... there is a dangerous trend observable in some quarters of the Movement to program Sapphire out of her "evil" ways into a cover...-up, shut-up, lay-back-and-be-cool obedience role. She is being assigned an unreal role of mute servant that supposedly neutralizes the acidic tension that exists between Black men and Black women. She is being encouraged--in the name of revolution no less--to cultivate "virtues" that if listed would sound like the personality traits of slaves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them serio...usly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can't really hear the audience applause when I'm on stage. I'm totally immersed in the piece. But sometimes I get a lot of it an...d wonder, "Now, why did they applaud here?" If it's a white crowd, they usually applaud because they think it's a pretty movement. If it's a black crowd, it's usually because they identify with the message.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establish...ment of black male patriarchy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... contemporary black women felt they were asked to choose between a black movement that primarily served the interests of black ...male patriarchs and a women's movement which primarily served the interests of racist white women.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A poet can read. A poet can write. A poet is African in Africa, or Irish in Ireland, or French on the left bank of Paris, or white... in Wisconsin. A poet writes in her own language. A poet writes of her own people, her own history, her own vision, her own room, her own house where she sits at her own table quietly placing one word after another word until she builds a line and a movement and an image and a meaning that somersaults all of these into the singing, the absolutely individual voice of the poet: at liberty. A poet is somebody free. A poet is someone at home. How should there be Black poets in America?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It must be terrible to bury someone you love in early May, when the ground is beginning to thaw and stretch and turn bright green ...and the smell of lilacs tumbles down from the bushes like a little benediction. Or in September, when the noon sun is still warm on your face but the evenings are cool enough for flannel and an extra blanket dragged up from the footboard in the middle of the night. Or at Christmas. It must be terrible at Christmas. February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency--indeed, 1992 wa...s the Year of the White Middle Class Woman--but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I invented the colors of the vowels!--A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green--I made rules for the form and movement of each con...sonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »