I'm watching too many sistas I love on my TL apologetically Tweeting for enjoying this wedding, and I'm not having it.

We have nothing to apologize for.

Entire world is uncomfortable when Black women & girls & femmes enjoy things.
I like what I like. I love what I love.

Never cared what folks thought about it... remember, I'm a Gen-X Black nerd. Never listened to those who said what made me smile was "White" or "corny" or whatever.

You have opinions. So do I, and they're just as valid.
But don't mind me. I'm an August-born Leo. We are the very definition of self-possession and toomuchness...

Just like the new Duchess of Sussex! 👑

#NotYourMule
When you learn to receive our joy as much as you consume our pain AND receive our labor as your right? That's when we'll know that we are free.

(And I'm not just talking about WP or NBPOC. I am *staring* at many of our men.)

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Ebonyteach

Oct 7, 2018
Coffee & proofreading! Copyedits for #TheDarkFantastic are due in 48 hours.

Press suggested "Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games" as a subtitle. Why not "from Harry Potter to Black Panther?"

Because I'm writing another book about the Black fantastic.
One of the things my mentors told me is that it's one thing to write a lot of books. Quite another to write a book people wanna read.

The final version of #TheDarkFantastic was approved back in March. I'm not a supergenius like some of you -- my writing & thinking takes time.
I wanted Black Panther to land, have its impact, and read its aftermath & re-evaluation. I wanted to read what my colleagues in comics studies had to say about it.

I also wanted to watch the Year of YA Black Girl Fantasy, to see how audiences & critics reacted.
Read 10 tweets
Oct 6, 2018
This. (That's why I'm not holding my breath for the "blue wave," which is assuredly a myth. Around 50% won't give up their pedestal. Never have, never will.)
Here's a truth that's as American as apple pie: You're going to have a hard time convincing ~50% of WW to give up their promixity to the most powerful group in the nation.

The half that are already voting blue aren't economically or socially dependent upon conservative WM.
Every single gain in this country was hard won. Few of those gains were made by pleading with that 50%. In fact, they're the ones who transmit White supremacist ideology to each successive generation.

Don't believe me? Here's a quick video.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 5, 2018
Also, for those talking about Black mythology "beyond" or "outside of" slavery & Jim Crow -- there is no beyond, or outside of. Those experiences were the crucible. Our myths and folklore were created back then, because our ancestors were fully human, and humans create culture.
Why is it so difficult for us to look at our enslaved ancestors fully in the face & see them as not only completely human, but extraordinary?

Why do we reduce their lives to mere survival? Flight? Suffering?

What about their dreams? Hopes? Stories? Imagination?
If we don't understand them and their lives better, who will?
Read 6 tweets
Oct 5, 2018
I'm not sure if Octavia Butler was Black American or if her folks were from the Caribbean, but KINDRED is sort of Shakespeare for anyone wanting to build a Black North American fantastic world. She dealt with the problem of slavery way back in the 70s.
Plenty of challenges for building a North American Black fantastic:
1) Slavery, of course. How can you build SFF while incorporating that?
2) Also, it's not North America after all. This place is Turtle Island & belongs to 100s of Native nations -- have to take that into account.
3) What do you do about language? Naming people and places? Naming magical phenomena? Sounds cooler when it's not just plain old English.
4) What about religion? Many (not all) Black US folk are Christian & Muslim, and much of our history & folklore -- & myth -- involves faith.
Read 9 tweets
Oct 3, 2018
This was a follow-worthy Tweet. (Lots of thoughts about this.)
Honestly, this is why I spent time in #TheDarkFantastic examining the construction of race in the Western speculative imagination, and left Afrofuturism -- which I do value as a Black American, and a Diasporan -- alone.
There's been a lot of heat for (a few) African immigrants to the US for critiquing Black Panther, but I think that it's important for us to read what continental Africans have to say about it.

(And we have to listen to their refusal to be labeled with our constructs, too.)
Read 11 tweets
Sep 29, 2018
Thread. (Those of us who came of age in the 1990s had better language & definitions, but the culture was the same as described in the 1980s. Assault was viewed as your own fault. The Internet -- and especially the social Web -- changed everything.)
(Trigger and content warnings, pls mute) The vast majority of women who came of age before 1990 did not have adequate terminology or definitions for sexual violence. *My cohort was the first to have them, but there were violent sanctions & even social death for women who dared.*
We came of age in the 1990s.

1990s sitcoms and the culture in general gave us the language. But you risked social death if it wasn't a stranger. You risked being retraumatized. #DesireeWashington
Read 12 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(