Across the web, Black women are producing incredible content on a wide range of topics. We've come across these 8 pieces by Black women that deserve your attention.

We're always looking for ways to amplify the voices of Black women. We do it within our community, but there are many more brilliant sistas writing themselves into history. Even if we tried, there's no way For Harriet could showcase all of the incredible bloggers we find.

We asked our readers to submit their best posts from last month, and here are our favorites.

Love Like I've Never Been Heart Before: Blessed Through The Pain - Ari Speaks

Have I been perfect in loving?  No.  But I am still happy that I have loved.  My pastor told me a few years ago, “When you love, you love deeply.”  And he was so right in his observation of me.  In fact, every man I have ever loved, I still love.  Even after and in the midst of all the pain, let downs, and disappointments, I still love.  The scripture really is true, “Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13: 8) It really keeps going, even if the relationship does not.  Love keeps going.

Emotional Manipulation is the New Racism - Asis Chronicle

That we had to explain to the Lone White Guy that advocating for the interests of African American students (which was, after all, why we were there) doesn’t make us “exclusionary” nor “reverse racists” in our advocacy made me realize this: As long as we are being bullied or otherwise coerced into advocating alongside others in support of their objectives, we’re the most cooperative and understanding people anyone’s ever come across, and everyone will say so.

But, the second we decide to advocate for dismantling public policies that negatively impact us and the members of our communities, EVERYBODY – white folk, especially – goes all “Can’t we all just get along?” on us.

Who's Lovin' You? - Checkin' Up & Checkin' In With Toni Staton Harris

I can say for certain is that when one gets her own worth, the supernova of peace and choice is unleashed and cannot be contained.  A woman who knows, believes deep down in her heart that she is worthy of greatness looms an unrivaled presence.  A worthy woman who truly loves herself cannot help but be properly loved in return, if one is privileged to be invited and take residence in her space.  A worthy woman doesn’t ask the question Who’s Lovin’ You.   A Worthy woman is the answer.

Rethink Everything - Felicia Pride

The radical act of self-care - Inkblot

Let me say this again, because sometimes we need to hear it more than once – we all deserve care, simply because we exist. That means you. And caring for yourself is one of the most powerful ways you can care for the world around you. 

An Open Letter to My Ex-Lovers - LoveJonesLifestyle

One of you used to make me cry but you didn't know it. My pride wouldn't allow me to display such 'weakness' before you.  That's why I preferred to keep a straight face & let my big mouth & cuss words do it all for me.  It was a smoke screen.  You were so fine to me and all I wanted to do was keep you, but somehow, when I tried to express that, the words would get stalled in my throat. That's why you couldn't grasp what I was saying. I wasn't telling you the whole truth. You went on with your life, doing what you wanted to do & I held a grudge against you for it. For some reason, I actually thought that you could read my mind & know that I wanted us to be together. Some years later, I was able to confess a lot to you and how I felt things went down between us. You confessed your wrongdoings & that was enough for me, but you took it a step further and healed me with your apology. Thank you.

Pryor's Place and The End of Saturday Mornings - Notes From The Brown Mama Underground

Ooh, Child - Read Bean Dreams

Loss and responsibility is not unique to black girls, of course.  The way we must bear it, however, is disproportionately harsher than non-black girls.  The world falls very squarely on far too many of our tiny shoulders.  When your resources are limited, options in the way of assistance are also limited.  By the time we’re women, too many of us have dealt with issues far above our pay grade, and the reaction to us is visceral and unforgiving.  We’re dismissed as broken and angry, and far too few people care to examine what has actually broken or angered us.

We'll do another roundup next month, so get ready to send us your best post from the month of June!

At For Harriet, we work to elevate the voices of Black women online and off.  So as much as we love our contributors it's essential for us to highlight the work of women around the blogosphere. Check out these great posts.

Black Folks, Class, and the Truth: Notes From A Mixed-Class Breed
A few days ago, a friend of mine hipped me to the Jalen Rose-Grant Hill beef. For those of you who haven’t read about it, Rose was interviewed for a documentary and said that back when he was playing for Michigan, he’d always thought of Hill and the Black Duke basketball players as “Uncle Toms.”
Continue Reading at Phillis Remastered

Infrastructure Building! Ava DuVernay Builds Her Own Movie Distribution System
We are going to pause from our coverage of the atrocities in Cleveland, TX to get back on track with our commitment to push Black women to take their destinies and images into their own hands.
Continue Reading at What About Our Daughters

Inconceivable: Black Infertility
There have been no fish dreams for me. There is a stork-less stark reality that my 2-hour treks to an expensive specialist to be jacked open, probed, and drugged, and my regimented record keeping about peek ovulation, period flow, body temperature, and patterned intercourse over the course of two years might still result in the inconceivable: infertility.
Continue Reading at Crunk Feminist Collective

On Being Feminism’s “Ms. Nigga”
Recently, I was invited to speak at a major feminist event.

