid negro. Embracing any physical, cultural, or spiritual blackness is considered undesirable and rendered as “other.” The histo-political marginalizing of blackness in the DR created a colorist Dominican culture that becomes even more compounded in the United States. When black Dominicans fail to interrogate the implications of their blackness in a context that systematically scrutinizes and polarizes black people, black Dominican lives become ever more vulnerable.

So much of what has come to define blackness is perception. To our oppressors, blackness is a monolith. White people are not socialized to understand blackness through its multiplicities and pluralities, but rather through skin color, racialized physical features, and uninformed stereotypes.

If we observe the media, people such as Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin were unfairly brutalized because of their blackness. As Dominican people, we need to interrogate this and understand that we too can and will be taken advantage of because of our blackness.

As a black Dominican, I am not exempt from the social violence and shaming that also affect my black American peers. My blackness and my Dominicanness are not mutually exclusive, and if I claim one it does not mean that I am distancing myself from the other. In fact, I am becoming more conscious of how rhetoric around Dominican nationalism has shamed my blackness and taught me to separate myself from it in order to be a “model minority.”

The point here is that Black Dominicans need to be more critical and nuanced in the ways we define and advocate for our identities. Much of our history has been manicured for us to have fraught relationships with our black ancestry. It is our duty to intentionally move against that history to interrogate the ways in which systems of power and oppression move through us. In unpacking the racist construction of our Dominican identity, we can come to understand how it manifests itself differently and is perceived differently in distinct spaces. While my black family members simply understand me as a Dominican woman in the safety of our home, in public spheres I am black and other. I am Jezebel. I am Sapphire. By the nature of our white supremacist, capitalist, sexist, racist, and classist society, I am at the intersection of the burdens of domination. Mi Dominicanidad does not come to my rescue when police assume I am a sex-worker on the street. Mi Dominicanidad does not exempt me from being patronized by white men. I cannot fall back on my Dominicanness to protect me from racial prejudice and discrimination.

I encourage black Dominicans to think critically about our culture and history to become aware of anti-Haitianism, anti-blackness, and the ways in which they shape our identities. We need to collectively push back on anti-blackness in our jargon, customs, and social realities. In a world that operates under an overarching anti-black agenda, black people can’t afford to perpetuate anti-blackness when our livelihoods are vulnerable.

References

Howard, David. Coloring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001. Print.

Growing up, my dad listened to rock music consistently and naturally this musical taste rubbed off on me. However, I always felt a disconnect between those promoted as the face of rock (white men) and my own identity as a Black woman. Rock and roll was born out of a tradition of Black music and the genre draws from blues, gospel, R&B, funk, country, and folk. It is only in recent years (and due to extensive digging) that I have come to learn of the Black women who have been integral to the creation and re-imagining of rock throughout the decades. Since its inception, Black women have used rock music as an avenue to sing pain and seek liberation. Heard through the free flowing, strong, and soulful vocals of legends like Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner, rock proves to be an empowering space for Black women. This collage series seeks to re-center the contributions made by Black women in the formation of rock as a genre. Each collage was made to capture the essence of the music these women created. Flowers are a reoccurring symbol in every collage to represent how these women nourished the genre from its infancy, brought it to life, and continue to reshape the diverse garden soundscape of rock and roll.

**Of course, this list of 10 Black women is not exhaustive. There are many other Black women who have (and continue to) contribute to the rock genre!**

You can also find this series on tumblr: http://reclaimingrocknroll.tumblr.com/

Sister Rosetta Tharpe – 1930s-40s

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a guitarist and singer who was highly influential during the early stages of rock music. She was an inspiration to Chuck Berry, Elvis, and Little Richard. Tharpe was known for her energetic guitar playing and extroverted stage presence, which set the precedence for rock performances as we know them today.

Watch: Didn’t it Rain – https://youtu.be/SR2gR6SZC2M

LaVern Baker – 1950s

LaVern Baker was a vocalist who played a major role in popularizing the R&B sound and integrating rock instruments and beats into her music. Baker’s accomplishments were often countered by white artists who would cover her songs and gain more notoriety. Nevertheless, Baker remains an integral figure in the incorporation of R&B into rock music.

