Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology

by Barbara Smith (Editor), Donna Allegra (Contributor), Tania Abdulahad (Contributor)

The pioneering anthology Home Girls features writings by Black feminists and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings. This edition features an updated lists of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides a fresh assessment of how Black women's lives have changed- or not- since the book was first published.

Includes:

For a godchild, Regina, on the occasion of her first love by Toi Derricotte
The damned by Toi Derricotte
Hester's song by Toi Derricotte
The sisters by Alexis De Veaux
Debra by Michelle T. Clinton
If I could write this in fire, I would write this in fire by Michelle Cliff
The blood - yes, the blood: a conversation by Cenen and Barbara Smith
Something Latino was up with us by Spring Redd
I used to think by Chirlane McCray
The black back-ups by Kate Rushin
Home by Barbara Smith
Under the days: the buried life and poetry of Angelina Weld Grimké by Akasha (Gloria) Hull
The black lesbian in American literature: an overview by Ann Allen Shockley
Artists without art form by Renita Weems
I've been thinking of Diana Sands by Patricia Jones
A cultural legacy denied and discovered : black lesbians in fiction by women by Jewelle L. Gomez
What it is I think she's doing anyhow: a reading of Toni Cade Bambara's The salt eaters by Akasha (Gloria) Hull
Tar beach by Audre Lorde
Before I dress and soar again by Donna Allegra
LeRoy's birthday by Raymina Y. Mays
The wedding by Beverly Smith
Maria de las Rosas by Becky Birtha
Miss Esther's land by Barbara A. Banks
The failure to transform: homophobia in the black community by Cheryl Clarke
Where will you be? by Pat Parker
Among the things that use to be by Willie M. Coleman
From sea to shining sea by June Jordan
Women of summer by Cheryl Clarke
The tired poem: last letter from a typical unemployed black professional woman by Kate Rushin
Shoes are made for walking by Shirley O. Steele
Billy de Lye by Deidre McCalla
The Combahee River Collective statement by Combahee River Collective
Black macho and black feminism by Linda C. Powell
Black lesbianbyfeminist organizing: a conversation by Tania Abdulahad ... [et al.]
For strong women by Michelle T. Clinton
The black goddess by Kate Rushin
Women's spirituality: a household act by Luisah Teish
Only justice can stop a curse by Alice Walker
Coalition politics: turning the century by Bernice Johnson Reagon

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Race, Anthologies, Essays, Social Justice, LGBT

404 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Barbara Smith (born in 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as a critic, teacher, lecturer, author, scholar, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities over the last twenty five years. Smith's essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditions and The Nation. Barbara has a twin sister, Beverly Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.

Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[jewelthinks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took my time with this one. I savored. I read slowly. I re-read. The pages are worn and dog-eared. So much was covered in these pages. My review is: Read this. Then read it again. And again. Again.

[Court Schueller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a collection of speeches, short stories, essays, and poems. Some I enjoyed more than others. They were all great, but a lot of the speeches just felt more like a textbook. Not always in a bad way, but that may have been why it took me so long to get through this one. Regardless, I’m glad I read it and it was extremely educational!

Also increased my interest in reading some Audre Lorde, so that’s something to look forward to!

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mom knew this woman when the first edition of this was published. I have one of the original editions and this book means so much to me. It for us women of color who long to scream and fight for change.

[cory · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the classics of Black Feminist thought. Very helpful in thinking about how to integrate our fights against racism, sexism and homophobia -- many essays are from women whose lives are at the intersection of all three.

[Trista · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished and I'm going to try to write something here if I can manage to steady myself after having my soul rocked so hard. This book is phenomenal. Poems, memoirs, short fiction, essays; there's something here to level everyone! Before beginning this read you may like to ask yourself insofar as having your ass handed you, what's your style ? Avant-garde or abstract? Gently whispered soul shattering truths? Or perhaps, cosmic and catastrophic all consuming vengeance? Personally, I will greedily take a heaping dose of All.

