Monthly Archives: August 2011

The Greatest Fears of All: a poem

August 30, 2011

I am afraid of being disappointed

I am afraid of being hurt

I am afraid of touching others

just as I fear remaining untouched

I am afraid of reaching out

I am afraid of calling out

I am afraid of hurting others

just as I fear being hurt

I am afraid of other people

I am afraid of looking weak

I am afraid of disappointing others

just as I am afraid of being disappointed

I am afraid of loving unconditionally

I am afraid of living boldly

I am afraid of being weak

just as I fear the reliability

of those I view as weak

I am afraid of being misunderstood

I am afraid of uncertainty

I am afraid of being disregarded

just as must as I am sometimes afraid of being seen

I am afraid of loneliness

just as I fear those who leave me alone

I anticipate living my whole self

because I am afraid of dying fragmented

fear is a tricky thing

having acquired much deception

and stealth

yet the only thing of all these things

that I do not fear

is death

Posted by Taviante Queens in Literature, Poetry, Reflections, Self-Care Letters, True Story, Writings to.... Tags: Black feminism, Cradle of Cicadas, Creative Writing, Ms. Queenly, poetry, social commentary, womanism, womanist Black feminist

1 comment

the Hair Boggart: the verdict–natural or another turn of of chemical relaxing

August 30, 2011

boggart: a magical’ creature that turns into the thing you fear most once it emerges from the darkness, where it hides in its true form. No one knows what the boggart looks like when she is alone (my definition of a creature from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter)

I’ve decided to “go natural” after about four or five years of choosing chemical relaxer treatments for convenience. The truth is that I just don’t have a reason not to let go of that “creamy crack”, as I’ve heard the product referred to. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried to take care of my hair in it’s natural state.

I’ve had a variety of hair styles and treatments over the years, most of them dictated to me by my mother who has always wanted me to keep my hair long. She herself has had her hair locked for about two years now and, when she’s not messing it up, it looks really good. My brother also had dreads and wore them until he passed away.

In my first post expressing my feelings, thoughts, and experiences about and with my hair, I discussed my dismay over its thickness and curl pattern. I also happen to be very tender-headed, or sensitive when it comes to manipulating my hair by way of combing or brushing or other means of styling. There’s a loooot of hair on this head to dedicate my time to, but I think I’m ready to learn how to do that rather than relying on chemical relaxers and stylists.

For financial reasons (meaning I’m poor and can’t afford luxuries like getting my hair done regularly), I have been getting my hair relaxed two or three times a year. How ridiculous it looks with those straight-frazzled ends hanging down or sticking up from my new growth while I hide in the house waiting for the time when I can go out into the light to get my hair done again. Luckily, my hair, if nothing else, is resilient, so waiting between chemical relaxers doesn’t cause me to go bald or anything.

As a child, I didn’t think that it mattered if I relaxed my hair or wore braids or weaves because my sister called me “white” anyway, no matter what I did. When I recently expressed my fears over attempting to care for my natural hair from now on, my sister’s response was that she didn’t think I was really serious about it. (At that point, I realized she was just shoving her own anxieties over her hair onto me, being someone who relaxes, braids, weaves, and wigs and falls out of maintaining her natural hair almost every time she has tried.) I realized that if I was serious about this, then I would have to put action to words and stop looking for a support system because there ain’t one around here.

I believe this is one of the first steps to truly learning how to take care of myself.

Posted by Taviante Queens in Reflections, the Hair Boggart, True Story, Writings to.... Tags: Black culture, Black feminism, Black feminist, Black women's hair, hair boggart, Ms. Queenly, natural hair, womanism, womanist

4 comments

the Fresno Diaries 1: two Black girls in Fresno

August 29, 2011

I will chronicle some of my first experiences after moving from my native home in Georgia on the East coast to Fresno, California on the West Coast. These are my stories.

Half-dead palm trees. Heat that’s bearable in the shade. Bright blue skies that looked like they never saw rain. Dry dirt and dust-like soil. Pavement shimmering with waves of heat under a sun that beats down.