Watch: Jim Dandy – https://youtu.be/qy6N1aWVW7k  Love Me Right in the Morning – https://youtu.be/TE7uwzc9xFo

The Shirelles – 1960s

The Shirelles were a girl group who wrote their own music and were the first of their kind to have a number one pop single. The idea of a girl group served as a source of shared community power between the girls listening. Their songs, such as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, discussed taboo subjects of the time like premarital sex. These songs were a departure from the innocent love songs of other girl groups at the time. The Beatles were also highly influenced by the sound and aesthetic of the Shirelles’ girl group prototype. The popularity of the Shirelles paved the way for the Beatles to capture the hearts of young girls everywhere.

Watch/ Listen: Will You Love Me Tomorrow – https://youtu.be/c_cRHw8PAPA, Mama Said – https://youtu.be/WQlImg2bm28

Odetta – 1950s-60s

Odetta was a folk singer and guitarist who was able to portray deep emotion through her music. She was also very active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. During this time period, Odetta performed at political rallies and protests and sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after being introduced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Both Bob Dylan and Joan Baez cite Odetta as a musical inspiration.

Watch: The Waterboy – https://youtu.be/V6xJLQKIRUI, Give Me Your Hand – https://youtu.be/g_Y7tXdOdIw

Aretha Franklin – 1960s-70s

Aretha Franklin is a gifted vocalist whose iconic voice injects life into any song she sings. Crowned the Queen of Soul (depicted as royalty in the collage surrounded by jewels), Franklin’s powerful voice is an example for rock singers who incorporate strong vocals into their own music.

Watch: Don’t Play That Song (You Lied) –  https://youtu.be/2ZVUVNJwQKI, I Say A Little Prayer – https://youtu.be/7Ifw8JhDBvs

Tina Turner – 1960s-80s

Tina Turner is a powerhouse vocalist and performer who is known for her outrageous voice and energetic dancing. Turner taught Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones how to dance! A survivor of domestic abuse, rock and roll was an avenue for Turner to sing her pain, and she poured strength into her music.

Watch: Proud Mary – https://youtu.be/hzQnPz6TpGc, River Deep, Mountain High – https://youtu.be/VN_Aq2W2Yi0

Betty Davis – 1970s

Betty Davis is a vocalist who created sexually charged funk music. Davis owned her sexuality and was vocal about it. Her music is laden with growling, hard-hitting vocals and she was explicit about her sex life as exemplified by the song “He Was a Big Freak”. Though Davis was liberated in her music, mainstream audiences did not accept her. Davis’ music was denounced by the NAACP and banned from radio stations.

Listen: He Was a Big Freak – https://youtu.be/JrRndTURujo, Don’t Call Her No Tramp – https://youtu.be/4KKLtyxqPGU, Anti-Love Song – https://youtu.be/fxKBnR_8LIM

Poly Styrene – 1970s

Poly Styrene was a punk singer who was known for being the front woman of the band X-Ray Spex. In the late 1970s, Styrene was at the center of the budding punk movement in London. Being a Black woman in the punk scene was a rebellion within itself because it was heavily saturated with white men. Styrene constantly channeled anger into her music and asserted her power as a Black woman in punk.

Watch: Oh Bondage! Up Yours! – https://youtu.be/ogypBUCb7DA, Identity – https://youtu.be/fYoiCStDTQg

Grace Jones – 1980s

Grace Jones is a model and performer who subverted gender norms through her image and stage shows. Jones toyed with ideas of masculinity and femininity in ways that no one had done before her. Both Jones’ music and live shows were abstract and out of this world.

Watch: On Your Knees – https://youtu.be/sxQG9fatx04, Live Concert Highlights – https://youtu.be/-5EyewfIODI

Tracy Chapman – 1990s

Tracy Chapman is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist who gained popularity in the late 80s and early 90s. Many of Chapman’s songs deal with issues surrounding poverty and social activism. Chapman draws on the legacy of Black women singing folk and acoustic music and reintroduced this facet of rock music to the mainstream in the 80s and 90s.

