Black Feminist Poetry: Expression as Activism

Описание: This video essay focuses on the power of poetry as a tool of self-expression and black feminist activism. Using Audre Lorde’s “Poetry is Not a Luxury” as a framework, this essay explores how for black women, self-expression through poetry is an important part of processes of survival of the mind, spirit, and body. For black feminist poets, their work is simultaneously a means of self-expression and activism, as the two become increasingly intertwined for black women.

Legacies of black feminist poetry have created spaces for personal expression and collective activism towards political and social change. Black feminist poems challenge hegemonic historical and scientific racialized notions of aesthetics, culture, morality, intelligence, and sexuality. Through the telling of their truths, black women poets create a space to create her-stories through art, illustrating their experiences, opinions, politics, and selves. The essay studies contemporary and historical black women poets, demonstrating how their words and poems directly and indirectly interrogate interlocking systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and hetero-sexism. Clips of contemporary black feminist spoken-word performances provide a sample of the breadth of ways in which poems function as tools of self-expression and activism for black women.