Women of Color Talk Filmmaking at Manhattan Neighborhood Network's Firehouse in East Harlem

The following is a tweetup of a panel discussion where women of color media makers and executives talked about the challenges, triumphs and future of institutions to support women of color making films.  It took place at the Manhattan Neighborhood Network's Firehouse Community Media Center in East Harlem, NY on Tuesday, February 13, 2013.  The panelists included:

Marcia Smith of Firelight Media - @FirelightMedia
Dorothy Thigpen of Third World Newsreel - @dthig and @ThirdWorldNewsr
Martha Diaz, hip hop educator - @marthadiazis
Moikgantsi Kgama of Image Nation - @ImageNationUS

Moderated by Christine Peng of Maysles Cinema - @mayslesed

The Projectionist: Why I Watched Basketball Wives and Why I Had to Stop

At the time that I learned I had breast cancer, I was taking little care of myself. For a few months I had let a few guilty pleasures devolve into unhealthy practices.  The occasional ice cream cone from el pillo (as my father calls Mr. Softee) became a nightly indulgence often followed by potato chips, cookies or some other junk food. Sometimes I would chase all this refined sugar with a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, a radical change for a woman who didn’t begin drinking socially until her early thirties and still could count on one hand how many alcoholic drinks she imbibed in any given month. I couldn’t find time to exercise, read or meditate, but there seemed to be endless hours available to watch some pretty horrific reality TV. 

I especially had the time and the mood for Bastketballl Wives. And watching episodes of the show wasn’t enough. I would seek to extend the experience across platforms, scouring the internet for opinions on all the show’s fuckery from running searches on the #BBW hashtag on Twitter to reading the comments posted under inarguably illegal excerpts of the show posted on YouTube.  

Yeah, I can be quite comfortable with my contradictions. Here I am cultural activist who emphasizes the importance of media literacy especially as it pertains to entertainment yet occasionally kicks back by engaging in some egregiously racist and sexist depictions of women of color that television has to offer. Nor do I always feign to do so in the name of conducting in-depth socio-political deconstruction. Of course I do that, but I’d be lying if I said that this was always my primary intention for tuning in. At my most conscientious, I often sought the kick of chopping up the drama with my tweethearts - equally if not more politically interested, astute and engaged sisters than me — as if we were just another high school clique (the honor students natch) side-eying the antics of  Evelyn, Jennifer and Shaunie’s mean girls across the cafeteria. We would tweet snark, psychoanalysis and, yes, sociopolitical commentary all hour long, using the trashy melodrama to inspire the fullest expression of our personalities one-hundred characters at a time. 

But when I was at what I can now accept was a period of mild depression, watching Basketball Wives and shows like it had morphed into a necessary and isolated activity. The compulsion became something far more insidious than an escape from life’s unfulfilled yearnings despite my constant striving according to rules that seemed only to apply to me. I was medicating myself... except that watching the show didn’t make me feel better. On the contrary, it gave me nightmares of getting into catfights with friends and strangers alike. Sometimes I even told myself that indulging Basketball Wives was a practice in gratitude albeit an admittedly high-minded one. At least I have real friends, I would judge from my recliner.  Thank God, I come from a good family.  I’d rather be single than be treated like that. 

Then I got the mother of all wakeup calls. “The smaller lump is nothing as we thought, but the one that you found is invasive ductal carcinoma… cancer.” And suddenly there was no more time for Basketball Wives and such bullshit. While the show went off the rails, I corrected course on a long neglected healing mission. I completed a liver detox and went on what I jokingly call a black supremacist diet (“If it’s white, it ain’t right.”) I quit telling myself that if I didn’t have at least an hour to spare, it wasn’t worth going to the gym and stayed consistent with an exercise regime of at least a half-hour of movement almost every day, and the thirty-plus pounds that had crept on me began to melt. Not only did I reinstitute my morning practice of inspirational reading, meditation and journaling, I finally achieved Reiki Level I, something that had been on my life list for almost a decade. And that is the just the beginning. 

And as I returned to steady self-care and enjoyed the results physically, emotionally and spiritually, I found that not only did I not have time for Basketball Wives, I didn’t miss those chicks not one bit. Since I wasn’t checking for them, it’s only now that I’m realizing how ugly the behavior on the show has become, and it was pretty bad when I was watching it. The tendency to go overboard was always there, no doubt, especially knowing what I do about how a reality TV show is no less concocted than a narrative series. The only difference is that the scripting takes place on the set and in the editing room. So why am I so disgusted now by the depths sunken to by a show I always knew was ratchet and no longer watch? Clearly, as the always problematic Basketball Wives "went left" (as cast member Tami Roman says ad nauseum) with its excessive violence and vulgarity, I had become and therefore came to the news a different person. 