We were in a cab, having taken bad directions from my mom to the apartment where we would be staying. The cab driver, despite the fact that we gave him the address, didn’t know where he was going. He became impatient and started getting snappy with us for his ignorance, like he was paying us for the ride instead of the other way around.

I looked to my right to find a beach blonde white guy in a ball cap was hanging out of the driver’s side window of his big shiny truck, staring into the cab at us from the next lane over with his mouth open. At first I thought it was a coincidence. I tapped my sister on the shoulder and gestured. For a second, he had retreated back inside his truck but the moment we both glanced, there he was, staring, open-mouthed at us again, hanging out of the window. Oooo, real live Black people!

“How rude,” I said out loud. “He just starin’ at us….” We must’ve looked really good to him or something, I would later reflect.

Welcome to Fresno.

Posted by Taviante Queens in Reflections, True Story, Writings to.... Tags: Fresno, Ms. Queenly, reflections

1 comment

Black Bloggers Connect “The Strength of Black Bloggers in the Digital Age”, 1st Twitter Forum

August 27, 2011

So Thursday August 25, 2011 this week, Black Bloggers Connect hosted its first Twitter forum and I was happy and excited to participate. I read a lot of positivity and potential in the tweeted comments. Personally, and this isn’t a plug, I never wanted a Twitter, but am pleased that I have one now if only for this kind of opportunity to communicate with other [Black] peoples on topics such as this. I don’t use my Twitter to Tweet to people, usually; I only use it to cover all three of my WordPress blogs feeds so if people want to see what I’m posting, they can. It was a challenge–typing with a word and character count limit!

One thing that did twinge me during the forum was several folks insisting that there’s a difference between Black bloggers fighting discrimination and gaining visibility and giving voice to their experiences using their own voices. I see these two things as one in the same. Trying to intentionally sound noncombative and passive isn’t going to make us any less of a threat to those who are going to view us as a threat no matter what–we might as well go on ahead with it and say where we’re really at and what we really want. Asking for all or a little bit at a time doesn’t change what we need as a peoples in the end. Justice might at times come slowly (if at all) but it isn’t by any means, in my opinion, something that we shouldn’t be shy about needing and demanding. That’s my take on why commentators were putting it that way.

The first icebreaking question presented by Black Bloggers was “How you, as a black blogger, made your contribution to ending [racism or] discrimination?”

More discussions questions include:

“The Help”, of course, came up during the conversation when this question was posed: The movie The Help has caused an uproar in the Black Blogosphere do you think this negative response is necessary?
How strong do you think Black bloggers are online? Do we have a real voice?
As Black Bloggers become more vocal in the online world, what do you think will be our biggest obstacle 4 maintaining independence?
How do you think Black Bloggers can utilize their resources to change our communities?
Many Blk youth are using the internet solely for gossip purposes, how can use blogging as a tool for education?

——————–

Other than being Black and being a blogger, however necessary to be sure, I was pretty nervous about giving my thoughts to the matter. Furthermore, as I said, I don’t usually tweet like that and have my Twitter account solely for the purpose of connecting with other bloggers and to put my own blog out there. I’m not a CNN commentator, political analyst, or a college professor (yet). I’m just a working class/poor Black writer and thinker whose head gets too full sometimes to keep into myself. I’m just someone who experiences the need to SPEAK UP and SPEAK OUT. I am someone who wants to be heard politically yet sometimes fears being misunderstood and misrepresented.

Given the reach of Twitter and the number of people participating, I was humbled to be addressed during the forum and tried not to embarrass Black people everywhere with my answers! ^_^ I was all like, “This is your chance! Say what you really think!”

I would like to thank Black Bloggers Connect and its affiliates (one being BlackAdvertising.Net) and all the bloggers who commented and participated for this awesome opportunity.

in solidarity,

~MsQ

Posted by Taviante Queens in Ms. Queenly's Response to..., News Flash!, Popular Media, Reflections Tags: #BBCForum, “The Strength of Black Bloggers in the Digital Age”, Black Blogger Connect, Black bloggers, Black feminist, bloggers of color, Ms. Queenly, Twitter forum, womanist

Ms. Queenly’s Response to “Second-largest U.S. Indian tribe expels slave descendants” via Yahoo

August 24, 2011

Well, mama, so much for being descended from those “dark-skinned Indians” that you’re so proud of, who are supposedly lurking around in our blood.

