The Frisky has an awesome series of images and stories about black women writers and artists, that are not as often heard of, including Ntozake Shange, Judith Jamison, and my very favorite Zora Neale Hurston.

I recently re-read Their Eyes Were Watching God, for the book I am writing (more to come on that later!), because of her ability to write a story about finding love in a time where it was very difficult for a black woman to do so, on her own terms. Rereading it as an adult gave it a new political resonance and importance that I had not felt as a teenager, when I had first read it. Rereading it also made me think about how it is still difficult for women of color to defy cultural norms when it comes to love and find paths that are self determined.

Through reading about notable author Richard Wright's squabbles with Hurston, I was given an early language for how I would negotiate finding sexual identity and sexual politics that often worked against nationalist sentiments for the place of my "people" and for the rightful place of women. It is her legacy that I remember when I am fighting with my favorite hip-hop heads about sexism in lyrics and pornographic style videos or fighting in the field of movement building that places gender and race as diametrically opposed. Hurston carved out a story of intersectionality before there was a term for it, before there was a way to understand someone as complex and outside of their lived experience as black, female, oppressed and poor. And for that I remember her this month and am eternally grateful for her work.

• Tags:
• history
• Bad-Ass Women
• Women of Color
• People of Color

View Original Post at feministing.com