“A future where everyone has dignity. Imagine that.”—Erica Hunt
At the cusp of the light at the end of the tunnel, what is that just ahead? Is it a healthier, more caring world? Is it stasis, just entering another variation of this room we’re stuck in around the calendar bend, or is it a new thing, something more challenging, disheartening, frightening, deadly, real? As the last element in this multi-year, five-part meditation on Black feminist futurity we confront the question mark. What is fierceness in this context? In the excerpts for this section, we frame a resolute eye to unapologetically be and stand to face whatever comes next, even if it’s the changing same.
In the work of Ruth Ellen Kocher and her dual forward-looking heroes as well as her personal meditation on finding a place for herself in earlier Black television, in Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s corporality of inner space, in Adrienne Kennedy’s true love in/through/as words and M. NourbeSe Philip’s projection of the future through the archives’ seeing, this last section explores the multifaceted approach of a future that has both hard edges and brilliant, cumulative light. Whatever it is, whatever it was or may be, we will be here ready, waiting, knowing.
– Tracie Morris, summer 2021
FUTURE is part of KPI’s small experiments of radical intent series:Postcards to the Future: Protest in Place that began during the BLM protests while on pandemic lock down in summer 2020. The series runs through August 2021 and focuses on the voices in Letters to the Future: Black Women / Radical Writing, with the intent to uplift and celebrate Black women’s voices. You can navigate through the series by following the tag Postcards, at left, and by clicking on the icons below for each unit.
The KPI Postcards to the Future: Protest in Place team has included
Tracie Morris, Lisa Bowden, Desiree Maultsby, Denise Uyehara, Dulce Botello, Casely Coan, Liz Burden, Tina Howard
View the “Future” Postcards
View the Postcards to the Future archive