This Yahoo article states that the Cherokee Nation has expelled hundreds of descendants of African peoples who were descended from the slaves of plantation-owning Cherokee natives. I had never really thought about the fact the Cherokees (one of the most prominent tribes if not the most prominent of my home state, Georgia) owned African slaves, my ancestors; a professor at the university I attended brought it to my attention, being part indigenous herself.

I hate Disney’s version of Pocahontas and actively rebel against it by trying to teach people the real historical truth behind the romanticized myth.

I always stick my neck out on the chopping block when people talk trash about people of color in the classroom and in my own house, especially for indigenous folks.

Why?

Though my mother is constantly saying that we have more Indians in our family than Africans, I have never claimed any Cherokee blood because I have no proof and do not want to sound like the hundreds of white people who swear-’fore-God that they have an Indian princess in their blood. Furthermore, I identity as Black and reject the idea that being “mixed white or ‘American Indian’” or whatever else will make me less Black; unlike many Black people who curse and thrust their African heritage away, I will not do so.

I understand why the tribes of this country would claim that they don’t have to look after anybody aside from those that they view as their own. But…the Cherokees benefited from a system of slavery put in place by the same group that oppressed and dehumanized them.

I’ve never seen a picture or read a narrative detailing African slaves on the Trail of Tears, come to think of it. And now the Cherokee Nation has shown just how much they care about the Black people that their ancestors helped enslave and had to carry their shit on that Trail of Tears. Their response is that they can change the rules of membership into their tribe any time that they like. Is this the real reason why they have done this?

At this point, if only because this was a bit of a shock to me, I’m kind of just throwing up my hands: Black people hate Black people. Africans hate Black people. Indigenous peoples/Indians/Native Americans/natives/*specific tribe name here* hate Black people. Latinos hate Black people. White people hate Black people. “Asians” hate Black people and think we’re savages.

And Black people, well, we could have it in for just about anybody for just this reason.

I’m sick of in-fighting with other Black people. I’m sick of having it out with other people of color who side with bigoted whites and their own groups. Occasionally, I just ask myself, What have I been fighting for all this time? If two of the most historically oppressed racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. can’t stand together, then what the hell is any of this for?

*throwing up my hands*

Ms. Queenly

Posted by Taviante Queens in Uncategorized Tags: apartheid, Black feminist, Black feminist critique, Cherokee Nation, Ms. Queenly, racism, reflection, Second-largest U.S. Indian tribe expels slave descendants, social commentary, womanism

2 comments

Empathizing with the “Monsters”: Popular Fiction as Metaphor in Race Discussion

August 23, 2011

X-Men. Avatar. Planet of the Apes.

Vampires. Lycanthropes. Aliens. Witches. Shapeshifting jello. Kittens….

….but not living, breathing Black people.

Many of us have learned to empathize and sympathize with the least human creatures and many of the most ostracized beings on Earth through film, books, and other media. I saw an article some time ago discussing whether or not a franchise such as X-Men or the movie Avatar can be used to discuss issues of racism [and other oppressions relevant to colonialism and expansionism] in real-life society.

What worries me about using popular fiction in race discussions in particular is that oftentimes the metaphors that are included in fiction like X-Men, centered around discrimination and violence against “Mutants”, doesn’t always exactly match up with how people discuss racism against people of color. Furthermore, why is it that it’s easier for people to identity with ET or Professor Xavier (X-Men), but not with the living breathing people who pass them on the street and whose history, especially in the case of Black peoples, is fairly well-documented and explicit?

What I’m finding more and more is that writers and producers are abusing this use of metaphor or allegory in order to manipulate readers’ and viewers’ sense and understanding of not only reality but history. You’ve got people saying and/or thinking, “Oh yeah, discrimination against vampires in so-and-so’s book is totally like discrimination against Black people in the South”. Or “Avatar is really about the plight of the American Indians and, like, Africans in the Congo”. Many of these types of movies and books never really explore the harsh reality of racism in its true ugliness and are rather used as selling points—hot gimmicks—for a public that lacks education on how to talk about racism against people of color and a world that lacks solutions to mitigating the oppressions that it upholds.