It was for a cause I cared deeply about, and I would share the stage with some of the best recognized figures in feminism.

And yet…I hesitated.
Continue Reading at Racialious

On Abortion and Humanness
My girl DeeDee was to most, including her older sister and mother, too young to care for a child. They, as women, had traveled the road of being young mothers and saw promise and redemption in DeeDee, who shared my gifted and talented classes in high school.
Continue Reading at Jo Nubian

11,12,13: Fast Ass Little Girls
I am 11 years old and my Dad just got me exactly what I asked for as my birthday gift. I carry my Mongoose dirt bike through our railroad apartment, past my sleeping mother, down creaky stairs and out of the heavy self slamming front door that leads to Monticello Ave.
Continue Reading at The Intersection of Madness and Reality

Rude Awakening
Have you ever woken up from an amazing dream to a reality not so amazing? You know one where your deepest desires were playing out; you could feel, smell and taste it in your dream?
Continue Reading at Freedom Love Justice

Pornography: A Change in Position
When I consider that pornography is simply the depiction of sexual acts as a means to an end – sexual arousal – I see no wrong in consenting adults engaging in sex acts which are recorded and disseminated for consumption and enjoyment by adults.
Continue Reading at Kay Renee

Grown's Gone And Got Me
I’ve never been the serial monogamist type who hops from relationship to relationship. If you ask my friends and family what I was doing romantically prior to my current boyfriend, you’d probably get a few variations of the same answer: “playing around.”
Continue Reading at The Beautiful Struggler

Daughter of The Great Migration
Reading The Warmth of Other Suns, I am reminded again that I am a member of a soon-to-disappear group--children and grandchildren of The Great Migration.
Continue Reading at What Tami Said



Have you read a great piece of writing by a Black woman recently? Leave a link and tell us about it.

We scoured all corners of the web to find compelling content, on all topics, created by Black women. Here are this week’s must reads.

What, Exactly, Is Emotional Eating? [A Black Girl's Guide to Weight Loss]

Deconstructing the Down Low Phenomenon: Thank You Mr. Perry for Another Stereotype [Arielle Loren]

As Pearl Cleage wrote in What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, “I got HIV from fucking men.” For most women, that’s the reality. Sexual orientation is irrelevant. The truth is that unprotected sex feels good and better than protected sex, so let’s stop beating around the bush. And if women want to take the risk of engaging in that type of contact with their male partners, there is no one to blame but themselves. Wrap It Up or Shut Up. That’s my new campaign and I may actually launch it.

What's Beef? A Rational Look at Why Lil Kim is Mad at Nicki Minaj [Gangstarr Girl]

10 Ways to Lower Your Heat Bill This Winter [Savvy Brown]

Real Talk, Wrong Talk [The Beautiful Struggler]

Never will I let “He doesn’t know any better” be an excuse for out and out street harassment or disregard for a woman’s personal space and/or her ability to travel the world freely. However, I can’t help but wonder if anyone is even attempting to talk to some of these men about how to approach a lady they find attractive. the problem with “Hey, bitch! C’mere!” should be common sense, but the leigons of men hollering “Yo, shorty” might not have gotten any lessons in the proper way to get a woman’s attention.

A Return to Myself: A Delayed Response to For Colored Girls [The Crunk Feminist Collective]

Love Adventures [Jo Nubian]

In that moment I realized that I can’t keep all my syrupy sweet loving to myself because I’m afraid that someone, or at least a lesser someone, may purloin it. I have no desire to be a hoarder, a bag lady. That simply ain’t my thing. I prepared a nice hefty plate for the new man in my life. If he behaves, he may be the recipient of even greater sustenance. My love’s too good to keep bottled up and blue. I hope you know yours is too…

Blogging 101: How I Make Money On My Blog [The Cubicle Chick]

5 Things I Wish I Knew About Sex When I Was Younger [Funky Brown Chick]

FEM confusion: Digital Deaths for AIDS relief? [The Feminista Files]

First, I detest the fact that these celebrities are acting as if not tweeting is a sacrifice. And that is what they are saying here - literally. I am willing to sacrifice my digital life for charity. Totally stupid especially since their power is in tweeting to their millions of followers. How is not tweeting to them a good idea?

Bonus:

Watch this profile of AIDS activist Rae Lewis-Thornton.


Be sure to listen to the 2nd edition of the For Harriet Roundtable Podcast

Shouldn’t this man be praised for getting the help that he obviously needed? Why is he being mocked and made the brunt of jokes? Was the shout out unexpected, yes. But it should not be shamed. The amount of courage and bravery it takes to admit that you need mental health assistance and to get it is incredible. It’s no easy feat. Black men, especially, are the least likely to seek treatment for mental illness. Does this mean that they are the least likely to have a mental illness in their lifetime? No. It simply means that they don’t get the help they need. If the reaction to Artest’s confession is any indication, I can’t say that I’m shocked.