This work is a compilation of Black Feminist writers, activist and lesbians handling, dissecting, exploding the white supremacist, sexist, homophobic order of the day (late 70's) which, shamefully echoes much of the order of today. These writers bare the souls of Black Lesbian Folk and what it was like for them to be a part of a coalition that although for women would rather not have Black voices added to the mix; through feminist groups that though Black would rather not have to uphold the validity of Black lesbians. They march you through the Black Civil Rights organizations that don't feel their lesbian sisters are people deserving of the same rights; through adolescent years and first experiences with girls and their homophobic families. Steeped in the wisdom, power, sorrow and transcendence, these pages are a deluge of humanity from which, once submerged, the reader may never feel the need to come up for air. Though it has great moments of judgment, it is also welcoming and tender. This reader found friends and kindred in these pages and voices that have not faded or aged a day in over 4 decades and cannot recommend this work enough.

Personal favorites were Barbara Banks' "Miss Esther's Land" about an old Black woman holding on to her farm land that her Uncle left her so white people could not take it, Toi Derricotte's "Hester's Song," inspired by her son when he asker her if she ever read The Scarlet Letter; Renita Weems, "Artists Without Art Form:' A Look at One Black Woman's World of Unrevered Black Women," where she discusses Sojourner Truth, Toni Morrison and Lorraine Hansberry. Alice Walker's "Only Justice Can Stop a Curse" is the only war "poem" I think I will ever refer to again and coming up on 40 years later, in the face of white men stepping out of penis ships with the promise to pollute and colonize space, her warning that "if we have any true love for the stars, planets and the rest of Creation, we must do everything we can to keep white men away from them," has a ring of doomsday to it. Lusiah Teish's, "Women's Spirituality: A Household Act," which ties in folklore and the great mystery and influence that was Marie LaVeau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans was a touch of the supernatural the work needed. There were honestly so many more, but if I mention them we will have a review of every piece and you really need to just go read it for yourself.

[Misse Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took my time savoring each story in the collection. Each experience, trauma, struggle, and outcry felt in some way my own or in the very least a common suffering relatable enough to keep me turning the pages. Often, I found myself flipping back to check the publication date and thinking this easily could have been writing today.

Each of the stories in the anthology are a testament to the black feminist perspective.

My favorite of them all is Pat Parker’s, “Where Will You Be?”

Boots are being polished
Trumpeters clean their horns
Chains and locks forged
The crusade has begun.

Once again flags of Christ
are unfurled in the dawn
and criess of soul saviors
Sing apocalyptic on air waves

Citizens, good citizens all
parade into voting booths
and in self-righteous sanctity
X away our right to life.

I do not believe as some
that the vote is the end,
I fear even more
It is just the beginning.

So I must make assessment
look to you and ask:
Where will you be
When they come?

They will not come
a mob rolling
through the streets,
but quickly and quietly
move into our homes
and remove the evil,
the queerness,
the faggotry,
the perservereness
from their midst.
They will not come
clothed in brown,
and swastikas, or
bearing chests heavy with
gleaming crosses.
The time and need
for roses are over.
They will come
in business suits
to buy your homes
and bring bodies to
fill your jobs.
They will come in robes
to rehabilitate
and white coats to subjugate
and where will you be
when they come?

Where will we all be
when they come?
And they will come —

they will come
because we are
defined as opposite —
perverse
and we are perverse

Everytime we watched
a queer hassled in the
streets and said nothing —
it was an act of pervasion.

Everytime we lied about
tne boyfriend or girlfriend
at coffee break —
it was an act of perversion.

Everytime we heard,
“I don’t mind gays
but why must they
be blatant?” and said nothing —
It was an act of perversion.

Everytime we let straights
make out in our bars while
we couldn’t touch because
of laws —
it was an act of perversion.

Everytime we out the proper
clothes to go to a family
wedding and left our lovers at home —
it was an act of perversion.

Everytime we heard
“Who I go to bed with
is my personal choice —
it’s personal and not political”
and said nothing —
it was an act of pervasion.

