Guiding Lights:
In the luminous echoes of memory, the voices of James Baldwin, bell hooks, and Audre Lorde converge like stars in the vast expanse of the night sky. Their words, like constellations, guide us through the labyrinth of history, reminding us to bear witness to both the pain and the beauty that reside within our collective past. Baldwin's piercing prose, hooks's compassionate insight, and Lorde's fierce truth-telling illuminate the shadows of forgetfulness, urging us to remember, to listen, and to learn. Together, they beckon us to honor the stories that shape us, to embrace the power of memory, and to forge a future grounded in the wisdom of the past
Reimagine. Fragment. Collide. Collage.
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James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work: Essays
“To encounter oneself is to encounter the other: and this is love. If I know that my soul trembles, I know that yours does, too: and if I can respect this, both of us can live. Neither of us, truly, can live without the other: a statement which would not sound so banal if one were not so endlessly compelled to repeat it, and act on that belief.”
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the brown menace : audre lorde
Call me
your deepest urge
toward survival
call me
and my brothers and sisters
in the sharp smell of your refusal
call me
roach and presumptuous
nightmare on your white pillow
your itch to destroy
the indestructible
part of yourself.
Call me your own determination
in the most detestable shape
you can become
friend of your image
within me
I am you
in your most deeply cherished nightmare
scuttling through the painted cracks
you create to admit me
into your kitchens
into your fearful midnights
into your values at noon
in your most secret places
with hate
you learn to honor me
by imitation
as I alter--
although your greedy preoccupations
through your kitchen wars
and your poisonous refusal--
to survive.
To survive.
Survivethe brown menace, or poem to the survival of roaches:: audre lorde