About Michelle
Michelle Brown is an author, activist & public speaker who believes in common ground for all people.Appearances
December 2024 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Blogroll
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Recent Posts
- The Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice welcomes Michelle Elizabeth Brown to the BRCSJ Board of Directors
- Ode to Kamala Harris/Our Vice President
- Updated poetry for TDOR 2020 (Monica on my mind)
- Living in the Shadow of COVID 3: Getting Back to Work, Because There’s SO Much Work to Do
- Living in the Shadow of COVID 2: Caring for Our Communities
Archives
Category Archives: Women
The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers “Storytelling Slam”
And the winner is – ME!!!! The theme was “Stand Your Ground” and I told a story about standing my ground in support of the city I love Detroit, MI, in support of building community by supporting local businesses and in standing your ground for respect as a consumer. An eclectic field of ten storytellers, but in the end there could be only one -winner that is – and I am so honored to be that winner.
The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers (TSSOTS) was created by award-winning performer and actor Satori Shakoor. TSSOTS has a global mission and purpose to connect humanity, heal and transform community and provide an uplifting, thought-provoking, soul-cleansing entertainment experience that is unique through the art and craft of storytelling. In Detroit on the third Friday of the month? Come experience TSSOTS at the Museum of African Am erican History.
Posted in Black identity, Black women, literature, Self imaage
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Back to My Future (a poem by Michelle E. Brown)
I don’t want to go back for my future
But every time I try to move forward
I run into the same old lies
The same old games
Flirtation, seduction, titillation
Words that promise
Touch that thrills
Brand new smiles
Telling same old lies
Detours, road blocks, hazards
Turning me around
Impeding all progress
And in my rearview mirror
There’s you
You fit like a comfortable old shoe
Like that big comfy sweater
With patches on each elbow
The cottage in the country
Porch swing rocking gently in the wind
Quiet, stable, solid, you.
But I don’t want to go back to that future
Thoughts, ideas, dreams stunted
Smothered in your all inclusive love
I died a little each day in that past
Back there with you.
After you, I took a deep breath
Awoke from the coma
Returned to my life
Picking up the pieces
Moving forward
Moving on
I don’t want to go back for my future
But every time I try to move forward
I find only darkness, only despair
The futility of today’s transience
Broken spirits, empty promises
Chance encounters on hot summer nights
Evening spent drinking as the bar gets ready to close
Damaged goods, excess baggage
Others trying to move forward
Weighed down by their past.
I want to go back to that promise
That promise of the past
Those quiet romantic evenings
Candle lit dinners, champagne and bubble baths
Deep thoughtful, heated conversations
The art of making love
I guess I want to go back to that future
To move forward, to start anew
And there you are in my rearview mirror
Quiet, stable, solid you.
Reminding that with the bad times
We’d shared a few good too
Rays of light amidst all that gray.
Maybe I can go back for my future
To move forward, to start anew
I want to go back to that promise
I want to go back to that future
I just don’t want to go back there
With you.
Posted in literature, Love, Self imaage, Women
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That Afro puff story got my hair all twisted – Rantings of an Afro Puff Warrior
Like many African American women I have had a love/hate/love history with my hair. I have worn it long, short, straight, braided, twisted and natural. I have covered it with wigs and had it dyed every shade of red imaginable and even a few shades of blonde. We, my hair and I, have traveled a long way to get to the place of love we share today.
You see I was born that middle child. I was supposed to be the long awaited son but instead they got me. Unlike my older sister with her fine curly “good” hair, I came into the world with a head full of thick, unruly, ‘had a mind of its own’ hair.
If my mother braided it in pig tails, it didn’t lay flat like my sisters. After a few hours of play, it would work its way free from the rubber bands and rise up, so my mother and aunties would say, like “someone had sprinkled baking powder on it.”
When appearance really mattered I would sit between my mother’s or aunt’s knees, my head in a knee-lock vice grip, and have it braided so tight my head would hurt. I’d cry “Take it easy” but my hair was a beast and taming it could not be done by “taking it easy.”
One year there was a big wedding. Relatives came from far and wide. When time came for hair combing I started to cry before my mother even touched me because I knew she was going to pull those braids so tight my toes were going to curl.
Aunt Helen who was in from North Carolina asked me what was wrong to which my sister answered “She doesn’t have ‘good’ hair like me. Mommy has to really comb it hard to make it look nice and it’s going to hurt.” She probably giggled (yes she was that kind of big sister.)
Well Aunt Helen looked at me and said “Come here baby. There’s nothing wrong with this child’s hair. You just have to work with it.” She took the comb and brush from my mother, worked a little hair magic and when she was done I was rocking my first set of Afro Puffs.
When I saw the photo on face book of the smiling little girl with her Afro Puffs above the headline that an Ohio School was banning Afro Puffs and braids I felt a pang in my heart.
Horizon Science Academy in Ohio sent a letter to parents including a ban on some Natural hair styles including Puffs as not in keeping with their dress code.
Seriously in 2013 natural hair banned, lumped in with other personal appearance bans like Mohawks, hair dye and body piercings!!!
Ironically I read this post on the same day my city Detroit, Michigan celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March in Detroit where Dr. King first gave his I have a dream speech in 1963. We all remember his dream for his four little children (two were little girls) that they would “one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I’m sure if he were alive today; Dr. King would look at that photo of that beautiful child with her puffs and see his own daughters Yolanda and Bernice.
Maybe he’d remember seeing their heads locked in that knee vice grip, remember hearing them cry as their mother or auntie braided or pressed their hair so it would be acceptable to a world where little black girls were repeatedly told they weren’t good enough, weren’t pretty enough.
I’m thinking he’d feel more than a pang in his heart that in 2013 the quintessential pretty black child look, the Afro Puff, along with braids and natural hair would be banned as unacceptable to Horizon Science Academy’s dress code. .
I believe he would see that speaking out against this ban and talking about instilling self-love in our children was part and partial of not being judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character if the dream is to ever be fulfilled.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not pointing the finger solely at Horizon, this decision did not come in a vacuum. We need only look at the community in the mirror with our penchant for assimilation, each generation getting further and further away from being black as we become more multi-racial, people of color to see how any school board could so blindly see this as just a matter of personal appearance on the same level of body piercing.
I bet Dr. King would be mad as hell, not just at Horizon but at us as community for still allowing our beautiful black children to be seen through a lens of beauty that denies our history, culture and inherent African American beauty
When I saw the photo on face book of the smiling little girl with her Afro Puffs, I remembered all those years I thought I was not pretty and some of the questionable choices I’ve made (like the blond hair) trying to fit someone else’s idea of pretty.
I think of all those dollars I spent on hair products trying to tame my hair so I would look “more professional” when trying to get a job, knowing my black skin was already a strike against me.
I think about how it still stung a little, just recently when someone asked me if I combed my beautiful natural hair and how appalled I am that people still ask if they can touch my hair (yes my hair, part of me not IT).
Although my first thought was to twist up my Afro puffs, gas up the car and head down to OHIO, instead I twisted up the puffs, gassed up the car and went over to visit my nieces. The youngest was wearing her puffs too. I told her “I love your puffs.” I gave her a big hug and said YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!
Posted in Black hair, Black identity, Black women, lgbt, Self imaage, Uncategorized, Women, youth
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