so many dope things happent. let's start w/ the dopest, shall we?
10:45 am. im fresh outta class. i'd went to check my mail after hrs the night before, so i knew i had a package. i go get the lil slip from my mailbox, take it to the office window & get my stuff. it's a medium sized brown envelope w/ a book inside (i knew it was a book cause it felt like a book & 'book' was written on the front of the envelope).
walkin back to my room, im tryna figure out what book it cld be & who it was from & why they sendin me a book in the first place. at first i thought it was finna be this dude sendin me the book he insisted on sendin me as a gift (bless his darlin lil heart), but the return address said 'barbara smith' from albany, ny.
?
i dont know no barbara smith
and i dont know nobody from no albany, ny
i didn't remember ordering any books from anybody, so im completely confuzzled and confroosed. i get to my room, open the package and find this book...edited by Barbara Smith. as in world famous feminist Barbara Smith. as in 'i started the first official publishing company for black women in my freaking garage because no other companies were publishing the works of people like me' Barbara Smith.
what
the
hell.
at that moment, brittany knocked on my door for somethin & i shoved the package at her.
'barbara smith? THEE barbara smith? 'home girls' barbara smith that we studied in class?? get outta here!!'
that's when it all hit me, man. like how famous she was & stuff.. i was a lil slow to let it all register.
she autographed the book "To: Tracy Clayton, In Black Sisterhood and Struggle, Barbara Smith, 11-8-03"
wow.
she also included a post card w/ her picture on the front (do u know how famous u gotta be to send somebody a post card w/ YOUR picture on the front?!?). on the back of it was written:
"Dear Tracy Clayton:
I Just read your article in the Third Wave newsletter. Your college experience reminds me in many ways of my own when I went to Mount Holyoke College in Massachusettes in 1965. You are making a difference where you are and doing so with great courage. Congratulations on your scholarship award.
Sincerely, Barbara Smith"
wow. freaking wow. i called my women's history professor straight away and britt & i took it over to show her. she was floored. i called my mommy and she demanded that i make copies of everything--the post card, the newsletter, the autograph. i told her the book was only 400 pages & i cld copy that too, if she liked. she's ecstatic for me. and so am i. i felt high the whole day & i think im still feelin it.
so that was great thing #1.
great thing #2: i FIIIIIIIIIIIINALLY got an A on a paper! first friggin A all semester! Dr. Vital gave it to me. i was shocked. that was dope.
great thing #3: they ran my article in the paper yessaday, on how diversity is a women's issue. i aint know how long it was (even though i cut out the 1,000 words) til i seen it in print. they hadda make the pages of the whole paper wider to get it all on one page (they did it cause another girl had a really long article too, who had also written a/b a feminist issue). that evening at around 5:00 i got an email from that girl, Catherine Greene, who is white, about how much she liked the article, how much she agreed w/ the things i said & how to improve on the situation here. that was dope. my mission had already started to be accomplished.
this morning i got another pretty lengthy email from Kelly Ball, also white (who happens to be a student co-ordinator of our diversity action council) about how much she loved the article too, and how much she can relate as a lesbian to my angst as a black woman.
*record scratch*
kelly's gay?! i had no idea!
so i got over the shock and wrote her on some ideas on how we can maybe get a dialogue going on the intertwining of oppressions for women's or black history month. this is a pretty crude synopsis of the emails. i saved them all, including my responses if anyone wants to see them or the article itself.
great thing #4: i sat myself down inthe computer lab last night & wrote a 9 page paper in 3.5 hr. dude, u cldn't tell me i wasn't the shit. then i found out that the paper's not due today, as i had thought, but tuesday. now that i got it outta the way, there's gonna be a whooooooooole lot less stress in the days to come.
so yesterday was great. im gonna write to ms. smith and thank her today.
like evrynight, the day only got sweeter when i laid down w/ my darlin, talkin about evrything & nuthin at all. his voice is like, the perfect lullaby. we playfought for like a million hrs.. lol. after we talked last night tho, i realized somethin-
im actually pretty scared of this whole feminism thing.
in our verbal sparring, he jokingly called me a man-hater & even though i knew he was joking i was pretty quick to take offense. i didnt even realize i had gotten offended til a few minutes later, after he'd apologized & sounded so extremely distressed & distraught that id felt insulted. my heart was finna break, i swear. i started thinkin that it was my fault for bein so sensitive, and i still sorta feel that way.
i dunno, man. there's such a big stigma that comes w/ proclaiming yourself a feminist/womanist/whatever. i know he was jokin, but dont wanna be seen as man-hater just cause im tryna do sumthin a/b the crazy unfair ways women are still treated today, u know? i mean hell, im a woman. why shldn't i care? i dont wanna be mistreated & i dont want anybody else mistreating me or other women, the same way blk folk didn't wanna be mistreated by white folk. other ppl are quick to judge me that way, tho (not ppl who really know me, but others who hear me or read my words in passing. ppl who really know & care about me know better (..i hope)) which is ridiculously ironic b/c i LOVE men. i mean damn, if anything, that's the reason im down w/ this whole feminism shit. i love men and i want them to love me unequivically (sp?). especially blk men.. if u can recognize how my struggle as a black woman is so similar to yours as a blk man, we can only grow closer & love harder, u know? feminists/womanists get such a bad rap. ive always been quick to defend myself to those who buy into the negative hype, & i guess that's what happent in the face of our joking last night.
so yeah, its scary. sometimes i wonder what im gettin myself in to. but i mean, i feel just as passionately about women's rights as blk men's rights. & i want other ppl--white folk, blk men, evrybody--to care about them too.
im rambling.
but yeah... yesterday was a pretty damn good day.
im off to the shower. peash!