Watch: Talkin’ Bout a Revolution – https://youtu.be/f0TdGGpOpVE

bluestockings magazine is very proud and excited to feature Khari Jackson’s comic “We Build They Burn: The Impacts of white Supremacy on Black Families and Communities and the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline”. This comic is beautiful, brilliant and due to its size and scope we are publishing a chapter each week. The first chapter is at the end of this post, after an interview with Khari. 

In love and struggle,
bluestockings

+++

My name is Khari Jackson (aka jkharij aka Kiki aka Black Magic(?)). I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada and I proudly claim Northside Tulsa, Oklahoma as home and I grew up traveling throughout the South, which grounded my identity as a Black Southerner descended from a long legacy of Black resistance.

At an early age, my public schools system struggled and ultimately cut their art programs so I was forced to teach myself how to paint, draw, create and edit videos, etc. My main artistic passion is cartooning and I strive create art and tell stories that restores color to whitewashed histories while educating and creating refuge for radical and abolitionist politics.

I view my work as conversations accessible for everyone, and at the same time I am speaking as a person resisting oppression and I want to have conversations with other people resisting oppression. In other words, I’m not trying to convince or plead with those in power to believe our truths.

Currently, I’m living and resisting in Philadelphia after abruptly leaving a toxic artist residency program in Canada with Ad Astra Comix. I’m pursuing my cartoonist journey while working with an Afrofuturist collective doing a variety of community work based in North Philly, including community driven art projects and archival work.

What is your favorite graphic novel/comic or hero?

This is impossible. Don’t do this to me.

I received a gigantic Garfield book as a kid and read it about 5,634 times (no lie) and Calvin and Hobbes was a mystical staple in my life that made doctor’s waiting room survivable.
But Jerry Craft’s Mama’s Boyz was the first time I can remember seeing  everyday Blackness represented and celebrated in comics, and Craft was such a major influence on me. I met him, got artist tips from him, and bought his book and read it about 8,109 times. He was the first person to make me believe I could actually be a cartoonist.
So I’m going to have to go with Mama’s Boyz with Garfield and Calvin & Hobbes tied for second. Final answer.

How do dreams feature in your work? 

Both individual and collective dreaming makes up my entire work and motivates me to produce art. I say individual because I have my own dreams of what a radically safe and just world would look like. But collective because the deep beauty, I believe, is realizing I’m not alone and there are a lot of folks dreaming of better, safer, and just worlds.
I’m all about showcasing radical narratives that society often shames and invisibilizes. I believe the oppressive forces that exist discourage our dreaming because what we create in our dreams can influence reality and directly challenge white supremacy and other oppressive forces. Further, when we dream we can develop solutions that move outside of what we thought was possible so we can achieve what society tells us is impossible.

In our dreams, we don’t have to depend on current laws, policies, and systems that have failed us and destroyed us, but instead develop our own ways of structuring society. That can be scary so ideally I’d like to produce work that allows for people to work through their dreams and embrace them rather than fear them because they so intensely counter the status quo.

Overall, as a lover of science fiction and fantasy, I hope to conjure up alternative realities where we can come together to design the world we wish to see, not caring if mainstream dominant society deems it “realistic”.

How do you think of your creative process?

Well, I’m a visual artist and an archivist so I’m always trying to figure out how to tap into histories of oppression and resistance and present them to the audience in accessible ways using art and creativity.

I start by identifying an issue, and I work through the history and try to make historical connections; tracing history is such an important practice and aids me into viewing the bigger picture and not just vignettes and not in ways that treat historical events as isolated incidents.

The first part of my process is less artsy, but helps me effectively communicate messages of oppression that are honest and believable to someone who hasn’t had access to these histories. From there I work on ways of creating art that not only presents the oppression but the resistance. That’s key to me. I never end a process unless I’ve presented some form of resistance. To me, speaking truth to power and exposing oppression and historical lies is great, but it’s also a dishonest, in my opinion, to present histories and erase the resistance. There has always and will always be resistance to oppression.