Metaphors such as these can be useful, creative, and sometimes fun on a basic and introductory level but many of them will never reach the depths that real life situations, history, and reality give us. As a fiction writer myself, I feel awkward saying this:

We need to stop relying so heavily on certain types of fictionalized movies and books by themselves to teach ourselves and children about racism and other injustice. Oftentimes they are produced and controlled by the interest of someone’s profit margin and this someone or somebodies will say anything to get your money and miseducate you at the same time, all the while with you thinking how awesome their production is.

We have to start looking each other and the world around us in the face.

for real,

Ms. Queenly

Posted by Taviante Queens in Film and Movie, Ms. Queenly's Response to..., Reflections, Writings to.... Tags: Black feminist critique, Cameron Avatar, film, Ms. Queenly, Planet of the Apes, race commentary, racial metaphor, X-Men

3 comments

Teaching some folks some manners

August 22, 2011

The problem I often find in conversations online and offline in our community is that I spend less time actually talking about the topic and more time trying to teach people some manners on how to have real, equal, honest, and open conversation even if we don’t agree and its difficult. I always end up in a conversation where I have the misfortune of learning that some people just don’t have the necessary manners to address others without talking down to them.

There are three or four modes of bullshitery/bitchery/common disrespect that some people try to wring you through usually:

passive agressiveness,
condescension,
Instead of discussing the topic or even voicing their real issue with you and trying to talk through that, it becomes a conversation just about YOU and what you aren’t doing, then it becomes their little therapy hour as you try to get them to understand that they’re being rude,
I’m older than you/more experienced/*name the privilege here*, so of course I’m always right–STAY DOWN! STAY DOWN, I KICKED YOU SO STAY DOWN! *props foot on your head and continues lecture/give unsolicited advice*

Usually this is something that they don’t realize that they do in the cases you care about; oftentimes they will even say that they aren’t doing it, kind of like snoring at night.

It doesn’t work the same way with everybody but these are just some thoughts to spring off of.

My problem is that I fall for it every time because I’m just gullible that way, because I want to be heard and I want others to understand as I try to listen and learn about them. I’m particularly weak when I’m dealing with other Black people, especially Black women because I want that haven of community. My problem is that I can’t sacrifice my goals and beliefs to gain that from certain types of people–Black or otherwise. They don’t respect others, and don’t listen.

This is rabid on the internet, most likely because people just say anything that they want from the other side of a computer, whether they’ve thought it through or not, like cowards; they feel that they don’t have to take responsibility or be accountable for what they put out there.

I’m a firm believer that in order to have real dialogue and change, we have to meet each other as equals and regard each other as equals. I get wordy, pissed, and rundown when I feel like people are talking down to me instead of talking to me, talking at me rather than listening. Right now, I’m very sensitive to people trying to explain things to me that I feel I’ve demonstrated I understand. I’m not a child. I’m not just an angry Black person. I’m not generally ignorant and I’m not stupid.

One of the worst things I ever heard someone say to me recently was that I was damaging potential relationships by attacking people who were complimenting me. If you feel someone is treating you like you’re stupid or talking to you like you’re a child that needs something explained to you (infantilizing), where the *&$# does a compliment come into your calculations for consideration in your response? I go into “er, thanks…? Buuuut why did you feel I needed that explained to me?” mode. I encounter this so often online and offline that I immediately go into deconstructing mode and try to figure out what the other person’s problem really is, which sometimes turns out to be a waste of my time like my most recent venture.

Intention has nothing to do with it. If you have something to say about me personally or the way you percieve my thinking, just say it honestly and as clearly and politely as possible. Don’t slice-of-life-lesson me because I don’t want that pie. Personally, that approach doesn’t work for me. Because I mirror that and begin to try and explain things to you (meaning the other person).

for real,

Ms. Queenly

Posted by Taviante Queens in Reflections Tags: assholes on the web, Black feminism, Black feminist, internet culture, internet etiquette, Ms. Queenly, womanism, womanist

Fear: no care in healthcare

August 21, 2011

My sister went to the hospital for two years with migraines, having had a mini-stroke, vomitting, numbness in her legs and feet, tingling, lack of balance, and several collapses, before she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). She also has sickle cell.

