woman go forth!

[Yann]

"If you the men of Ashanti will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I shall call upon you my fellow women. We will fight the white men. We will fight until the last of us falls in the battlefield."

Yaa Asantewa, an Ashanti queen who led the resistance to British colonial rule in Ghana. She succeeded in the short run, but the Ashanti were heavily outgunned.


"My little daughter, yours is the battle! How shall we act for you? Here are your revered mothers, but indeed yours is the task... You are the Eagle Woman, go to the encounter!"

Aztec birth chant, Miguel Leon-Portillo, "Translating the Amerindian Texts," 1983

[Tyehimba]

"Learning to love ourselves as Black women goes beyond a simplistic insistence that "Black is beautiful". It goes beyond and deeper than the surface appreciation of Black beauty, although that is certainly a good beginning. But if the quest to reclaim ourselves and each other remains there, then we accept another superficial measurement of self, one superimposed upon the old one and almost as damaging, since it pauses at the superficial. Certainly it is no more empowering in the service of ourselves and each other, in the service of our work and future-that will be the result of this pursuit"-

Eye to Eye, Audre Lorde.