Why the form of a graphic novel / comic?

Well, It comes naturally. I can’t think of why I wouldn’t chose this form, haha. I started creating comics when I was around 6 or 7 but then it was just a way of dealing with trauma that engulfed me. I could sit and get lost in them and create fantastical worlds where anything could happen. When I started entering my more political and social conscious part of my life journey, that’s when I started attempting to transform and expand on what was possible with this form. I begin to conceptualize a life where I tell stories of oppression, centering the voices of the oppressed first and foremost, and do so in a manner that was accessible and educational. In my intro to We Build They Burn, I drag the academy because it was one of the spaces I realized just how much disparity and inequality there is in the realm of knowledge production. In these often elite spaces, we have the most privileged members of society learning radical histories and then creating inaccessible materials that never get to the very communities that they are about. Further, people can build careers and profit from studying and producing around oppression, but, from my perspective, there is rarely a priority to distribute the knowledge in a way that aids in the liberation of communities. Knowledge is power, and that power has rested in the hands of the elite far too often and for far too long.

And finally, comics are hyper versatile and are great for people of all ages and interests.

How (if so) does your art relate to your liberatory or revolutionary practices?

Gosh, where do I start?

Everyday I try to live an anti-oppressive and anti-capitalist lifestyle. As an artist I enjoy producing accessible and radical work just for the love of it, without thinking of profit. This is how I entered this passion and how I want to always view it. I try to be kind to myself and not stress and feel guilty just because I’m not thinking of ways of commodifying my art.

I’m a huge believer in community care and self care is always a challenge for me. I grew up viewing art as an individualistic self-care endeavor. But I have found the joy in bringing others into my art projects and collaborating with others. I’m extra introverted but I value healthy relationships,  building community, and collective resistance. Through collective art projects, we connect with others and build community and stable relationships. I also love seeing Artists of Color, especially those identifying as LGBTQ+ (queer, trans, gnc, etc) and holding other marginalized identities, support each other and celebrate each other’s victories and triumphs.

It’s a way of building each other up as opposed to tearing each other down. Oftentimes in this capitalist society, artists are pushed to be moved by fears and compete with one another for a limited number of resources and capital just to survive. But through art and collective art we can envision ways of supporting each other without tying livelihoods to capital.

It’s just another way to be anti oppressive in your everyday actions to work towards a larger goal. Radical and revolutionary work can take on many forms. As we work to break down physical walls (e.g. detention and imprisoning walls), we can also work to demolish psychological and spiritual walls between oppressed communities as well.

What does liberation look like / feel like to you?

The toughest question tbh.

I’d imagine that liberation feels stable–Like you don’t have to lock your doors anymore to feel safe.

We’d know we’re truly free when we can look around and see and feel that everyone has the opportunity to live safe healthy lives for themselves, their families, loved ones, and communities. Liberation feels and looks complete when we’re all free, and not just the ones who have certain resources and privileges in this hierarchical white supremacist society.

What’s next?

I’m still growing and evolving in all aspects of my life, especially involving my art. My senior thesis was a project created under harsh conditions, so I’m afraid I wasn’t able to showcase my best work and really show the universe what I’m capable of. When I start publicly displaying my art again, y’all can expect art that’s been completed on my terms.

Pt. 1 of 6 of “We Build They Burn: The Impacts of white Supremacy on Black Families and Communities and the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline” is below.

In my family, baseball is religion. Small prayers are said at Yankee games; our cathedral was the old Yankee Stadium; our annual pilgrimage is to Cooperstown, New York for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Induction Weekend (this past year was the twelfth for me and my dad). Baseball will always be something I love passionately.

However, I am keenly aware that I am frequently one of the few women of color in white male-dominated baseball spaces. I still get stares and comments every time I am in Cooperstown, even though an increasing amount of attendees are people of color. Whether it’s hearing a few older white men loudly discussing how Negro Leagues players shouldn’t be allowed into the Hall of Fame, or standing up to a group of drunk white guys who were heckling a female Astros fan with some super sexist remarks, microaggressions have been a consistent and unfortunate part of my fandom.

