Essays and Poetry that Truly Speak to the Black Woman's Experience - 3/31/2020

[Daylian]

Sensuous Knowledge by Minna Salami

The creator of the internationally popular, multiple award-winning blog MsAfropolitan applies an Africa-centered feminist sensibility to issues of racism and sexism, challenging our illusions about oppression and liberation and daring women to embrace their power. Sensuous Knowledge is a collection of thought provoking essays that explore questions central to how we see ourselves, our history, and our world. In this riveting meditation, Salami asks women to break free of the prison made by ingrained male centric biases, and build a house themselves—a home that can nurture us all.

Minna Salami is Nigerian, Finnish, and Swedish author, blogger, and social critic, and international keynote speaker. She is the founder of the multiple award-winning blog, MsAfropolitan, which connects feminism with critical reflections on contemporary culture from an African-centered perspective. Listed by Elle Magazine as “one of twelve women changing the world” alongside Angelina Jolie and Michelle Obama, Minna has presented talks on feminism, liberation, decolonization, sexuality, African Studies, and popular culture to audiences at the European Parliament, the Oxford Union, Yale University, TEDx, The Singularity University at NASA, and UN Women. She is a contributor to The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and the Royal Society of the Arts, and a columnist for the Guardian Nigeria. She lives in London.

We Want Our Bodies Back by Jessica Care Moore

A dazzling full-length collection of verse from one of the leading poets of our time. Over the past two decades, Jessica Care Moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race. Fierce and passionate, Jessica Care Moore argues that Black women spend their lives building a physical and emotional shelter to protect themselves from misogyny, criminalization, hatred, stereotypes, sexual assault, objectification, patriarchy, and death threats. We Want Our Bodies Back is an exploration—and defiant stance against—these many attacks.

Jessica Care Moore is the founder and CEO of Moore Black Press, executive producer of Black WOMEN Rock!, and founder of the literacy-driven, Jess Care Moore Foundation. An internationally renowned poet, playwright, performance artist, and producer, she is the 2019 and 2017 Knight Arts Award Winner, 2016 Kresge Arts Fellow, NAACP Great Expectations Awardee, and an Alain Locke Award recipient from the Detroit Institute of Arts. Moore is the author of The Words Don’t Fit in My Mouth, The Alphabet Verses the Ghetto, Sunlight Through Bullet Holes, and the critically acclaimed Techno Choreopoem, Salt City. Her work has been published in numerous literary collections and she has performed on stages all over the world, including, The Apollo Theater, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the London Institute for Contemporary Arts. Jessica lives and writes in an historic Detroit neighborhood with her son King Thomas.

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