Friends, I joined Tumblr in 2010 in order to share my writing. Now that I run a feminist blog, I no longer post my writing name in full, and my professional url is my name, but I just achieved something I’ve dreamed of since I was a kid: I am now a published book author! Been published for short stories before, but this is the first project that is totally mine. It’s 71 pages as an ebook and about 90 as a print book.
I mostly write magical realism and my goal is always to pass the Bechdel Test with my female characters. If you want to buy a copy, I’d really appreciate the support, but I’m also willing to send it to you gyns and others if you’d like. Lmk
So I’m gonna start marketing these again in preparation for the second edition, which I plan on releasing this year, doubling the size of the book. Expanding on my goal it’s not just to pass the Bechdel test - two named women must have a conversation about something that isn’t a man - but to go a step further and have every conversation a woman has be related to her story and her character development.
Getting my education in English literature as a black lesbian meant committing the Western Canon and its white males to memory as much as possible and finally only seeing somewhat seeing myself represented in the likes of Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou. But as I read I was taking notes about what the great men of the past did in their works and working out how I could infuse classic technique and metaphor into stories that women like me really needed to read. The world needs more lesbian and feminist stories that aren’t just a streaming only series that gets canceled a season or two in, aren’t just gay for the sake of it and cheap rep for rep’s sake, aren’t just more “bury your gays” (all mine live and then some)
Audre Lorde writes in her autobiography “Zami” “Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me,” and while my stories are definitely fiction (unfortunately women can’t spontaneously turn into plants yet) in the background I’ve been inspired by nonfiction stories and the themes of the lives of the hundreds of women I’ve experienced in life so far, platonically in love and passing, irl and online. I just want us to have a literature history as rich as the other half’s
I’ve been reluctant to share my work on my beloved hellsite here since the Trump election honestly, however right now it’s more important to me that other black women see black women writing For Us, By Us (and all women and girls, really). So here’s the beginning of one of my flash fiction pieces.
DM me if you’d like to buy a copy and consider sharing if you like this 🖤
me, seeing a pretty girl: “wow. there she is. the most beautiful girl in the world”
me, seeing an entirely different pretty girl: “wow. there she is. the most
Fuck all types of abusers but especially those who just memorize and regurgitate the language of psychology and call themselves “self aware” and bullshit with a therapist for appearances but don’t actually change anything