From Effa Manley (currently the only woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame) to Rachel Robinson to Mo’ne Davis, women and women of color have been an enduring part of baseball history. Black fans of all genders have been supporting professional baseball since the early 20th century (those numbers have dipped in recent years due to institutionalized racism, but that’s a whole ‘nother article). But in a game that fetishizes a whitewashed reading of “tradition,” baseball marginalizes Black women in favor of (white) men again and again.

Enter Pitch. This drama centers fictional pitcher Ginny Butler, who becomes the first woman (and first Black woman!) to play in any of the four major sports (baseball, football, basketball, hockey) at the Major League level. Ginny is called up to the bigs amidst swarms of adoring female fans, flashbulbs, sexism, and insecurities. She wears number 43, one number up from Jackie Robinson’s 42.

Black women in baseball is nothing new; just television shows about them are.

Not only do I get to see Black women included as Pam Oliver-type sideline reporters, but also as the center of a compelling narrative. And Ginny is a complex character devoid of many of the stereotypes Black female TV characters are burdened with. Although after one episode, I do see some flaws (both as a baseball fan and as a feminist–let’s be real, the writers couldn’t have given Ginny at least a crappy third pitch if she was going to be a consistent starter?), I believe now is a time for celebration. The beauty (and ugliness) of media is that it informs our imagination of what is and what is not possible. I find this show deeply empowering, and I hope it helps redefine the baseball, and larger sports community, as more inclusive of racial and gender differences. This show makes me feel like my prayers have been answered: it makes me feel like I belong. That’s a homerun for me any day.

View the trailer for Pitch below, and catch it on FOX at Thursdays 9/8 Central:

Hi, and welcome to the first installment of Read a Zine! To celebrate and elevate the voices of indigenous peoples, this is a list of native zines for you to explore. Links of where to read or buy are included (most are $2-3), and if you are in the local area, all of the zines can be read at the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center.

1. The Nizhoni Beat: Native American Feminist Musings Vol. 1 by Melanie Fey and Amber McCrary
Started by two Navajo women, this beautiful, full color collage zine has so much (aesthetically-pleasing) realness packed in its pages it’s unbelievable, including some great pieces on indigenous feminism and coming out as gay. The authors are about to come out with their fourth zine, so keep a look out!

2. Movement Demands Autonomy! An O’Odham Perspective on Immigration and Border Controls by the O’Odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective
This zine offers an indigenous perspective on immigration policies and aggressive policing of the United States-Mexico border. The zine argues how aggressive border control is not only violent and colonial but a gross denial of tribal sovereignty. An important read. For more information, look here or purchase here from Brown Recluse (an all POC distro).

3. Everyone Calls Themselves an Ally Until It Is Time to Do Some Real Ally Shit by Xhopakelxhit
Xhopakelxhit, a member of Ancestral Pride (a grassroots native direct action organization from Ahousat territory), discusses how to actually be a anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, anti-racist white settler ally. Read the pdf here or purchase here.

4. Going Places #2: Powwow Country by Kesheena Doctor
Kesheena chronicles her experiences of attending powwows as a child and the cultural differences at different ones. It even includes a CD of Powwow music that makes this zine even more multidimensional! Other zines in the series include Going Places #1: The Realities of Being Native American and Going Places #3 A Native American in Education. Find it at Brown Recluse or here.

5. Women of the Pacific Issue #1 by J. Vehia Wheeler
This zine is based off of the zinester’s pretty awesome tumblr with the same topic. The zine profiles five badass native Pacific women: Princess Ruth Luka Keanolani Kauanahoahoa Keʻelikōlani, Bean Kaloni Tupou, Chantal Spitz, Melodie Turori, and Fu’una. Though not currently in stock, try to read it if you can!

