Black Women’s History, Day 3: A Black woman you admire from another country
The week of February 25 to March 3 is Black Women’s History Week; it bridges Black History Month and Women’s History Month. For each day of the week, the team will discuss a different prompt. Today’s theme: a Black woman you admire from another country.
Charise: Need to give mine some thought, but I think I’ll go for Wangari Maathai…or someone extant like Vanessa Nakate.
Tierra: I knew it!
Charise: 😁😁 I’m predictable!!
*ZZ* Makes Art: I’m terrible. I can’t off the top of my head think of a Black woman that I know is from another country. I can think of 3 I admire who live in another country but I don’t know if they’re from there.
Tierra: I can only think of a few myself. This one is going to be tougher. Which is a blind spot I need to work on.
*ZZ* Makes Art: My number one I thought of when I saw the prompt is Andrea Pippins. But she moved to Europe for love. She’s from Bowie. 😂
Tierra: I’m embarrassed because I can only think of MEN from the diaspora.
Charise: Dude I have that problem all the time… I always think of men. -_-
Tierra: And then I keep thinking of these Latina revolutionaries, but they’re white. Stacey Plaskett doesn’t count, because the Virgin Islands are part of the USA. Does Ilhan Omar count? (Pause) You know what? Fuck it. Rihanna. I don’t care if she’s an off brand choice for me. That woman is living her best life. Rihanna took her money from singing about “umbrella ella ella” and turned it into Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty – ayyyy!
Charise: Rihanna is a damn legend.
*ZZ* Makes Art: Equally embarrassed I couldn’t think of foreign born Black women I admire but I was happy I could think of Black women that lived in other countries. Then I realized the only one I could confirm by memory was born there was Layla Saad. She’s amazing and I wish all wypipo had to read her books. But her workshop now book blew up globally because of the dreaded Instagram Black square moment.
Tierra: My first thought was Shirley Chisholm, but she only grew up in Barbados. She was born in New York.
Charise: Rihanna and Layla both count! LOL.
*ZZ* Makes Art: Ok, my hype womxn Charise has me going with Layla then. I learned about Layla while working at Howard and trying to face the impact of white supremacy on my life. And have you seen Rihanna’s new art book?!?
Charise: I have a lot of love for Rih… she turned that BS abuse and ridicule from Chris Brown, and built herself up in spite of the haters. She made sure that wasn’t gonna be her damn legacy. -_-
*ZZ* Makes Art: I wish I was that badass.
Tierra: I didn’t even know she had an art book.
*ZZ* Makes Art: Just came out last week. Not that I’m following her drip that hard…
Tierra: I respect that so much.
Charise: I think it’s important to be honest about how we came to our decisions too. Being American, we tend to see life through the lens of America and Americans. But this prompt really exposed something we can look into deeper. We had trouble, which pointed out how little we think about the diaspora and how necessary it is to recognize our global community of Black women.
What Black women from outside the USA do you admire? Tell us below!
An expat, a cannabis advocate, a stay-at-home mom, an artist, a nonprofit director and an environmental scientist walked into a blog.
That’s it. That’s the bio.
