Reclaiming Our Words: Black Womanist Politic in the Arts

(Artwork by Benny Andrews)

By Maryam Muhammad

Black women are labeled political when simply trying to exist, from Jada Pinkett Smith's hair follicles to Megan Thee Stallion's lyricism. Whether it's fashion, music, writings, or films, it's rare for a Black woman to create art that is not overly and overtly politicized. As the late great Toni Morrison said, "All good art is political! There is none that isn't." Unfortunately, our art is often dismissed as abrasive or threatening because of the misogynoir that precedes us. Still, Black womanist art that's been made political has often been some of the most essential in its impact.

The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s ushered in Black womanist themes and influences throughout various creative channels. Writers like bell hooks, Sonia Sanchez, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, and Toni Cade Bambara published work that illustrated their experiences with race, gender, and community. An example of womanist work from that time is Audre Lorde's 1978 essay, "Uses of the Erotic." In it, she differentiates pornography and erotica by detailing pornography as a tool of exploitation and erotica as a gateway to empowerment. She explains that too often, pornography has been mistaken for erotica, with women often being the victims of it.

Black women in the Black Arts Movement also helped shape organizing and community spaces. They were strong advocates for racial equity but understood that strides were needed to dismantle gender inequality and classism. They understood that the revolution could not be static and that various groups within the Black community struggled with different concerns based on their material conditions. Writers like Audre Lorde and Cheryl Clarke were members of the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist, socialist, and lesbian organization created to fight against oppressive forces such as capitalism, white supremacy, and cis heteropatriarchy.

In 1977, the group published a manifesto called The Combahee River Collective Statement, emphasizing the need for a Black feminist perspective:

"Black women's extremely negative relationship to the American political system (a system of white male rule) has always been determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes."

More than four decades later, Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter Network, produced a theatrical piece, "POWER: From the Mouths of the Occupied," debuting at Highways Performance Space in 2014…

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Maryam Azeeza Muhammad (she/her) is a poet and womanist from Bridgeport, CT. She is currently majoring in Journalism and minoring in Africology at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.