Dearly Beloveds,
I am writing to you across a day I cannot predict. But maybe that is always true. You will receive this on a day shaped by the countless (and possibly still being counted) decisions that came before it. And that has also been true every day before this one.
I am writing to you on a day when the United States is complicit in multiple genocides, a day when the United States is financially and militarily responsible for the deaths of many children and of whole families and communities. I hope that will not always be true, but I also know that it has been true for the entire history of the United States. Audre Lorde was right when she spoke in defiance about the US and its brand name “freedom.” She said:
The United States is on the wrong side of every freedom struggle on Earth.
The foundation of the United States is the genocidal displacement of Indigenous people, including my own Shinnecock ancestors and my ancestors from the African continent who were stolen and held captive in great numbers in this region, now called the southeastern United States where I live. Those ancestors were the first purveyors of the genius and labor that constitutes what this journal calls “southern culture.”
I am writing to you as a Black feminist, as the oldest daughter of an immigrant mother, as a queer woman in love, and as a US citizen horrified at what my tax money engenders and destroys.
I am writing to you because my prayer is that underneath and beyond the toxic collectivity that links us through a history of colonial destruction there is another way to be connected. I am writing to you because my impulse and my refuge is to offer the best thing I have in the face of fear.
The best offering I have available to me is a love that has flowed through a series of decisions, actions, and artifacts that I cumulatively name the Black feminist tradition. A political ethic, a literary legacy, an ongoing intellectual intervention and, for me, a spiritual practice. I live inside of that tradition, not as a protective bubble or a nostalgic fantasy but as an archive of possibility and intergenerational accountability.
In my decades of research in the archival correspondence of Black feminist writers I have found the words that serve as the title of this letter again and again: “stay strong.” These words appear as a form of sisterly punctuation across a range of events. Health episodes, break-ups, deaths in the family and community, horrible headlines, and, yes, election results and their aftermath. The alliteration of “stay strong” circulating among Black women writers—those intentional wordsmiths—in no way buys into the unhealthy stereotype of Black women, those whose labor and presence is a deciding factor in so many movements, industries, and elections, as a form superhuman strength that can take infinite abuse while continuing to provide infinite care. In fact, it is the quite the opposite. The words “stay strong” between sisters acknowledge vulnerability and grief, an intimacy of witness that reminds us that we do not have to pretend to be okay when we are not. It comes (verbatim and in other words) with Sonia Sanchez reminding Audre Lorde to take her vitamins or reaching out to Toni Cade Bambara after her first cancer treatments. It comes with June Jordan promising to light a candle for Toni Cade Bambara while she tries to quit smoking again or sending Audre Lorde a Zebra plant after her mastectomy. It comes with Alice Walker reminding Audre Lorde she is always welcome in her home if she needs a site of refuge. It comes with Barbara Smith sending June Jordan a copy of a memorial program for Audre Lorde and offering to collaborate in support of other Black feminists facing right-wing backlash. “Stay strong” cites the reaching out of sisters who have often fiercely debated the many issues of their collective movement and sometimes who have quite recently not even been on speaking terms. It is how they remind each other that they are first and foremost resources for each other’s sacred survival across challenging times and even sometimes beyond death. The susurration of stay strong holds within it the whisper, Remember, when you feel isolated and bereft in your grief, I am with you.
This reiteration of staying strong is also a redefinition of strength. It teaches power with instead of power over. It offers us the possibility of a life-giving reality where our energy flows into contributing to each other’s ongoing evolution instead of staving off political and economic violence. It offers a reminder that we are already living archives of so much love and generosity. It encourages us to build the communities of support that nurture and revere the infinite different forms of power we are each growing into daily.
This is the possibility that I invest in with my lifetime commitment to Black feminism. These are the words bequeathed to me and so these are the words that I offer you: “stay strong.”
Stay strong and remember that we hold within us the love of multigenerational movements.
Stay strong by acknowledging the grief you are experiencing and the grief of everyone around you.
Stay strong by remembering that any powerlessness we feel in the face of these collective horrors will not be alleviated by policing or attacking each other.
Stay strong by continuing to listen.
Stay strong by accessing the quiet you need.
Stay strong by reaching for coalition and organizing, you cannot face this time alone and you were not meant to. You do not have all the answers and you do not need to.
Staying strong is not an individual achievement. It is not a performance. It is not something to prove. It is not possible in isolation.
Reach and remember. Breathe and believe. The decision to stay present and engaged is yours. But the strength of a love so powerful it can show up as care instead of domination? That is already flowing through all of us towards you. Even and especially in the most uncertain of times.
Stay strong.
Love always,
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer Black feminist love evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all life. She is the author of several books, most recently the biography Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. She lives and loves in Durham, NC.
Header image: Audre Lorde, 1983. Photo by Jack Mitchell/Getty Images.
