Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Quirky Black Girls

So, if you read my blog at all, you'd probably be well aware of the fact that I have been in what my mother would call "a mood" (said with a sigh). A while ago I was reading this sort of debate on a forum I'm on. It started out innocently enough but became about race, which is a fascinating subject to me. Someone posted a link to a (three year old) blog posting about racism. After reading that, I went to the main page of the blog and saw a link to a site called Quirky Black Girls, and another blog who had written about them. This site's manifesta literally had me smiling from ear to ear... it's just may as well be about me. This made my day, and I'm so glad I read it.

Quirky Black Girls - Embrace the Quirk!

Manifesta:
"Because Audre Lorde looks different in every picture ever taken of her. Because Octavia Butler didn't care. Because Erykah Badu is a patternmaster. Because Macy Gray pimped it and Janelle MonĂ¡e was ready.

Resolved. Quirky black girls wake up ready to wear a tattered society new on our bodies, to hold fragments of art, culture and trend in our hands like weapons against conformity, to walk on cracks instead of breaking our backs to fit in the mold.


We're here, We're Quirky, Get used to it!


.... Quirky Black girls don't march to the beat of our own drum; we hop, skip, dance, and move to rhythms that are all our own. We make our own drums out of empty lunchboxes, full imaginations and number 3 pencils.


Quirky Black girls are not quirky because they like white shit; rather they understand that because they like it, it is not the sole province of whiteness.


Quirky black girls are the answer to the promise that black means everything, birthing and burning a new world every time.


Sound it out. Quirky, like queer and key, different and priceless, turning and open. Black, not be lack but black one word shot off the tongue like blap, bam, black. Girl, like the curl in a hand turning towards itself to snap, write, hold or emphasize. Quirky. Black. Girl. You see us. Act like you know.


We demand that our audiences say "yes-sir-eee" if they agree and we answer our own question "What good do your words do, if they don't understand you?" by speaking anyway, even if our words are "bruised and misunderstood."


Quirky black girls are hot!

Whether you're ready to see it or not.


Quirky means rejecting a particular type of "value," a certain unreadiness for consumption and subsumption in an economy of black heterocapital. This means that Quirky Black Girls act independently of dominant social norms or standards of beauty. So fierce that others may not be able to appreciate us just yet.


No matter what age we are, we hold onto that girlhood drive for adventure, love for friends, independent spirit, wacky sense of humor, and hope for the future.


Quirky Black Girls resist boxes in favor of over lapping circles with permeable membranes that allow them to ebb and flow through their multiple identities.


Quirky Black Girls- Embrace the quirky!"

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