6. ALWAYS WAS, ALWAYS WILL BE ABORIGINAL LAND
As the first page of this zine states, “The focus of this is the six years of the Northern Territory Intervention and its wider context of systemic displacement, dispossession and genocide of Aboriginal people in Australia. Since colonisation, the Australian Government has been responsible for acts such as the White Australia Policy, and the Stolen Generations, which has been recognised as genocide by international bodies. There are significant disparities in statistics regarding deaths in custody, health, life expectancy, literacy, education, income, welfare, and housing.” Compiled by a non-Aboriginal settler coloniser, the zine is composed of letters from members of the Aboriginal community and statistics on the genocide. This is a super important zine to read. Find it here.

7. The Thirteen Grandmothers: An Indigenous Guide to Peace by Daisy Salinas
Written by Daisy Salinas, self-described “Xicana feminist punk, community activist, & zinester,” “Thirteen Grandmothers” chronicles the stories of indigenous women from all over the world. This powerful zine connects people across cultures as they embrace native knowledges in order to heal themselves, the earth, and intergenerational trauma. . To learn more about the project and see a trailer for the documentary, check out forthenext7generations.com. The zine itself can be purchased here.

On Friday, October 14,  Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Craig Gilmore, and Pete White were on a panel about the new book Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter and led a discussion about policing repression and global resistance.

“Afrofuturism bridges so many aspects of our culture, from African mythology, art and hip-hop to politics, comic books and science” – Ytasha L. Womack

What is afrofuturism?

Afrofuturism is a Black aesthetic expressed through art, literature, music and culture, created by artists and thinkers as a means of escaping the oppression and mistreatment experienced by Black people in their everyday lives.

It takes experiences of struggle and turns them into the fantasmic.

It is the intersection between science-fiction, historical fiction, cosmology, Black culture, resistance, and magical realism.

It is a way of connecting the past with the future, the real with the imagined, all with the hopes of finding new modes of reflecting the Black experience and making the world a safer place for people of the African diaspora.

Afrofuturism today:

Afrofuturism often reflects on the past, and looks for ways to interrogate and reinvent it, while also attempting to gain insight into how history relates to the present and the future. Take the works of Octavia Butler, a groundbreaking science fiction writer who today is often associated with Afrofuturism. In her novel Kindred, a Black woman travels back in time to the Antebellum South and meets her enslaved ancestors. She then brings what she learned from the past into her present understanding of the world.

The concept of Afrofuturism is extremely important today, since it is intimately tied to the Black Lives Matter movement, as a response to a media landscape oversaturated with images of Black death. Afrofuturism not only ties Black struggles together transnationally, but reflects on Blackness as being part of a collective future, when so often individual Black futures are extinguished. Without Black life, there is no Black future.

These musical artists are celebrating, critiquing, and creating a broad range of Afro-futures. And they do it while making some pretty dope music too. So get your mind right and let the music play:

1. Download Everything (Teaser) – Wildkatz ft. Saturn Rising

In “Download Everything,” we get a sample of the kind of pulsing futuristic beats Wildkatz creates while Afrofuturist dancer Saturn Rising, gives us a fierce performance all in 36 seconds.

2. M.anifest – W’ani Aba ft. Bisa Kdei

M.anifest’s “W’ani Aba” combines the musical styles of Afrobeat with the aesthetics of Afrofuturism to make a hopeful and bright song and music video. The video is filmed in Accra, Ghana and involves mystic and cosmetic animation. It also includes M.anifest walking through the streets of Jamestown, one of the oldest areas of Accra, handing out sci-fi style goggles to the young and old. Jamestown is a significant location, because one can see the decaying architecture from the colonial British rule juxtaposed with the people of the city. The song, and especially the video, talk about turning the old into something new to create a brighter future. All the goggles that are worn and handed out are created from recycled materials gathered from around the district.

3. Cybiko – Princess Nokia

In “Cybiko,” Princess Nokia places herself in a videogame-like world where she is both the character and the controller. In doing this, she is stating that she has the power to code and create her own world as well as inhabit it. Nokia is utilizing contemporary technology, showing us how she can use it (or “hack” it) to shape her world.

