Photographer Zanele Muholi creates the Being series as an “intimate portrayal of the lives of black lesbian women in South Africa.”
Being is an exploration of both our existence and our resistance as lesbians/women loving women, as black women living our intersecting identities in a country that claims equality for all within the LGBTI community, and beyond.
The work is aimed at erasing the very stigmatisation of our sexualities as ‘unAfrican’, even as our very existence disrupts dominant (hetero)sexualities, patriarchies and oppressions that were not of our own making. Since slavery and colonialism, images of us African women have been used to reproduce heterosexuality and white patriarchy, and these systems of power have so organised our everyday lives that it is difficult to visualise ourselves as we actually are in our respective communities. Moreover, the images we see rely on binaries that were long prescribed for us (hetero/homo, male/female, African/unAfrican). From birth on, we are taught to internalise their existences, sometimes forgetting that if bodies are connected, connecting, the sensuousness goes beyond simplistic understandings of gender and sexuality[…]
Being is part of an ongoing journey to interrogate the construction of our sexualities and selves, and then to deconstruct ourselves, identity by painfully-earned identity, in order to see the parts that make up our whole.
Clockwise from the top:
- Zinzi and Tozama III, 2010
- Katlego Mashiloane and Nosipho Lavuta, Ext. 2, Lakeside, Johannesburg 2007
- Being 2007
This needs more love. It’s so on point.
(via dawntree)
Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 10 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a Grammy Award winning South African singer and civil rights activist. She actively campaigned against the South African system of apartheid. As a result, the South African government revoked her citizenship and right of return. After the end of apartheid she returned home.
Click the link to watch the interview — she has such an enchanting voice.
“There is no difference in the struggle between the people because we are all Africans. We were just put in different countries by white people who took the people from Africa and spread them out.”
(via azaadi)
“There was one girl in our school whose mother made her wear a clothespin on her nose to make it thin. There were quite a few girls who tried to bleach their skin white with bleaching cream and who got pimples instead. And, of course, we went to the beauty parlor and got our hair straightened. I couldn’t wait to go to the beauty parlor and get my hair all fried up. I wanted Shirley Temple curls just like Shirley Temple. I hated the smell of fried hair and having my ears burned, but we were taught that women had to make great sacrifices to be beautiful. And everybody knew you had to be crazy to walk the streets with nappy hair sticking out. And of course long hair was better than short hair. We all knew that.
We had been completely brainwashed and we didn’t even know it. We accepted white value systems and white standards of beauty and, at times, we accepted the white man’s view of ourselves. We had never been exposed to any other point of view or any other standard of beauty. From when I was a tot, I can remember black people saying, “Niggas aint shit.” “You know how lazy niggas are.” “Give a nigga an inch and he’ll take a mile.” Everybody knew what “niggas” like to do after they eat: sleep. Everybody knew that “niggas” couldn’t be on time; that’s why there was c.p.t. (colored people’s time). “Niggas don’t take care of nothing.” “Niggas don’t stick together.” The list could go on.
To varying degrees we accepted these statements as true. And, to varying degrees, we each made them true within ourselves because we believed them.”
"Assata Shakur (via daughterofzami)
“but we were taught that women had to make great sacrifices to be beautiful…”
(via up-away)
“We had been completely brainwashed and we didn’t even know it.”
(via azaadi)
“Lies I’ve Told My 3 Year Old Recently”
Raul Gutierrez
Trees talk to each other at night.
All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.
Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.
Tiny bears live in drain pipes.
If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.
The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.
Everyone knows at least one secret language.
When nobody is looking, I can fly.
We are all held together by invisible threads.
Books get lonely too.
Sadness can be eaten.
I will always be there.
Many adults are put off when youngsters pose scientific questions. Children ask why the sun is yellow, or what a dream is, or how deep you can dig a hole, or when is the world’s birthday, or why we have toes. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before a five-year-old, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know? Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys many adults. A few more experiences like this, and another child has been lost to science.
There are many better responses. If we have an idea of the answer, we could try to explain. If we don’t, we could go to the encyclopedia or the library. Or we might say to the child: “I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.”
"Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as the Candle in The Dark (via ironfleet)
Carl Sagan wins again.
(via believeinthefight)
“I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.”
(Source: skaterboytae, via believeinthefight)
(Source: leilockheart, via moonboy666)
you guys don’t know what fear is until your mom takes the sandal off
I used to make it into a game of dodgeball, and that just made my mom more angry.
(Source: pumpkinshallucination, via azaadi)
and how does this make you feel?
(Source: cnide, via con-amoryabsurdidad)
Nicholas Kristof (via think-progress)
You can categorize this under “things I need to know to not be ignorant”.
(via think-progress)
People in Islam — Slam Poet
Week 5-1: Mark Gonzales, poet, activistMuslim revert, Mexican, and a man who can make words deliver the most impressionable imagery; Mark Gonzales has traveled the Latin American, Muslim, and American world pushing concepts like “Beats Not Bombs”, and with a Master’s degree in Education has taught his fans as much as he has been taught by the Ummah. Part of a leading generation in the United States of first generation Muslim converts, Mark has shown that unifying Latino culture with Islam isn’t a hard concept to grasp - with Latino’s culture having root in the Islamic Iberian peninsula known as Al-Andalus.
Through Mr. Gonzales’s work, you see a window into multiple worlds that make up his identity, and give insight into that of 200,000 other Latino reverts in the United States. He’s worked with Omar Offendum and others to deliver multimedia lectures on poetry in the Muslim world and has recently traveled through Europe to connect the inner-city Muslim culture in America with the inner-city Muslim culture in France, Germany, and other nations. He has also been a participant in Occupy Oakland.
Clicking on the photo will lead you to his TEDxRamallah performance that is the cornerstone of his “Beats Not Bombs” philosophy. Enjoy.This guy is awesome. Word.
^^THIS HUMAN^^ i bow to you and your ability to slam poetry into my heart.
(via roxygen)
A word that does not exist in the English language:
Ya’aburnee
Arabic – this incantatory word means “You bury me”, a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.
(Source: emeraldscales)
On my campus you can have your pick of about three different guys who come every few weeks to yell about everyone going to Hell with the exception of God-fearing Christians who hold the exact same views that they are spewing - in other words, most people are doomed. Jews, Muslims, mainstream Christians, LGBTQ community, non-virgins…typical quasi-Westboro stuff.
I don’t think that such people should be barred from speaking, even if it incites offended reactions from their audience. I also don’t begrudge the college-aged troll the opportunity to yell back at them.
With that said, you know that if some misled brother with a beard was out there yelling at the same volume about Hell fire that 9-11 would be flooded with phone calls. He could be hitting the same exact topics with the same misled conclusions and people would freak out.
Sure, Misled Brother with a Beard has the liberty to do that Constitutionally, but in most instances, most realize that this would end with drastically different results.
That’s my real rub with the Hell-fire commentary on campus. It doesn’t irritate me because I actually care about what they say, but the fact that not everyone actually has the liberty to be that type of idiot.
Preach it please, you’re so on point.
Young woman dressed as an Imaam for a Qur’an school performance - Istanbul, Turkey
(burqa/bob bint battuta)
(via roxygen)
(via daisea)