Moving to music not yet written
Listen to these wise words from outstanding Black queer women thinkers. Consider their application today, as we work for changes in society and wait for the 9th article of faith to move on our behalf (“We believe all that God has revealed…”; you know the rest).
Alice Walker: “Our mothers and grandmothers, some of them: moving to music not yet written. And they waited. They waited for a day when the unknown thing that was in them would be made known; but guessed somehow in their darkness, that on the day of their revelation they would be long dead . . . . But this is not the end of the story, for all the young women — our mothers, our grandmothers, ourselves, have not perished in the wilderness.” In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 1983).
Alexis Pauline Gumbs: “Those of us who nurture the lives of those children who are not supposed to exist, who are not supposed to grow up, who are revolutionary in their very beings are doing some of the most subversive work in the world. [We are] generators of an alternative destiny.” “Other Ourselves: A Black Queer Feminist Genealogy for Radical Mothering,” in Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines, edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2016).
To you generators of an alternative destiny,
To you revolutionaries in your very being,
To you who are moving to music not yet written,
I quote the ninth article of faith:
“We believe that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that he will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.”
Keep dancing, defying, and living your best life.
-Marci