“When the earth spoke to me, I was moved to compose a collection of love letters between Black women.” -- This is how Dr Briona Simone Jones (University of Connecticut) describes their work in the introduction to their mind-expanding anthology Mouths of Rain. In this episode, Briona tells me how and why they took on the feat of publishing this book while also finishing a PhD on Black lesbian aesthetics in the middle of a pandemic, and how both their mum and Audre Lorde helped them do it. Briona also addresses the impact the constant violence against queer Black women has on their work and on that of others, while, at the same time, highlighting the importance of the Erotic, of love, and of pleasure.

I fell in love with Mouths of Rain immediately and I think you will too. Listen to the episode, get the book, and follow @brionasimone and @queerlitpodcast on Twitter and Instagram.

Texts, people and concepts mentioned:

Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought (ed. Briona Simone Jones, 2021)
Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (A Biomythography), Sister Outsider, Collected Poems, “A Litany for Survival”, “Recreation”, “Love Poem”
Bikram Yoga
https://blacklivesmatter.com/
Words of Fire (ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall)
Alice Walker
Norton Anthology of African American Literature
James Baldwin
Kristie Dotson
Yomaira Figueroa
Afrekete (eds. Joyce Delaney and Catherine McKinley)
Does Your Mama Know? (ed. Lisa C Moore)
Black Woman (ed. Toni Cade Bambara)
Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual African American Fiction
Joseph Beam
Brother to Brother (dir. Rodney Evans)
In the Life
Cheryl Clarke’s After Mecca
But Some of Us Are Brave (eds. Barbara Smith, Patricia Bell Scott and Akasha Gloria T Hull)
“The Black Lesbian Body.” (forthcoming, Cambridge UP)
Pat Parker
Combahee River Collective (1974)
https://americanstudies.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Keyword%20Coalition_Readings.pdf
Barbara Smith
Beverly Smith
Demita Frazier
Margo Okazawa-Rey
Ann Allen Shockley’s Loving Her
Kitchen Table: Women of Colour Press
This Bridge Called my Back (ed. Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa)
Anita Cornwell’s Black Lesbian in White America (1983)
Black Arts Movement (1965-1975)
Alexis De Veaux
Frederick Douglass
The Erotic
Kaladaa Crowell
Brandi Mells
Shanta Myers
Kerrice Lewis
Crystal Jackson
Britney Cosby
Sheila Adhiambo Lumumba
#SayHerName

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.What is the Combahee River Collective?
2.Why does Briona describe ‘Black lesbian’ as a very capacious term? What can ‘Black lesbian’ mean? You may want to refer to Briona’s introduction to Mouths of Rain in your response.
3.What role does naming play in Black lesbian thought?
4.Why does Briona emphasise the importance of the long history of Black lesbian writing?
5.Please pick one of the theorists or writers Briona mentions and learn more about them.
6.How can literature help us fight systemic racism and anti-Black and anti-queer violence?