As we come to the close of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I wanted to highlight Misogyny & the Emcee: Sex, Race, & Hip Hop, a very powerful book that was recently written and published by Ewuare X. Osayande. Brother Osayande, has a demonstrated track record of being consistently unapologetic and outspoken about challenging Black communities to address violence against women and girls, with the same vigilance that the Black community addresses state sanctioned violence against Black men and boys.

Chapters from this riveting book include:

• Sexist Perpetrators Are Not Playas but Haters Cause Misogyny Ain’t No Game: Addressing the Case of R. Kelly
• The Source of the Confusion: Eminem, The Source & the Denigration of Black Women
• Spittin’ Acid at the Sistahs: Rap(e) & the Assault of Black Women in Hip Hop
• Manufacturing Pimps: Rewarding Sexual Violence from Hollywood to Hip Hop
• Defiant Black Love Post-Imus: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Nappyness
• Snoop Dogma: Porn-Again Christians, Evangelical Emcees, Wife-beating Bishops, Homophobic Homilies & the Damnation of Women.

“At a time when the outcry is minimal and the voices are tragically few, Ewuare Osayande’s MISOGYNY & THE EMCEE takes no prisoners and cuts straight to the chase on challenging all forms of inter and intra-racial violence perpetuated against Black women and girls. “Too fierce! Osayande’s critically needed message is a constant reminder that if Black people, most especially Black men, do not address sexism with the same vigilance that we (need to) address racism, our (non-monolithic) communities will never ever be whole or safe. In response to Abbey Lincoln’s timeless essay “Who Will Revere The Black Woman?,” Osayande’s powerful book of essays very loudly and clearly say “I will!’”
Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Producer, Writer, Director, NO! The Rape Documentary

“This is a powerful, passionate, compelling commentary on how popular culture, including so called rap and strip club hip hop, is complicit in the perpetuation of patriarchy and the abuse and degradation of Black women. Osayande is devastating and relentless in his logic, and unsparing in his willingness to name those who collaborate in corrupting and debasing Black culture. Ideal for general readers and especially courses in Black history, sociology and cultural studies.”
Dr. Wayne Glasker, Associate Professor of History Director, African American Studies Program, Rutgers University-Camden –Rutgers University

Purchase your copy today. Use it as an educational organizing tool in your home, middle and high school, college/university, church, mosque, and community center to end all forms of violence perpetuated against Black women and girls.

Shout Out: Women of Color Respond To Violence
Maria Ochoa & Barbara K. Ige, Editors
Seal Press ©2008

“How do so many women survive the violence of their daily lives? Where do they find hope? How can this violence be allowed to continue? Shout Out address these troubling questions and more. This powerful collection provides a range of responses to the injustices that women sustain in their dialy lives through critical examiniations, creative non fiction, visual art, and poetry. Shout Out provides living testimony for the need to put an end to Oppression and violence.”

In January 2008, Seal Press released the powerful anthology Shout Out: Women of Color Respond To Violence. Shout Out doesn’t allow readers to be passive spectators. No, this compelling anthology will take you on a transformational journey that challenges you to be involved in the multi racial, anti colonialist, transnational movements to end all forms of violence perpetuated against women.

I am honored that my choreopoem, “A State of Rage” which was conceived in 1994, in a Toni Cade Bambara scriptwriting workshop at Scribe Video Center, is featured in Shout Out. This choreopoem served as the literal roadmap on my eleven year journey to make my documentary NO!.

As with Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, Shout Out: Women of Color Respond to Violence, is another ground breaking, riveting, anthology, which creates the critically needed space for women of color activists, cultural workers, scholars, and practitioners, to document the violence we face everyday, while celebrating our resistance, expressed in a myriad of ways, against all of the odds.

Buy your copy today!!!

Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology
South End Press © 2006

What would it take to end violence against women of color?

In the early winter of 2006, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, a national organization of radical feminists of color, announced the launch of an anthology of critical writings demanding that we address violence against women of color in all its forms, including interpersonal violence, such as sexual and domestic violence, and state violence, such as police brutality, militarism, attacks on immigrants and Indian treaty rights, the proliferation of prisons, economic neo-colonialism, and violence from the medical industry.