In Praise of Ron Artest | Bassey's World

From the moment our freedom and dignity were taken from us, we have struggled towards physical and emotional emancipation; in return we have been lynched, raped, beaten, economically destroyed, silenced, and "othered". We have had our children taken from us, and watched sadly as their childhood was robbed from them to elevate Whiteness. In many of our communities there is a distinct lack of hope, and far too many have sought salvation in the needle. This has left some of us lost and bereft of hope -- and yet through all of this, Whiteness can still demand that we provide a solution to salve its conscience.

What Are You Doing to Elevate My Black Body? | Womanist Musings

Here’s the thing: if you’re going to go around erasing survivors, it’s pretty difficult to erase only the ones you want to. You can’t come up with a good reason why male rape survivors don’t count without also erasing some women rape survivors or survivors of other genders. If it’s about the rapist having oppressive power based in gender over the victim, you erase women who have been raped by women or by people of non-binary genders. If it’s about penises, you erase women who have penises, men who don’t, and victims who were raped with something other than a penis. If it’s about men having so much power in society and you just being understandably really angry about that, it’s impossible to make a non-oppressive argument that white rape survivors, straight rape survivors, cis rape survivors, abled rape survivors, and so on, shouldn’t also be erased.

Rape, Male Victims, and Why We Need to Care | The Curvature

Children are hammered daily with images that glorify the degradation of women. Talk of strippers, the tricks they perform with their bodies and showering strippers with cash is prevalent in much of today’s popular music. The raunchy, adult-themed songs are often supported by even raunchier videos that really up the ante. The fight to keep children from being subjected to these over-sexualized images is hard enough. I can’t fathom why a mother would want to thrust her children into this fuckery rather than protect them from it.

Where the Cash At? In Mama's Pants. | KayRenee - Reality Served Raw

I actually had someone tell me I was "rubbing it in" that I was raised in a two parent household with a good father. Um, I still miss my dad. I was trying to get through the day without weeping buckets. I didn't realize that it was some sort of competition: My dad is better than your dad? Really, after all these years? We didn't leave that behind in pre-school?

So...some folks aren't feeling Father's Day | BougieLand

As I say all the time, this isn’t a privilege that holds much weight outside of our community. It is gender based privilege that Black men have over Black women that is rooted in more than simply Western patriarchy. I believe that our people’s reaction to the White man’s attack on Black manhood placed us in a position in which we seek to protect Black men in a way that isn’t always…appropriate.

That Feminism Thing - Part 3 | The Beautiful Struggler

An hour later, I stood in amazement with my hair tied up and watched Nicole lay waste to this young lady with no assistance needed from anyone. I’d seen fights, but never anything like this. Nicole had walked up behind the girl and tapped her on the shoulder. As soon as she turned around, Nicole nailed her in the face with a right jab. What followed was a one-sided melee. Nicole unraveled the girl’s cheap weave and then proceeded to ram her head into the wall. “Bitch you gon’ kill who? I’m here forever!”



That was the moment that I knew I did not belong at Collinwood High School.

Stuck in the Middle - Parte Seconda | The Skinny Black Girl

Vanessa Bryant and the bedazzled mini-Kobes were a lot. Like seriously? I swear her and them lil' girls were down on center court faster than freaking security! Granted, we all know Mr. Bryant told her to have that ass front & center if/when they won but still... Can you relax and stop throwing cut-eye while that man celebrates with his teammates? Jeesh. (Lord knows, if the 1st Lady of the Lakers was African-American, folks would be calling her clingy ass all kinds of emasculating right about now. SMH. That good-good hair works wonders, I tell ya.)

bout to cop ron ron's new single and a bag of indian yaki... | Mitzi Moments

We deserve every bit of joy, happiness, fulfillment, peace that comes our way. You need to know this. We. Deserve. It.



It's easy to miss the magical moments because we're so busy looking up for the other shoe. It's like we're just waiting for a big, fat, stinky, ugly Frankenstein boot to fall out of the sky and drop right in the middle of all the sweet smelling goodness that's coming together in our lives. Like it's going to hit us on our heads and bring us out of some happy haze. After all, they say when something seems too good to be true it usually is, right?

Looking Up From the Other Side | Six Figure Sisters

Essentially, the ‘black’ American narrative simultaneously oppresses us and empowers us. It derives from a painful place as a result of oppression brought on by slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow, and institutionalized racism. It’s also responsible for conceiving and giving birth to liberation and Civil Rights movements. This narrative is unique to ‘black’ Americans. It’s also complex, not only because of the histories it speaks to but also because of how it conflicts with our current lived stories that deal with more than just racial identity.

In search of a new Black narrative | TheLoop21