"We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves": A Dialogically Produced Audience and Black Feminist Publishing 1979 to the "Present"

Abstract

In 1979, black lesbian feminist writers and scholars Barbara and Beverly Smith wrote, "There is...no guarantee that we or our movement will survive long enough to become safely historical. We must document ourselves now." In order to make themselves "present" black feminists (especially lesbian and bisexual feminists) operating in literary collectives from 1979 to 1990 stole the key term "motherhood" out of its heteronormativized function and instead used it to create a shared space and time of co-production. In 1983, when Audre Lorde suggested "[w]e can mother ourselves," she was explicitly suggesting the possibility of a co-productive relationship between black women of the same generation, countering the presumption that a black woman could only expect unconditional love from her mother. In addition, Lorde's statement implicitly requires a complete transformation of the mode through which black female subjectivity is produced, invoking a politics of presence which both frames the political practice of black feminist publishing and scholarship in the 1980's and provides a framework for how black feminist scholars, writers and publishers today can engage a legacy that will still be in the making.