The Free Black Women's Library

[The Free Black Women's Library]

A benefit to now has been my culinary explorations, I forgot how much I love to cook and how much I love to eat, this week I made breakfast for myself for the first time in several months. I usually have a smoothie or tea but I actually made some savory curried grits, sautéed Dino kale with bell pepper, garlic. I baked a premade lobster cake and doused it in chipotle sauce. I used coconut oil in the grits to make them extra silky. (I don’t do sugar grits!!) It was quite yummy 😋

Right now and probably forever. my favorite cookbook is COOKING WITH HERB/ 75 recipes for the Marley Natural Lifestyle by Cedella Marley. She wonderfully represents for her father, the culture and the island of Jamaica 🇯🇲 🖤⭐️

Its filled with gorgeous photos and the most delicious sounding recipes for stuff like banana fritters, callaloo dumplings, yucca wedges and corn bake. Whew. She also teaches you how to make your own canna butter and canna oil, as well as face and body products. 👌🏿⭐️👌🏿

This book is thoughtful and beautiful, and offers a different perspective on this “controversial” herb. I highly recommend it for those who are open to its exploration.

Have you made anything new and different since the social distancing saga has begun?

What is new and cooking in your kitchen, drop some inspiration for me and the rest of the TFBWL community in comments 👩🏾‍🍳 🔥

[The Free Black Women's Library]

Every once in a while I get a message asking if the books I post are for sale. I got one yesterday and realized I’m way over due for a 411 style post so here goes -

I am an interdisciplinary artist, set decorator, yoga teacher and single mother born in Brooklyn, NY.

I am a shy introverted nerdy day dreaming soft hearted Aquarius. A film fanatic, dance junkie, Black Feminist Womanist femme, lover of art, nature, music, books, and Black culture.

I started a literary project called The Free Black Women’s Library in 2015, it’s a mobile pop up and biblio installation that centers and celebrates the work of Black women writers, monthly sessions feature workshops, authors, film screenings, performances, games and dope conversation. All ages, races and genders are welcome to trade books with the library. Books written by self identified Black women only, books written by Black non binary and GNC folks are also welcome. For every book you bring, you get to take one this your books are your currency!! 🙌🏿📚

All genres accepted!!

I take photos of people with their book trades for my archives, I love taking photos of people w/their trades and consider it an integral part of this work which revolves around the brilliance of Black women, community engagement and liberation thru literature.

Photos from OTD 2017 @bedvynebrew 🖤🖤

There are now TFBWL libraries in 4 other cities, which is AMAZING!!! Sending deep LOVE to my co ministers in this work, mighty gorgeous branches of this glorious tree in Houston @thefreeblackwomenslibrary_htx

Detroit

@thefreeblackwomenslibrary_det

Atlanta

@thefreeblackwomenslibrary.atl and extra special big birthday love to Los Angeles @thefreeblackwomenslibrary_la which turns one today!!! AYE!!🎂❤️🎉📚

The library is funded through Patreon, I have TFBWL angels who donate $2 to $50 a month. This money goes toward the labor, storage, transportation, PO box and other costs. Also funded through t shirt, poster and other merchandise sales.

It is nowhere near enough but I am hopeful and deeply motivated with goals of a book mobile and storefront space in mind!! I imagine it as a radical co working space, reading hub and resource for all.

If you would like to support the vision please consider becoming a Patreon patron.

Thank you!! 📚🖤🙏🏿

[The Free Black Women's Library]

[The Free Black Women's Library]

“Please God” she whispered into the palm of her hand. “Please make me disappear” She squeezed her eyes shut. Little parts of her body faded away. Now slowly, now with a rush. Slowly again. Her fingers went, one by one; then her arms disappeared all the way to the elbow. Her feet now. Yes, that was good. The legs all at once. It was hardest above the thighs. She had to be real still and pull. Her stomach would not go. But finally it, too, went away. Then her chest, her neck. The face was hard, too. Almost done, almost. Only her tight, tight eyes were left. They were always left. Try as she might, she could never get her eyes to disappear. So what was the point? They were everything. Everything was there in them” ⭐️

-

I still remember 1st time I read THE BLUEST EYE, it was a life time ago but I do recall how it broke my heart open. It shifted something in me that was deep and frightening, it scared me, I knew this writer was telling me something/even as an avid book reader never in my teenage life, had I read something so painful relatable, it triggered me and healed me at the same time. It uncovered the pain and ugliness of poverty, and the loneliness and trauma that comes with abuse and self loathing. Also the insidious toxic nature of anti Blackness, capitalism, patriarchy and colorism. It was the first book I read where the words and stories of Black girls like me were centered, it was a matter of fact, it became all I needed for decades to come. I saw a kindred spirit in the character of Claudia, who took her white dolls apart and never really actually wanted one, who felt confused frustrated alone and misunderstood, I was so grateful to this writer for creating this character.

-

Since Toni Morrison passed away I have been re reading her books, and I wonder how I forgot or maybe blocked out how hard the story of Pecola Breedlove is, I was emotionally exhausted by the end, as a grown Black woman mama who has had a plethora of traumatic experiences and hopefully gained some insight, I’m broken open in a new way, cause now I know for sure that Pecola is not a myth, her story is terrifying, ironic, sad and real. And there is so much power in it being told.

[The Free Black Women's Library]

“You should tell me what you are thinking? Is that the only way I can be freed?” ⭐️

What do you do when you are feeling too tired or wired to fall asleep??

