Questions Regulate/ Knowledge Radiates: Black Girlhood in Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths

Ruth Nicole Brown--Guest Blogger

Just because we use the language of Black girlhood to organize SOLHOT

Doesn’t mean we operate within fixed identity politics. My name is Ruth Nicole

And I am serious about our beautiful complexity and our beauty.

When asked to write a guest blog, even though I am not a blogger, I said yes because I appreciate Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachery’s observation that we do not intentionally focus on Black girls enough.  In many conversations, organizing efforts, and academic reports I have learned not to assume that there will be a focus on Black girls, even if the topic is youth, gender, age, black people, hip-hop, organizing, arts, and/or producing knowledge. If I am wrong and Black girls are taken up as the focus, sometimes the images reflected back to me are so distorted that I do not recognize myself and the Black girls I know in Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT). SOLHOT is my practice of Black girlhood, a space consistently made to celebrate Black girlhood with Black girls and beyond in all of our complexity. What I know about Black girls, and how I give shape to words and images I create is informed by almost six years of doing SOLHOT.  Surely, this means that I do not speak about Black girls as a monolith nor as a generalization but rather when asked to share what I have learned about Black girlhood by doing SOLHOT, I am referencing a very specific group of people.  My hope is that in the lack of focus, intentional and unintentional misreadings, your practice of celebrating Black girls, and ours in SOLHOT, we can come to something most important that must be spoken, and written, and shared in preparation for something bigger, which we, as a whole, wide world, have yet to be.

The language of Black girlhood in organizing SOLHOT is insufficient mostly because it’s a misnomer. Those who do SOLHOT are not all Black girls, nor do some Black girls who do SOLHOT think that this is the most important thing about them. Nonetheless, I find Black girlhood discursively useful.  I have found that when we organize to create a space to celebrate the complexity of Black girlhood, the look received is of surprise, uncertainty, and a bit of skepticism, which is exactly the space out of which SOLHOT is intended to operate. “Something for me? For us??” are typical responses that instigate delight, wonderment, and excitement.  I mean we make it as big as we want—that is our right—but the idea that my Black girl existence is not an adjunct to someone else’s, presumably more important, is still a current idea even as the Combahee River Collective stated so in the1970’s. Certainly, one of the best things about doing SOLHOT and using the language of Black girlhood is that when breathing in the space of a Black girls’ gaze returned and turned out on you, critical knowledge, sacred relationship, and creativity flows over in abundance.  We do our best, when we live out of this space. Justice.

Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT) is a visionary space of Black girlhood liberation. We compose and choreograph Black girl poetics and we speak and enact Black womanists/feminists sensibilities and actions. The echo of June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Sakia Gunn, our mothers, aunties, and so many others is very present with us, you can hear what they taught us when we speak, as we write, in our practice. There are more than 3015,021,009 plus infinity ways of doing Black girlhood, Black girls in SOLHOT are clear about this, and there are seemingly just as many programs (too many of which focus on Black girls only to further control and discipline them).

But there is a space called SOLHOT- that is very much not a program, and I have a few stories that are mine to tell about it. As I do SOLHOT, I have become more aware that the conversations I prefer to have, cannot always be. For me this is particularly challenging because as I write this, I cannot be with you, see you, and ask the question, so what kind of conversation are we prepared to have today, among each other about Black girlhood? If we have decided that we should focus on Black girls, I want to know what informs your seeing and/or lack of vision.  When you see something, or in this case someone as a Black girl, I wonder if you presume to know them. For what purpose is your focus, and how does that implicate who we are, all together, and apart? Whose Black girl voice sounds your image-making mind? What kinds of actions does that sound move you to make? These kinds of questions are becoming increasingly important to me as a foundation for proceeding to discuss the issues that give meaning to Black girlhood, and to focus on Black girls in good faith.  But this medium, much like SOLHOT, does not provide for an uncomplicated knowing of where you and I stand, or an articulation of who is standing with me and who is with you. I proceed anyway. 

Kind of like the Black girl who shows up to SOLHOT for the first time, my check in is short and deeply observant- I’m watching you, reading me, and I decide on poetry. I share this poetic narrative as a way to highlight the work of SOLHOT as a methodology of Black girlhood that insists on valuing Black girls’ lives. Like many a first timer to SOLHOT, I am unapologetically and intentionally vague, however what I know about doing SOLHOT over the years is that even my critical Black girl cynicism offers you something to work with because it is above all else, a promise that my hand is extended out to you with an interest in being together, reaching toward some space beautiful that I can not get to alone.

 

Saving our Lives Hear our Truths (SOLHOT) is what we call the work we do when we gather with Black girls to organize, work together, and be. I suggested it as an idea because I noticed that in too many girl programs, Black girls were always getting in trouble for exercising skills which the program professed to value, like having and using a voice, being in one’s body, and exhibiting willfulness. I suggested SOLHOT as a way to organize with Black girls to create a creative space where we could come together and do something that was useful to our beloved communities and for us. The structure and content is decided by those who show up and is shaped by our individual and collective gifts in conversation with the issues that arise as significant in the places we live, work, and study. There have been hundreds of Black girls and women, at least between the ages of 11 to 55, who have found SOLHOT positively productive, but that is not really the point.  The point is that SOLHOT makes possible conversations and actions that depend on listening, compassion, and a sincere appreciation of what Black girls know. SOLHOT is not for those who know better, perfect people, or anyone interested in etiquette. SOLHOT is for those who can maintain a beginner’s enthusiasm even after five years and know that they do not know so they must unlearn.

