As described by Darlene Clark-Hine in her article, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West" (1989), black women and folk have fostered a culture of dissemblance as a strategy to navigating a systemic state of precarity; Clark-Hine argues that they “created the appearance of openness and disclosure but actually shielded the truth of their inner lives and selves from their oppressors.”(p. 912) 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 do this through approaching the relationship of disclosure and place-making through black women’s writing.
Being in diaspora requires a reckoning with the idea of place. Place being somewhere you can make, even when sold and stolen from home. Or stoled away from home. Or fleeing the place that once was home to make a new place. Place-making is not home-making, in the least because it is temporal, as required. To make place, as I argue here, is to make room for story to make room for folk: a place to be solidified, put back together, to gather a breath.
In How We Write Now (2024), Jennifer Nash characterizes Black feminist theory-voice as “an affectively saturated voice, a deliberately revelatory voice, a voice that discloses, truth-tells, and stays close to the bone…This voice speaks in an intimate register; it grapples with the ethics of disclosure, the risk of saying too much or too little.”(p. 4) I use these five characteristics to consider the ways in which telling makes place, or dimension. While Nash focuses on the beautiful voice of black feminist theory as it attends to, or wrestles with its proximity to loss, I borrow these categories to think alongside writers in how their work does what it does. Here, I consider the five categories through the work Audre Lorde, Black lesbian feminist warrior poet. I turn to Lorde because of her clarity on voice, her deep resolve toward a future, her insistence on living and writing and speaking publicly on her experience, feelings and commitments.
This is what we hope tellings do: make enough space for the struggle a little longer. This is what tellings do, which is why institutions and folk holding power over insist upon one’s silence. Tellings are about futures—the place in the right now, so that another one that is yet to come might be. In this way, tellings are spiritual work: they are the midwifery required in this moment.
Hine, Darlene Clark. 1989. “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14(4):912–20.
Nash, Jennifer Christine. How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory, Black Feminism on the Edge (Durham London: Duke University Press, 2024), 4, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478059509.
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).