Everytime we let straight relatives
bury our dead and push our
lovers away —
it was an act of pervasion.

And they will come.
They will come for
the pervert D
& it won’t,
if you’re
homosexual, not faggot
lesbian, not a dyke
gay, not queer
it won’t matter
if you
own your business
have a good job
or are on S.S.I.
it won’t matter
if you’re
Black
Chicano
Native American
Asian
or White
it won’t matter
if you’re from
New York
or Los Angeles
Galveston
or Sioux Falls
it won’t matter
if you’re
Butch or Dem
Not into roles
Monogamous
Non Monogamous
it won’t matter
if you’re
Catholic
Baptist
Atheist
Jewish
or M.C.C

They will come
Then will come
to be cities
and to the land
to your front rooms
and in your closets.

They will come for
the perverts
and where will
you be
When they come?

[Radia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really the book that changed my life.

[Emmaby Barton Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

a lot more fiction than i expected but i really enjoyed (most of) it! - as with any anthology, was a bit of a mixed bag and definitely a few that i ended up skimming/didn’t love but overall a really good collection

from the combahee river collection talking about black feminist writing - ‘we feel that it is absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics’ - i think that really sums up this collection and the importance of so many fictional works being in it

also interesting from a historical perspective - pub/written in the 70s/80s

barbara smith - introduction
- ‘without revised basic thinking - the women intellectual is likely to find herself trying to draw conclusions - moral conclusions - based on acceptance of a social moral superstructure which has never admitted to the equality of women and is therefore immortal itself’
- ‘autonomy and separatism are fundamentally different. whereas autonomy comes from a position of strength, separatism comes from a position of fear… the worst effect of separatism is not upon whomever we define as enemy, but upon ourselves as it isolates us from each other’
- ‘i want to know more and i also want to put myself in situations where i have to learn’

gloria t. hull - for audre
- such a beautiful poem - god i love audre lorde - but i did also really appreciate the point that some people have valid reasons/difficulties for their sielcens - ‘while you probe our agonised silence, a constant pain… please keen on teaching us how to speak, to know that now our labor is more important than our silence’ ‘

michelle cliff - if i could write this in fire i would write this in fire
- ‘to be colonised is to be rendered insensitive. to have those parts necessary to sustain life numbed. and this is in some cases - in my case - perceived as privilege’

home - barbara smith
- ‘i want to tell someone who knew me long ago what we’re doing. i want her to know where i am’
- ‘i envy my friends. i’d like to have a woman on my side who brought me here. yes, i know it’s not that simple, that i tend to romanticise, that it can be hell especially about coming out. but i still want what they have, what they take for granted’

under the days: the buried life and poetry of angelina weld grimke - gloria t.hull
really loved this one which i didn’t expect

- god grimke’s poems!! ‘if i might taste but once, just once the dew upon her lips’
- ’one reads it sensing the poet’s tremendous need to voice, to vent, to share - if only on paper - what was pulsing within her, since it seems that sometimes she could not even talk to the woman she wanted, let alone anybody else’
- ‘what is the meaning of grimke’s life to us?… what she says to me is that we must work, write, live so that who and what she was never has to mean the same again’

artists without art form: a look at one black womans world of unreversed black women - renita weems
- ‘eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely’
- ‘madness is never just madness. it is a way of coping when sanity will no longer do’

cat - julie carter

before i dress and soar again - donna allegra
- ‘why have you shown him the way to pull at the wings and stop the wide stroke of your lesbian angel courage? how can your daughters grow?