4. Q.U.E.E.N. – Janelle Monáe ft. Erykah Badu

According to Janelle Monáe, “Q.U.E.E.N.” is an acronym for “Queer, Untouchables, Emigrants, Excommunicated, and Negroids.” Monáe and Badu use religion, stereotypes, and histories of oppression to talk about each of the identities mentioned in the acronym.The song specifically centers those who identify with all five labels. “Q.U.E.E.N.” is about taking back the power from the oppressor and making sure it remains in the hands of the oppressed. In the music video, Erykah Badu and Janelle Monáe are “time traveling rebels” who are frozen in “suspended animation.” The video is heavily inspired by the works of Octavia Butler, who played with the idea of rebels traveling fluidly throughout history to break shackles and bring acknowledge back to their own time.  

5. Dial’Afreaq – Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu’s most recent album “But You Caint Use My Phone” examines how phone technology affects our natural world as well as our abilities to communicate with one another. The album warns us that if we don’t move past our obsession with phones, there will be very real and lasting consequences. In “Dial’Afreaq,” one of those devastating effects is the loss of the bee population, who are confused by the buzzing sounds emitted from our phones when we don’t answer one another. Though the song and album are playful, making up fake consequences such as bees being confused, Badu manages to address serious issues and imagine a world in which we are competing with our phones for each other’s attention.

6. Phenomenal Woman – Laura Mvula

“Phenomenal Woman” is a celebration of Black women and their resilience. Laura Mvula takes Afrofuturistic funk and combines it effortlessly with R&B to create this dreamy dance ballad. In the video, Mvula can be seen impeccably dressed, dancing with a chorus of equally stylish people. It is the kind of song that, as a Black woman, makes me feel proud, beautiful, and resilient.

7. Green Aphrodisiac – Corinne Bailey Rae

“Green Aphrodisiac” is one of those rare songs that manages to authentically capture the beauty and complexity of love and nature. Corinne Bailey Rae takes the body and makes it the universe. At once, the listener’s boundaries break down, and they are made to ask: What makes me different from the wind blowing through my hair? Is love for another, not also love for the universe?  

8. Cybernetic Armor – Sammus

“Cybernetic Armor” is the story of a girl who, due to difficult circumstances, finds herself alone in the universe, forced to rely on “cybernetic armor” to survive. Sammus uses the construction of the cybernetic armor as an allegory for the layer of armor that women, especially Black women, must create to protect themselves from the oppressive systems they are faced with in everyday life.

9. Never Catch Me – Flying Lotus ft. Kendrick Lamar

In this Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar collaboration, we find the two artists hypothesizing what awaits them after death, and how this affects life. In one line Lamar says, “life and death is no mystery and I wanna taste it.” Lamar removes the stigma around death by stating that there is hope; that maybe death is not just the end of life, but possibly the beginning of something new and unexplored. In the music video for the song, two very young children lie dead in caskets. However, as the song picks up, life returns to their bodies and they dance their way out of the church, past all the mourners who are unable to see them in their new forms.

10. Forerunner Foray – Shabazz Palaces

“Forerunner Foray” is a psychedelic rap with many synth samples appearing throughout the song. The video is animated by Chad VanGaalen, and takes us on a mystical journey through the cosmos. Many absurd images appear in relation to one another. At one point in the video, basketball legend Magic Johnson is seen riding a piece of pizza through the stars.

11. MysticVerse – Bang! Zoom!

MysticVerse’s “Bang! Zoom!” has a complex flow, interweaving cosmic and science-fiction with the mystical and ancestral. It closely follows the Afrofuturist tradition of connecting one’s own inner strength to the power of the universe.

12. Alright – Kendrick Lamar

In “Alright,” Kendrick Lamar lists all the difficulties and obstacles he faces as a Black man in the United States. Just when the circumstances seem too bleak, he introduces the chorus, which is also the song’s title. Lamar looks to the near future and says: “We gon’ be alright. Do you hear me, do you feel me? We gon’ be alright.” No matter how hard institutions try to oppress and marginalize Black people, the Black community will rise above it. Lamar depicts this in the music video for the song, as he floats over his native Compton. The video is a celebration of resilience and strength.

