#futureancient

5) How will this book speak to and include not only black women, but also other communities of people, like men of color and LGBTQ? This is an interesting question because I wouldn’t separate Black women from LGBTQ communities. Now this isn’t to say that I haven’t struggled with naming, and identity categories because I have; we are all trying. In fact I have a good story about this. One of my favorite stories from the process of the shooting the documentary was that I wanted a friend, my friend Z, who I identified as a Black woman to participate. Well Z, turned around and said “I don’t identify as a Black woman, I identify as gender queer” and “I was like OH DIP, you have to be in the doc, because the purpose of the work is to push the boundaries of how we think about race and gender.” Z thought that how she identified meant that she couldn’t participate. The opposite was true. I went on to tell Z, well, you can identify as a “gender queer Black woman” and you need to be here, because the focus isn’t just on cis-gendered Black women. This moment is important to me because it is a reminder of how process and outcomes are connected. Meaning that I had to go through this with Z in order to see the work that goes into interrogating how we use language to describe our realities.