Deliberate Revelation: Telling as Place-Making

In this paper I take seriously the need, at times, for dissemblance, but argue that telling, or disclosing, is also an act profoundly concerned with black futures. I explore the relationship between disclosure and place-making through the lens of Black women's writing. I argue that being in diaspora requires reckoning with the idea of place, even when one has been sold, stolen, or fled from their original home. I draw on Jennifer Nash's characterization of Black feminist theory-voice as "affectively saturated," "deliberately revelatory," and grappling with the ethics of disclosure. Using these categories, I consider how the work of Audre Lorde, the Black lesbian feminist poet warrior, does the work of telling and making place. Ultimately, I suggest that tellings, or the act of speaking one's truth, are spiritual work that create the space for struggle and pave the way for future(s).