the wedding - beverly smith
loved this one
- ‘the only way i’ve kept my sanity is by writing every change i get’
- ‘i feel that i literally wrote my way out of the marriage’
- a real relatability to the bathroom breakdowns: ‘im in the bathroom trying to get some notes on this mess… i feel so cynical, so frustrated, almost hysterical and bored.. i feel so out of place. twinges of self-pity’

miss esther’s land - barbara a banks
- ‘the anger felt good, but it did not, as expected, replace the nameless thing that gnawed inside her, frightened her with its intensity. instead, it began to define her’
- ‘esther was impressed by the strangers who could articulate the things she did not know, and never would know how to say’
- ‘i loved you, and any excuse was good enough’

from sea to shining sea - june jordan
- ‘this is a good time. this is the best time. this is the only time to come together. fractious, kicking, spilling, burly, whirring, raucous, messy, free’

the combahee river collective statement
- ‘we believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression’
- ‘we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic’
- ‘we feel that it is absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics’
- ‘we do not believe that the end always justifies the means. many reactionary and destructive acts have been done in the name of achieving correct political goals. as feminists we do not want to mess over people in the name of politics’

black lesbian/feminist organising: a conversation
- ‘it’s very risky [following ones calling in activism/organising]. not only in a political sense, but in a personal/political sense. in a certain way, its very lonely. and i think that as black women, because of the way we’re socialised in this whole mess, we’ve been kept from each other’
- ‘people define politics very narrowly in terms of elections or who’s running for office. but every waking moment of your life is about some political decision or some political act that you’re making’
- [on coalition work]: ‘we have a bigger world and broader questions hat we have to relate to and we can’t operate in these old narrow vacuums’
- ‘yes, there’s going to be conflict. there has to be conflict. that’s the only way that we learn from each other. if an organisation’s running smooth with no problems then we all are basically saying the same thing. rhetoric. that’s what you get. no one’s growing. and we’re not challenging anything.’
- ‘but i felt not saying anything was worse than my feeling terrible. so i had to think of something to say and in putting together a letter, it at least maybe opened up a door that, had someone not responded, might have been shut forever’

for strong women - michelle t. clinton
such beautiful poem
- ‘you wait, on the verge of crying for someone… to crack the silence that is consuming your body’
- ‘it might dawn on you how shallow your relationships have become if no one, no one is worrying about you’
- ‘i have needed someone to be kind to me, like a sad, sad, misty and grateful dream, my hand outreached, waiting, yet not believing i deserve anything… for those simple times, when i cannot take care of myself’

only justice can stop a curse - alice walker
- the hatred of the curse-prayer - and how old it is - humans are humans etc
- ‘fatally irradiating ourselves may in fact be the only way to save ourselves from what earth has already become. and this is a consideration that i believe requires serious thought from every one of us’
- ‘life is better than death, i believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it. in any case, earth is my home.’

coalition politics: turning the century
an incredible end to the book

- ’i feel as i’m gonna keel over any minute and die. that is often what it feels like if you’re really doing coalition work. most of the time you feel threatened to the core and if you don’t, you’re not really doing no coalescing’
- ‘you don’t go into coalition because you just like it. the only reason you would consider trying to team up with somebody who could possibly kill you, is because that’s the only way you can figure you can stay alive’
- ‘but most of the things, if you do them right, are for people who live long after you are long forgotten’

[Claire S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read excerpts from this during my Women's Studies days, but that was long ago and I've lived so much since then. I am totally due for re-reading!

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, the perspectives of the African-American feminists, and the light it shown on their thinking in the 1970s.

I put this down for a long period of time because the publisher left out some pages right in the middle of a very interesting story.

I read this (or started reading this) as the essay collection for the 2018 Read Harder Book Riot Challenge.

[ruinedpoet · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You dont go into coalition because you just like it: the only reason you would consider trying to team up with somebody who could possibly kill you, is because that's the only way you can figure you can stay alive."

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book. Especially enjoyed the voodoo at the end. The book covers many issues. I’d love to see new pieces included.

[Isis Kazadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

love the idea of finding small expressions of the divine to anchor yourself to. peaches, fish, sunlight whatever

[Brittany Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

BLACK FEMINIST BIBLE. my favorite essay from this book is “Home” by barbara smith. i read it everyday. so grateful to have this book in my life in my heart in my mind.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important touchstone text in Third World Feminism.