Shani In Realism

Support and cop from these talented Black artists ✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾

The Muses  #Cosplay  

Muses: 

michelle_maka 

universallygeeky 

j_to_the_lae 

for3verredbarbie 

Photographer: yorkinabox 

I’m tired of tarot cards and tarot readers everywhere…it’s awesome but there’s just too many of ya’ll. I just want my friends list to be more diverse. If I am gonna be honest, tarot isn’t most of your forte. Most of you just aren’t good at it. And further, you set yourself up for failure doing the job that 1000 other blitches are already doing and excelling at! But the good news is there are other options!

TYPES OF DIVINATION THAT AREN’T TAROT:

☕🍷Tasseomancy: Divination from tea leaves, coffee grounds, or wine sediment. Put that drinking or herb habit to good use!

🔮🍶🕯️ Scrying: Divination using a crystal ball (gastromancy), mirror/black mirror (catoptromancy), bowl of water (hydromancy) or other reflective surface. Can also use a flame or ashes from a spell (cineromancy/ceneromancy). Go get some full moon water and Git it.

📖 Stichomancy/Bibliomancy/Rhapsodomancy: Divination from sacred and spiritual texts. Yes, we have sacred and spiritual books that aren’t the Bible. Yes much of our oral tradition has been written down. No excuses.

✋🏾Chiromancy: Palmistry, divination through the study of the hand. There are hands all around you! You have two! Grab and go, fam, grab and go!

🌬️Capnomancy/Libanomancy: Divination through reading smoke. COME ON where my potheads at this isn’t hard. Where my cigar smokers, pipe smokers, roll a bleezy and let’s get to it!

💃🏾Pendulum Reading: Energy reading using an object or your body as the pendulum.

☠️ Osteomancy: Divination with bones, shells, and other parts of nature.

🗿💎Lithomancy: Divination with stones that have symbols drawn on them (runes, a popular British Isles practice but I’m down if you want to drawn indigenous symbols from your culture)

💰I Ching Divination: Utilizes coins and yarrow stalks. You should probably only bust out Chinese coins with holes if you are in some way Chinese FYI. But why not use coins from your hometown? We all have coins laying in the sofa cushions! We all have native twigs in the grass outside!

🏚️🔠 Spirit Boards: Divination with a talking board–the most commonly called a Ouija board. Used since Ancient times (China, Africa, Greece) and for much more than talking to demons. Like please just stop obsessing with the devil lmao.

⚕️Dowsing Rod: A spiritual stick used for fortelling and finding. I’ve seen a million crystal “wands” being sold by blitches, go get one and do this thing!

☁️🌨️Nephomancy: Divination of the clouds. They are beautiful. Best of all…they are free and you don’t have to store them. My husband just reminded me that an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender was based on a woman who read the clouds ⛅

🌌✨Sortilege: Also called casting lots, ancient form of divination that is quite mysterious and open for interpretation. Found in the Bible 70+ times (most notably to throw Jonah to the whale) it involves taking a group of relevant objects and casting them for the truth. The objects can range from items to paper with words or symbols written on them. Typically all items are placed in a bag and you draw them out one at a time.

☀️🌅🌦️Heliomancy/Solaromancy : Divination of the rays and movement of the sun. We can all see the sun, really this one sounds easy. Why is none of you with Rah on your name jumped on this?

🌓🌔🌕 Selenomancy: Step 1, go outside and look at the moon. Step 2, ______. Step 3, profit. But for real ya’ll love the moon, go read her!

👨🏾👩🏿Physiognomy: Divination through facial reading. You seen faces before! Read them!

😪😴Narcomancy: Divination while sleeping /dreaming.

🌿🍃Phylomancy: Divination of leaves. Your divination pics will never look the same twice! Plus this is another free one!

🛣️Symbolomancy: Divination of things found on the road. I’d follow an IG of someone who did THAT in a meaningful way!

