books

You’ve got to love your local library

| Sheree

With my knapsack on my back, I went a wandering. Wandering and wondering is part of my summer field guide plans ( more to follow here with updates). It wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t too cold. It was just right.

I had a bundle of old photographs with me, probably half of my family archive of photographs, as I was going to get them photocopied for a project I’m working on ( more to follow here too).

At my local library, there are two photocopiers. I usually use the downstairs one. But this one was broken. Has been for a few weeks. So I had to go upstairs and use that one.

This photocopier upstairs is manually operated and all monies have to be given to the librarian sitting not far from it.

I asked to use the photocopier. They said yes and I started the job. As I’ve said there were a few photographs to get through and the librarian did say they were leaving momentarily, swapping out.

They stayed for the duration of the job. I paid for the copying and then I took a minute to turn around and look at the new books . Something I do from time to time.

The librarian said at the same time, I was just going to say that there are new books in if you want to have a look at them. Don’t you just love getting your hands on new books? And I had to agree with them.

And there, right in the middle of the shelf, facing me at eye level was the new book from Christena Cleveland, The Black Madonna.

You might remember that another book from Christena Cleveland has been featured on this blog. God is a Black Woman. Ring any bells?

A book I travelled with to Paris, and the outskirts as I took a mini trip to France in search of Black Madonnas.

Well, Cleveland’s next instalment is The Black Madonna, is a further reclamation of the divine feminine, part memoir, part global stories, part historical records, part invocations and rituals. Total liberation.

Part way through this book, where at the end of each chapter there is an invitation to actively allow Black Madonna into your life more fully, I’m drawn to the task of mapping Black Madonna’s loving pursuit of us. Of me throughout my life.

Cleveland presents the story that Black Madonna, is the sacred black feminine worshipped from time, from Africa. When the people of Africa were stolen, taken across the ocean to be enslaved, the sacred black feminine in the form of Osun, orisha of the Osun river begged Yemoja, Mother of all Orishas and Oceans, to let her go with them. Osun’s love for her people was limitless and she didn’t want them to think that she had forsaken them, forgotten them or stopped loving them because of their forced departure .

Yemoja granted Osun’s wish by transforming her into rain, so she could cross the ocean and be with her people who needed her most. So within the Americas, and the Caribbean, Osun crossed an ocean, transforming herself into a more light-skinned goddess so her people would recognise her in these strange new lands, where they had been enslaved and all Africanness bred and/or whipped out of them. She crossed an ocean not just out of love for us, but to empower us. Who has not heard of the slave rebellions inspired and led by Black Madonna, by black women? Who do. you think Harriet Tubman’s North Star was?

Black Madonna. Shape-shifter. Black women. Shape-shifters.

Anyway, I thought I’d share my mapping of Black Madonna’s loving pursuit of me for the past 6 years on this blog this month as I’m in need of feeling that I am not alone.

I’m in need of feeling that I have a black divine presence in my life who’s got me. Who’s there to catch me when I fall.

I’m not religious more spiritual. And because of the white washing of religion,I would’t claim any religion as truth, as something to put my faith in. Never.

I’d much rather put my faith and trust and love into black women. God is a Blackwoman, right. And there is something about Black Madonna that keeps drawing me back to her. That gives me peace and joy when I sent eyes on her.

So who wouldn’t these feelings to continue? Who wouldn’t want to highlight and amplify these feels through difficult times?

We Deserve Monuments

| Sheree

I don’t know about you but I love me a good book cover.

You must have chosen to read a book because of the cover, right?

That’s what I’ve just done.

I recognised the artist as Laylie Frazier. I knew her work from reading Christena Cleveland’s work The Black Madonna.

Researching up more of Laylie Frazer’s work, I found this book over for We Deserve Monuments.

A mixed race teenager with freckles and a lip piercing, defiantly holding the viewers gaze. Yes.

I had to start reading this book. Then to find out it’s a young adult book, and the main character from the cover is Avery and is gay. Yes. Then read on.

In my Summer Field Guide, which I have to fill you in on as there’s been developments, this week was earmarked for a YA read to fit in with how I’m summering like it’s 1985.

Everything is aligning. And the book does not disappoint.

Avery is uprooted from DC to her mum’s childhood home in rural Bardell, Georgia, because Mama Letty ( Avery’s grandma) is dying. The family hasn’t been back for years because of some family rift and secret, which no one will talk about. Avery makes new friends and starts to settle into her new life, even though there’s talk of one of her friend’s mum being murdered by her rich dad who’s linked to the past of slavery, slaves and plantations.

And still no one wants to talk about the past but everything is linked to the present and what happens moving forward.

Right, after sharing this with you, I continue to read now.

