Home Girls, 40th Anniversary Edition

BARBARA SMITH is an author, activist, and independent scholar who has played a groundbreaking role in opening up a national cultural and political dialogue about the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender. She is the co-editor of Conditions: Five, The Black Women's Issue (with Lorraine Bethel); and All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (with Akasha (Gloria) Hull and Patricia Bell-Scott). She is the general editor of The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History (with Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, and Gloria Steinem), and is the co-author of Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (with Minnie Bruce Pratt and Elly Bulkin). A collection of her essays, The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom was published by Rutgers University Press in 1998 and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and was a Nonfiction Award finalist for the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Book Award. Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building, edited by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks, with Barbara Smith was published in 2014. It won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography and the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction from the Publishing Triangle. Smith was the cofounder and publisher of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S. Publisher for women of color until 1995, and served two terms as a member of the Albany Common Council from 2006-2013. In 2005, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

"The survival of these women and their joy makes Home Girls very satisfying." (Essence) “A provocative and important collection.” (Ms.) "Pungent and varied, full of questions, convictions, and insights." (The Nation) "It is fitting that Home Girls also reflects and celebrates the difference, among the [thirty-three] Black feminist writers, critics, and theorists assembled from the United States and the Caribbean, among Black women of all colors, classes, and cultures. More importantly, it reflects and celebrates our connections." (Women's Review of Books) "Home Girls is a book that has been saving lives and freeing communities for my entire lifetime. The Black Feminist revolutionary ethic and aesthetic that this book founds, documents and forwards is the best hope for survival and well-being that our species has. Read or re-read this book as if everything depends upon it. It does."- Alexis Pauline Gumbs (author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals) “Groundbreaking…Though written years ago, Smith’s words are as valid today as they were then.” (Shondaland) “There is a profound need for those in communities that are taken for granted (or taken advantage of) to give voice to their joy, pain, and ambitions. Home Girls is a must-read for those who wish to understand, to grow, and to learn.” (Black Lesbian Literary Collective) “Considered by many to be the essential book on feminism, Home Girls is a selection of profound essays penned by intriguing feminists as well as lesbian activists.” (VIBE) "Home Girls is a repository of Black lesbian and feminist life, an animate archive that holds the breadth and depth of Black women’s intellectual and political acuity. Home Girls expands the episteme of Black Studies, offering a method to examine the simultaneity of oppression, a vision of freedom that eclipses captivity. Forty years later, this autopoietic text renews the life of Black Feminism, supplying us with incisive language for living." - Briona Simone Jones (editor of Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought) "With its warm, inviting and endearing title, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, this still classic work became foundational as it helped to develop a whole field in which generations of scholars learned the politics of coalition building, organizing, writing responsively and creatively about the Black woman’s experience in global contexts. The 'simultaneity of oppressions' logic which is its theoretical framework still provides an analytical model for assessing how these structures of power are even more clarified today but also how Black women have constantly challenged enforced locations." - Carole Boyce Davies (author of Black Women's Rights: Leadership and the Circularities of Power)

• Preface to the 40th Anniversary EditionPreface to the first Rutgers University Press EditionIntroductionPoem, Akasha (Gloria) HullI. The Blood--Yes, the BloodFor a Godchild, Regina, On the Occasion of Her First Love, Toi DerricotteThe Damned, Toi DerricotteHester's Song, Toi DerricotteThe Sisters, Alexis De VeauxDebra, Michelle T. ClintonIf I Could Write This in Fire, I would Write This In Fire, Michelle CliffThe Blood--Yes, The Blood: A Conversation, Cenen and Barbara SmithSomething Latino Was Up With Us, Spring Redd"I Used to Think", Chirlane McCrayThe Black Back-Ups, Kate RushinHome, Barbara SmithII. Artists Without Art Form"Under The Days": The buried Life and Poetry of Angelina Weld GrimkÉ, Akasha (Gloria) HullThe Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview, Ann Allen ShockleyArtists Without Art Form, Renita WeemsI've Been Thinking of Diana Sands, Patricia JonesA Cultural Legacy Denied and Discovered: Black Lesbians in Fiction by Women, Jewelle L. GomezWhat It Is I Think She's Doing Anyhow: A Reading of Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, Akasha (Gloria) HullIII. Black Lesbians--Who Will Fight For Our Lives But Us?Tar Beach, Audre LordeBefore I Dress and Soar Again, Donna AllegraLeRoy's Birthday, Raymina Y. MaysThe Wedding, Barbara SmithMaria de las Rosas, Becky BirthaMiss Esther's Land, Barbara A. BanksThe Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community, Cheryl ClarkeWhere Will You Be? Pat ParkerIV. A Home Girls' AlbumV. A Hell of a Place to Ferment a RevolutionAmong the Things That Used to Be, Willie M. ColemanFrom Sea to Shining Sea, June JordanWomen of Summer, Cheryl ClarkeThe TIred Poem: Last Letter from a Typical Unemployed Black Professional Woman, Kate RushinShoes Are Made for Walking, Shirley O. SteeleBilly de Lye, Deirdre McCallaThe Combahee River Collective Statement, Combahee River CollectiveBlack Macho and Black Feminism, Linda C. PowellBlack Lesbian/Feminist Organizing: A Conversation, Tania Abdulahad, Gwendolyn Rogers, Barbara Smith, Jameelah WaheedFor Strong Women, Michelle T. ClintonThe Black Goddess, Kate RushinWomen's Spirituality: A Household Act, Luisah TeishOnly Justice Can Stop a Curse, Alice WalkerCoalition Politics: Turning the Century, Bernice Johnson ReagonAcknowledgments Information on Contributors