This anthology started in 2000, in an attempt to document and commemorate the first Color of Violence Conference at Santa Cruz. At that time, I was in year six of my eleven year journey making NO!. I was one of the 2000 predominantly women of color who attended the herstorical first Color of Violence Conference. It was at that conference that I interviewed Rev. Dr. Traci C. West about the role of religion in violence against women. Traci’s voice joined the chorus of voices featured in both NO! and Breaking Silences. Her written words are a part of the quilt of women and trans activists of color, of which I’m honored to be one, featured in this brilliant anthology.

To purchase your copy of this anthology today, please click here.
To read more about this radical anthology, please click here.

Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara

From 1990, when I was 21 years old, through 1995, I had the absolute privilege to know and learn from Toni Cade Bambara who was an award-winning author, screenwriter, organizer, activist, teacher. Her “hands on” influence on some of the most prominent writers and filmmakers spans two generations. Personally, were it not for Toni’s profound presence in my life at a critical period in my life, I don’t know if I would be a documentary filmmaker today. I wrote about my herstory with Toni and her pivotal role in my becoming a documentary filmmaker, in my featured essay “Asserting My In(ter)dependence: The Evolution of NO!”

Linda Holmes and Cheryl Wall have done a magnificent job of gathering a chorus of well known and lesser known diverse voices who sing a praise song for Toni Cade Bambara, one of the preeminent cultural workers.

BUY YOUR COPY TODAY!!!!

“Brilliance, courage and joy are what I knew of Toni Cade Bambara. Savoring the Salt mirrors her exhilarating intellect and the reach of her incomparable talents. Clearly, in these pages, the impact of her life and work—on family, friends, artists, students, colleagues—is as profound as it is forever”
—Toni Morrison

The extraordinary spirit of Toni Cade Bambara lives on in Savoring the Salt, a vibrant and appreciative recollection of the work and legacy of the multi-talented, African American writer, teacher, filmmaker, and activist. Among the contributors who remember Bambara, reflect on her work, and examine its meaning today are Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Pearl Cleage, Ruby Dee, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Nikki Giovanni, Avery Gordon, Audre Lorde, and Sonia Sanchez.

Admiring readers have kept Bambara’s fiction in print since her first collection of stories, Gorilla, My Love, was published in 1972. She continued to write-and her audience and reputation continued to grow-until her untimely death in 1995. Savoring the Salt includes excerpts from her published and unpublished writings, along with interviews and photos of Bambara. The mix of poets and scholars, novelists and critics, political activists, and filmmakers represented here testifies to the ongoing importance and enduring appeal of her work.

Reviews

“This is a moving tribute to a seminal figure of American literature whose work continues to resonate.”
—Booklist

“Toni Cade Bambara is one of the great literary figures of the late 20th century. She deserves more serious attention and sustained scrutiny. This magnificent volume is a first step toward this necessary effort!”
— Cornel West

“Toni Cade Bambara was a genius of language, an artist of connectedness, a lucid, inspired artisan of human freedom. This collection in many voices, hers threaded throughout, is a gift to her memory, a continuing rediscovery of her visionary work, and an important historical document.”
— Adrienne Rich

“Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Pearl Cleage and other African American luminaries remember the late writer and activist [Toni Cade Bambara]. What emerges is a portrait of a brilliant wordsmith and tireless revolutionary who 10 years after her death, is missed, says Cleage, ‘each and every day.’”
— “Ms.” Magazine

“The breadth of outstanding contributors to this collection is evidence of Toni Cade Bambara’s enormous influence on writers, filmmakers, scholars, and community activists. Bambara’s artistry, insight, and lived example create a directive for 21st century artists: Tap into the genius within, stay rooted in local communities, and use culture as a tool for progressive social change.”
— Louis Massiah

BUY YOUR COPY TODAY!!!!

About the Author(s)

Linda Janet Holmes is a writer, independent scholar, and activist. She is also co-author of Listen To Me Good: The Story of An Alabama Midwife.

Cheryl A. Wall is Professor of English at Rutgers University, and the author of Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition, and Women of the Harlem Renaissance. She is the editor of Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings and Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women.