Re-engaging with Fugitive Feminism

| Sheree

How would you improve your community?

I applied to Arts Council England for a Developing Your Creative Practice grant mid 2025. It was unsuccessful.

Undeterred, I resubmitted it under the project grant scheme. I was notified of being successful just before Christmas 2025.

Practicing Creative Fugitivity is its name, and it involves researching fugitive practice. It also involves reading in community Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu.

A study circle of women of the global majority.

When did you first learn that you were a non-human?

The question that opens the first chapter of the text Fugitive Feminism.

A question that hits me in my gut with its open, blatant honesty and curiosity.

A question which niggles at a truth that I’ve not wanted to face up to as it would mean that I’ve spent a lifetime trying to demonstrate, prove, live up to an unattainable category of being human.

Human as a category was never created to include someone like me within it.

Human = Whiteness

Human v Non-Human

You can’t have the light without the dark.

All constructs to create hierarchies. A hierarchy where white, EuroAmerican, able bodied, middle class, cis-gendered, college educated and suburban men reign supreme. Superior.

Conceptual Other. No Humans Involved. The Lack of the Human.

Black women. Outside. Out Outside.

Our exclusion determines the borders/ boundaries of the human.

But consider this …

If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all systems of oppression.

Combahee River Collective

Where the excitement lies for me and others, is once we realise that Black women cannot be human, then with the support of this book in community, let’s consider what if ‘human’ cannot and should not be reclaimed?

Speculate. Speculation. Speculative.

How might we divest from the human?

That the non-human Other actually decentres the human. Move beyond human to something otherwise.

Something else.

Becoming ( something else).

Thinking of how to be/ how to live beyond the binary of human v non-human could produce the means of improving our community/society/our planet.

Centring the human ( v non-human/ othering all else) has got us into the shit we’re facing now in terms of ecological disaster.

Finding a way to decentre the human, divest from what this concept / construction means and how it operates has to be the way forward.

Fugitive Feminism is the doorway into another way of being. A portal into an alternative world built upon the Black Feminist politics of liberation.

The path ahead is not clear or defined. It’s slippery and ambiguous. It’s experiential and experimental. Yet full of possibilities. Caring not harmful possibilities.

Speculative. Suggestive. Spacious.

And it starts and continues with the act of refusal. Refusal of the way things are right now.

Refusal of being defined by others to fit into their definition of humanity ( whiteness).

Refusal of being extracted and exploited for the benefits of a few.

Refusal of being non-human.

Refusal of being outside of humanity.

Refusal of the whole concept of human/whiteness/ fascist.

Refusal of these limitations when i, we, i and i can be something else beyond humans.

Hello, did you miss me?

| Sheree

Hello again. It’s April first. And I’m back. And after taking March off from posting here, I’m come to realise that I need this space, this digital, open notebook. This open notebook acts as a catch all space as well as a release of the pressure valve. Knowing I can come here and share anything, let off steam, muse, not even make sense or have the answers is something I’ve been taking for granted. Time away has given me a rest but also a renewed perspective and appreciation for this space, this blog, this notebook, this website. I can hang out here and be completely myself. Spaces and places like this are few and far between.

What makes this space cool also is you. You come here and read all about it. You’re part of the process. And I appreciate your eyes and hearts. Thank you for sticking with me. Thank you for being here. I’ll be honest with you though, from the get go, I didn’t get very far with the archives of this space. I’ve hardly touched the practice as I’ve been pulled elsewhere. But I’ll let you know what I’ve been up to by ad by. For now, I’m just marking my spot, putting down a marker that I have returned and with great joy.

I’ve got so many images to share with you as well as notes about my adventures and reading and thinking and dreaming. But all in good time. I don’t want to overload the senses straight away. Let’s just ease ourselves back into position. Take a look around and see if anything needs changing. I’ll be back daily during this month.

I’ve always loved April for creativity. Both my kids are April babies. The womb, my gut is the seat of your creativity, so let’s see what comes forth this April as I dive back into poetry reading and writing. I’m feeling the urge to write and I’ve got time on the horizon. I’m excited to see what occurs.

I hope you are sticking around to find out too.

Playful Palimpsests

| Sheree

I go to my local probably about once a week if not more. I was brought up next to a library, in Bradford and in Newburn. They were places I could go to for some sense of freedom and adventure.

The librarians knew me and would recommend books to me and events. They wouldn’t rush me, I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted.

Today, I love to pop in to see the book sales at my local libraries. As I have a few on my doorstep now. I flit between them, collecting worn and torn books that I repurpose.

I was brought up to know it was ‘wrong’ to write in books. They were sacred in our home. Probably because we were poor and if we bought books, usually from the indoor market in town, we knew it was money we couldn’t afford to spend on books. But my parents spent it anyway, as they valued books, learning and education. It was our way out of poverty.