Grady Memorial Hospital sent her repeatedly to the Sickle Cell Clinic, claiming that it was a pain attack. At one point, they diagnosed her with an inner ear infection and prescribed her medicine that made her worse. We went to the hospital three nights in a row, where they pumped her full of morphine and fluids, but did nothing to help her though she told them it wasn’t a pain attack and the treatment wasn’t helping; they also have a time limit for how long she could occupy a bed in the clinic and kicked her out. When she was admitted to the upper floors to stay for a night and day, the doctors and their in-residence students stopped by her room to tell her she didn’t understand her condition or her symptoms and that she wasn’t really sick at all. They told her she was pretending.

As I’ve written about before, I myself have hypothyroidism and possibly endometriosis because of my debilitating pains and whatnot, sometimes for months. I haven’t had the Synthoid or Levothyroxine medication in two months because we can’t afford it and now I don’t have a valid prescription or primary care physician in Fresno, where we’ve been forced to move.

My mother, we recently found out, has a so-far benign tumor in her brain that needs to be monitored, and has dealt with Type 2 diabetes for decades.

As I’ve also written before, my brother had diabetes and died after falling ill with Southwest Regional prescribing him steroids, which apparently you aren’t supposed to give to diabetics. He was 21.

The medical bills pile up. The utility bills pile up. And now that I might be sick I’m afraid to bring it up because we just don’t have the money for me to go to the hospital. We’ve never really been in much of a position to pay to live well, not even for the most simple things and a lot of people blame us instead of criticizing and radically altering a system that victimizes us.

I have a healthy fear of the medical system in this country, after so many abuses and failures, and with its history. I’m sure the machine would prefer I was just dead because they’d make more money that way.

Posted by Taviante Queens in News Flash!, Reflections, True Story, Writings to.... Tags: Black feminism, Grady Memorial Hospital, healthcare, healthcare system and failure, Ms. Queenly, social commentary, Southwest Regional Hospital, womanism, womanist

1 comment

Black folks get the NeverEnding slavery and white folks get “The NeverEnding Story”

August 20, 2011

My mama introduced me to all types of fantastical stories when I was a kid, somewhat younger. Gremlins. X-Men. The Dead Zone. Star Wars. Somewhere in Time. Batman. Peter Pan. Warriors of Virtue. Casper. Willow. Galaxy Quest. Reboot. Indiana Jones. Star Trek. Back to the Future. Ronin Warriors. Labyrinth. Hook. Star Gate SG-1. Sailor Moon. Ever After. Bram Stroker’s Dracula. I grew up playing RPG (role playing games) like the Zelda series, Castlevania, Soul Reaver, Sonic the Hedgehodge. Super Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong, Final Fantasy, and, later, Kingdom Hearts.

And, of course, all of those movies, games, and shows are chockfull of white/white skinned people. One of the movies that stands out the most in my thoughts is the NeverEnding Story, which led me to the title of this post. Full of symbols of whiteness and white people.

Yet I know me and my family weren’t the only Black folks watching and playing this stuff nor were our imaginations unstirred by them. I went to see Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows pt. 1 when it came out at a midnight showing. The theater was full of Black people who came there in the middle of the night and paid their money to do the same thing. There was this Black person, and you sometimes you get the vocal types in the movies theater, this Black guy, who said quite loudly and proudly, “Man, I don’t give a shit what nobody say, man, I luv Harry Potter.”

It’s not that Black people and writers don’t write or commune with what could be labeled the fantastical and simultaneously spiritual. But the point is that we as a peoples generally tend not to write/get published for fantasy fiction or anything related, like sci-fi, supernatural, magical girl (fantasy and more of a manga/anime thing), horror (unless you count some of our experiences in life, which we don’t even have to make up), etc. Do we cling to a realistic/realism writing style? Or is the market so simplistic, capitalist, and intent on typecasting/pigeon-holing us as slavery-related lit, street lit, and urban lit that the multiplicity of our writing as it crosses several genre classifications is just ignored? Maybe a lot of us lose motivation, think fantasy and Sci-Fi are for white folks, or have no opportunities to publish, which are my bets. I hope with our generations and the preceding ones that this will change for people of color.