I hope this list inspires you to just jump in and try something new. Stop waiting for a teacher and just PRACTICE. The same way you all are doing with tarot. Feel bold and like you can practice something else…hell make up your own pieces and ways. Blaze a goddamn trail.

Signed,

Tahtahme

Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements (2018)

A manifesto from one of America’s most influential activists which disrupts political, economic, and social norms by reimagining the Black Radical Tradition.

Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. It also offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances. And Unapologetic provides a clear framework for activists committed to building transformative power, encouraging young people to see themselves as visionaries and leaders..

by Charlene A. Carruthers

Get it  now here

One of America’s most influential activists, Charlene A. Carruthers has spent over a decade developing leaders as an effective strategist, community organizer, and educator. She is a Black lesbian feminist and founding national director of the BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), a leading organization of young activists in the movement for Black liberation. Her work has been featured in outlets including the Nation, NBC News, BBC News, Huffington Post, the New Yorker, Al Jazeera, Ebony, USA Today, and the Washington Post. Carruthers was born, raised, and still resides on the South Side of Chicago.

Color outside the Lines: Stories about Love (2019)

This modern, groundbreaking YA anthology explores the complexity and beauty of interracial and LGBTQ+ relationships where differences are front and center.

When people ask me what this anthology is about, I’m often tempted to give them the complicated answer: it’s about race, and about how being different from the person you love can matter but how it can also not matter, and it’s about Chinese pirate ghosts, black girl vigilantes, colonial India, a flower festival, a garden of poisons, and so, so much else. Honestly, though? I think the answer’s much simpler than that. Color outside the Lines is a collection of stories about young, fierce, brilliantly hopeful people in love.—Sangu Mandanna, editor of Color outside the Lines

With stories by: Samira Ahmed | Elsie Chapman | Lauren Gibaldi | Lydia Kang | Michelle Ruiz Keil | Lori M. Lee | Sangu Mandanna | L.L. McKinney | Anna-Marie McLemore | Danielle Paige | Karuna Riazi | Caroline Tung Richmond | Adam Silvera | Tara Sim | Eric Smith | Kelly Zekas & Tarun Shanker

by Sangu Mandanna  (Editor), Samira Ahmed  (Contributor), Adam Silvera  (Contributor), Eric Smith  (Contributor), Anna-Marie McLemore (Contributor)

Get it now here

Sangu Mandanna, the editor of Color outside the Lines, is the author of The Lost Girl and the forthcoming trilogy A Spark of White Fire. Born and raised in Bangalore, India, she now lives in the UK with her husband and three kids, and she has an alarming Netflix addiction.

Black Queer Identity Matrix: Towards An Integrated Queer of Color Framework (2014)

“This volume launches the first sustained discussion of the need for a queer of color conceptual framework around Black, lesbian female identity. Specifically, this volume addresses the necessity for a more integrated framework within queer studies, in which the variables of race/ethnicity are taken into consideration. 

This book is unique in that it highlights a triple-jeopardy minority group that has been historically marginalized and concludes with the proposal of a much-needed framework for researchers to begin to create a baseline of knowledge/research under the umbrella of the Black Queer Identity Matrix.”

By Sheena C. Howard

Get it now here

Dr. Sheena C. Howard (PhD, Howard University, Intercultural/ Rhetorical Communication) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Dr. Howard is the editor (with Ron L. Jackson) of Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation (2013). Her most recent article, «Intercultural (Mis)Communication: Why Would You ‘Out’ Me in Class?», published in the Journal of Sexuality and Culture, won Top Competitive Paper under the Voices of Diversity Unit at the Eastern Communication Association Conference in 2012.

What Momma Left Me  (2019)

Serenity is good at keeping secrets, and she’s got a whole lifetime’s worth of them. Her mother is dead, her father is gone, and starting life over at her grandparents’ house is strange. Luckily, certain things seem to hold promise: a new friend who makes her feel connected, and a boy who makes her feel seen. But when her brother starts making poor choices, her friend is keeping her own dangerous secret, and her grandparents put all of their trust in a faith that Serenity isn’t sure she understands, it is the power of love that will repair her heart and keep her sure of just who she is.