I wonder what they would say now, if they saw what I did to books?

10p is all I pay for big, colourful children’s books, withdrawn from library stock. I have to feel the paper first though before I buy them. Even if only 10p, too shiny the page and the paint won’t grip it as well. The paint just swirls around and doesn’t stick.

I like my pages rough and matt finished. Ready to absorb whatever I put down on it.

This sketchbook was my side hustle for the last month. Side hustle to my main creative sketchbook. Here I just lay down colour and see what happens.

I like when what’s underneath the paint bleeds through. I like when the different layers of paint and pencil and pen bleeds through to the surface too.

It’s like a palimpsest. The marks beneath is the feeling I’m after. The haunting, the trace, the evidence of time and the passage of time. The archive is present now.

At last, let’s explore time

| Sheree

When a planned work gig falls through, time can take on a precious meaning.

Instead of attempting to fill time with all the things I ‘should’ do, I’m choosing to rest and finally bury my nose in a book I’ve been itching to read all last year. But some how shit got in the way.

You know the feeling when you find a book that is probably going to speak to your soul and underline all the arguments you’ve been putting forward in the last couple of years but you procrastinate in the reading of it.

For me maybe there’s been a fear factor. That I’ll have more evidence and weapons to add to my arsenal that makes me even more ‘other’, on the edges outside the mainstreams.

And just sometimes occupying this space and moving against the grain is tiring.

It’s like when your eyes have been opened, once you’ve seen it, once you’ve seen those zeroes and ones of the system behind the surface fake-arse narrative, you can’t unsee it and you can’t continue to move and act in ways that support and perpetuate the systems of oppression and hierarchy.

Yes that kind of reading and knowledge. That kind of book. Well that’s what I feel Dismantling The Master’s Clock: on race, space and time by Rasheedah Phillips will do to/for me.

I’ll let you know how I get on!

Ring Shout

| Sheree

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark is a book I can’t get out of my head since I finished reading it.

A dark gothic southern historical fantasy novella set in 1920s Macon, Alabama, just after the 1915 film The Birth of the Nation which is being used to grow the KKK but to another level of Ku Kluxes. Monsters upon monsters.

And who is there to fight them and save the day if not three black women armed with blade, bullets and bomb. Helped with special powers and kinship with Gullah women and the supernatural.

Published on October 13, ( my birthday) 2020, this book blurred all the genres, redefines narratives and timelines and had me hooked from start to finish. It messed with my expectations and just left me wanting more.

I hope there’s going to be a sequel as these characters are too powerful and inspiring to be left in one novella.

More, I want more!

Girl’s Reading for Pleasure

| Sheree

I’ve got a reading streak going on with kindle – not including the physical books I’ve read this year.

I’m at about 210 days and 70 books done. I surpassed my projection of 50 books on kindle.

Anyway when I get sick, I get to taking it even slower and instead of watching pap TV I turn to books to escape from my uncomfortableness and irritability.

It soothes me to read a good book. And I’ve been getting into speculative fiction. I would have said I’m crime fiction and romance fiction till I die. But once I’ve come to realise, really see how both of these genres prop up the capitalist, white supremacy, patriarchal, colonialist system, I can no longer read them with joy.

I can no longer read them full stop. So to fill the void, I’ve been reading non-fiction by black authors and speculative fiction by black authors too.

If I’m gonna be buying this shit then let me buy the shit that supports my people and continues to help me get free.

So here’s a selection my recent reads.

Summer Reading

| Sheree

After a busy week so far, my body is calling for the easy days of summer. Summer reading is usually how I get to slow down. I’ve got nothing major planned for the summer months. Usually we go down south and house and dog sit. But this year I needed a change.

I’m not sure what that is at the moment. The change I’m looking for. But I’m looking forward to putting up my email message of being off the clock for summer. I’ve started a countdown to that time in my head now.

Call it the teacher still in me but I love my six weeks( or more) summer holidays. So I’ve started the slowdown with reading short stories. A quick and easy way to get back into the reading habit. As well as introduce me to new writers. Read the first two this morning as part of my morning routine. And continue to read The Moor throughout this week.

I’ve swept my back yard, and I’m going to spend more and more time out there, reading and dreaming as I want to start growing stuff back there. But first I need to get to know the space. Spend some time there instead one just passing through.

I’m so looking forward to being off the clock and lazing. Trying to complete my chapter on black mothering and fugitivity after requesting an extension. Nearly there. I’ve got to the first of July and then I can relax and start dropping commitments outside the home, work and responsibilities and just go feral for a while. Yes!