the word

bell hooks' sisters of the yam should be part of our personal scriptures. today's word is among the reasons why:

clearly, if black women want to be about the business of collective self-healing, we have to be about the business of inventing all manner of images and representations that show us the way we want to be and are. within white-supremacist patriarchal society, it is very difficult to find life affirming images of black femaleness.

...i was shocked by how difficult it is to find representations of us where our features were not crudely distorted or exaggerated. i was dismayed by how many paintings showed us without eyes, or noses, or mouths. and i began to wonder if these body parts are "forgotten" because they takes [sic] us into the realm of the senses. the problem that i encountered was not a dearth of imagery, but a lack of appealing imagery. [emphasis added]