Open Letter as read at Jubilee 2009

Potential concrete Possible and possibly already Existing Soon-to-be full letters. Toying with the idea of when something is ever really finished and over.

Open letter to whomever tore down the posters in Fisk commemorating the struggle to force Wesleyan to hire black professors and to create a black studies department:
Every time I was walk into CAAS the center for African American studies I try to remind myself not to take it for granted. Try and picture wanting and needing something in your life, in your school enough that I would risk being kicked out of school or arrested or physically assaulted and breathing deep and doing it. There’s not a lot of things. And yet. Had that not happened I wouldn’t be here and the most challenging and important moments I have experienced at this school wouldn’t be here. This department. What those people did. The conversations and things that they went through while trying to live and be on this campus. That’s what the posters you tore down were about.

Also we’re hiring two more tenure track profs in afam. And Marsha’s just keep putting the posters back up.


Open letter to the department of Public safety
It is unacceptable that your policy regarding who is and who is not allowed to step foot on this campus is decided on by individual public safety officers and that you think policing people at your own discretion is appropriate. It is unacceptable that those with enough power to encourage you to look at this policy have not done so.

Which brings me to

Open letter to students dissatisfied with Public Safety policies

we’re more powerful and less divided than they think we are.. don’t tell anyone but this is not their priority.. we got this.




Open letter to Urban outfitters/ Liana Stela

In high school when Urban Outfitters became popular
We made tee shirts that said
“Everyone Loves A Multi-Cultural Girl!”
And wore them on picture day
So we could show everyone what we weren’t.

Sometimes we loved performing ourselves, showing people our bodies
Dressing up and looking different
But it was exhausting and painful.

This is the reality. This is how we have come to be where we are here. This is what it means to live together divided.

We promised to name our kids after each other. I am glad you
Have such a beautiful name. But. What does it
mean for me to give my child a name
That I didn’t grow up pronouncing correctly.



[Now] open letter from my mama to me when I was 2 months old (as written in her journal)
20 sept. 1987

Your skin is fairly light (olive) especially for what our expectations were. Tante Jill says she’s thankful for that- that it'll be easier on you- looking or at least blending with me. Who knows? Life is not that easy anyway. It's impossible to predict. Whatever happens I just pray you are comfortable being you and proud to be you. I certainly am proud and almost out of control with it in being part of you.



My friend Alexis writes,

Since love is not scarce, our ancestors bathe us in it every moment that we dare to receive.

I have learned that there are sources of nurturing that are older than us and swifter than our bodies. I am noticing that those who are no longer here in physical form are teachers in the wind, showing us how we must relate to each other, if we want to survive longer than our bodies and longer than a system that denies us.

I have been writing urgent letters to my ancestors since before I knew they were watching and on the cusp of this new year they whispered a suggestion to me. “How about for this new year, as a gift to yourself, you receive some letters from us, the spirits of women that love you from eternity?”

As ever, my answer was yes. These daily letters from the most beloved of my known and chosen ancestors on behalf of all of the ancestors who have sent us love with their lives and dreams without us knowing came at exactly the right time. When I was afraid to trust myself, I was not afriad to trust their guidance for me. I re-learned a shifting methodology of loving myself firstly as their vessel and secondly as their recipient.


Dear Ruby-Beth

Don’t pretend like you’ll get the full effect of this letter inside.
Go outside.
You are much more yourself there.
There was a moment in the creation of what it means for all of us to have set foot on this earth when we had to sit quietly. It is safe to assume that sitting quietly is something that is difficult to make time for. Make time. Abeni Make time. Little one. Make time. importantly try to remember those times that you actually did it. That you felt that rush down your spine and the through your toes and into the earth. It was a bright clear day and you went out into the woods to ask a specific question, something you rarely do when asking for help and you dug as deep as you could and you pulled from somewhere in there to ask and you looked up at the bright sky an the only drop of rain left in the sky fell right into the palm of your hand. That was us. Chills are not chills unless your cold and then you’re probably getting sick. You are not random. If you walked into a room of people you feel funny around and it makes you feel random then you probably just walked into the wrong room. Make context for yourself and when you walk into CAAS don’t take us for granted.

[now] open letter from my mama to me, also in her journal
26 Sept. (you are 10 weeks) 1987
Just lay you, actually ‘sat you’ in your rocker cradle seat. Sitting outside in the sun- you like being out-of-doors- you are hardly ever fretful outside and sometime when you are upset in the house and I can’t figure out what it is- I take you outside and you “cool out.” You never seem to cry for ‘no reason’-