And that begged the question just who was I when I was indulging the show so religiously? Or perhaps more accurately and fairly, which facet of my humanly contradictory being found the show so compelling? What was it feeding to that self?

Could it be possible that Basketball Waves spoke to a baser part of my nature that had not found a safe place for exploration or a healthier form of expression anywhere else? Looking back now on how watching the show made me feel before I embarked on my cancer journey, I can see how as much as I criticized them, I still wanted to be more like Ev and Tami. Not sleeping with ballers, being on TV or stacking weaves and implants (yes, I’ll eventually be undergoing reconstructive surgery, but trust that I would much rather breast cancer had missed me if that was the only way off the Itty Bitty Titty Committee.) Deep down I hungered to be that unapologetically self-centered. That ambitious. That entitled to and uninhibited in expressing my rage.  

The problem is that the things that make me want to behave outrageously are much bigger than she-said-Susie-said. Rape “humor” makes me want to throw wine bottles. I want to run barefoot across conference tables when colleagues make racist jokes.  I’d leave so many dead fish in the cars of men that harass me as I walk down the street, you’d think my name was Jesus. 

But as a socially conscious person, spiritual seeker and, you know, mature adult, that kind of behavior is not supposed to be available to me. I’m too painfully aware that if I were to indulge these impulses, the likely target of my fury would be someone who looks like me just as in Basketball Wives. Look to none other than Tami Roman who has revealed on the show and in follow up interviews the amount of abuse and violence she has survived. Being close in age to Evelyn Lozada and having grown up a stone’s throw away from her in the Bronx, I would bet that she has experienced similar traumas.  But if 14 year old Amber Cole can become the target of malicious vivisection when she most needed sympathy and consolation, how much compassion do you think these women have ever experienced in the aftermath of their woundings whatever they may be? And I don’t know if other women were ever the perpetrators of these transgressions, but I understand intimately that it’s very hard to resist the constant message that you courted and deserved your mistreatment and too easy to lash out the nearest approximation of yourself. The one who seems the most like you, the one whose eyes mirror your own pain and indignation, the one who could be your best healing agent like a blast of cool air in claustrophobic heat is the one you immediately label enemy and set out to vanquish.

If you are a woman of conscience, however,  you make efforts to restrain, reflect and resist, sometimes to our own detriment.  How many times have I checked myself while someone - most likely a sister — has wanted to jump bad with me on the subway over trivia.  I will politick and spiritualize myself out of throwing my hands up even as she comes for me. I don’t think there is a progressive woman of color who hasn’t been in the same situation and later said herself, “I'm reminding myself that somebody has probably hurt her when homegirl didn't thinking twice about hurting me.” It's a scary thought that douses our anger with fear. Where has our instinct for self-preservation gone and what will become of us if we do not recover it? 

Despair builds upon acrimony, and no amount of socio-political understanding of internalized oppression diffuses it. Something must be done with these feelings. Something acceptable. And lots of self-destructive shit is acceptable.  I chose to suppress my ugly feelings with unhealthy food or project them onto someone on TV. Usually I did both at the same time. 

Yet I would watch Basketball Wives, telling myself that I was so much better than Ev or Tami because I know how to act, perhaps all along wishing I could bring wreck with no consequences except maybe a legion of fans who will respect how real I keeps it, a pseudo-celebrity boyfriend, and maybe even my own TV show. But that doesn’t happen in the real world (no pun intended) to sisters who play by the rules never mind those who elect to live down to the stereotypes. No wonder the more heinous the cast of Basketball Wives behaved, the more cathartic it became to my wounded and furious psyche. As with all addictive substances, however, the medicinal effect is short-lived yet the toxicity lingers. Just like an undetected cancer, it feeds on its host and others around her.  

As I discover and practice healthier ways to explore, accept and express my darker emotions, it becomes easier to walk my talk not only as a cultural activist practicing and promoting media literacy but also an evolving spiritual being committed to limiting my ingestion of toxins. That said, I know that I am still far from impervious to the highly addictive drug that is reality TV.  After all, the original toxins — oppression in all its forms — endure unmitigated. But just as the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, the very reasons why Basketball Wives appeals to me are the same reasons it is imperative that I tune it out. 

Queer Sisters Keep Saving Me: The Brilliantly Selfish Act of Being an Ally

Today is the first St. Valentine’s Day in three years in which I write a new blog about what this day means to me. In 2009 I wrote one wherein I recount why St. Valentine was a historical figure worthy of recognition especially in these times and reiterate my support for marriage equality. (These may seem like disparate themes, but trust me, they come together in the blog.) Rather than write a new post, I simply pulled The Spirit of Love and Resistance Behind St. Valentine's Day from the archives and put it back into circulation every February 14^th.

