An excerpt from the poem The Welder by Cherrie Moraga; the complete poem can be found here: The Welder
...I am now
coming up for air
Yes, I am
picking up the torch.
I am the welder.
I understand the capacity of heat
to change the shape of things.
I am suited to work
within the realm of sparks
out of control.
I am the welder.
I am taking the power
into my own hands.
Justice by Langston Hughes, written in response to the Scottsboro Boys case and as part of a book written to raise funds for their defense.
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
An excerpt from A Journey by Nikki Giovanni; the full poem can be found here: A Journey
It’s a journey . . . that I propose . . . I am not the guide . . . nor technical assistant . . . I will be your fellow passenger . . .
Though the rail has been ridden . . . winter clouds cover . . . autumn’s exuberant quilt . . . we must provide our own guide-posts . . .
An excerpt from the essay An Open Letter to Mary Daly by Audre Lorde as found in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
To dismiss our black foremothers may well be to dismiss where european women learned to love. As an African-American woman in white patriarchy, I am used to having my archetypal experience distorted and trivialized but it is terribly painful to feel it being done by a woman whose knowledge so much matches my own. As women-identified women, we cannot affort to repeat these same old destructive, wasteful errors of recognition.
When I speak of knowledge, as you know, I am speaking of that dark and true depth which understanding serves, waits upon, and makes accessible through language to ourselves and others. It is this depth within each of us that nurtures vision.
Lady LIberty Needs Glasses by Tupac Shakur
An American Lyric, written and read by Amanda Gorman (transcript here: An American Lyric)