March on the ABW
So, we made it through February. And I feel it was quite a successful celebration of blackness and history. But now we’ve come to March and, guess what? It’s Women’s History Month.
Now, had I planned this out from the beginning of the year, I’d be all prepared to celebrate my womaness with as much extravagance as I celebrated my blackness. However, the BHM thing was planned quickly, and now I am all planned out.
Still, I do not intend to let the month pass without some note of it. And there will be posts about history and women and feminism and other things. Plus, I am going to continue with the author essays since I found them a lot of fun to read and solicit.
Do any of you have some ideas how we can celebrate Women’s History Month? Perhaps we can break out the Virginia Slims!
Hey ABW. I think it would be great to continue some of the conversations about feminism and women of color. I would love to see some posts about how others feel about feminism and its embrace (or lack of embrace) of women of color. Maybe bring in some readings of bell hooks into the mix as well? Just a thought…
By the way- thanks for your hard work on organizing a fabulous Black History Month set of postings. Makes me glad that we had an extra day in Feb this year to allow for just one more post!
I’ve also been racking my brain for good ideas to celebrate woman history month. I mean, I’m a woman, I run a feminist website, I need some kick ass posts celebrating women and their history…But of course, at the moment, I have come up with one idea–One. With 31 days in the month I sure as hell need more than one idea.
Good luck and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.
It would be interesting to talk about women of color who have made important contributions to history, particularly American, but because of sexism or other reasons, have become forgotten figures. One person that comes to mind is Claudette Colvin – a figure that could be called the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”
It would be interesting to me to hear who black women relate to the ideas of sisterhood. I am writing my undergraduate thesis on sisterhood and black identity through black women’s writing through the diaspora.
Sorry, I meant “how black women” in the second paragraph.
It’s not history exactly, maybe “history in the making”, but I was watching the slideshow at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/impact/iwd/liberia_slide.html and thought you might be interested. It’s part of Oxfam UK’s International Women’s Day post, talking about the education of girls in Liberia (with a brief mention of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in the commentary).
For next year, if you can set it up, I’d love to read author essays focusing on writing woman-ness in a non-white context. I’d also particularly like to read about black women’s contributions to various feminist/womanist/gender equality movements–in my opinion, part of the racism of recorded history in general and therefore feminist history as well has been the effacement of black women’s work. It wasn’t until quite recently that I learned how active black sororities were, for instance, in getting women the vote, and given how closely the second wave was related to the civil rights movement, I’d be very surprised if black women hadn’t had a role to play there as well. But you know, it’s your blog, so what do I know about what would work best.