This year is different because St. Valentine's Day has acquired deeper significance to me. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of this year, I learned that I have breast cancer. For many reasons, it has been challenging to reveal my condition to those I know who love and appreciate me never mind acquaintances, colleagues and virtual strangers who follow me on social media. While I got over the shock of the diagnosis fairly quickly – I had to – accepting this frightening contour to my identity enough to make it public has been more difficult.

So why am I “coming out” today as a person with cancer? I do it to acknowledge all the queer women of color in my life who have stepped up for me since I was diagnosed. Rest assured, I have been showered with heartfelt messages of love and encouragement and genuine offers of support from people of all walks of life. Every one of them has been integral in activating and sustaining my new warrior mode, reminding me of how too blessed I am to not beat this disease. All of these people are soldiers in my quickly formed and ever-growing wellness army.

But there have been certain sister-friends who have played immediate and special roles through the early days of my devastation and terror. Not even weeks after my diagnosis, the woman I affectionately call my Minister of Defense and her husband helped me clean and reorganize my bedroom so that it can be a space much more conducive to my healing, physically, emotionally and spiritually. In fact, she has been fielding the outpouring of concern from our mutual friends and has appointed herself the coordinator of my extended support system – rides, meals, escapes and other things I may need as I undergo treatment. My Minister of Defense and I were supposed to leave for Sundance a few days after I was diagnosed. Not only did she cancel her trip, she let the others we were going to stay with about my condition. Upon receiving the news, those women made time in their hectic festival schedule to pray and chant in community for my recovery.

It was critical for me to not wait until conventional treatment started to take action towards healing myself. I needed to build my sense of agency as well as my immune system, and before I could even take the first step, my Minister of Defense and another friend teamed up to split the cost of having a box of organic fruits and vegetables shipped to my house each week so I can juice every day. I could not afford to do this otherwise. They also take turns accompanying me to my appointments which is not only of comfort to me but to my elderly parents who insist on coming with me. When not taking the copious notes and posing the questions that I may be too overwhelmed or frightened to ask, they are engaging my parents in the language in which they feel most comfortable about anything and everything but the fact that their youngest adult child is facing a life-threatening illness. It helps them, and that in turn, supports me. Another lifelong friend – a doctor who is facing a challenging transition of her own at this time – not only sent me hundreds of dollars in health assessment and improvement kits including immunity-boosting supplements, she flew to New York City so we could have an ol’ fashion slumber party in her hotel room.

In the fight for my life, these women have been on the frontline. Each of them, at one point in her life, has been in a romantic partnership with another woman. Because I had not gone public with my diagnosis, one of the friends who went to Sundance actually sent me an email to ask permission to tell her partner because her wife had a very strong relationship to powerful ancestors who answered her prayers. I have no doubt that she organized the prayer circle for me in Park City even when her primary reason for being at Sundance was to premiere and promote her own film. All this slander against LGBT people, painting them as ungodly, immoral and such, when from where I sit, they are the most spiritual and even prayerful folks I know.

This is not the first time I have written about being an appreciative ally. I am the first to say that heterosexual people especially women owe a tremendous debt to the LGBTQ struggle for some of the sexual freedoms we enjoy. Ironic as it may seem, the boundaries queer people bend and bust at the risk of their own lives in many ways expand our heteronormative privilege. Their radical decision to be simply who they are makes it much safer for the rest of us to redefine who we may want to be. We have a broader range of acceptable sexual expression because of the queer liberation movement for every time they push the envelope, they set a new “normal,” and it’s not even they who benefit the most for their courage. Rather it is those of us whose sexual identity is already validated.

While I admit now that this is an oversimplistic analogy, I liken it to how the presence of Malcolm X made the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. more palatable in a society where his ideas were already deemed radical. Same visions, different philosophies, both to the left of what was considered acceptable and therefore also dangerous and vulnerable to the status quo. They needed each other to survive long enough to make the impact that the rest of us, regardless of what we may believe, continue to enjoy today.

Perhaps I am stretching for meaning behind my receiving the news on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this year, but one thing remains true. For the longest time I have felt that in many ways I can choose to do with my life and body – have (a certain kind of) sex or not, get married or not, have children or not – because the authentic living of openly queer women make it more permissible for me to make choices that buck the heteronormativity that attempts to govern even my life as a straight woman. What I do or not and why or not is on me, no doubt. But I have more sexual choices that carry less negative repercussions because of their sacrifices as much if not more than any other freedom movement.