SOLHOT feels as if it’s a new idea every Monday evening, every Tuesday after school (2 different places at the same time), and every Friday just before the weekend begins. If it didn’t occupy my thoughts daily, every minute, every hour, you could reduce my rush to get snacks--cookies and chips because that’s what they want and strawberries, grapes, and water because that’s what I need— to disorganization. But I arrive to the place we gather every time fully expecting a miracle.  I just know that she, he, and ze are going to be there and surprise us all with a word, a dance move, or/and a shrug of the shoulders. I am not disappointed.  We are abundantly miraculous. In spite of being called the visionary, it is always what I did not see coming which absolutely makes SOLHOT a personal lesson in the power of unpredictability. And a lesson in why and how not to get caught up on form.  And a lesson in knowing yourself, being well, so that you can share freely.

As of late, the sessions seem hard. Well, at least for us who are the oldest and have been socialized the longest to equate control with awesomeness, a followed agenda with success, replication with normalcy. We have gathered for almost six years now to celebrate Black girlhood and we learn in and out of celebration. The girls teach us how to make meaning in the double—the entendres, the Dutch ropes, the meanings, the takes, the whammies, the dashes, the steps, because they do know even as they insist, “I don’t know” and because “she ratchet,” really mans that non-sense is where it is at and time does not exist. SOLHOT is so contrary, so anti-, really not about the easy answer, the short cut, the product, the shiny happy faces, and the manufactured one-dimensional success stories. This is the thing, SOLHOT never meets our expectations and that is wonderful! We defy description, even this one, every time. If you have not already noticed by now, SOLHOT is not a program, but an opportunity to live. In the moment. Black girl to Black girl. Alive. 

What we do is what needs to be done — talk, make art, process, produce, get crafty, perform, gossip, read poetry, socialize, write, dance encourage, motivate, give hugs, receive, think twice, combat fear, grow, experience disappointment and non-satisfaction, laugh hard, organize, intend, and come to something specific. We lie, make fiction, write on paper, take photos, sit quietly, talk over people, question, critique, criticize, smile, high five, act on impulse, and share our wisdom. We relate, fight, disown, and become one. It’s nothing really, if it weren’t everything.  Love is at the center, regardless. That is enough.

Questions regulate: Are you a foot doctor? What are we doing today?  What’s for snack? How many real friends do you have?  Why Trayvon’s killer walking around here like he didn’t do nothing wrong?  Can you be my mentor? What do you think about that? Who want to fight you? Why they act like they better than everyone else? What he got to do with me?  Where the lady with the dreds? What is racism, like how do you define it and know if it is about race and not something else?  Let me see your nails? What you doing this weekend? Who is CeCe McDonald?  What can I do? Who do she think she is? Why? When we gonna do this again? What she say? How come? Who is that? Why? Who me? Why not?

Knowledge radiates: Sometimes I am the problem so it would best if everything were not up to me.  I’m gay and if you don’t like it, oh well.  Grown ass women know and respect whose land they are on and who was there first.  Just because I like bad boys doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. Don’t let the devil use you.  My name is a combination of my mother and grandmother’s — that’s what my daddy wanted. I am not ghetto. It is always the person defending herself that is caught and punished — not the one who started it. She ain’t SOLHOT. Don’t be messy. I am no one’s second choice. It is time to reconnect. I can’t tell you that.  Lemmme wwrriittee it lik dis cuz it ain’t meanttt for yuh to kno. I am not from this planet, but beyond.

There is a kind of Black girl who can handle Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths.

There is a kind of Black girl who liberates us all in SOLHOT.

There is a kind of Black girl who says that SOLHOT did as it’s name implies, saved her life and facilitated the speaking, hearing, and sharing of her truth.

There is a kind of Black girl who rarely shows up— middle to upper class, and/or overly scheduled, and/or raised by non-Black parents — we just have not had the honor of her presence in SOLHOT (that I know of).  

 There is a kind of Black girl who decides that SOLHOT is not worth her time. Much more regular are those who know mama, and mama as grandma, and grandma as the center of the universe. Those who participate are self-directed in every way, they who come skip volleyball to do so, or recognize SOLHOT as their first choice. These Black girls, most of them, anyway, question more than they claim to know except when it is about family, honor, reality, and themselves. Sometimes they appear disinterested even as they swore by pinky and intimately crossed their heart to be there, consistently without apology, taking up all the space and then some.

In the doing, I have met more than a few super Black girl womanist feminist scholar performer poet doer visionaries. Artists. They give. Collaborate. Think fast. Feel. Love always. They make the space of SOLHOT happen. They know full well the power of having a self and being selfless. They are for sure labeled “crazy” by those who are skeptical of their divinity exercised — but they are well, with haters and all, and in their right mind. They say to me, and mean it, “I love the girls, I love the homegirls, I love you, and I love myself.”  Not in this order and, as my own daughter always reminds me, not above who they know god to be, but the point is they mean love and practice it, at least every Monday evening, every Tuesday after school (two different places at the same time), and every Friday just before the weekend begins. 

But you do not know us and you don’t know this work.  As a rule, we resist being known completely. Black girlhood demands this of us.  SOLHOT would not want it any other way.  Possibility, connection, inspiration are found in the iterative process of coming together in company of Black girls who are also doing the same thing in her own where—our higher selves on higher ground, not alone.  In SOLHOT we delight in the complex genius of Black girls and beyond. We call on some of everybody to be right there with us, and we call them by name to be known and remembered.  Sometimes we fail in SOLHOT, and that is okay.  Sometimes it seems like it is falling apart, except that somebody came to SOLHOT who needed a hug and by the end of the session they received at least one. We learn as we teach— shells of memory and stories of re-memories push and pull us on the shoreline of survival towards liberation. Black girl genius remains obvious to us in SOLHOT in the distance and in the very middle of it.