#Terrion L. Williamson

[notchainedtotrauma]

And that there is something to be said for living outside of value, for acknowledging the absolute violence of value, of being party to a system in which one either has value or is devalued and consequently must make all sorts of diabolical concessions, alignments, and, ultimately, misalignments, in order to stay on the positive end of that scale.

from Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Meaning of Black Social Life by Terrion L. Williamson

from top left to bottom right: Kennedi Carter; Elliott Jerome Brown. Jr; Quil Lemons; Shikeith; Kennedi Carter; Nydia Blas; Chrisean Rose; Deana Lawson; Quil Lemons; Kennedi Carter

[adesireforhealing]

If we think about the correlation between black women and anger as more than just, “let’s push back against this representation we don’t like,” there might be something useful for us there. The image of the angry black woman can’t do the work. Arguing about whether or not the “angry black woman” is a good or bad representation won’t really move the dial.

Terrion L. Williamson

[weneedtotalkaboutsexnow]

The communal spaces where black women can go to lay their burdens down are rare indeed, but even more rare are the instances in which black churchwomen can openly address their stigmatized sexualities.

from Scandalize My Name by Terrion L. Williamson 

[ahistoryofanxietyandanxietyand]

In a context where we have been bought, sold, and possessed many times over, black women’s will to self-possession is the ultimate rebellion. It is, as Audre Lorde has taught us, survival.

from Scandalizing My Name by Terrion L. Williamson

[unusualmodesofresistance]

In a context where we have been bought, sold, and possessed many times over, black women's will to self-possession is the ultimate rebellion. It is, as Audre Lorde has taught us, survival.

from Scandalizing My Name by Terrion L. Williamson

[ellierreads]

Nonfiction Book List

A collection of nonfiction books by Black authors and/or related to intersectional race and gender studies, history, as well as other various topics. The list below is a compilation of various lists I have seen on Instagram, as well as research I’ve done on my own. I am sure I am missing important works, and am happy to add anything that is suggested. This list will be regularly added to and updated. 

Race & Anti-Racism

Diangeo, Robin - White Fragility

Eddo-Lodge, Renni - Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Kendi, Ibrahim X. - How to Be Anti-Racist

Mahzarin, Banaji & Greenwald, Anthony - Blindspot

Oluo, Ijeoma - So you want to talk about race

Omi and Winant - Racial Formation in the United States

Rankine, Claudia - Citizen

Roberts, Dorothy - Killing the Black Body

Smith, Andrea - Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy

Sowell, Thomas - Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Waheema & Lubiano - The House that Race Built

Ward, Jesmyn - The Fire This Time

Prison Abolition & the Justice System

Alexander, Michelle - The New Jim Crow

Davis, Angela - Are Prisons Obsolete?

Murakawa, Naomi - The First Civil Right

Stefanic & Delgado - Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

Stevenson, Bryan - Just Mercy

Rothstein, Richard - The Color of Law  

Policing

Vitale, Alex S. - The End of Policing

Intersectional Feminism

Bambara, Toni Cade - The Black Woman, An Anthology

Carruthers, Charlene - Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements

Cooper, Brittney - Eloquent Rage

Collins, Patricia Hill - Black Feminist Thought

Collins, Patricia Hill - Black Sexual Politics

Cottom, Tressie McMillan - THICK and Other Essays

Crenshaw, Kimberle - On Intersectionality

Davis, Angela - Women, Race, & Class

Davis, Dána-Ain - Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth

Gay, Roxane - Bad Feminist

Gumbs, Alexis Pauline - Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugivity

Hernandez, Ed. Daisy and Rehman, Bushra - Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism

hooks, bell - Ain’t I a Woman

hooks, bell - All About Love

hooks, bell - Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

Jenkins, Morgan - This Will Be My Undoing

Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. - They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Kendall, Mikki - Hood Feminism

Lorde, Audre - Sister Outsider

Morales, Rosario - This Bridge Called My Back

Morgan, Joan - When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks it Down

Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́ - The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses

Shakur, Assata - Assata: An Autobiography

Simpson, Leanne Beta - As We Have Always Done

Williamson, Terrion L. - Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life

Wilson & Russell - Divided Sisters

Yamahtta-Taylor, Keeanga - How We Get Free

Masculinity

hooks, bell - The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

hooks, bell - We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

History

Asante Jr., M.A. - It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation

Baldwin, James - The Fire Next Time

Berry, Daina Ramey & Gross, Kali Nicole - A Black Women’s History of the United States

Gates Jr., Henry Louis - Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

Blackmon, Douglas A. - Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Du Bois, W.E.B. - The Souls of Black Folk

Hartman, Saidiya - Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

Hurston, Zora Neale - Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”

Johnson, E. Patrick - Black, Queer, Southern Women.: An Oral History

Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. - They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Kendi, Ibram X. - Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Snorton, C. Riley - Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity

Taylor, Candacy A. - Overground Railroad: The Green Book & Roots of Black Travel in America

Washington, Harriet A. - Medical Apartheid

Wilkerson, Isabel - The Warmth of Other Suns

Zinn, Howard - A People’s History of the United States

Politics/Economy

Anderson, Carol - One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

Baptist, Edward E. - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Psychology

Menakem, Resmaa - My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Mending of Our Bodies and Hearts

Tatum, Beverly Daniel - "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity

Literary Criticism

Morrison, Toni - Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

Education

hooks, bell - Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Science & Technology

Benjamin, Ruha - Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

Skloot, Rebecca - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Shetterly, Margot Lee - Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

Autobiography/Memoir

Angelou, Maya - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Bernard, Emily - Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine

Broom, Sarah M. - The Yellow House

Brown, Austin Channing - I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

Coates, Ta-Nehisi - The Beautiful Struggle

Coates, Ta-Nehisi - Between the World and Me

Hinton, Anthony Ray - The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row

hooks, bell - Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood

Jones, Saeed - How We Fight For Our Lives

Khan-Kullors, Patrisse and Bandele, Asha - When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Laymon, Kiese - Heavy: An American Memoir

Mock, Janet - Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

Noah, Trevor - Born a Crime

Obama, Barack - Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Obama, Michelle - Becoming

Shakur, Assata - Assata: An Autobiography

Welteroth, Elaine - More Than Enough

Wright, Richard - Black Boy

X, Malcolm - The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Comedy

Bell, W. Kamau - The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian

Haddish, Tiffany - The Last Black Unicorn

Rae, Issa - The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl

Robinson, Phoebe - You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain

[blackfeminism101]

blackfeminism101 recommends...

A reading list in case you have made a goal to only read books written by Black women this year:

Hunger by Roxane Gay

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

The Black Girl Next Door by Jennifer Baszile

Born Bright by C. Nicole Mason

The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper

Scandalize My Name by Terrion Williamson

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

Surpassing Certainty by Janet Mock

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America by Ayana Byrd and Lori L. Tharps

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Sula by Toni Morrison

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Bonus-- this one is written by a guy, but it is sooooo good

The Racial Contract by Charles W. Mills

[wanderingandactingout]

My concern is with thinking about what the scrictures placed on churchwomen enable discursively and materially and how these same women go about negotiating these constraints in ways that simultaneously affirm their legitimacy and challenge their authority.

Scandalize My Name by Terrion L. Williamson

[notchainedtotrauma]

Angry black women like me, it was said, who were willing to openly, and sometimes, quite forcefully, contradict our male counterparts, along with our general unwillingness to smile on command or otherwise cater to their overtures, however jacked up they might be, were running good black men away and making ourselves much less viable as marital companions.

from Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life by Terrion L. Williamson

[notchainedtotrauma]

Bass Bailey as Claudia de Pointe du Lac in Interview With A Vampire produced by Jessica Held and Adam O’ Byrne

"Give me the heartbeat I remember. Call it love."

from Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

"Women rid of crimson. Melded flesh. Nothing but flaky tongues for everybody.

Cars morsel sunlight as they stand, arrested. Black girls know about blood."

from And When Where They To Run With That Horizon Across Their Mouths and that Sunset Down Their Spines ? by Salt

Viola Davis as Rose Maxson, Denzel Washington as Troy Maxson in Fences directed by Denzel Washington and adapted from the August Wilson's play and photographed by Charlotte Bruss Christensen

"In this context, the superwoman is not the woman who is asked to do too much but the woman who is expected to feel too little."

from Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life by Terrion L. Williamson

"It settled as the history

of a sprained ankle;

a drawl hauling mud.

Clefts amidst an apple sour

chest."

from We Didn't Mean to Strike Through Sunset by Salt

[notchainedtotrauma]

Like my grandmother before me I have been well acquainted with anger my entire life.

from Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life

[notchainedtotrauma]

First of all, some of these " deadbeats that are sucking the welfare system dry" are students. I, myself, am a high school student, and I also receive welfare assistance. But I also worked at a part-time job for four of five months in which I had to go directly from school and not return home until after 10pm.  This started interfering with my school work and my relationship with my 15-months-old son. So, being the intelligent person I am, I decided that my school work and my son were more important. So I am no longer working.

Chia, in a letter to the (Peoria) Journal Star, cited from Scandalize My Name by Terrion L. Williamson

[notchainedtotrauma]

Perhaps, as my erstwhile friend suggested, I am really too close to anger. But at least I'm in good company.

from Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and The Scandal of Social Life by Terrion L. Williamson

[notchainedtotrauma]

“And that there is something to be said for living outside of value, for acknowledging the absolute violence of value, of being party to a system in which one either has value or is devalued and consequently must make all sorts of diabolical concessions, alignments, and, ultimately, misalignments, in order to stay on the positive end of that scale.” from Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Meaning of Black Social Life by Terrion L. Williamson

[notchainedtotrauma]

“This, ultimately, is about a reckoning. It is about bringing close the lives of those who are not simply "other" but who are fundamentally us and who have so much to tell us not just about who we are but who we can be. It is a story we must pass on.”

from Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life by Terrion L. Williamson

[notchainedtotrauma]

The point of pointing out this dynamic is not to suggest it lessened the impact of our basement gathering-it did not-but to proffer an insight about black female sociality and the spaces where it is enacted. That is, these are not utopic spaces free from the tensions of everyday life or the imperfections of every daypeople but complex sites wherein black social life can and does become unfettered from "the conundrums of the public sphere" that work to wrangle the passions, frustrations, sentiments, and  ultimately, histories of black women into consumable and manageable parts. In these spaces, we can be mad, but still be happy; we can laugh along with someone we despise and rejoice with our enemies, set aside our differences momentarily and pick them back up again before we leave the room.

from Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life by Terrion L. Williamson