Black History Reads / New Zine Announcement!
collage by Kenya Ku$h using image from "But Some Of Us Are Brave" and artist's own photography.
Housekeeping (Exciting Announcements)!
We hope this note finds you in good health. We are sending love to every person reading this letter. <3
We have two exciting announcements before getting into the reading list of the month!
First, congratulations to Women.Weed.WiFi co-founder, Janice aka Nasty Muva, on the birth of her second baby! We are so excited to welcome baby Nova into the girl gang and proud of Janice for becoming a mother of two. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to our GoFundMe to help Janice and Nova have a successful and safe out-of-hospital birth!
Next, we are excited to announce that we are switching themes for issue 07 of our zine. We have scrapped the Rihanna fanzine and are pivoting to a new theme: REPROGRAMMING.
Uhura from the Starship Enterprise -- programming and reprogramming into the future
This decision feels necesarry at a time when only the real is hitting, and we don't want the fake! While a fanzine is a fun staple of zine culture, we're called back to Women.Weed.WiFi's reason for creation, which is to facilitate and advance the holistic health of ourselves and community. At a time when all the walls of the old empire are crumbling and illusions are irreversibly shattered, collectively we are in need of reprogramming. We invite all femme-identifying artists with emphasis on BIPOC women to submit their artwork of all mediums centered around the theme of REPROGRAMMING -- finding alternative and new pathways / patterns in the machine that is our brains and the larger collective machine of society. Reprogramming includes disrupting old habits, thought patterns, and beliefs that no longer serve us , and creating / enforcing new neural, social, physical, and spiritual pathways to leave a world *better* than we received it. Please forward this newsletter to anyone you feel might be interested in submitting! Email submissions to: high@womenweedwifi.com !
~Black History Month Reads~
by Kenya Ku$h
Sometimes Black History Month feels hard for me to get excited about -- I'm always excited about Black history, but sometimes the commodification feels too much, or fake. However, our history is one to feel proud of, one to study intensely, and so amazingly expansive. In lieu of posts on specific icons from history, we wanted to share a reading list — a good start of beautiful, mind-bending, well-researched books across genres, including some by those in our immediate community! The four titles of the month are: Blood Sex Magic by Bri Luna, Revolution This Time: Toward a New Africa by W.O. Maloba, White Teeth by Zadie Smith, and But Some Of Us Are Brave edited by Akasha (Gloria T) Hull, Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith.
Blood Sex Magic by Bri Luna. This book is a gorgeous exploration written by a renowned bruja of Black and Mexican descent. If you made it to our 2019 3-day conference, "Nurturing the Divine Feminine" you remember Bri speaking candidly on our panel about Motherhood and Entrepreneurship! Her book is full of stunning artwork to accompany rituals, incantations, and anecdotes for new and experienced witches. 🔮
White Teeth by Zadie Smith. White Teeth has been one of my favorite novels since I first read it over a decade ago. Zadie Smith is one of my favorite contemporary authors, and this book in particular was a huge inspo to me as a young, Black woman writer. White Teeth was published in 2000 and was widely praised as one of the first, important novels of the 21st Century. Not to mention she started writing this as an undergrad and had it published at the age of 25! Smith uses her lived experience coming up in a multicultural London to analyze the cultural, political, and social factors at play in the decline of the empire, rise of immigrants, and the attempts to sort it out on the micro and macro levels. 🦷
From The Hoodwitch IG of "Blood Sex Magic" author, Bri Luna.
Table of Contents from "Revolution This Time: Toward a New Africa" by Dr. W.O. Maloba
Revolution This Time: Toward a New Africa by W.O. Maloba. I am obviously biased in this recommendation as this one comes from my own father! I am super proud of all of his accomplishments including being one of the most consistent, thorough, and insightful African scholars on African history for over 30 years (a field ironically full of non-Africans). This title deviates from his previous work in being a more conversational, and very accessible read for ALL Africans on the continent and throughout the diaspora. It is a page turner, and honestly that table of contents tells you everything--The man gets right to the important topics! 🔥
But Some Of Us Are Brave edited by Akasha (Gloria T) Hull, Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith. This text is a super important one to read as a Black Feminist or anyone who is interested in having a more fundamental understanding of Black Feminism. The full title reads, "All the women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies." This is a compilation of essays, poems, demands, and pontifications about the state of teaching works by Black Women.🖤
Have you read any of these books? Would you be interested in a WWW book club?
We'd love to hear back from you with any comments or resources you may have!
In love and solidarity,
Women.Weed.WiFi