Renée Watson’s stunning writing shines in this powerful and ultimately uplifting novel.

by Renée Watson (Author)

Get it  now here

RENÉE WATSON is the Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning author of the novels Piecing Me Together, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, co-written with Ilyasah Shabazz, and two picture books: Harlem’s Little Blackbird and A Place Where Hurricanes Happen. Renée is the founder of I, Too, Arts Collective, a nonprofit committed to nurturing underrepresented voices in the creative arts. She lives in New York City.

Young Justice #6 (2019)  //  DC Comics

The secrets of Gemworld begin to unlock themselves for the newly reformed members of Young Justice—Tim Drake, Conner Kent, Jinny Hex, Wonder Girl, Impulse and the new Teen Lantern—but is it too late for the teen heroes to help Amethyst bring some order to her chaotic realm? Fan-favorite artist Elena Casagrande also joins the team as she delivers a look at Jinny Hex’s origins and how she came to be in Metropolis on the day the new Young Justice formed.

Story: Brian Michael Bendis, art: Patrick Gleason

Get comics here

Love Is a Revolution (2021)

When Nala Robertson reluctantly agrees to attend an open mic night for her cousin-sister-friend Imani’s birthday, she finds herself falling in instant love with Tye Brown, the MC. He’s perfect, except … Tye is an activist and is spending the summer putting on events for the community when Nala would rather watch movies and try out the new seasonal flavors at the local creamery. In order to impress Tye, Nala tells a few tiny lies to have enough in common with him. As they spend more time together, sharing more of themselves, some of those lies get harder to keep up. As Nala falls deeper into keeping up her lies and into love, she’ll learn all the ways love is hard, and how self-love is revolutionary.

In Love Is a Revolution, plus size girls are beautiful and get the attention of the hot guys, the popular girl clique is not shallow but has strong convictions and substance, and the ultimate love story is not only about romance but about how to show radical love to the people in your life, including to yourself.

by Renée Watson  

Order it here

Renée Watson   is the Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning author of the novels Piecing Me Together, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, co-written with Ilyasah Shabazz, and two picture books: Harlem’s Little Blackbird and A Place Where Hurricanes Happen. Renée is the founder of I, Too, Arts Collective, a nonprofit committed to nurturing underrepresented voices in the creative arts. 

my card - The Ace of Cups for the @ladytarotcards deck 💖🔮🍷

it was rough finishing this, but I’m so glad I pulled through ! You can get the merch pack here and the orders for the deck reopen on August 15th ! Treat yourself to a beautiful deck made for, by and about lgbt poc ! 😌💜

New work…“Iniko”  Acrylic on canvas 20" x 24"

Lez Talk: A Collection of Black Lesbian Short Fiction ( 2016 ) 

“A necessary and relevant addition to the Black LGBTQ literary canon, which oftentimes overlooks Black lesbian writing,

Lez Talk

is a collection of short stories that embraces the fullness of Black lesbian experiences.  The contributors operate under the assumption that “lesbian” is not a dirty word, and have written stories that amplify the diversity of Black lesbian lives.

At once provocative, emotional, adventurous, and celebratory, Lez Talk crosses a range of fictional genres, including romance, speculative, and humor. The writers explore new subjects and aspects of their experiences, and affirm their gifts as writers and lesbian women. 

Beginning with Sheree L. Greer’s “I Can’t Turn it Off,” a short, powerful tale imbued with socio-political undercurrents, the collection also includes work from Claudia Moss, LaToya Hankins, Lauren Cherelle, K.A. Smith, S. Andrea Allen, Faith Mosley, and Eternity Philops.”

Edited by S. Andrea Allen and Lauren Cherelle  

Get it  now here