I often meditate, pray, stretch and sometimes read myself a short bedtime story. Last night was one f those nights for me, I read the brief and intense piece, Asylum by Gayl Jones from the story collection, entitled MIDNIGHT BIRDS, and had some strange and beautiful dreams. This collection published by Anchor Books in 1980, also includes works by Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Sherley Ann Williams and Toni Cade Bambara. ⭐️📒💛

[The Free Black Women's Library]

Thank you so much to our sweet speculative sci fi babes over at @blfpress for sending us copies of their mystical and lovely new releases.

GOD’S WILL AND OTHER LIES, a story collection by journalist, teacher and award winning playwright Penny Mickelbury

and BLACK FROM THE FUTURE a 22 piece anthology of prose and poetry that spans across horror, fantasy, magical realism and Afro futurism all written by Black women writers.

Thank you for blessing us now and always with gorgeous and dreamy literary content. We LOVE y’all and are super excited to add these gems to the stacks!!!🖤📚🖤📚🖤📚🖤

[The Free Black Women's Library]

Sarah M Broom’s THE YELLOW HOUSE is a stunning debut memoir about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a neglected New Orleans neighborhood. In 1961, Sarah M Broom’s mother, Ivory Mae, a fiercely determined and recently widowed nineteen year old, invested her life savings in a shot gun house in the then promising neighborhood of New Orleans East. It was the height of the Space Race and the area was home to a major NASA plant. The optimism of postwar America seemed endless. In the Yellow House, Ivory Mae and her second husband, Simon Broom, who would be Sarah’s father, built domestic tranquility one wobbly renovation at a time, their dreams perpetually under construction. The family would eventually number 12 children. When Simon died, 6 months after Sarah’s birth, the house became Ivory Mars 13th and most unruly child.

A brilliant interweaving of reporting and gorgeously rendered family lore, this book tells the story of a mother’s struggle against a house’s entropy, and that of a daughter who left home only to be continually pulled back, even after the House was wiped off the map by Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House is described as a touching tribute to family and a unique exploration of the human experience.

Thank you so much to my sweet dear friend (and literal rock star) @tamar_kali for gifting this wonderful book to me for The Free Black Women’s Library book collection. I love the cover, title and descriptor!! I love memoirs, I love New Orleans!! I can already sense this book’s beauty and significance is deep. I’ve heard nothing but god things about this one, and I’m really looking forward to reading it!! 💙❣️💙❣️💙

[The Free Black Women's Library]

“There was no way for me to understand it at the time, but the talk that filled the kitchen those afternoons was highly functional. It served as therapy, the cheapest kind available to my mother and her friends. Not only did it help them recover from the long wait on the corner that morning and the bargaining over their labor, it restored them to a sense of themselves and re-affirmed their self worth. Through language they were able to overcome the humiliation of the workday. But more than therapy that free wheeling wide ranging exuberant talk functioned as an outlet for the tremendous creative energy they possessed. They were women in whom the need for self expression was strong, and since language was the only vehicle readily available to them they made of it an art form that - in keeping with the African tradition and which art and life are one - was an integral part of their lives. And their talk was a refuge.” - ⭐️ Monday Muse - best selling author, professor, and mentor Paule Marshall. It hurts my heart to share with you that this incredible writer is now an ancestor. It is always sad and awkward for me to share the news of someone passing on social media. Something about it feels strange, almost inappropriate. The fact that we have lost 2 Free Black Women literary legends this month feels particularly intense, both Paule and Toni are sacred bricks that help in forming The Free Black Women’s Library’s existence. They both gave us incredibly powerful stories about Black life - confession - if not for this project I’m not sure if I would know who Paule Marshall is, I had never heard of her until 2015 (!) when I started collecting books by Black women. I devoured her writing which felt like it was just for me. Through this work I honor her writing and her life, I share her book and stories and treasure her legacy of using language to define and center our gorgeous and complicated existence. This excerpt is from REENA AND OTHER STORIES which was published by The Feminist Press in 1983, this book features her early short fiction, Merle (a novella), as well as an autobiographical essay entitled “From the Poets in the Kitchen”

[The Free Black Women's Library]

“The great gift of aging is the ability to release yourself from responsibility for others’ reactions to you. The relinquishing of such a burden comes with an additional prize: finding people’s disapproval or shock about who you are ridiculous.” NO THANKS/Black, Female and Living in the Martyr-Free Zone.

Thank you so much to the brilliant writer, teacher and world traveler @keturahkendrick for sending me an advance copy of her awesome new memoir. ♥️

With humor and wit, Keturah Kendrick reimagines what it means to be “a good black woman”. From choosing never to have children to being the solitary black atheist to conquering loneliness as a single woman in a foreign country, the experiences she captures in this collection represent a cultural shift from the black woman who serves as noble martyr and sacrificial lamb to the black woman who chooses to put herself in the center of her own life.

Keturah has been penning insights about life and the intersection of race and gender for over a decade. A New Orleanian by birth and a New Yorker by choice, a practicing Nichiren Buddhist and a secular humanist she seeks to widen the narrative of good black womenhood. Much of her work normalizes and celebrates the black woman who exists outside of the beloved box of gleeful sufferer who sacrifices self for the greater good. She has lived, worked and dated on three different continents and visited dozens of countries. Her travels across the globe have shown her that patriarchy and the worship of whiteness are worldwide illnesses.

In this book she shares first hand experience of her self and many other Black women who have purposely chosen to not have children and not get married, she shares reasoning for their decision, the empowerment that comes with it, and the curious, strange and condemning reactions from their families, friends and communities. It is a fascinating read, and I love hearing her perspective. It seems that Black women living for themselves, - their own joy, their own pleasure, their own liberation, is something the entire world still struggles with, it seems to make folks uncomfortable and even angry.I for one find it beautiful and quite inspiring!!