13. Video Girl – FKA Twigs

In this song and video, FKA Twigs combines both haunting vocals with dystopic imagery centered around surveillance and the prison industrial complex to create a mystical and eerie experience for the viewer and listener. In parts of the video, FKA appears as a cyborg dancing mechanically around the room; while in other moments she presents as  a mystical apparition.

Nicki Minaj’s Beam Me Up Scotty mixtape on repeat was the soundtrack to my ninth grade life. As I sat at the cafeteria’s colored girls table in my almost all white high school, my friends and I talked about Nicki more days than I could count. More than once the girls at my table said that they would sleep with Nicki if they ever got the chance–she was just that damn sexy.

High school slugged on and my iPod moved on from Roman’s Revenge to Rihanna’s. S&M owned the radio, and I saw parents in my suburban town simultaneously blast pop stations and gasp with horror as their kids sang along. My white classmates made endless, often tasteless jokes about the song. “Shouldn’t Rihanna have liked Chris Brown beating her?” they said. No one around me seemed to comment on the fact that a Black woman was in the mainstream media in chains that didn’t represent her enslavement, but her pleasure and control. And as people continued to taunt Nicki Minaj’s wigs, they ignored the fact that her existence provided an acceptance of queerness in an otherwise homophobic environment.

Both Nicki and Rihanna taught me more about my sexuality as a young Black woman (and a queer woman, even if I didn’t fully accept that yet) than any of my sex ed did. Their bodies are allowed to experience pleasure. They break the strict codes of acceptable behavior for Black women. Even if I didn’t act on the sexually charged words, artists like Nicki and Rihanna expanded the boundaries of sexuality and pleasure without shame in who they are. When society polices poor, queer, and Black/brown femmes and tells them they are hypersexual by nature, seeing these artists own their identities liberated me.

That’s why Nicki’s raunchy, over the top look was more than a gimmick. Jillian Hernandez, an artist/activist/academic triple threat, defines raunch aesthetics as “creative practices that often blend humor and sexual explicitness to launch cultural critiques, generate pleasure for minority audiences, and affirm queer lives.”  Even before hip hop, raunch has always been a tool of poor people/people with lower social standing. It easily transfers to other peoples (Black and brown folks, queer folks, women, femmes, fat folks, disabled folks, etc.) who are institutionally disenfranchised as a way to fight against oppressive structures. Raunch is used as a teaching tool to connect people through generations. Raunch doesn’t view sexuality as taboo; instead it’s natural for it to be explored by all ages, allowing kids to be included in the conversation.

While raunch exists other places (in movies, in drag, etc.), raunch in hip hop has my heart. Against the danger of street harassment, I can think of Remy Ma’s lyrics in Conceited and walk a little taller: “I look too good to be fuckin’ you / I look too good to be lovin’ you / You know I look way too good to be stuck with you / I’m conceited I got a reason.” Or if I am feeling insecure because I didn’t have time to put on my makeup one day, I can hear Nicki and Ciara singing in my head, “I’m the shit with no makeup / Don’t have to curl my hair up.” Not only does this music continue to teach me, but it provides me with confidence I can wear like an armor.

Non-femme raunch artists like Ludacris matter to me too, but femmes remain underrepresented in the rap game. Sexism, racism, and queerphobia in the music industry reflects that of society at large, pushing talented artists out of the limelight. I have realized more and more how much I need raunchy, Black femme love in my life. This music makes me feel empowered and at home in myself and dares me to take up space. The playlist below starts with people I grew up with like Lil’ Kim and Remy Ma and moves to artists I’m listening to today. So here I am, sharing a little raunchy resistance with you.

Malana is a Black, mixed race, disabled white passing queer woman smashing the patriarchy daily. People she doesn’t know often come up to her and tell her their life stories, apparently because she has a lot of water in her astrological chart.