Home Girls, 40th Anniversary Edition

A Black Feminist Anthology

Edited by Barbara Smith

Rutgers University Press

Home Girls, the pioneering anthology of Black feminist thought, features writing by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and contains work by many of feminism's foremost thinkers. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides Barbara Smith the opportunity to look back on forty years of the struggle, as well as the influence the work in this book has had on generations of feminists. The preface from the previous Rutgers edition remains, as well as all of the original pieces, set in a fresh new package.

Contributors: Tania Abdulahad, Donna Allegra, Barbara A. Banks, Becky Birtha, Cenen, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Cliff, Michelle T. Clinton, Willi (Willie) M. Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Alexis De Veaux, Jewelle L. Gomez, Akasha (Gloria) Hull, Patricia Spears Jones, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Raymina Y. Mays, Deidre McCalla, Chirlane McCray, Pat Parker, Linda C. Powell, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Spring Redd, Gwendolyn Rogers, Kate Rushin, Ann Allen Shockley, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Shirley O. Steele, Luisah Teish, Jameelah Waheed, Alice Walker, and Renita J. Weems.

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

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.

Preface to the 40th Anniversary Edition
Preface to the first Rutgers University Press Edition
Introduction
Poem, Akasha (Gloria) Hull

I. The Blood--Yes, the Blood

For a Godchild, Regina, On the Occasion of Her First Love, Toi Derricotte
The Damned, Toi Derricotte
Hester's Song, Toi Derricotte
The Sisters, Alexis De Veaux
Debra, Michelle T. Clinton
If I Could Write This in Fire, I would Write This In Fire, Michelle Cliff
The Blood--Yes, The Blood: A Conversation, Cenen and Barbara Smith
Something Latino Was Up With Us, Spring Redd
"I Used to Think", Chirlane McCray
The Black Back-Ups, Kate Rushin
Home, Barbara Smith

II. Artists Without Art Form
"Under The Days": The buried Life and Poetry of Angelina Weld Grimké, Akasha (Gloria) Hull
The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview, Ann Allen Shockley
Artists Without Art Form, Renita Weems
I've Been Thinking of Diana Sands, Patricia Jones
A Cultural Legacy Denied and Discovered: Black Lesbians in Fiction by Women, Jewelle L. Gomez
What It Is I Think She's Doing Anyhow: A Reading of Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, Akasha (Gloria) Hull

III. Black Lesbians--Who Will Fight For Our Lives But Us?
Tar Beach, Audre Lorde
Before I Dress and Soar Again, Donna Allegra
LeRoy's Birthday, Raymina Y. Mays
The Wedding, Barbara Smith
Maria de las Rosas, Becky Birtha
Miss Esther's Land, Barbara A. Banks
The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community, Cheryl Clarke
Where Will You Be? Pat Parker

IV. A Home Girls' Album

V. A Hell of a Place to Ferment a Revolution
Among the Things That Used to Be, Willie M. Coleman
From Sea to Shining Sea, June Jordan
Women of Summer, Cheryl Clarke
The TIred Poem: Last Letter from a Typical Unemployed Black Professional Woman, Kate Rushin
Shoes Are Made for Walking, Shirley O. Steele
Billy de Lye, Deirdre McCalla
The Combahee River Collective Statement, Combahee River Collective
Black Macho and Black Feminism, Linda C. Powell
Black Lesbian/Feminist Organizing: A Conversation, Tania Abdulahad, Gwendolyn Rogers, Barbara Smith, Jameelah Waheed
For Strong Women, Michelle T. Clinton
The Black Goddess, Kate Rushin
Women's Spirituality: A Household Act, Luisah Teish
Only Justice Can Stop a Curse, Alice Walker
Coalition Politics: Turning the Century, Bernice Johnson Reagon

Acknowledgments
Information on Contributors