Interlude: The #SableFanGyrl Dances to the Noisettes

Remember when we were talking black lady silhouettes and other sundries not too long ago?  Aker over at Futuristically Ancient posted the Noisettes video for their new single “Winner.”  Screenshot gallery below:

I love how Shingai Shoniwa is front and center against dancers who, in black from head to toe, aren’t identifiable as either male or female, black, white or green.  And I love her repeated fist pumping, probably because it brings to (my) mind a Black Power salute.

The lyrics themselves are pop-happy, Katy Perry-approved empowerment.  Peep the first verse below:

#SayItLoud…and Dirty?, Or How Rodney McMillian’s Carpet is My Mama/Daddy/Abuela’s Carpet

Rodney McMillian Untitled, 2005 Carpet 139 x 178 x 114 in. (353 x 452 x 289.6 cm)

Today I stopped and stared at a carpet.

I was at the @CorcoranDC’s 30 Americans exhibit.  I’d just passed through a gallery featuring works by Carrie Mae Weems, Glenn Ligon and William Pope.L.  But now a carpet dominated the entire length of one wall, with a single strip of tattered and stained material extending into the path of patrons, guarded by black, rubber bumpers:  Rodney McMillian’s, Untitled (2005).

I’d originally passed it by.  How does an old, ugly carpet compare to Carrie Mae Weem’s portraits?  Or Glen Ligon’s Mirror (2002)?  Or Nina Chanel Abney’s caricatures?   Granted, Abney’s twisting lines and bright circus carnival colors assaulted me if I focused too closely.  And the topics were strange.  Ghosts emerged from dress ties and the tails of animals.  Jagged teeth gaped and spread into red, wet smiles.  Disturbing.  But interesting.

The WOC Survival Kit is Desperately Seeking GIFs!

Never submitted to the WOC Survival Kit?  Now is your chance.  The WOC Survival Kit needs more GIFs!!!!

What’s a GIF, you ask?  Well, since a GIF is worth a thousand words…..

Except if you’ve ever tried to search for the perfect, pro-womyn of color GIF, then you already know.  Not so easy.  Not easy at all.

Help us make the WOC Survival Kit one of the go-to places for poignant, political, ratchet, funny, sexy, silly and honest radical womyn of color GIFs on the web.  

Go forth!  Make those images of womyn of African, Asian, Latina & Native American descent move, shake, flash, beep, bling, snark, cuss, fart, and frakk.  Submit them to the ‘Kit here.  Or toss them up on your Tumblr, Twitter or blog and send us a message so we can reblog.  Or shoot them to us in an email (iwannaliv@gmail.com).  But send them our way!  Because the WOC Survival Kit is here for and accountable to YOU.

Happy searching,

The #AntiJemimas of the WOC Survival Kit

An iwannalive production. 

Afrofuturism’s Stranger Blues

1993 Cover of Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

…I woke up this morning
And I put on my walkin’ shoes
I’m goin’ down the road
Cause I got them walkin’ blues

I’m just a stranger here
I’m just a stranger there
I’m just a stranger everywhere
Sometimes I know that I would go home (I would go home)
But I’m a stranger there…

I’m just a stranger here
I’m just a stranger there
Good God, you know
I’m just passing through
Passing through your town.

I would stay
But your people keep on doggin’ me ’round….

“Stranger Blues,” Sweet Honey in the Rock

Bernice Johnson Reagon and Aisha Kahlil of Sweet Honey in the Rock composed “Stranger Blues.”  It was released in 1985 on the group’s album The Other Side (Flying Fish Records).

And when I heard it, I heard these lines:

It’s Sable Fan Gyrl Week @NunezDaughter

"Dark Warrior Elf" by Leah Keeler via Mark Knox, Artist/Writer, Member of the Black Science Fiction Society

In the Future, We Kill Our Attackers: Rihanna’s “Man Down” as Afrofuturist Text

Rihanna’s video for “Man Down”  dropped last week and set the web on fire.  The way justice and rape, innocence and violence work in the video–and the non-sensical responses to it–have already been outlined by better writers than me.

I’m writing this post to take the video to its logical conclusion:

In the future, do we kill our attackers?

Rainbow Reclamations DC: The Woman in Brown

The stage is in darkness.  Harsh music is heard as dim blue lights come up.  One after another, seven women run onto the stage from different exits….

The lady in brown comes to life and looks at the other ladies….

These days, my mother fights the camera.  She sees each photo taken as a violation.

But there are older images of her.  Carefree, fresh and open.  Dreaming and willing to dream.  The woman who took photography class and experimented with black and white film and rolled her hair on top of her head and dabbed her lips with gloss and arched her eyebrows just so and then — SNAP — captured.

I think my grandmother saw it too.  She saw herself in her daughter-in-law’s eyes.  Brown, big-skinned woman with a one-way ticket from Troy, Alabama to Chicago,

Thursday Readin’: M. Nourbese Philip’s “Publish + Be Damned”

Follow my footnotes.

Rainbow Reclamations DC is THIS Sunday! RSVP Today!

The movement continues.   Jess Solomon of the ground-breaking and love-making Saartje Project & Emerson Zora Hamsa, of Planet Mixtape,  Shifting Vantage Point and a Come Correct #blackfeministsex rabble-rouser, are hosting Rainbow Reclamations DC, a series of discussions, workshops and rituals for queerky girls of color:

With infinite love, Emerson Zora Hamsa and Jessica T. Solomon will host a seven-month creative, collaborative effort called Rainbow Reclamations DC!

Using the template of the original Rainbow Reclamation series that was started by the brilliant black feminist scholar, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Durham, North Carolina, the Rainbow Reclamation District of Columbia Sunday Rituals will begin this June!

Shawty Got Skillz: Picnik

One of the guiding principles behind Nuñez Daughter and iwannalive productions and, well, the ‘Net, is that making media should be as cost free as possible.  Computers and internet access are already very, very expensive (net neutrality is good for #blackgirls).  No one should have to pay hundreds of dollars for word processing or photo editing software, blog editors, and storage on top of that.  Unofficially, 90% of the tools used to make and maintain Nuñez Daughter and iwannalive productions are free of charge.

A favorite tool of ours is Picnik.