Welcome to Litsy!

This book is just 190 pages, but it‘s powerful, and beautifully written. Black women have been telling us to look at the whole picture. We must do it through the lens of Black Feminism. White Feminism has failed us, time and time again. The author breaks down liberation and decolonization, giving us a new way to think about and apply, what she calls ‘Sensuous Knowledge‘. Highly recommended. Link to her website: https://msafropolitan.com/

When it comes to beauty, we need to detach our ideas of beauty from heteronormativity, patriarchy, and racism and redefine beauty from a woman-centered point of view. We need to explore beauty from an active rather than a passive position of womanhood—as subjects and not objects, as directors of the orchestra rather than the instruments to be played. The orchestra might look similar, but the song will sound different.

At some point in life the world‘s beauty becomes enough. You don‘t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don‘t need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens—that letting go—you let go because you can. The world will always be there—while you sleep it will be there—when you wake it will be there as well. So you can sleep and there is reason to awake. —Tony Morrison

Rivers start out as tiny streams at mountaintops. As the streams trickle down, they are met by other small streams and tributaries, together growing larger, and larger until their mutual flow becomes a river. The more the river widens, the more power it has to circumvent the barriers in its way. In this sense, rivers show us that there is high power in collective action. Yet once a river reaches the ocean, it streams separate again, reminding ⬇️

Resistance against racism and sexism is like bench-pressing weights. If you lift only with your right hand, the left weight will collapse on you and vice versa. We need to resist sexism together with those black men who oppose it, and racism with white women who oppose it. Without a sense of political sisterhood, the fight against patriarchy is moot.Acid rain may not kill every single tree in the world, but it is a threat to every single tree on⬇️

If I spend my life despising you because of your race, or class, or religion, I become your slave. If you spend yours hating me for similar reasons, it is because you are my slave.I own your energy, your fear, your intellect.I determine where you live, how you live, what your work is, your definition of excellence, and I set limits to your ability to love. I will have shaped your life. That is the gift of your hatred; you are mine. —Toni Morrison

We have such collective terror, fury, and rage, as well as sorrow and many other emotions, because of the destructions of men.Whether it is rape, domestic violence, molestation, sexual harassment, or “just” the casual sexism and the quotidian abuse of power that surrounds us or that affects people whom we love, we all have borne witness to the recklessly raw, cold, and violent side of masculinity. We have all glimpse, if not been forced to stare⬇️

Everywhere around the globe, women still except and protect patriarchy in myriad ways— by executing traditions that harm women‘s bodies or carrying out unpaid labor within the domestic space or by taking men‘s family names or through worshiping male gods or by supporting imperialism or through heedlessly raising entitled boys who continue to oppress future generations of women. These are only some of the ways that women are patriarchal, and it ⬇️

A revolution means to turn something on its head. There are many ways to turn something on its head, but the method that prevents a “re-turn” is to change what is actually inside the head. The feminist cause continues to be neglected, diminished, and co-opted in the conversations about decolonization, but one thing is still as sure as when Sankara said it, “The revolution cannot triumph without the emancipation of women.”

A decolonial feminist approach uses principles derived from the exteriorly measurable and deductive worlds as well as the interior, and fertile worlds: from the work of planet preservation; from care professions such as teaching and mothering, rebirthing and creating; from poetry and music; and from making knowledge an active and collective process. A decolonial feminism is explicitly antipatriarchal in nature, meaning the language with which we⬇️

Decolonizing the mind is a process of inserting and reinserting, imagining and reimagining, shaping and reshaping. It is ultimately creating something new using what is needed from the past. It is like the Japanese kintsugi, also known as “golden repair,” the art of repairing a broken glass object with powdered gold. In kintsugi, the gilded cracks give the piece character and beauty. Decolonization of the mind is using powdered gold not only⬇️

Systems of oppression are disintegrating like never before. If ever there were a time when male supremacists cannot ignore women‘s voices, it is now. All over the world, feminists are exposing the inhumane ways that patriarchy oppresses women – and men too.

The colonizer imposes their language, religion, and ideologies, and narrative and uses violent tactics such as detention without trial, collective punishment, mass execution, forced resettlement, and extreme torture to occupy geographical and psychological territory. The patriarch uses similar violent tactics to colonize women‘s bodies and minds. He uses domestic violence, female genital mutilation, foot binding, breast ironing, forced abortion,⬇️

If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression. —The Combahee River Collective

Those who seek to destroy progress— fundamentalists, imperialists, sexists, corrupt governments, white supremacists, military men, greedy corporations, and so on— discourage a sensuous approach to knowledge because tyrants have always understood that the more robotic people are, the more easily manipulated they are. This is why colonizers confiscated indigenous art. It is why organized religions destroyed evidence of goddess worship; it is why⬇️

The incapacity to listen serves to suppress feeling, which results in toxicity because it overlooks actuality. The reason why the most violent people tend to be male is because the social education teaches men to repress their emotions.The repression of emotions always leads to violence, both physical and nonphysical—both toward oneself, and others. We need an approach to knowledge that synthesizes the imaginative and rational, the quantifiable⬇️

I think if you‘re interested in feminism or a feminist approach this is a good one to read. It‘s not so much about rejecting colonialism and Eurocentric knowledge as it is learning, accepting, and incorporating other knowledge into your life for a fuller perspective. Not a quick read, but full of food for thought.