This year I learned that Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Yoko Ono were all born on February 18. Can we scrap that holiday called Presidents’ Day and call it Radical Women Artists Day instead? Or, even better, let’s just call Lorde, Morrison, and Ono “presidents,” since they rule my world and no one really seems to know what Presidents’ Day is, anyway.
In honor of these women and many more, and in homage to the famous Lorde photo above, Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Lee Segarra posed for this photograph and posted it on the band’s Facebook page:
This week over at the Believer Logger, several writers—including Amina Cain, Kate Zambreno, and Jenny Zhang—held a conversation on the work of Bhanu Kapil, on the occasion of the publication of Kapil’s Ban en Banlieue, a book “derived from performances in India, England and throughout the U.S.”
SoCal denizens, get excited for the Blk Grrrl Book Fair, an “anti-racist, anti-colorist, anti-heterosexist, anti-misogynist, anti-ageist and anti-ableist” day of feminist film, visual arts, and literature taking place March 7 in Historic South Central LA. There will be a spoken-word event called “WOMYNSTORIES” in honor of Wanda Coleman.
You’ve probably heard about this movie, Fifty Shades of Grey? But have you heard of “Fifty Shades of Socialist Feminism”?
Out of all the tributes and profiles to mark the passing of Lesley Gore this week, my favorites were this one about the true story behind “It’s My Party” (there was no Johnny—Judy just didn’t want her grandparents to come to her sweet sixteen!) and this amazing Juliana Hatfield cover of “You Don’t Own Me”:
Patti Smith reminds the world one more time that parenting is work:
I’m not a celebrity, I’m a worker. I’ve always worked. I was working before people read anything about me, and the day they stopped reading about me, I was doing even more work. And the idea that if you’re a mother, you’re not doing anything—it’s the hardest job there is, being a mother or father requires great sacrifice, discipline, selflessness, and to think that we weren’t doing anything while we were raising a son or daughter is appalling. It makes me understand why some human beings question their worth if they’re not making a huge amount of money or aren’t famous, and that’s not right.
Check out “Save Yourself,” artist Saint Hoax’s autoerotic self-love answer to the Disney damsel-in-distress narrative.
via sainthoax.com
Speaking of saving yourself, save yourself some affective labor by letting this extension “brighten up the tone” of your emails!
Over at Salon, Katie McDonough takes on “lean-in” ethics, Jessica Williams’s response to those who think she should host The Daily Show, and “the many ways we serially doubt women”:
As long as “lean in” is the central narrative for how we value women’s work and women’s choices, there is very little room to recognize when women are being ambitious when it doesn’t line up with narrow expectations about what we think success and ambition are supposed to look like.
The &NOW Awards 3: The Best Innovative Writing, edited by Megan Milks and featuring poems by yr Weird Sister editors and many of our favorite writers, is now available for preorder!
I love the design and concept behind Scout, a new site for short poetry reviews edited by Kathleen Ossip and Spencer Short.
Check out Affect & Audience in the Digital Age from Essay Press, a free chapbook of conversations curated by Amaranth Borsuk.
Last but not least, I’ll send you off with some poems by Camille Rankine, Rae Armantrout, and Ada Limón published this week.