I’m not trying to devalue or undervalue the importance of Black folks’ stories and struggles, but, at this point, my experience with the Black writers has been poetry to slave narratives to stories about slavery and its related periods, chocolate romanticizing and damn-near pornographic stuff to street lit and back again on a continuous loop. I’m just posing this question: why haven’t I heard of any Black fantasy fiction writers before now? There’s a few of them, less than twenty prominent names (I did some minimum research). Why haven’t more Black people made the leap to writing fantasy fiction and other genres that is generally palatable for Black people? Or do most of us just think it’s a genre best left to white folks?

I believe that we as a peoples, whether some of us want to acknowledge it or not, are still healing from the inflictions of slavery, colonialism, and, now, globalization.

We don’t have to sell out or be pretentious to write literature that respects, acknowledges, and is woven through, even heavily, with our history, which I think is necessary. It seems partly an issue of creative thinking versus [a regurgitation] of realism/realist style of writing and the trap of the market itself. Just by being who we are, as Black peoples across the African Diaspora, and writing stories that are thoughtfully about brown people and still fun and exciting and that provoke and evoke our dreams and imaginations, we can never be less than who we are.

evermore,

Ms.Queenly

Posted by Taviante Queens in Literature, Ms. Queenly's Response to..., News Flash!, Popular Media, Reflections, True Story, Writings to.... Tags: black fantasy writers, Black female writers, Black feminist, Black feminist literary critique, black fiction writers, black writer’s market, feminism, literary fiction writers, Ms. Queenly, the Black imagination, womanism, womanist

3 comments

The Wall

August 20, 2011

*cross-posted @ Black Bloggers Connect and She Writes*

After an unfortunate conclusion to a discussion with the blogger Tosh Fomby from totsymae.com, I come to contemplate The Wall.

I feel like I wasted my time with this Tosh Fomby, and at the end of it all, she labeled and dismissed me as some bitch trying to grind an axe for argument’s sake after I clearly inquired as to what her beef over the ‘The Help’ post on my blog was really about because I really wanted to know and jumped through all kinds of hoops of expression for her. No we weren’t going to come to any agreements because we just didn’t agree and I think she understood that much. Seems to me like she was just leading me around for the sake of leading me around while I really trying to clarify myself and get to know her, all the while she was making fun of me and not really listening at all.

Obviously, she must have been pissed off about the post because she liked ‘The Help’ or something. I should have read the signs, what with her being all passive aggressive throughout the entire conversation and with my brief experience with her She Writes, where she welcomed me and seemed friendly enough at first. So the my time-wasting issue is partly my fault for falling for it.

She’s just one so-and-so, right? Why listen to her? But…the situation really let me down. I really thought she was listening because I was listening to her (while standing steadfastly with determination in pushing back with my own prospective). Maybe this is my challenge from this experience, to push past people like this.

The recent conversation had me sitting there with my disappointed boo-boo the bear face for a sec and I thought of this post. Can two people who think they have similar goals understand each other enough to really work towards dialogue and understanding for the cause?

As I work towards my goals and trying to be true to myself at the same time, I encounter The Wall, or a breakdown in communications.

Ever more true,

Ms. Queenly

Posted by Taviante Queens in Ms. Queenly's Response to..., News Flash!, Reflections, True Story Tags: breakdown in communications, Ms. Queenly, reflection, She Writes, social commentary, Tosh Fomby, totsymae.com

Monthly Archives: August 2011

the Hair Boggart: the verdict–natural or another turn of of chemical relaxing

the Fresno Diaries 1: two Black girls in Fresno

Black Bloggers Connect “The Strength of Black Bloggers in the Digital Age”, 1st Twitter Forum

Empathizing with the “Monsters”: Popular Fiction as Metaphor in Race Discussion

Teaching some folks some manners

Black folks get the NeverEnding slavery and white folks get “The NeverEnding Story”

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