And so it is on this St. Valentine’s Day, the lapsed Catholic with breast cancer is reminded yet again in the most visceral way why supporting full equality and acceptance of LGBTQ people is not some noble feat of reneging her privilege. It is a radical act of self-preservation. In more ways than I can count, queer sisters keep saving me. Again, I am humbled, appreciative and grateful to new depths of my being.

The day after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California affirmed the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8, I sat in a waiting room at the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Cancer Center with my parents and a lesbian “sister from another mister.” She reminded me of the previous day’s historic significance. We slapped a high five, and I joked, “If these MFers can’t support marriage equality because they can’t see past their religious dogma that it’s the right thing to do, at least do it because it’s strategic. It’s good fiscal policy!”

“You know how many people would flock to get married?” my friend said. “How much money that would put into the economy?”

“It’s a recession, yo,” I reminded no one. I reminded myself, however, how lucky I am. Here I face the biggest challenge of my life, and choosing to be on the right side of justice is proving to be one of the most brilliantly selfish things I ever did.

Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica - The Blog Tour

Five Questions from Jolie du Pre, editor of Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica, for Sofia Quintero, author of On Her Terms.


1. Why do you write erotica?

Essentially, writing erotica is a liberating act for me on many levels. It so happens that I write in many genres, and yet I feel erotica is the one that I truly write for myself. The overwhelmingly majority of what I write I intend to publish in some format, and if for some reason I cannot publish something I've written, I feel terribly disappointed especially if the piece is fiction. The exception to this self-imposed pressure to publish, however, happens to be my own journal entries and my erotic short stories. I journal because it's healthy to have something that is all yours and that is not to be shared with anyone else.

I write erotica, however, because it's liberating to share things that we're socialized to keep to oneself or only intimates, especially sex since it's paradoxically ubiquitous and taboo. Creative writing allows me to explore places I haven't been and may not ever go in real life, and so writing erotic fiction is the ultimate freedom in creative expression. Finally, I'm an unapologetic feminist, and writing erotica satisfies my activist impulses to use storytelling to raise significant issues with respect to gender liberation.

2. What do you like best about lesbian erotica?

This is the first lesbian erotic story I've written although I do read lesbian erotica from time to time. There seems to be a unique sensuality that comes from two women giving each other pleasure that borders on revolutionary. That may seem like a romantic overstatement, but the argument can be made when we look at cases like the murder of Sakia Gunn. Two women who openly love each other in every way are a serious threat to the patriarchal status quo that seeks to oppress anyone who is not white, straight and male. That daring, that authenticity, that passion of lesbian sex is immensely beautiful and a powerful inspiration to anyone regardless of sexual orientation who has ever had their sexuality repressed or policed.

3. What is the theme of your story On Her Terms. in Iridescence:Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica?

The theme of my story is authenticity. Using ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Hollywood as the backdrop, it explores the risks and rewards of being true to oneself. I work in the entertainment industry, and the paradox that persists with regards to lesbianism boggles my mind. On the one hand, what I call "thesbians" abound in the industry – fundamentally straight women who will have sexual interactions with other women for the entertainment of straight men. They know they're straight, they ultimately want men, and they know rare is the straight guy that is not turned on by watching two women getting it on.

On the other hand, in the same industry that rewards "thesbians," you have gay women who are afraid to come out. My colleagues and I often discuss the "open secret" phenomenon, where the men and women whom everyone in the industry knows are gay won't come out to the public at large out of fear that the revelation will bring their careers to an abrupt halt.

When writing On Her Terms. I imagined what would happen if an established yet closeted actress once known for her fearlessness but now sliding back into obscurity were to fall for a rising starlet who reminds her of how authentic she used to be. It's a romantic story with a bittersweet ending. It also speaks to the "isms" that abound in an industry that is perceived to be so liberal.

4. Name some other books where we can find your work.

Under the pen name Black Artemis, I wrote the hip hop novels Explicit Content, Picture Me Rollin' and Burn. For more short erotica, check out the anthology Juicy Mangos. Fans of chick lit should pick up my novel Divas Don't Yield and the anthologies Friday Night Chicas and Names I Call My Sister.

5. Just for fun! Gym Shoes or Stilettos?

Why choose when I can rock these:



This blog is part of the Iridescence Blog Tour. For the entire month of June, you can read the answer to these questions from other contributing authors of this amazing collection of erotic short stories including Jolie du Pre, Fionna Zedde and Rachel Kramer Bussel. To read an excerpt of my short story, click On Her Terms.